flaw in this hard-working, tireless, enduring, discerning, truth-loving, lie-hating congregation: “I have this against you, that you have left your first love” (2:4). This “first love” was a height from which the church had fallen and to which it must return if its lampstand was not to be removed (2:5). Is Jesus rebuking their loss of love for himself, a waning of the devotion that characterizes new converts? In Jeremiah 2:2–3 the Lord reminds Israel of their honeymoon in the wilderness, calling
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