Love and Discernment
Rev. Res Spears
Walking in Truth and Love • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Transcript
It’s funny how we can live with someone else for so long and never really understand some things about them.
Now, I’m sure that if you asked Annette or Miss Lynn, they’d tell you there are plenty of things about me that they’ve never been able to understand.
But they’re not standing up here now, and I am, so I’m going to take a couple of moments to dish on THEM a bit. I’m sure they’ll have their chance some other time.
Let me start by asking how many of you have a dishwasher at home. I’m not talking about the kids or someone else whose chore it is to wash dishes. I’m talking about a mechanical dishwasher.
OK. I imagine if I’d asked this question 50 years ago, the number would have been lower. Today, I think the dishwasher might be one of the favorite modern household appliances in homes all over the developed world.
What used to be a boring and laborious task is now simply a matter of filling the machine, closing the door and pressing a button.
The only hard part is to make sure you’ve loaded the dishwasher the way your spouse insists on it being done.
We have a dishwasher in the home we moved into in 2020. And we had one in our old home, as well.
But we never use the one in the new home, and we never used the one in the old home.
Let me take that back. In the old place, the dishwasher was where we kept all the clean plastic containers.
I remember the dishwasher being used occasionally when I was a teenager in that house, and I THINK it was used sometime in the 1980s.
But by the time Annette and I moved in there with Mom, it had sat dormant for decades. Mom had stopped using it and even after we moved in, she asked that we not use it either.
She was afraid the plumbing it was connected to might have sprung a leak during all those years. Better to just use it for storage and not have to deal with disastrous kitchen flooding.
Somehow, though, this mode of thinking moved with us from North Suffolk to Carrollton. So we STILL don’t use the dishwasher, even though we know the plumbing is sound.
I don’t understand it. And I don’t question it. It is what it is.
We have a dishwasher, but we live as if we have no dishwasher. I’m just glad we don’t take the same approach to the OTHER plumbing fixtures in the house. THAT would make life a lot more complicated.
Now, I don’t tell you this information about us just because I like living on the edge — although I often DO like living that way.
I tell you this, because I want you to have a picture in your minds as we look at 2 John today of a church whose love reflects the truth in which it walks.
A picture of a church whose love is a PRODUCT of that truth. A picture of a church whose love could not exist WITHOUT that truth.
As we continue our series of messages from 1, 2, and 3 John, we’re going to see the Apostle make the case that the brotherly love to which the church is called cannot exist without truth.
Last week, as we looked at 3 John, we saw that he told Gaius love is the product — the fruit — of truth. This week, as we turn to 2 John, we’ll see him argue that real love can’t be found where real truth is not treasured and proclaimed.
And, in the course of his argument, we’ll see a warning from John about the dangers of UNtruth to the church.
But before we look at this letter, let me give you two quick reminders.
First, we’re going backwards through these letters, because 2 and 3 John give us some of the setting and framework that will help us to better understand 1 John. And going backwards helps us to see John’s progression from individual theology to theology that impacts the universal church.
And second, we need to understand what John meant by the two key words — love and truth — that appear so frequently in all three of these letters.
For John, love isn’t about sentimentality or emotion, though those things CAN be part of it. Instead, love is a conscious choice to seek the best for another person, regardless of the cost and without respect to whether that love is returned or deserved.
This is the kind of love that Jesus demonstrated as He hung on the cross, taking upon Himself the sins of the world — and their just punishment — so that all who believe in Him would have eternal life.
Significantly, truth in John’s conception of it is also connected to Jesus, the one who called Himself the way, the TRUTH and the life. Jesus IS truth, and all that He says and does is truth, and there is no truth that is not His.
Now, with those reminders, let’s take a look at the text of this letter, which we know as 2 John.
1 The elder to the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in truth; and not only I, but also all who know the truth,
2 for the sake of the truth which abides in us and will be with us forever:
3 Grace, mercy and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.
Now, you’ll recall that 3 John was written to a specific believer, Gaius, who was part of a church in Asia Minor, possibly the church at Pergamum.
Looking at the text in verse 1, we might conclude that this letter was written to another individual, this one a woman.
But many Bible scholars believe that the “chosen lady” John refers to is actually a church.
Jesus personified the church as His bride, which would fit with John’s reference to a lady here. And the Greek words translated as “you” in verses 5, 6, 8, 10, and 12 are all plural, which suggests that he’s writing to a group, rather than an individual.
This is important, because I’ll argue that John’s message in this letter was meant for the group of people that constituted a church.
