Manna Praxis

The Book of 2 John: Truth and Love

Introduction

Today’s Passage: An Overview of the Whole Book

Sit down now with one of the smallest books in your Bible. Thirteen verses. A few hundred words in the original Greek, which is about as much as a man could fit on one ordinary sheet of papyrus, and that is almost certainly why it is the length it is. This is not a treatise. It is a note, written in haste and warmth by a man who calls himself simply “the elder” and who is remembered by the church as the apostle John, grown old, writing to a household or a congregation he loves and cannot presently visit. He has heard good news about them and he has heard something that worries him, and both are in the letter. The good news is that he has met some of their children walking in the truth, and it made him overjoyed. The worry is that travelling teachers have gone out into the world who will not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, and some of them are on the road, and sooner or later one of them will knock on this door. So the old man writes down two words and refuses to let anyone pull them apart. Truth. Love. He greets them in truth and love. He rejoices over children walking in the truth. He asks them to love one another, which is not a new command but the oldest one they have. He tells them what love actually is: that we walk according to His commandments. Then he tells them what to do when a man arrives carrying a different Christ. And he closes by saying he would rather not spend any more ink on it, because he hopes to come and speak face to face, so that their joy may be complete.

As you read, hold this: In a note short enough to fit on a single sheet of papyrus, the elder ties truth and love together in a knot no one may untie, because the Christ who is the truth really came in the flesh.

The name and what it means

The word that governs this letter is ἀλήθεια (alētheia), pronounced ah-LAY-thay-ah (Strong’s G225), and it means truth: what is actually the case, what is real, what stands when everything else is stripped away. The word is built out of a negative and a root meaning to hide or escape notice, so that at its bottom it carries the sense of the unhidden, the thing brought out into the light and no longer concealed. Greek philosophers used it for reality as against appearance. The Greek Old Testament often used it where the Hebrew spoke of firmness and faithfulness, the quality of a thing you can lean your weight on without it giving way. Put those two together and you have very nearly what John means by it: truth is what is really there, and it is what will hold you.

Count the occurrences and you will be startled. Five times in thirteen verses. He loves them in the truth, and so do all who know the truth, because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever, and grace and mercy and peace will be with us in truth and love, and he was overjoyed to find their children walking in the truth. Truth is not a topic in this letter. It is the air the letter breathes.

And here is what you must understand before you read a word of it. For John, truth is not first a set of propositions to be agreed with, though it certainly includes propositions and he is about to insist on one of them very sharply. Truth is first a Person, and then a road. It is a Person, because this same writer recorded the Lord saying, “I am the way and the truth and the life,” and wrote of the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth. It is a road, because John never speaks of truth as something you merely hold; he speaks of children walking in it, and of truth that abides in us. You do not possess this truth the way you possess an opinion. You live in it, the way you live in a house, and it lives in you. That is why he can move without any awkwardness at all from truth to love in the very next breath. If the truth were only a list, love would be a separate subject. Because the truth is a Person who laid down His life, love is simply what walking in that truth looks like from the outside.

The world of the book

Picture the geography first, because it explains the danger. The church of the first century had no seminaries, no printing press, no way for a congregation to check a stranger’s credentials. What it had was roads, and men walking on them. Teachers, prophets, and evangelists moved from town to town along the Roman roads and the coastal shipping routes, carrying the message with them, and the churches supported them. Inns in that world were few, filthy, and often little better than brothels, so a traveller depended on being taken in. When a Christian teacher arrived in a town, he went to a believer’s house, and that house was very likely where the congregation met, since there were no church buildings for another two centuries. To be received into the house was therefore to be received into the church. To be given the ordinary greeting of welcome at the door was to be publicly vouched for. Hospitality was not a nicety in that world. It was the whole delivery system of the gospel, and like any delivery system it could be used to carry poison as well as bread.

