Well we turn now in Holy Scripture to our Old Testament reading which tonight is coming to us from Deuteronomy chapter 6 We’re reading verses 1 through 12 Deuteronomy chapter 6 After that, we’ll flip over to one of the smaller books in scripture, to 2 John, a mere 200-ish words in Greek. For our New Testament passage, we’ll read the book in its entirety, but focus on the first six verses. But first, let’s hear God’s word from Deuteronomy chapter six, beginning in verse one.
Hear now God’s word for us this Lord’s Day evening. Now this is the commandment, the statutes and the rules, that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you, that you may do them in the land to which you are going over to possess it, that you may fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments which I command you all the days of your life, and that your days may be long. Hear therefore, O Israel, and be careful to do them, that it may go well with you, and that you may multiply greatly as the Lord, the God of your fathers has promised you in a land flowing with milk and honey. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.
And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorpost of your house and on your gates.
Excuse me, continue, read the next few verses in verse 10. And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give you with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant, and when you eat and are full, then take care. lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.
Hearing now a word from the New Testament from the book of 2 John, reading it in its entirety. 2 John. The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth, And not only I, but also all who know the truth, because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever. Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God, the Father, and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, in truth and love.
I rejoice greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father. And now I ask you, dear lady, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the 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 commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it.
For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Christ Jesus in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch yourselves so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting. Whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.
Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to come to you and talk face to face so that our joy may be complete. The children of your elect sister greet you. This is God’s word for us this evening. Let’s go to him once more in prayer. Blessed are you, God, Father of glory and light, the eternal source of wisdom and knowledge. Give us now a spirit of wisdom, May the revelation and the knowledge of Christ enlighten the eyes of our heart, that we may know the hope that we have been called to. Reveal yourself to us this evening, that we may know you, as you have given yourself to be known through your holy word, through Christ Jesus, our savior, that we may rejoice in the good news of the gospel, cling to it, and love it, as we delight in our walk with you. Pray all this in the name of your holy son, Christ. Amen.
We live in a world that has torn love and truth apart. On the one hand, we are told that loving means affirming everything. To love someone is to celebrate whatever they believe, whatever they feel, whatever they choose. Truth becomes something flexible, something personal, independent, something that cannot and must not be offended. On the other hand, we see a different distortion.
Truth without love. A harsh, combative spirit that wields doctrine like a weapon, that cares more about winning an argument than winning a person. Someone that can be technically right, but spiritually cold at the same time. This is the clickbait YouTube special. Our culture gives us these two options. Soft love without truth, or hard truth without love.
But the Apostle John says no. In this short letter, as I said, one of the shortest in the New Testament, a mere 200-ish words, John shows us something far deeper and more demanding. Truth and love are married. They belong together because they both come from Jesus Christ. For John, truth is not simply something that you know. And love is not merely something you feel. No, truth is the reality God has revealed in His Son Christ. Love is the shape that reality takes when it enters human lives. You cannot truly love without truth, and you cannot truly know the truth without love.
That’s why John writes this small letter. Not because the church he’s writing to is failing, but because it’s vulnerable. Not because love has disappeared, but because truth is being challenged in its midst. Not because obedience out of gratitude is gone, but because deception is nearby. So 2 John is this small pastoral letter written to a real congregation facing a real danger.
Voices were speaking about Christ, about Jesus, but not the Jesus of scripture. No, teachers were claiming spiritual insight, but were quietly unraveling the gospel. And John knows something that we all need to learn and be reminded of again and again. When the truth about Christ, who he is and his great work is compromised, love collapses, everything collapses. When love is severed from truth, the church loses her way.
So John writes not to stir fear, but to secure their faith. Not to divide them, but to deepen their faith. Not to crush their joy, but to protect the very core of it, to preserve the peace, purity, and unity of the family of God. So that this short letter comes from the Apostle John, it probably comes later in his life and in his ministry, likely to a specific region called Ephesus, written to a local network of churches there that were facing this growing threat. This time not of persecution from outside, of being beaten, being kicked out, no, but of deception bubbling up from within. Traveling teachers were going around trying to redefine who Christ was in his humanity, in his coming.
And John writes as their great spiritual father to study his children and the truth they have received. So John here in verse one opens this short letter with words that are warm and personal, but also theological, deeply so. the elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever. At first glance, it sounds like a private letter, right, to a woman and her family. But in this small letter, it very quickly becomes clear that John is doing something more rich and more layered than on the surface.
He refers to her as the Elect Lady, and that small phrase has stirred centuries of discussion. Some suggest in their teaching that it refers to a literal woman, perhaps the name Electa, a name that, surprisingly, you would think would be more popular among the Calvinist crowd, but isn’t. Or perhaps it’s the name Kyria, a feminine form of the word Lord, so a noble lady. Some say it’s a polite form of address, something like, ah, my fairest lady, I write this letter unto you. But when we look at that language, when we look at the themes of this small but potent letter, its shape, a different picture emerges for us.