His encouragements and his warning have individual applications, but they’re especially important as those individuals come together as the bride of Christ, as His church, as His hands and feet here on earth.
And here’s the message of this letter: Abiding in truth is essential to brotherly love.
From a negative perspective, a church that does not cherish and protect and proclaim truth cannot love the way Jesus loves, the way we are CALLED to love.
And so, truth is foundational, both to the Christian life and to this letter. John reveals its importance by referring to it four times in the first three verses.
It is, in verse one, the very basis of his love for this church and the basis of the love of all Christians. In verse 2, truth is the reason for his writing this letter and the promise of Emmanuel — “God with us” — that is the very hope of every follower of Jesus from every time and every place on earth.
In verse 3, truth is the basis of the three greatest Christian blessings — grace, mercy, and peace.
And the order in which these blessings appear here is important. John records them in the order in which we experience them when we turn to Jesus in faith.
First, we receive grace, the unmerited favor of God. We who deserve nothing but condemnation from God because of our sins against Him instead receive His kindness, demonstrated when He sent His unique and eternal Son, Jesus, to live among us as a man — yet without sin — and to give Himself for us and in our place as a sacrifice to pay the penalty we deserve for our rebellion against God.
Grace is everything God has done for sinners that we don’t deserve.
Mercy is God’s compassion and pity on us. In God’s mercy, He stands ready to forgive we sinners who place our faith in Jesus and His completed work at the cross.
And peace speaks of the completeness and well-being of life lived in the presence of God. It includes the idea that we who were enemies of God because of our rebellion against Him are now welcomed into His household as sons and daughters by virtue of our faith in Jesus.
Because of God’s grace, we can experience God’s mercy. And IN God’s mercy, we can find peace.
Remember that I said this letter has special applications to the gathered church?
Here is one of them: If you’re looking for a place where you can find grace, where you can find, mercy, where you can find peace, then find a church where truth and love prevail.
Find a church that proclaims the truth of JESUS, rather than foisting the lie that there is peace or hope in anything but Him.
Find a church whose life reflects the love that is the fruit of TRUTH, and you will find a place where grace and mercy and peace abound.
And so, having laid the foundation of this letter in truth and its connection to love, John moves on to his encouragement and instruction. Look at verse 4.
4 I was very glad to find some of your children walking in truth, just as we have received commandment to do from the Father.
5 Now I ask you, lady, not as though I were writing to you a new commandment, but the one which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another.
6 And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it.
As he did with Gaius in 3 John, the Apostle takes a moment to praise and encourage this church for its walk with Jesus, for “walking in truth.” They LIVED what they BELIEVED.
As the Baptist preacher Vance Havner used to say, “What we live is what we believe. Everything else is just religious talk.”
Drawing from the whole counsel of Scripture, John says walking in truth what God commands us to do.
And if we’re walking in truth, then we’ll be doing what we’ve been commanded to do from the beginning — loving one another.
This isn’t a new commandment. Unlike some of the false teachers that were already appearing on the scene in the early church — the deceivers we’ll see him mention in a moment — John wasn’t coming to this church with some new word.
When Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment from the Old Testament Scriptures, He said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your hearth and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
Love God and love people. This is the basic message of the entire Old Testament. We see God giving these commandments and the people of Israel failing to do either of them.
And then, Jesus comes along, and He gives us essentially the same message. Love God and love people. The two are connected. They’re “like” each other. They’re two sides of a coin. We can’t truly love God if we don’t love the people He loves.
As one commentator puts it: “Love offers the clearest test of the truthfulness of [a confession of faith]. Belief may be feigned and confession only of the lips, but love is harder to counterfeit.” [Tom Constable, Tom Constable’s Expository Notes on the Bible (Galaxie Software, 2003), 2 Jn 1.]
Walking in truth results in loving one another the way we’ve been called to love. And loving one another the way we’re called to love requires us to walk, as verse 6 says, according to God’s commandments — in other words, by walking in His truth. Love and truth are unbreakably connected.
When John was writing this letter, there were people who were claiming to be able to love without holding to the truth of who Jesus was and is. They claimed they had some advanced truth that He had not revealed. But what they’d done was to reject the truth.
We see the same thing today, as our culture demands, for example, that we affirm the popular slogan, “Love is love.”
But what John tells us here is that TRUTH is love and that LOVE is truth. REAL love — the love for which every one of us was created — cannot be found where truth is rejected.
And so, having praised and encouraged and instructed this church regarding the connection between truth and love, John now moves to a warning against those who would bring deception into the church. Look at verse 7.
