John's Second Letter to the Church ...

John begins his second letter using a new way to identify the church of Christ, as being a ‘Lady’.  This may well have been an active reference to the book of Revelations where he writes many things about a “woman” who was persecuted by the dragon.  John, in the book of Revelations, compares the church to a good woman, and he compares the world to a woman like Jezebel, a harlot, who seduces many.  In this letter he begins by greeting the lady and her children, a reference to the little children he wrote about in the first letter, and admires them in truth.  His greeting then extends to include Grace, Mercy, Peace, Truth, and Love.  This was quite a wonderful blessing, something needed as much then, as it is now in our own churches.

In verses 4 to 6 He continues his appeal to the ‘lady’, and continues the over-riding theme of his first lengthier letter, that the foremost concern we must have as Christians is to love one another.  So as not to be misinterpreted as to what love is, he gives it a simple definition … “And this is love, that we walk after His commandments”.  Those who say that the commandments of Christ authored on the top of Mount Sinai were nailed to the cross of Calvary, apparently did not get the memo from John.  John continually measures our love for each other by our harmony with the laws of God.  When Christ Himself summarized the law He summed it up by saying the first and therefore most important law was to love God with everything we have; the second to love each other. 

To discard love on the cross makes no sense at all.  Why would the God of love, in the crowning act of love and service, be trying to make null the very love He was expressing for His creations?  If the goal of Calvary was to free us from the law, then it would be to free us from love itself – to embrace what?  Hate, vengeance, self-interest, these are the things of Satan and the reason why the law of love is constantly broken.  Evil is defined as the opposite of love.  And again here in a very short letter to the church of his day, John again measures our love by our harmony with the laws of God, the laws of love itself.

John further states that this is not something new, it is not a new commandment, it has been with them “from the beginning”.   ‘Beginning’ is another interesting word.  One could apply it to the day of Pentecost when the birth of the Holy Spirit poured out on the early church gave it the start the world had never seen.  Or one could go back further and apply the commandment to the point in the ministry of Christ when He had summarized the commandments to the questioning listeners trying to trap Him in which law is most important.  Or one could go back further to the birth of Christ, and His entry into the world.  But the beginning could be referencing all the way back to the mountain top at Sinai when the law of love was first documented for the benefit of mankind. 

I believe John was referring back even farther, to the creation of mankind itself, which in essence was ‘our’ beginning.  At that time the institutions of marriage, the seventh day Sabbath, and a daily personal fellowship with God walking in the evenings in the Garden of Eden were established.  Before sin entered the picture, love was already present.  It was present in the marriage of Adam and Eve.  It was present in weekly rest of the Sabbath God had given them.  And it was present in the daily talks with God Himself.  It would take another 2800 years after the fall of man, before a hardcopy of the basic law of God would be needed for man to even remember what love is.  But here John calls us to remember, that the commandments of God, are the basis for our measurement of love to each other.

In verses 7 to 11 John addresses a new growing threat to the infant church of Christ.  The idea of a literal Jesus Christ, who came and died in the flesh, began to be replaced as being merely an idea, or a Spirit.  This dangerous doctrine would seek to undo the sacrifice Christ made to redeem us, and therefore to diminish the cost of our redemption; to cheapen grace.  To acknowledge that Christ was a literal person, cast blame upon the Jews and Romans who ended up killing Him.  It pointed out in stunning clarity that the very organized religion of God, was the vehicle to kill the Messiah they had so long waited for.  And further, when looking in the mirror, we realize our own accountability for the death of Christ, as He had to die for the choices we made, and continue to make.  The Roman guard who nailed the hands of Christ, shares his hammer with me, each time I decide my own pleasure supersedes the laws of love John writes about.  That is not a pleasant thought.  So in his day, John encounters those false ‘teachers’ who would rather ascribe the life of Christ as being too good to be true, and therefore more of a Spirit, Ghost, or idea, than a man born in the flesh.  John states that Christ was real, and only by accepting this truth, can we ever hope to reach the Father who is also real.

