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From the foundational realities of what God has done in us to the outworking of that love working through us, God has prepared us to be an influence for Him in a dark world. However, the book of Ephesians concludes, and we are left to wonder how the story ends. The church had been influenced greatly by the love of God, yet had begun to drift over time. The foundation of love began to shift to a focus of doctrine, teaching and preaching.
The book of Revelation captures the end of the story with the church of Ephesus being commended for their doctrinal purity yet corrected because they left their first love. As time went by, they slowly forgot what it meant to simply love God and love people, and were challenged to remember where they had fallen from, repent, and do the deeds that they had done at first. The consequences of their departure were potentially catastrophic, and contain a warning to us all: a church that loses its first love runs the risk of God removing his blessing from their midst and finding another gathering of believers whose hearts are completely His.