Trinitarian First Love

Revelation chapter 2 verse 4. Jesus says to the church in Ephesus, nevertheless I have somewhat against thee because thou hast left thy first love. Jesus had something against them because they had left their first love. Lord, may it never be that we leave our first love.

We remember the early stages of being born again when our love was burning. We remember learning that God loves us and we remember starting to love God. But it seems many of us fall from that place.

If we're honest, many of us can also say that the first months weren't perfect. The first months weren't burning and maybe the first love, the true first love came later. But whenever it came, God gave you a revelation of love.

At some point, for me, it was about a year into being a Christian when I heard a man named Tim Conway preach and I was bathed in love for about two weeks and I could see nothing but love and I was telling friends about Jesus who I would have been so scared to talk to before. But there was love dripping out of me and I remember the sun and the way it looked coming through the trees. I remember the whole of the world around me just looking like it was illuminated, just pulsing with the love of God.

And I was so, so taken with this. It didn't come the minute I was saved maybe, but it was in the first year or after the first year that I could say I was solidly immersed in the love of God. This first love where He loves me, He initiates the love, He pours out the love and the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit.

But then also where He warms my heart to start loving others, to start loving Him, to start giving out that love. All of us, if we've been truly born again, we've had that experience, we've had that revelation, that intense glimpse of His love. You might even say, but it's always been a little covered over for me.

Okay, then this verse applies to all of us. We have left our first love. We need to get back to that place of raw, initial, first love.

That place where it's just, it's new, it's exciting, it's holy, it's separate, it's different, it's first. It becomes the first thing in our lives. It's the first priority and it's love and it's saturating everything.

Bernard of Clairvaux, who was writing in around 1100 AD, about a thousand years ago, writes about Trinitarian first love. And it's so interesting to remember those initial glimpses of God's love in your life. Do you remember them? I remember that I knew something of the Father.

I remember that I knew something about Jesus Christ, definitely. And I remember that I knew something about the Holy Spirit. I knew that He was somewhat wild.

I knew that He was stirring. I knew that the Holy Spirit was doing these mysterious things. You could say as a new Christian, that's all I knew.

I mean, I knew the Father so loved me somehow. And I knew that there was this God-man Jesus who had stepped into my life and I was never going to be the same. And I knew that there was a wildness and a convicting and a mystery coming from the Holy Ghost.

So that first love was Trinitarian. And now, as I want to get back to my first love, every time I read this verse, every time God provokes us to get back to our first love, let it be a dripping Trinitarian first love. Let it be that sort of love of God burning in our hearts where we say, I want to know the Father.

I want to know my Abba. I want to talk to my Father. I want to know my Father's heart.

Father, Abba, I want to know your emotions here. I want to know your affections here. I want to know your plan here, Father.

I want to know your heart for this person in my life. I want to know your heart for this situation that I'm in. So we get back to the first love for the Father.

And then the first love for Jesus, of course, is always a love that goes right back to his blood, that goes right back to his rising again. Lord, your blood shed for me, your soul poured out for me, you giving your all for me, you pouring it all out in your blood for the sins of the world, and the life is in the blood, and I feel the love and the healing coming from your blood, Lord Jesus. And then you're rising again.

He rose again for our justification. He rose again to seal the deal. He rose again to prove that the promises were all yes and amen.

He rose again to say we are righteous. He rose again to seal our identity. He rose again to give us his presence.

It says in Psalm 17, let my sentence come forth from your presence. That presence, that power, that resurrection nearness of God, that's where my sentence comes forth. My righteousness, my identity, everything about who I am is sealed in the resurrection.

So that first love gets me back to the cross and the rising again, back to the blood and the busting open of the grave, back to Jesus, back to Jesus, my friend, back to Jesus, this close one, back to the Jesus of John 14, back to the Jesus who promises to come and make his abode with me, the Father and the Son sitting down with me right here on this couch, right there where you are, wherever you are, and then the Holy Spirit. We get back to the first love for the Holy Spirit. I remember when I was initially saved, it was just that feeling, just that sense of mystery, like who is the Holy Ghost? Who is the Holy Spirit? What has happened to me? What does it mean that I've been born again? What does it mean that I didn't do this? God did something to me.

