But this you have, that you hate the works of the Nicolaitans, which I Myself also hate. Rev. 2: 6

This is Jesus continuing to speak to the Ephesus church. The group doing the hated works consists of followers of Nicholas of Antioch (an ancient Greek city). Nicholas was one of the seven deacons of the early church (see Acts 6: 5). He wound up teaching heretical doctrine.

The Nicolaitan doctrine is explained in the message to the Pergamum church. There, it is likened to the doctrine of Balaam (Rev. 2: 14, 15). Balaam was an Old Testament prophet of God who sinned by helping the pagan Moab king come against God’s people. He advised King Balak that the Israelites could be conquered by tempting them into sin through sexual immorality and pagan feasts.

This is what the Nicolaitans were pushing in the Ephesus church. It was the very issue that the Jerusalem council instructed believers to resist in Acts 15: 29. “Abstain from things offered to idols, blood and things strangled, and from sexual immorality.”

Instead, the Nicolaitans found justification for idolatry, fornication, and compromise by perverting the Apostle Paul’s teaching. They turned his writings about Christian liberty into a sort of Christian license to do almost anything. The doctrine should sound familiar because it has made its way into today’s Christian teaching. It goes something like this– “You don’t have to pay attention to the law of God. It no longer affects us because we’re no longer under the law. Just believing in Jesus is enough.”

The Nicolaitan/Balaam doctrine would have us believe that we’ve been released from having to be doers of God’s word; that whatever we do doesn’t really affect our relationship with God; in other words, once saved always saved.*

The Nicolaitans’ presence and heresy in the church threatened the purity and integrity of Christian conduct. The Ephesus church recognized the danger from a warning Paul gave some fifty years earlier. He said, “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them” (Acts 20: 29, 30).

Admirably, the Ephesus church heeded that warning from Paul. The church realized that being covered by Christ’s righteousness is a call to freedom, but not freedom to sin. The Ephesus church would have nothing to do with the heretical works of the Nicolaitans; nor should any Christian church today. Jesus’ message to today’s church, as it was to the Ephesus church, is to overcome the things that He hates.

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Pls read Eternal Salvation is Conditional. Click here.