Charles Ellicott Commentary Revelation 2:5

"Remember therefore whence thou art fallen, and repent and do the first works; or else I come to thee, and will move thy candlestick out of its place, except thou repent." — Revelation 2:5 (ASV)

Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, ... and do the first works.—It is argued that we have here evidence that the later, or Domitian, date of the Apocalypse is the true one, since it describes a fall in spiritual life that might have occurred in thirty years, but would hardly have taken place in the few years—ten at the utmost—that elapsed between the visit of St. Paul (Acts 20:29–30) and the reign of Nero.

But greater changes than a decay of this kind have passed over communities in equally short periods. We have seen nations pass from imperialism to republicanism, from the fever-heat of radicalism to the lethargy of conservatism, in a shorter space of time. Has not the past decade shown marvelously rapid movements in the Church of our own land! The change, moreover, in the Ephesian Church was not so great as the advocates of the later apocalyptic date would describe.

There is at present little outward sign of decay; they have resisted evil and false teachers; they have shown toil and endurance; but the great Searcher of hearts detects the almost imperceptible symptoms of an incipient decay. He alone can tell the moment when love of truth is passing into a noisy, Pharisaic zealotism; when men are “settling down into a lower state of spiritual life than that which they once aimed at and once knew.” Such a backsliding is “gentle, unmarked, unnoticed in its course.”

Further, it must not be forgotten that the Apostle did express his presentiments of coming danger, and specially warned the elders (Acts 20:28) to take heed to themselves; and in his Epistle (Ephesians 6:24) he gives in his closing words the covert caution that their love to Christ should be an incorruptible, unchanging love: Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruption (“sincerity,” English version).

The advice now given is, Repent, and do the first works. The advice is threefold: remember, repent, reform. Remember the love of the past peaceful hours. “How sweet their memory still!” “There are ever goads,” says Archbishop Trench, “in the memory of a better and a nobler past, goading him who has taken up with meaner things and lower, and urging him to make what he has lost once more his own.” (Compare to Luke 15:17 and Hebrews 10:32.) So Ulysses urges his crew to further exertions.

“Call to mind from where you sprung:
You were not formed to live as brutes,
But virtue to pursue and knowledge high.”

—Inf. xxvi.

Remember, but also repent, and repent in true practical fashion; for Love will recognize no repentance but that which is confirmed in the doing of the first works. It must be a repentance by which we forsake sin. “Christ does not say, ‘Feel your first feelings,’ but, ‘Do the first works.’” “An ounce of reality,” says a modern novelist, “is worth a pound of romance.”

Or else I will come ...—Better, Or else I am coming to you (or, for you, in a way that concerns) you, and (omit “quickly,” which is missing from the oldest manuscripts) will remove your candlestick from its place, unless you have repented—i.e., unless the change has come before the day of visitation. The saying, now they are hid from thine eyes, is not yet spoken for Ephesus.