And now as we get back to the Trinitarian first love, we say, Holy Spirit, it's you. I want that mystery. I want to know what you're doing.

I want to not know what you're doing and just follow what you're doing. I want to just be convicted by you. I want to be enlivened by you.

I want to swim in you. I want to have your gifts. I want to speak in tongues.

I want to speak in mysteries unto God. I want to be totally immersed in the Spirit of God. I want to honestly feel every moment of my life that in him I live and move and have my being because the Holy Spirit is filling me and I am in him and he is in me.

You see? So we're getting back to our first love. We're getting back to a Trinitarian first love. And this idea was impressed on me by Bernard.

And I'll just read you what he says. I mean, this is amazing. This is absolutely astounding.

I'll read it sort of slow. It is no great matter that a little dust, that's us, a little dust, should be all consumed with love of that majesty which loved her first and which revealed itself as wholly bent on saving her. He's referring to us as her because we're the bride and we're the church.

Isn't that amazing? It's no great matter that a little dust, little worms like us, should be all consumed with love of that majesty which loved her first. There's that first love and which revealed itself as wholly bent on saving her. First love also has to do with realizing that God is the initiator.

God is wholly bent on saving us. God gets this thing going. God starts this process.

God started it because I could not have done it. I was bent on wasting myself. I don't know about you, but we were not headed toward heaven.

We were not headed toward goodness. We were not in ourselves naturally inclined to love God. He had to start this thing.

And I love that he says that. God revealed himself as wholly bent on saving her. Now listen to how he unfolds this trinitarian love.

First, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life. John 3 16. This sets forth the Father's love.

God the Father so loved the world. The Father's first love for us. But he hath poured out his soul unto death was written of the Son.

So there's the Son's first love. He poured out his soul unto death for us. He initiated that love way before we were even born on Calvary, pouring out his soul unto death in the most incomparable act of sacrificial love.

Third, and of the Holy Spirit it is said, the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost whom the Father will send in my name. He shall teach you all things and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you. So there's the Father's first love, the Son's first love, and the Holy Spirit's first love.

He's the Comforter who's going to come and reveal all of these things to us. And again, he's the initiator. He's the one who starts it.

He is the first lover in this first love covenant. And then Bernard says, it is plain therefore that God loves us and loves us with all his heart for the Holy Trinity altogether loves us. If we may venture so to speak of the infinite and incomprehensible Godhead who is essentially one, can we just let that melt us a little bit? For the Holy Trinity altogether loves us.

I mean, wow. I was at a wonderful retreat center in East Texas recently, and that ministry is based on a revelation of Trinitarian love. I don't even know if the team that works there would say it that way, but I felt it every single moment that the Father was being honored, that the Son, Jesus, was being honored, that the Holy Ghost was being honored, and it convicted me that I ought to return to my first love.

Trinitarian first love is that exciting place where with raw childlike faith we can say, I want my Father, and I want my Jesus, and I want those influences of the sweet Holy Dove. And that's what I want to get back to, and that's what I want to live in every day, and that's what I want to celebrate, and that's what I want to walk in. For the Holy Trinity altogether loves us.

May we, brothers and sisters, precious church of the living God, may we get back to a Trinitarian first love. May we always get back to what Jesus says to the church in Ephesus. I have something against you because you have left your first love.

He says, remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, remember that place, and repent, turn around, and do the first works. We can get back to it. We can.

And we want to live there forever. The incomparable love of the lovely one, the first love of the one who first loved us and gave us that raw first love. Initial impressions, the initial, wow, Lord.

That first time when you say, what is going on? I know Jesus Christ. I'm different. I'm not going back.

I want this. I've entered into a world of love. Hallelujah.