November 17, 2018 7:00 pm
A cold, dead orthodoxy can exist when one goes through the motions of following Christ without a vibrant love for Him, despite having correct doctrine and adhering to rules.
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There's a commendation for persevering, for being intolerant. There's a good kind of intolerance here of false teachers and teaching that they hated the sensual heresy of the Nicolaitans, but they had lost their first love for Christ. And this is a huge warning here to leave your first love for Christ.
They were sound in their teaching, sound in their orthodoxy, but they had a cold, dead orthodoxy. In other words, they're putting in the time, they're keeping the rules, they're paying attention to what Scripture says, but there's a cold relationship, a dead relationship with Christ. And the lesson here is that we as Christians can go through the motions and have correct doctrine and dot our i's and cross our t's and so forth, but we can not have a vibrant love for the source of our faith or the object of our faith, which is Christ. It's sort of like a child who is told to do something by his parents and just does it out of rote obedience, but shows no love for the parents at all.
No parent is happy with that when a child just obeys just because he has to and just goes through the motions with no love for the parent at all. And this is exactly what happened in the Church of Ephesus. They were praised for their perseverance and their intolerance of false teaching and teachers. They hated the sexual deeds of the Nicolaitans, but it was a cold and dead orthodoxy without that primary quality of a love for Christ. We hope you gained from this short take of the Christian Worldview Radio program. To hear the full program and further connect with this ministry, go to thechristianworldview.org. I'm David Wheaton.
