“I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lamp stand from its place.” (Revelation 2:2-5)

Now looking at this church from the outside it seems they have it all together. They are obedient and they test the spirits and have found some people to be false apostles. They have endured persecution and hardship, and have not given up, and yet for all of that God is not satisfied. None of these things are enough, they are good, but in God’s eyes they are not best. They lost their first love. On the outside they look like a thriving body of believers yet inwardly they are dead and disconnected from the fiery love of God. They lost their passionate relationship with the Holy Spirit, and now lived a shallow religious life.

Jesus so strongly detested their spiritual state that He said they were fallen. This is most intriguing because, outwardly they are obedient and have a passion for biblical truth in testing supposed men of God claiming to be apostles, but Jesus holds “first love fellowship” at such a high priority that if we slip out of that place, and remain there, we are in danger of falling away.

Christ then says if they don’t see how far they have fallen from true inner-relationship with Him, and then repent, then they will be snuffed out: their lamp stand removed.

Sin from God’s perspective doesn’t start when we drink a bottle, or lose our temper. It starts when we depart from His presence. The moment we leave His presence, and refuse to return, we are living in rebellion. From that place of emptiness sin thrives as our master and multiplies like bacteria. In the absence of true encounter a vacuum is created within a person that is quickly replaced by sin.

The fall of mankind began when man was separated from relationship with God, but the fall ends when we enter back into that supernatural glory-filled relationship with the Holy Spirit.