<p>2:4 <em>But I have this against you, that you left your first love</em>- That we should love as the Lord loved us is the utterly essential basis of the Gospel; it was the &quot;beginning&quot; of what the Lord preached and it was likewise the first thing John included in His message when preaching the Gospel (see on 2 Jn. 5,6). To leave or put away <em>agape</em> from this core place was to fall far indeed and required repentance (:5). The attributes of zeal and doctrinal soundness listed in :2 and :3 are seen by many as all that is required to be fairly sure of salvation. But actually they are irrelevant compared to the supreme aspect of <em>agape</em> love. &quot;Left&quot; can carry the idea of 'dismissed'. They had come to the mentality that such love could be dismissed as of fundamental importance. The more 'religious' issues of zeal and preserving purity of teaching had assumed such importance in their minds that they had dismissed <em>agape</em>, the love of others as the Lord loved us, from its primary place.</p><p>The Lord Jesus had &quot;somewhat against&quot; six of these seven ecclesias in the Lycus valley. He had &quot;somewhat against&quot; one ecclesia because they allowed prostitution to go on within the ecclesia. But exactly the same rubric is used here in the letter to Ephesus; the Lord had &quot;somewhat against&quot; them because they had left their first <em>agape</em>, they no longer had a spirit of true love within the ecclesia as they once did- even though they were full of zeal in other ways. The similarity of the rubric is surely intended to teach us that lack of true love is just as obnoxious to the Lord Jesus as those other sins which appear so much bigger in human eyes. Indeed, sin is serious, in all its guises. See on 1 Cor. 11:18.</p>