Read Revelation 2:1–7
Can you be right for the wrong reason? Can you still call it right? Imagine receiving a gift from a friend out of the blue. You thank them and ask why they did this. If they say, “My boss at work told me I had to,” does that have a different effect than, “Just because I care about you”? Of course it does. The second makes you feel loved, while the first makes you feel like a means to an end. It seems like the church in Ephesus was doing the first. But they really were doing the right things! See how thoroughly they held to good theology: “[Y]ou cannot tolerate evil people. You have tested [false teachers]…You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans” (2:2, 6). See how much they did and endured: “I know your works, your labor, and your endurance…you have persevered and endured hardships…and you have not grown weary” (2:2–3). And yet Jesus tells them that if they do not change soon, He will remove their lampstand. In other words, He will remove their status as a true church. How could Jesus do this to a church that was doing all the right things? Why would He want to do that? Because they were doing the right things for the wrong reason. They had “abandoned the love [they] had at first” (2:5).
Paul addressed this very same issue in 1 Corinthians 13:1–3: “If I speak human or angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so that I can move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give away all my possessions, and if I give over my body in order to boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
So as you go about your day, doing all the right things for all the right people, ask yourself, “Why am I doing this?” Is it from love or something else?
