2 John 1

Today’s Passage: 2 John 1

Here is the whole letter, all thirteen verses of it, and you should read it the way you would read a note left on a kitchen table by someone you love who was in a hurry. It opens with a greeting that cannot get through three lines without saying the word truth four times. It moves to a burst of gladness, because the old man has run into some of this household’s children out in the world somewhere and found them walking in the truth, and it clearly made his day. Then comes his one request, and he is at pains to say it is nothing new: love one another. He explains what he means by love, and the explanation goes in a circle on purpose, tying love to obedience and obedience back to love until you cannot separate them. Then the shadow falls across the page. Many deceivers have gone out into the world, and the thing they will not say is that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. Watch yourselves, he says. Do not run ahead of the teaching of Christ; stay in it, and you have the Father and the Son together. Then the hardest sentence in the letter, about what to do when such a teacher comes to your door asking for a bed and a platform. And then, as suddenly as it darkened, the note brightens again: he has much more to say and does not want to spend paper and ink on it, because he hopes to come and speak face to face, so that their joy may be complete. Greetings from the children of her elect sister. That is all. It takes three minutes to read and a lifetime to obey.

As you read, hold this: A note of thirteen verses refuses to let truth and love come apart, because both of them stand or fall on the Son of God who really came in the flesh.

2 John 1:1–3 (BSB)

¹ The elder, To the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in the truth—and not I alone, but also all who know the truth— ² because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever: ³ Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, will be with us in truth and love.

He does not give his name. He calls himself “the elder,” which is the way an old man who needs no introduction signs a note to people who know him well, and the church has always heard the voice of the apostle John in it. Then look at how he addresses them: “the chosen lady and her children.” Whether that is a real woman with a real household or a congregation addressed with affection as a lady, and Christians have honestly read it both ways, notice the adjective he cannot leave off. Chosen. Before he says one word about their conduct, he tells them that God picked them out. Everything else in the letter rests on that, and so does everything in your life if you are in Christ.

And then the word begins to repeat. He loves them “in the truth.” Not merely truly, though that is included, but in the truth, as men love one another inside a shared house. And he is quick to add that he is not alone in it: “not I alone, but also all who know the truth.” There is a fellowship here wider than one old man’s affection. Everyone anywhere who knows the truth loves these people, though most of them have never met. That is a real thing, and if you have ever sat down with a believer from the other side of the world and found yourself at home in ten minutes, you have felt it. Then he gives the reason, and the reason is not sentiment: “because of the truth that abides (μένω) menō, pronounced MEN-oh. Strong's G3306, to remain, abide, stay. Menō is one of John’s favorite words in all his writings, and it means to remain, to stay put, to take up residence and not leave. It is the word for lodging somewhere overnight, for a thing that lasts when other things pass, for the guest who does not go home in the morning. In the upper room this same writer recorded the Lord saying “Remain in Me, and I will remain in you,” and the whole picture of the vine and the branches turns on it. Here he says that the truth abides in us and will be with us forever, and you should feel the weight of that. The truth is not a lodger you are keeping an eye on. It has moved in, and it has no plans to leave, and it will still be there when this world is gone. That is why he can tell people to stay in the teaching of Christ later in the letter without it sounding like a burden; he is only asking them to remain where they already live. And notice what this does to the fear that dogs so many honest believers, the fear that they might one day wake up and find that the whole thing has quietly slipped away from them. The truth abides. It is not being stored in the frail cupboard of your memory or your feelings. It is held in you by the God who put it there, and it will be with us forever. in us and will be with us forever.” The love is not generated by the people. It is generated by the truth living inside them, and since that truth is permanent, so is the love.

Then comes the blessing, and it has an unusual shape. Paul normally writes “grace and peace to you.” John writes “Grace, mercy, and peace,” slipping mercy in between the other two, and he does not write it as a wish but as a statement of fact: they “will be with us.” Grace is God’s undeserved kindness to the guilty. Mercy is His pity toward the miserable. Peace is what a soul has when the war with God is over. And the source is named with great care: “from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father.” He will not put a hair’s breadth of distance between them. In a letter about people who were tampering with the Son, he names the Son beside the Father as the joint fountain of grace. And then, as if he cannot say a sentence without them, the two words come again at the end: “in truth and love.” That is the whole letter in three words. Not truth or love. Truth and love, and the greeting itself already refuses to choose.

2 John 1:4–6 (BSB)

⁴ I was overjoyed to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father has commanded us. ⁵ 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. ⁶ 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.