7 For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.
8 Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward.
In contrast to those who embrace the truth of Jesus, John writes here that there are many deceivers who are in the world, denying the fact that the same Jesus called the Son of God in verse 3, has come to us in human flesh.
This was a widespread heresy in the early church and one the church dealt with in its earliest creeds. Jesus came to us as a man, though He was and is still fully God.
He was raised into a glorified but still fleshly body. And He ascended to heaven in that body. He is still the embodied God.
And it is BECAUSE He was and remains human that He could take upon Himself the just punishment for our sins. He could only represent mankind at the cross as a human. And He can only represent us before God as a human.
By coming to us as the incarnated Son, God Himself bridged the chasm our sins created between us and Him.
As the divine Son of God, Jesus was able to reach back up across that chasm to the holy and righteous Father. And as the Son of Man, He was able to reach down to sinful mankind.
It is only because He is both God and man that Jesus can be the bridge to connect us back to the God from whom our sins cut us off.
Those who reject either the humanity or the deity of Jesus are deceivers. They are antichrists — people who are opposed to Christ.
One day, the earth will see THE Antichrist, who will attempt to set himself up to take the place of Jesus. But here, John is talking about those who oppose Jesus by rejecting what He said about Himself.
Such people existed during the time of the early church, and they still exist today.
Just as the Apostles went out to spread the truth about Jesus, the antichrists have gone out spreading lies. And believers and non-believers, alike, have often been deceived by them.
So, John warned that church — and us — that we need to be careful not to fall for their lies. We need to watch ourselves so we don’t undo the work of the Apostles. And so we don’t lose the rewards in heaven we’ll have for being steadfast in the truth.
Folks, what you believe matters. And what you believe about Jesus matters more than anything else.
I know Christians who say that theology doesn’t matter as long as you love Jesus. But I’m here to tell you that if your theology is wrong, you won’t be loving the Jesus of the Bible. You won’t be loving the God of the Bible.
You’ll be loving a god of your own making. And that will put you in the same position as all of those disobedient people we read about in the Old Testament. The same position as the Pharisees of Jesus’ time.
Instead of loving the God who had created them in HIS image, they loved a god they had created in their own image. In other words, they loved themselves and tried to fit God into that picture.
And John has hard words for those who would lead God’s people astray in this manner. Look at verse 9.
9 Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son.
10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting;
11 for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.
12 Though I have many things to write to you, I do not want to do so with paper and ink; but I hope to come to you and speak face to face, so that your joy may be made full.
13 The children of your chosen sister greet you.
The false teachers of John’s time thought they were enlightened thinkers and that the Christians who held to the teachings of Jesus were immature.
It’s the same thing today with those cult religions that claim some further revelation from God. They talk about Jesus, but they claim things about Him that He never taught, things that haven’t been revealed by the Holy Spirit.
And John says here that they don’t have God. They’re out of touch with God, whereas those who abide in the teaching of Jesus are in close touch with Him.
And the proper response to an out-of-touch teacher, John says here, is to refuse to give him aid and comfort. Don’t give him a greeting.
Giving a greeting in the Jewish culture would have implied giving a blessing. So the idea here is not to bless the ministries of those who “go too far.”
This is the other side of the coin from what the Apostle talked about when he wrote in 3 John that we should support the traveling preachers who are sharing the gospel.
Just as supporting traveling preachers and evangelists and missionaries makes us co-workers with them, blessing those who “go too far” constitutes participating in their evil deeds.
Note that John doesn’t tell us we shouldn’t love these people. Indeed, I think he’d tell us to take them aside privately and show them the truth and try to help them believe. That’s what love would do.
But we as individual Christians — and especially as the gathered body of Christ — must watch ourselves and be discerning in the ministries we support to make sure we are not participating in the spreading of lies.
If ever I were to leave this church as its pastor — and I’ve never felt the slightest leading of God to do that — I think that I might preach this message again, because it’s one of the strongest messages in the Bible about being careful whom you call as a pastor. It MATTERS what your pastor believes and what he teaches.
And that’s one good reason for each of you to listen carefully and critically when you hear ME preach. If I’m ever preaching or teaching unsound doctrine, I hope someone will be quick to come to me in love and remind me of the truth. That is, after all the loving thing to do.
But we can’t love if we’re not walking in truth. Let us be people who LIVE the truth by which we walk.
Let us be people who live in constant recognition that we HAVE this truth. Let our lives reflect the love that is its fruit. And let that love be rich in both generosity AND discernment.