SEV Biblia, Chapter 2:5
Por lo cual ten memoria de dnde has caído, y arrepintete, y haz las primeras obras; si no, vendr presto a ti, y quitar tu candelero de su lugar, si no te enmendares.
Clarke's Bible Commentary - Revelation 2:5
Verse 5. Remember] Consider the state of grace in which you once stood; the happiness, love, and joy which you felt when ye received remission of sins; the zeal ye had for God's glory and the salvation of mankind; your willing, obedient spirit, your cheerful self-denial, your fervour in private prayer, your detachment from the world, and your heavenly- mindedness. Remember - consider, all these.
Whence thou art fallen] Fallen from all those blessed dispositions and gracious feelings already mentioned. Or, remember what a loss you have sustained; for so ekpiptein is frequently used by the best Greek writers.
Repent] Be deeply humbled before God for having so carelessly guarded the Divine treasure.
Do the first works] Resume your former zeal and diligence; watch, fast, pray, reprove sin, carefully attend all the ordinances of God, walk as in his sight, and rest not till you have recovered all your lost ground, and got back the evidence of your acceptance with your Maker.
I will come unto thee quickly] In the way of judgment.
And will remove thy candlestick] Take away my ordinances, remove your ministers, and send you a famine of the word. As there is here an allusion to the candlestick in the tabernacle and temple, which could not be removed without suspending the whole Levitical service, so the threatening here intimates that, if they did not repent, &c., he would unchurch them; they should no longer have a pastor, no longer have the word and sacraments, and no longer have the presence of the Lord Jesus.
John Gill's Bible Commentary
Ver. 5. Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen , etc.] Believers cannot totally and finally fall away from the grace which they have received; but they may fall into sin, and from a degree of grace, and the exercise of it, as these first and pure churches did, from some degree of their love to God, and Christ, and one another; and therefore are called upon to remember, mind, and observe from what degree of it they were fallen; in order to bring them under a conviction and acknowledgment of their evil, and a sense of their present state, and to quicken their desires after a restoration to their former one: and repent ; of their coldness and lukewarmness, of the remissness of their love, and of those evils which brought it upon them: and do the first works ; of faith and love, with the like zeal and fervour, which will show the repentance to be sincere and genuine; so the Arabic version reads, and exercise the former works, to wit, charity or love.
The Jews have a saying f50 , if a man repents, do not say to him, remember ynwarj y[m , thy first works; which they seem to understand of evil works; but former good works are to be remembered and done, to show the truth of repentance for evil ones. Or else I will come unto thee quickly ; not in a spiritual way, to pay a love visit, nor in a judicial way, to take vengeance or inflict punishment, but in a providential way, to rebuke and chastise: and will remove thy candlestick out of his place, except thou repent ; or thee out of the candlestick, the pastor from the church, either by persecution or by death; or else the church, and church state itself, signified by a candlestick; (see Gill on Revelation 1:12); and may design a shaking and an unsettling of it, which is sometimes done by violent persecutions, and by false teachers and their doctrines, and by the divisions and contentions of saints among themselves; and by the former particularly was there a change made in the state of this apostolic church, when it passed into the Smyrnean one, which was a period of great persecution and distress; for this cannot be understood of the total removing of the church state itself quickly, no, not of Ephesus itself; for though there is not now indeed, nor has there been for many hundred years, a church of Christ in that place, yet there was one till the times of Constantine, when there was none in any of the other seven cities, and a long time after; (see Gill on Acts 20:17); which shows, that this was not a commination or threatening of divine vengence to that church literally, but to the state of the church, which that represented; nor does it intend the utter abolition of that church, for the apostolic church still continued, though it ceased to be in the circumstances it was before.