Feel the gladness in that first line. “I was overjoyed.” He evidently ran into some of these children somewhere, perhaps travelling, perhaps passing through his own city, and what he found made him happy the way good news about your grandchildren makes you happy. And notice exactly what pleased him. Not that they were gifted, or successful, or well spoken of, but that they were walking (περιπατέω) peripateō, pronounced peh-ree-pah-TEH-oh. Strong's G4043, to walk about; to conduct one's life. Peripateō means literally to walk about, to go around on foot, and the Greeks used it for the ordinary business of getting from one place to another. But Jewish writers had long used walking as the picture of a whole manner of life, the way a man conducts himself day after day, and the New Testament takes that up everywhere. To walk in the truth is not to visit the truth on the seventh day; it is to live in it on the way to work. Two things follow. First, walking is unspectacular. Nobody applauds a man for walking. It is what you do when there is no audience, one plain step after another, and that is precisely the Christian life as John describes it here. Second, walking gets you somewhere. A believer who walks in the truth this week is not in the same place he was last month, even though no single step felt dramatic. Set that beside how we usually measure our spiritual life, by peaks and by feelings, and you will see how much kinder God’s measure is. He asks for steps. And if you want to know what made an old apostle overjoyed, it was not a crowd or a movement. It was somebody’s children still walking. in the truth. He is honest, too, and it is a tender kind of honesty: he says some of your children. He does not say all. He is not going to flatter anyone by pretending he saw more than he saw, and he is not going to spoil his own joy by refusing to celebrate what he did see. That is a good way to speak of people. Rejoice loudly over what is genuinely there and do not manufacture the rest.

Then comes his request, and he takes real care with how he frames it. “Not as a new commandment to you, but one we have had from the beginning.” He is not introducing anything. He is reminding them of the first thing they ever heard. This is the old man who was in the room when the Lord said, “A new commandment I give you: Love one another,” and he knows that by now it has been theirs from the beginning, and he wants them to feel the weight of its age rather than the thrill of novelty. That matters in a letter about people who were running ahead into fresh teaching. The deceivers were offering something new; the apostle offers something old, and it is the old thing that is alive.

And then he does something extraordinary with the definition, and you have to read it twice to catch it. “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.” He is going in a circle, and he means to. What is love? Walking in obedience. What is the commandment? Walking in love. Round it goes, and by the end there is no gap left between them. That is a beautiful refusal, and it settles a very old argument in a single verse. Nobody may say, “I love God, I simply do not accept His commandments,” because love is obeying Him. And nobody may say, “I keep the rules, whether or not I have any love,” because the rule He gave is love. Sentiment without obedience is not this apostle’s religion, and obedience without love is not either. The same writer says it plainly elsewhere.

"For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome," 1 John 5:3 (BSB)

Not burdensome. That last phrase is worth its weight in gold. He is not describing a heavy religion of duty that grinds a person down. He is describing what it feels like to do what you actually love doing for Someone you actually love. A father does not experience getting up in the night for his child as an unbearable weight of law. Love makes the commandment light. Praise God for a Lord who commands nothing but what He first supplies.

2 John 1:7–9 (BSB)

⁷ For many deceivers have gone out into the world, refusing to confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. ⁸ Watch yourselves, so that you do not lose what we have worked for, but that you may be fully rewarded. ⁹ 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.

Now the reason for the letter comes out into the open, and the old man does not soften a syllable of it. “Many deceivers have gone out into the world.” Many, not a few. Out into the world, which means they are on the roads right now, and one of them may reach this house before the year is out. And the mark that identifies them is not their manner, their morals, or their eloquence. It is one confession they will not make. They refuse to confess “the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh (σάρξ) sarx, pronounced SARX. Strong's G4561, flesh; human nature apart from the Spirit. Sarx is the ordinary Greek word for flesh, the soft stuff of a body, meat on a bone. It was not a dignified word, and that is exactly why the Spirit chose it. In the world John was writing to, educated opinion held that spirit was pure and matter was low, and a religion that had God taking meat and blood upon Himself was an offense to good taste. So the teachers offered a Christ who only seemed to have a body, or a heavenly power that visited the man Jesus and slipped away before the nails. It sounded more reverent. It was fatal. Take away the flesh and there is no real death, and with no real death there is no atonement, no substitute, nothing but a beautiful idea that cannot save anybody. Take away the flesh and there is no High Priest who can sympathize with our weaknesses, because He never actually got tired or thirsty or grieved. Take away the flesh and there is nothing on the throne of heaven now but bare deity, whereas the New Testament says there is a Man there. This is why John will not be gracious about it. Everything a sinner needs is fastened to that word. And the same writer had already given us the sentence the church has never gotten over, that the Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. .” Everything hangs on that. A man may say a great many admiring things about Jesus and still be the deceiver, if he will not say that the eternal Son of God took a real human body and lived and bled and died in it.

He calls such a person “the deceiver and the antichrist,” and we must be careful to let the word mean here exactly what he makes it mean, and no more. John is the only writer in the New Testament who uses that word at all, and he uses it as a description, not as a title for one figure at the end of history. In his first letter he says plainly that many antichrists have already come. The word means one who stands in the place of Christ and against Him, offering a substitute in His name, and John’s test for spotting one is not political and not dramatic. It is doctrinal and simple: what does this man say about Jesus coming in the flesh? Christians have held a range of views about how history will end, and this letter does not settle any of them. What it settles is far more useful for a Tuesday afternoon. If a teacher will not confess the real incarnation of the Son of God, you already know what he is, whatever else he is right about.

