Revelation of John 2:6

Start with the first word: "But." Jesus has just told the church in Ephesus something painful. In Revelation 2:4 he said, "you have abandoned your first love," and in verse 5 he warned that if they don't repent he will remove their lampstand. Verse 6 turns around and hands them something good. The rebuke is real, but it is not the last word.

Look at what he credits them for. Not that they know about the Nicolaitans, or disagree with them, but that they hate their works. That's a strong word, and it is aimed at deeds, not at faces. Jesus does not say "you hate the Nicolaitans." He says you hate what they do, and that distinction has shaped how Christians read this verse for centuries: hate the evil, not the person caught in it. Jamieson-Fausset-Brown

Then the line that makes this verse unforgettable: "which I also hate." The risen Christ, the one described in Revelation 1:14-16 with eyes like fire and a voice like rushing water, says I hate. Most of us have a picture of Jesus that doesn't include that sentence. Scripture has no trouble with it. Psalm 101:3 puts the same words in the mouth of the king: "I hate the work of those who fall away."

Who were the Nicolaitans? Honestly, we don't know much. The best clue is nine verses later, in Revelation 2:14-15, where Jesus tells the church in Pergamum that some hold "the teaching of Balaam," which led Israel into eating food sacrificed to idols and sexual immorality, and then adds, "In the same way, some of you also hold to the teaching of the Nicolaitans." So the Nicolaitans were almost certainly a group inside the churches teaching that Christians could join in pagan feasts and pagan sex and still be fine with God. Tyndale The Jerusalem council in Acts 15:20 and Acts 15:29 had ruled on exactly these two things.

Where do Christians disagree? Mostly on origins. Some early fathers tied the group to Nicolas, one of the seven in Acts 6:5, either as their founder or as a man whose words they twisted. Others think the name is symbolic, a Greek echo of "Balaam." A few readers have taken the name to mean "conquer the laity" and read it as a warning against clergy lording over people, but most scholars across traditions find that a stretch.

Here is where the verse sits: this is the first of seven letters, to the mother church of the region. Ephesus has lost its warmth but kept its spine. Jesus wants both.

John wrote Revelation from Patmos, a small rocky island off the coast of what is now western Turkey, where he had been sent for his witness to Jesus ( Revelation 1:9). Most scholars date the book to around AD 95, late in the reign of the emperor Domitian, who leaned hard on the cult of emperor worship. A minority date it earlier, to the late 60s under Nero. Either way, this is a church under pressure, writing to seven real congregations in cities a courier could reach by road.

Ephesus was the big one. Think of a port city of a few hundred thousand people, the commercial hub of the Roman province of Asia, with a harbor, a theater that seated roughly twenty-five thousand, and above everything the temple of Artemis, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. That temple was not just a religious site. It was a bank, a tourist magnet, and an engine for the local economy. In Acts 19:23-41 you can read about a riot that broke out when Paul's preaching started hurting the silversmiths who sold Artemis souvenirs.

That matters for our verse. In a city like Ephesus, nearly every trade had a guild, and every guild had a patron god and regular feasts in that god's honor. Those feasts included meat offered to the idol and often ended in the kind of sexual behavior that went with pagan worship. If you refused to show up, you could lose customers, contracts, friends, maybe your livelihood. The pressure to compromise was economic before it was theological. learn.ligonier.org

So picture a teacher in the church saying something reasonable-sounding: "Idols are nothing, so the meat is just meat. Grace covers us. Go to the feast, keep your job, don't be so rigid." That is roughly what the Nicolaitans seem to have offered: Christian faith adjusted to fit comfortably inside pagan life. bible.usccb.org The church in Ephesus, founded by Paul, pastored by Timothy, and taught for years by John himself, said no.

One more piece. Later writers like Irenaeus (around AD 180) told a story that Nicolas of Acts 6:5 had taught people to "abuse the flesh," meaning deny it, and that his followers flipped it into "indulge the flesh." Whether that story is history or legend, we can't be sure, and scholars across traditions say the evidence linking the group to Nicolas is thin. bible.usccb.org What we can say is that the behavior Jesus hated looked a lot like the behavior that Jude 1:4 and 2 Peter 2:15 condemn: grace twisted into a license for sin.

A few words carry this verse.

ἀλλά (allá), G235, "but, on the contrary." This is the strong Greek "but," the one that sets what follows against what came before. Strong's Jesus is deliberately turning the page from rebuke to credit.

ἔχω (échō), G2192, "to have, to hold." The word covers everything from owning a coat to possessing a quality. Strong's "You have this" means it is genuinely theirs. The hatred of evil isn't something Jesus is asking them to work up; it is already in their hands, and he names it as a possession worth keeping.

μισέω (miséō), G3404, "to hate, to detest," and by extension "to love less." Strong's That second meaning is worth knowing. In Luke 14:26 Jesus says a disciple must "hate" father and mother, which clearly means to love them less than him, not to despise them. Here, though, the object is "works," and the fuller sense fits: active revulsion, not mild preference.

ἔργον (érgon), G2041, "work, deed, act," from a root meaning labor or occupation. Strong's The target is conduct, the things people actually do, not their identity.

