It is a sad reflection that we humans have a tendency to twist and distort the truth of God. We have a deep-rooted desire to take the wonderful blessings we receive from God, throw them on the ground and trample over them. It all began in the first ever garden when Satan in the guise of a serpent persuaded Eve that God was not really meaning that she should not eat of the tree of life. In this church at Ephesus it was God's grace which was being seriously undermined. The fact that God is gracious towards us and does not treat us the way our sins deserve is all because of an amazing attribute of God - His grace. We only deserve judgement and punishment but instead he lavishes great blessings on us. Here is how Paul described it in his letter to this same church.
“he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us."
[Ephesians 1:5-8 NIV]
These verses tell us that we have been publicly declared as sons of God. We have been set free - redeemed and we have had our sins forgiven all because of the riches of God's grace. This is a wonderful truth and shows us clearly the character of God. Here is how the Old Testament prophet sums up the character of our God
“I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity.”
Jonah 4:2b NIV
There is in sinful, human nature a desire to exploit kindness. In the message from the risen Lord to the church at Ephesus, there is a reference to the teachings of the Nicolaitans which are an unknown sect which were active in the first century. In the third of the messages to the church at Pergamum, the Nicolaitans are mentioned again and there is also a reference to the teaching of Balaam, a heathen man in the Old Testament who encouraged the Israelites to commit sexual immorality. Darrell Johnson argues that these two groups were part of the same error. They were encouraging Christians to eat food which had been offered to idols and to have sexual intercourse outside of the one man, one woman life covenant (which we know as marriage).
Without going into details on both of these sins, I am going to suggest that they are both a form of antinomianism (a desire to throw off any rules or restrictions and live life to the full). This was very much an issue in the first century church and it is still an error which is present today. Here is how Paul the apostle summed up this error.
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” [Romans 6:1-2 ESV]
Here Paul is summing up the argument of the antinomians. In other words, they were arguing that if God is a God of Grace then we can sin as much as we like and so we will have greater experience of God's grace. Here is Paul's counter-argument.
“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” [Romans 6:12-14 ESV]
There was a notorious monk in Russia in the early twentieth century and he won the wholehearted support of the wife of Tsar Nicholas II. Rasputin, who was basically lecherous and thoroughly disgusting, seduced the wives of Russian nobility with the idea that they could sin with him and also he would forgive their sin. This is a caricature but the seeds of this error are often present in our thinking in Christian circles today.
The Christians in the church at Ephesus were strong when it came to this. They would not tolerate such teaching. They were loyal to Christ and the purity of the Christian life. So that was not their big problem. Their problem was they had stopped loving Jesus.
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