"The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth." John 1:14 (BSB)

“We have seen His glory.” The man writing this note saw it with his own eyes and leaned on that chest at supper, and he is not going to sit still while somebody turns it into a rumor. Then he says, “Watch yourselves, so that you do not lose what we have worked for, but that you may be fully rewarded.” Notice he says watch yourselves, not merely watch them. The danger of false teaching is never only out there. And notice how much labor is behind the phrase “what we have worked for”: years of preaching, of travel, of prison and patience, of raising up a congregation in a hard city. He does not want that harvest scattered by a persuasive visitor in a single winter.

Then verse nine, which is one of the great, clarifying sentences of the New Testament. “Anyone who runs ahead without remaining in the teaching of Christ does not have God.” The picture is of a man striding out in front, past the boundary, leaving the teaching behind him because he considers it elementary. The false teachers were the advanced ones, the progressives of their hour, and John’s verdict is brutally simple. Run on ahead of Christ and you do not have God at all. You have something, but not Him. And then the other side of it, and this is the promise to rest on: “Whoever remains in His teaching has both the Father and the Son.” You are not asked to be original. You are asked to stay. And staying is not poverty, because the two of them come together, and there is nothing beyond them worth running toward.

2 John 1:10–13 (BSB)

¹⁰ If anyone comes to you but does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your home or even greet him. ¹¹ Whoever greets such a person shares in his evil deeds. ¹² I have many things to write to you, but I would prefer not to do so with paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come and speak with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete. ¹³ The children of your elect sister send you greetings.

Now we come to the hardest sentence in the letter, and it deserves to be handled slowly and honestly, because it has been misused for centuries and the misuse has hurt people. Read what it actually says. “If anyone comes to you but does not bring this teaching.” The picture is specific: a travelling teacher arrives, carrying a message, looking for a house. In that world the house was the church. To receive him was to give him bed, board, funds for the next stage, and above all a platform and the congregation’s public endorsement. And the greeting (χαίρω) chairō, pronounced KHY-roh. Strong's G5463, to rejoice; the ordinary word of greeting and public welcome. Chairō means to rejoice, and its infinitive was the ordinary Greek word said at meeting and at the head of a letter, the way we say greetings or good morning. But you must picture how a first-century greeting worked to feel the force of it. It was not a mumble in passing. It was a public act at a doorway, often with an embrace or a kiss, and when the household head spoke it over a visiting teacher in front of the gathered church, everyone present understood it as vouching for the man. It said: this one is ours, listen to him. That is what John forbids, and it is essential to see the limit of it, because the same man who wrote this wrote that we are to love one another, and he wrote that love comes from God, and he recorded the Lord telling us to love our enemies and to be kind to those who are not kind to us. This verse has sometimes been dragged out of its doorway and used to justify cutting off relatives, refusing to speak to neighbours, or shunning fellow believers over matters this letter never mentions. That is a misuse, and a serious one. John is protecting a congregation from being used as a launching pad by men who deny that Christ came in the flesh. He is not handing anyone a licence to be cold, and he is certainly not authorizing you to treat as an antichrist a brother who differs from you on things Scripture leaves open. John forbids is the formal word of welcome at the door, which functioned as a kind of certification in front of everybody watching. So what the elder forbids is not courtesy to a stranger. It is sponsorship of a man who is dismantling the incarnation, using your house as his base and your good name as his credential. Do not fund that. Do not host it. Do not put your family’s endorsement on it. Whoever does, he says, “shares in his evil deeds,” because you cannot supply the ladder and then claim you had nothing to do with the climb.

So hold the two together, exactly as this letter always does. Guard the door of the pulpit with real vigilance, and keep the door of your heart wide open to people. Do not sponsor a teacher whose Christ is not the Christ who came in the flesh. And do not use that as cover for the far easier and far uglier sin of despising people who are not like you. The same hand that wrote verse ten wrote this:

"Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God." 1 John 4:7 (BSB)

Whenever verse ten is quoted without verse seven standing beside it, something has already gone wrong. The old man who told them to guard the door is the same one who could not stop saying beloved.

And then, mercifully, the note softens and ends like a letter between friends. “I have many things to write to you, but I would prefer not to do so with paper and ink.” He is nearly at the bottom of his sheet, and he is also saying something every reader in that world would have understood: some things should not be handled at a distance. Hard subjects go better in a room, with faces. “Instead, I hope to come and speak with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.” Face to face is literally mouth to mouth in the Greek, near enough to be heard without shouting. What a thing for the end of a letter about deceivers. He has warned them about a door they must not open, and then he tells them the door he is hoping to walk through himself, and that the point of it all is joy. Not victory in an argument. Joy, made complete. And the last line is a greeting from the children of her elect sister, one household of the chosen sending love to another across whatever miles lay between them. That is how the church has always lived.