John goes further, and draws a line about supporting this kind of nonsense.  He asks the believers not to receive these false teachers into their homes, or offer them blessings in their work.  John does not want those who hold to the truth, to have their own faith or ideas shaken by the various counterfeits of Satan.  Any teaching that would demean Christ, or attempt to elevate a human to the position only Christ could hold was based in error.  We are redeemed only by the singular work of Christ performed within us, the perfecting of His love inside of us.  This is a work only Christ is qualified to do.  No spiritual leader is able to reach inside of you and change what you want, who you are, and therefore what you do.  A spiritual teacher may influence how you think, but they cannot change who you are. 

This is a work of perfection only Christ can do.  It is yet another service our God does for us.  So many leaders, even inside of Christianity attempt to become agents of salvation, rather than pointing us to the only true means of salvation.  They falsely tell us to look to ourselves and make better choices to remove our sins, and that we can be responsible for our own perfection.  In so doing, they deny the work of service only Christ can perform within us, and encourage us to make ‘self’ our God instead of Christ, all under the name of Christianity.  And so is born the doctrine of antichrist.  It is possible even within the name of Christianity to lose focus on Christ as our only method of redemption from evil, replacing Him with a ‘partnership’ with ourselves, or worse a wholesale replacement based on our own ‘good works’. 

In so doing we no longer feel the need to humble ourselves, and submit to the transforming love of Christ.  Love is never our real motivation.  Control, and status with others, in short pride of being a ‘righteous’ person tempts us away from the humility it would require to go to Christ and admit we ‘cannot’ and need Him to save us from us.  This dangerous doctrine forms the basis of every false religion in the world – that man can save man from the creature he is, by what he does.  Self-denial is not the key to Christianity.  Self-control is not the key to perfection.  Self is the very enemy of anything in harmony with God.  It is the death of self in us, that must be achieved, before others can take a higher priority in our motivation than ourselves.  This lack of self, or freedom from self, can only be achieved by the divine work of Christ within us.  It is not something we are able to do for ourselves.  We do not keep the commandments of God to achieve our perfection; we keep them because the perfection Christ creates inside of us, can think of no other way to live.

John concludes his letter by telling his readers he has much more to say, but he intends to visit them personally to say it.  Then he salutes his readers with a greeting from the children of “thy elect sister”.  Again John uses the idea of a chaste woman to represent the church of Christ.  This distinction is important as much of Revelation cannot be understood without it.  It is also interesting that John uses the imagery of a woman to define the church rather than a righteous man.  In his day, a woman was much more dependent on her husband for her survival.  Our church then must be dependent on Christ for our survival.  A woman was protected by her husband, as our church is protected from the assaults of the devil by our Lord Jesus Christ.  John does not present the church of Christ as a strong figure able to sustain itself based on the strength it inherently has.  Instead, he presents the church as being chaste, but still in a state of dependence.  The characteristics of how a woman loves and how she gives her whole heart to just one, is more important to John to describe the church, than the image of a mighty man of war who could defeat his enemies by his strength of arms and will.  John would rather call it like it is, he would rather keep it ‘real’, by talking to little children, and comparing the church to a good woman. 

I wonder what images we conjure in our minds today to describe our churches?  I would bet a playground full of trusting, happy, loving, playful toddlers is not the first image that comes to mind.  Our American idealism has crept into our churches and brought with it the spirit of self-reliance, and independence – rather than the pure dependence a child must have on its parent to survive, and the freedom this dependence offers.  Our Lord teaches community, not isolationism.  Our Lord teaches us to reach out in love, particularly to those who do not deserve it.  Our national pride teaches us to give only as it makes budgetary sense, and hold accountable those who make bad decisions to suffer the fate of their decisions.  Were this true in how our God thinks about us, redemption would be impossible, and perfection something we could never know.  The true strength of the Christian church can only be found when our weakness is admitted, and then taken to Christ.  Our actions can only be in harmony with the law of love, when we allow the Author of that law, to change who we are from the inside out.  This is not an act of strength on our part; it is an act of divinity on the part of Christ.  Our dependence must be complete, as only that reality will see perfection completed within us.