Matthew Henry Commentary
Verses 1-7 - These churches were in such different states as to purity of doctrin and the power of godliness, that the words of Christ to them wil always suit the cases of other churches, and professors. Christ know and observes their state; though in heaven, yet he walks in the mids of his churches on earth, observing what is wrong in them, and what they want. The church of Ephesus is commended for diligence in duty Christ keeps an account of every hour's work his servants do for him and their labour shall not be in vain in the Lord. But it is not enoug that we are diligent; there must be bearing patience, and there must be waiting patience. And though we must show all meekness to all men, ye we must show just zeal against their sins. The sin Christ charged thi church with, is, not the having left and forsaken the object of love but having lost the fervent degree of it that at first appeared. Chris is displeased with his people, when he sees them grow remiss and col toward him. Surely this mention in Scripture, of Christians forsakin their first love, reproves those who speak of it with carelessness, an thus try to excuse indifference and sloth in themselves and others; ou Saviour considers this indifference as sinful. They must repent: the must be grieved and ashamed for their sinful declining, and humbl confess it in the sight of God. They must endeavour to recover their first zeal, tenderness, and seriousness, and must pray as earnestly and watch as diligently, as when they first set out in the ways of God If the presence of Christ's grace and Spirit is slighted, we may expec the presence of his displeasure. Encouraging mention is made of what was good among them. Indifference as to truth and error, good and evil may be called charity and meekness, but it is not so; and it is displeasing to Christ. The Christian life is a warfare against sin Satan, the world, and the flesh. We must never yield to our spiritual enemies, and then we shall have a glorious triumph and reward. All wh persevere, shall derive from Christ, as the Tree of life, perfectio and confirmation in holiness and happiness, not in the earthl paradise, but in the heavenly. This is a figurative expression, take from the account of the garden of Eden, denoting the pure satisfactory, and eternal joys of heaven; and the looking forward to them in this world, by faith, communion with Christ, and the consolations of the Holy Spirit. Believers, take your wrestling lif here, and expect and look for a quiet life hereafter; but not til then: the word of God never promises quietness and complete freedo from conflict here.
Greek Textus Receptus
μνημονευε 3421 5720 ουν 3767 ποθεν 4159 εκπεπτωκας 1601 5758 και 2532 μετανοησον 3340 5657 και 2532 τα 3588 πρωτα 4413 εργα 2041 ποιησον 4160 5657 ει 1487 δε 1161 μη 3361 ερχομαι 2064 5736 σοι 4671 {1: ταχει 5034 } {2: ταχυ 5035 } και 2532 κινησω 2795 5692 την 3588 λυχνιαν 3087 σου 4675 εκ 1537 του 3588 τοπου 5117 αυτης 846 εαν 1437 μη 3361 μετανοησης 3340 5661
Vincent's NT Word Studies
5. Thou art fallen (ekpeptwkav) Lit., hast fallen out.Repent (metanohson). See on Matt. iii. 2; xxi. 29.
l will come (ercomai). Rev., correctly, I come.
Quickly. Omit.
Will remove thy candlestick. "Its candlestick has been for centuries removed out of his place; the squalid Mohammedan village which is nearest to its site does not count one Christian in its insignificant population; its temple is a mass of shapeless ruins; its harbor is a reedy pool; the bittern booms amid its pestilent and stagnant marshes; and malaria and oblivion reign supreme over the place where the wealth of ancient civilization gathered around the scenes of its grossest superstitions and its most degraded sins" (Farrar, "Life and Work of Paul," ii., 43, 44). John employs the verb kinew remove (Rev., move) only in Revelation, and only once besides the present instance, in chapter vi. 14, where, as here, it signifies moving in judgment.
The Nicolaitans. From nikan to conquer, and laov the people. There are two principal explanations of the term. The first and better one historical. A sect springing, according to credible tradition, from Nicholas a proselyte of Antioch, one of the seven deacons of Jerusalem (Acts vi. 5), who apostatized from the truth, and became the founder of an Antinomian Gnostic sect. They appear to have been characterized by sensuality, seducing Christians to participate in the idolatrous feasts of pagans, and to unchastity. Hence they are denoted by the names of Balaam and Jezebel, two leading agents of moral contamination under the Old Testament dispensation. Balaam enticed the Israelites, through the daughters of Moab and Midian, to idolatry and fornication (Numbers 25; xxxi. 16). Jezebel murdered the Lord's prophets, and set up idolatry in Israel. The Nicolaitans taught that, in order to master sensuality, one must know the whole range of it by experience; and that he should therefore abandon himself without reserve to the lusts of the body, since they concerned only the body and did not touch the spirit. These heretics were hated and expelled by the Church of Ephesus (Apoc. ii. 6), but were tolerated by the Church of Pergamum (Apoc. ii. 15). The other view regards the name as symbolic, and Nicholas as the Greek rendering of Balaam, whose name signifies destroyer or corrupter of the people. This view is adopted by Trench ("Seven Churches"), who says: "The Nicolaitans are the Balaamites; no sect bearing the one name or the other; but those who, in the new dispensation, repeated the sin of Balaam in the old, and sought to overcome or destroy the people of God by the same temptations whereby Balaam had sought to overcome them before." The names, however, are by no means parallel: Conqueror of the people not being the same as corrupter of the people. Besides, in verse 14, the Balaamites are evidently distinguished from the Nicolaitans.
Alford remarks: "There is no sort of reason for interpreting the name otherwise than historically. It occurs in a passage indicating simple matters of historical fact, just as the name Antipas does in verse 13."