Νικολαΐτης (Nikolaḯtēs), G3531, "a Nicolaite, a follower of Nicolaus." Strong's The name itself is built from "victory" and "people," so it could mean "conqueror of the people" or something like "victory people." Some think it's a Greek rendering of "Balaam," whose Hebrew name can be read "destroyer of the people," since Revelation often pairs a Hebrew and a Greek name for the same thing (Abaddon and Apollyon in Revelation 9:11). Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Others hear a sales pitch: victorious Christian living without the cost of obedience. thegospelcoalition.org

κἀγώ (kagṓ), G2504, a contraction of "and" plus "I," so "I also." Strong's Small word, enormous weight. Jesus puts his own name beside their hatred and says it is his too.

This verse doesn't point forward to Jesus. He is the one speaking. So the question is what it shows you about him.

First, it shows you that love and hatred live together in Christ without contradiction. The letter opens with Jesus "walking among the seven golden lampstands" ( Revelation 2:1), close to his churches, tender enough to notice when their love has gone cold. The same Jesus says "I hate." Hebrews 1:9, quoting Psalm 45:7, says of the Son, "You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness." It is not that Jesus has a hard side and a soft side. It is that real love for people necessarily hates what wrecks them. You see it in John 2:15-17, when he drives the merchants out of the temple, and the disciples remember "Zeal for your house will consume me."

Second, it shows you what he came to do with sin. The Nicolaitans were offering a way to keep Christ and keep the idol feast, a faith that costs nothing. Jesus hates that, not because he hates pleasure, but because he knows what sin actually is. He went to a cross for it. Grace that was bought at Calvary cannot be cheap, and Romans 6:1-2 asks the Nicolaitan question directly: "Shall we continue in sin so that grace may increase? Certainly not!"

Third, the verse is a quiet echo of a bigger pattern. Balaam's scheme in Numbers 25:1-3 and Numbers 31:16 was to seduce Israel into Moab's feasts and beds when he could not curse them outright. Jesus calls the Nicolaitans Balaam's heirs in Revelation 2:14-15. Where Israel fell, Jesus stood: tempted in the wilderness with shortcuts to glory ( Matthew 4:8-10), he refused every one. He is the faithful Israelite the first Israel never was.

And notice how the letter ends. The Jesus who hates the Nicolaitans' works promises in Revelation 2:7 to give the one who overcomes "the right to eat from the tree of life." The Nicolaitans offered a feast; he offers a better one. The point of hating the counterfeit is that the real thing is on the table.

Let's be honest about what this verse asks of you, because it is not what you might expect.

The obvious lesson is "hate sin." True enough. But look at who is being praised. The Ephesians were tired, had lost their first love, and were under threat of losing their lampstand. And Jesus still said, you have this to your credit. He saw the one thing they had held onto and he named it. If you are in a dry season, where your love for God feels like a memory, hear that. He is not blind to what you've kept. Ask him to show it to you.

Now the harder part. The Nicolaitans were not outsiders. They were in the church, with a reasonable-sounding theology, and they were offering relief from a cost. Go to the guild feast. Keep the contract. Don't be the person who makes a scene over a plate of meat. The compromise always comes dressed as common sense and usually as grace.

So here is the cost this verse names for you. There is probably a place in your life where you have made peace with something Jesus hates because hating it would be expensive. It might cost a friendship, a client, a promotion, a comfortable reputation as someone easygoing. Hating the works of the Nicolaitans in Ephesus meant being the odd one out in a city that ran on idol feasts. learn.ligonier.org What does it mean in your city?

Two guardrails. First, hate the works, not the people. The verse is precise about that, and so should you be. The person caught up in compromise needs you to love them and refuse their teaching at the same time, which is harder than either alone. thegospelcoalition.org Second, don't let hatred of error become your whole religion. That is exactly the trap Ephesus fell into. Verse 4 and verse 6 belong together. Guard the truth, and go back to your first love. Jesus wants both, and he is willing to tell you plainly when you only have one.

• Lord Jesus, you walk among the lampstands and you see me clearly. Show me what I still have to my credit, and show me what I have let go of.
• Give me your hatred for the things you hate, especially the compromises I have excused in myself because they cost me nothing.
• Teach me to hate the works without hating the people. Keep me from contempt, and keep me from cowardice.
• Where I am being pressured to join the feast, to keep quiet and keep my place, give me the courage the Ephesians had, and the warmth they lost.
• Bring me back to my first love for you, so that my refusal of evil flows from delight in you and not from pride in being right.

• Jesus says "you have this." If he wrote a letter to you today, what one thing would he name to your credit, and what would come right before the "But"?
• The Nicolaitans offered a faith that fit comfortably inside the city's economy. Where has your faith been adjusted to fit your job, your friendships, or your comfort?
• Is there a "work" you tolerate in yourself or in your church because the person doing it is likable, and does Jesus tolerate it?
• When you think of Jesus saying "I also hate," does it unsettle you? What does your reaction reveal about the Jesus you've been imagining?
• Ephesus hated the right things and had lost its first love. Which of those two is easier for you, and which one has quietly become your whole religion?