Remember, Repent, Return

But I have this [one charge to make] against you: that you have left (abandoned) the love that you had at first [you have deserted Me, your first love]. Remember then from what heights you have fallen. Repent (change the inner man to meet God’s will) and do the works you did previously [when first you knew the Lord], or else I will visit you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you change your mind and repent.

-Revelation 2:4-5

"The vital doctrines of Christianity met from them [the early Roman Christians living in the catacombs] far more than a mere intellectual response. Christ Himself was not to them an idea, a thought, but a real personal existence. The life of Jesus upon earth was to them a living truth. They accepted it as a proper example for every man. His gentleness, humility, patience, and meekness the believed were offered for imitation; nor did they ever separate the ideal Christian from the real. They thought that a man's faith consisted as much in the life as in the sentiment, and had not learned to separate experimental Christianity from practical Christianity. To them the death of Christ was a great event to which all others were but secondary. That He died in very deed, and for the sons of men, none could understand better than they. That He is risen and glorified at God's right hand, all power given to Him in Heaven and on earth, was to them divine reality. Among their own brethren they could think of many a one who had hung upon the cross for his brethren or died at the stake for his God. They took up the cross and followed Christ, bearing His reproach. That cross and that reproach were not figurative." -Martyr of the Catacombs, page 87