By the time this note was written, near the end of the first century, in the region around Ephesus by the oldest tradition we have, the poison had appeared. Teachers had gone out from the churches who would not confess “the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.” We should be careful not to claim to know more about them than we do, but the shape of the error is clear enough from what John denies. It was not that they thought too little of Jesus. In a sense it was that they thought too little of flesh. The educated world around them took it for granted that spirit was high and pure and that matter was low, and a religion built on that assumption will always find the incarnation embarrassing. A God who takes a body, gets tired, bleeds, and dies is not the sort of thing refined people want. So the teachers offered a Christ who only seemed to be a man, or a divine spirit who came upon the man Jesus and left before the cross. It sounded reverent. It was, John says without softening it, the mark of the deceiver.

And notice who is being written to. “The chosen lady and her children.” Christians have read that in two ways for as long as we have records, and it is honest to tell you so and then leave it standing. Some read it as a real woman, a Christian matron whose house was open to the church, with real sons and daughters, a sister of hers elsewhere whose children send greetings at the end. Others read it as an affectionate way of addressing a whole congregation, the church as a lady chosen by God, with her children being her members, and the elect sister at the close being a neighbouring congregation. Both readings fit the Greek. Both fit the letter. The second explains why so much of the letter is plural (“you” is plural nearly all the way through) and why the instructions read like church policy rather than household advice. The first explains the sheer warmth of it. We are not told, and nothing in the letter depends on settling it. What we do know is that a name was left out and a title of dignity was put in its place, and that whoever she was, she was chosen. That is the word that mattered to the old man writing, and it is the word that ought to matter to you. God chose her. God chose her children. He chose you too, if you are in Christ, and it was not because you were impressive.

The shape of the book

The one thread to carry

Carry this one thing through these thirteen verses: hold truth and love together, and hold them together because Christ came in the flesh. Every age wants to keep one and let the other go. There are people who will tell you that love is what matters and doctrine only divides, and there are people who will defend every syllable of sound teaching with a coldness that would frighten a child. John will not have either. Read what he actually says and watch how the two are welded.

"I was overjoyed to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father has commanded us. And now I urge you, dear lady—not as a new commandment to you, but one we have had from the beginning—that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the very commandment you have heard from the beginning, that you must walk in love." 2 John 1:4–6 (BSB)

Look at the circle he draws. Love one another. And what is love? That we walk according to His commandments. And what is the commandment? That you must walk in love. He goes round and round on purpose, and by the time he is done you cannot get a knife between obedience and love. Love that will not obey is only a feeling with a nice name on it. Obedience that has no love in it is not obedience to this Lord at all, because the thing He commanded was love. So the sentimentalist and the cold-hearted defender of correctness are both shut out by one short sentence, and the ordinary believer who is trying to tell the truth kindly and love people honestly is quietly told that he has understood the faith.

Then comes the reason the two can never be separated, and it is not a principle. It is a Person with a body.

"Anyone who runs ahead without remaining in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever remains in His teaching has both the Father and the Son." 2 John 1:9 (BSB)

Notice the word remaining. The old man is not asking anyone to be clever. He is asking them to stay. The deceivers were the progressives of their moment, running ahead, moving on to something more advanced than a Galilean carpenter nailed to a Roman cross, and John says that a man who runs on past the teaching of Christ has run out of God altogether, while the one who simply stays has the Father and the Son thrown in together. There is enormous rest in that for anyone who has ever felt outpaced by people with newer ideas. You are not required to keep up. You are required to remain.

And that is why the incarnation is the hinge of this little letter. If Jesus Christ has really come in the flesh, then truth is not an abstraction floating above our ordinary life, and love is not a mood. God has entered the world of bodies, of doors and tables and journeys and papyrus and ink, and He has told us that we may know Him and that we must love one another in the same ordinary places. Take away the flesh and you lose both halves at once: the truth becomes a theory and the love becomes a sentiment. Keep the flesh and everything holds. So read these thirteen verses slowly, more slowly than their length seems to deserve, and let an old man who leaned on Jesus at supper teach you how to keep the two together. Learn the Word, love in the truth, and give thanks.