Throughout Scripture, God’s people are regularly and often portrayed as a woman. Jerusalem is called a woman in Isaiah, The people of God are called a bride in Revelation and throughout. Paul speaks of the church as his betrothed bride in 2 Corinthians and as a wife in Ephesians 5 by analogy. John himself will later describe the New Jerusalem as a bride adorned for her husband.
This commonplace metaphor, having nothing to do with gender, is in the air and in the ethos. So when John writes to the elect lady and her children, it is almost certainly speaking to a local congregation and his members, using that intentional biblical imagery of a chosen woman and her offspring.
This fits especially well with what he says at the end of the letter, when he sends his greetings from the children of your elect sister, that is another church. This is not a private family exchange, it’s a pastoral letter between congregations. It is as if I wrote a letter to you at Westminster and said, my beloved elect sister at Westminster, your elect sister at Escondido, greetings. This is to you. But notice that choice. Yes, he’s writing to this church, to her children and her people, but he describes her as elect, as chosen.
Certainly not an accident. In John’s gospel, Jesus says that his people are chosen out of the world. That is, they belong to God, not to the system around them. And this church, like every true church, exists in a world that we, as we know, doesn’t know God, but it does belong to Him as the universal King. John’s love for this church isn’t sentimental or generic.
This is whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth. There’s a bond that exists among believers that is deeper than personality, deeper than culture and language, deeper than preference, deeper than the nuances that often divide us.
It is rooted in something objective, something unchanging. It’s rooted in the truth. Not truth as feeling, not truth as opinion, but truth as revealed in Christ Jesus. So John says something even more remarkable, that that truth abides in us and will be with us forever. This truth isn’t just something we possess, something we guard and treasure, it certainly is. It is something, though, that lives in us, that takes its dwelling in us.
It abides, it remains, it does not shift with the winds of culture or the fashions of theology, no. And because of this truth that comes from Christ, the one who is truth, is the truth that carries us into the very age to come, a truth that is unchanging, a truth that does not expire, that stretches into eternity itself.
And that’s why John can write with such love and love the church the way he does. Love isn’t rooted in their performance. and their great size and their reputation and their contributions to his ability to be in ministry. No, it is rooted in what God has done for them already in Christ and in the truth that now lives and abides in them.
And out of that overflowing heart of deep affection that we might feel for one another as believers, he pronounces a beautiful blessing, one of the richest blessings of the New Testament, grace. Mercy and peace will be with us from God the Father, from Jesus Christ the Father’s Son, in truth and in love. Theologian John Stott notes, peace indicates the character of salvation. Mercy, our great need of it, and grace, God’s free provision of what we need. So in this small phrase, we see salvation’s character, our need of it, and its free provision in Christ. And that is the blessing that John pronounces over this church.
And where do all three of these come from? From God the Father, from Jesus Christ. They don’t come from the church itself. They don’t come from human effort, from spiritual techniques or discipline. No, they flow from the triune God through the Son to his people so that they come in truth. and in love, because truth, we know, without love, it’s cold, it’s crushing. Love without truth is empty, often misleading. But in the person of Christ, truth and love blend together in holy matrimony.
No, he tells us who we really are, and then he gives himself for us anyway. And John begins the small letter with that assurance before he ever speaks about the danger that is encircling them like a shark. No, he reminds them of who they are. They are elect. They are chosen people, loved in truth and held by a truth that will not let them go.
And that foundation is essential because it is exactly this truth that is about to be challenged as the opponents challenge Christ coming in the flesh. Christ came, he took a true body, a reasonable soul. Christ was and is and will continue to be man, the Son of God incarnate, fully God, fully man, two natures, one person. This is the truth, the truth that expresses Christ’s love for his people. And this is what is being challenged, love and truth. For no greater act of love has there been than the life and ministry of Christ. to humble himself in taking on the form of an infant, the form of man, born of woman, born under the law, to live perfectly, to obey, to be scorned and ridiculed, and to die the death of humiliation upon the cross. And this is being challenged.
But before all of that, he provides this blessing. Where does he go then next? Does he immediately jump to challenge? Well, let’s see. He moves in from greeting in the first three verses to thanksgiving. I rejoice greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father.” That’s where he introduces this one sentence that shows the character of the main concern of the whole letter.
John is not happy that people are only attending church by itself. He’s not primarily rejoicing that they are orthodox on paper. He’s concerned if they are walking in the truth. Are they walking the walk and talking the talk, or is it for show? Throughout all of John’s writings, truth is not merely ever something you assent to alone.
He always uses metaphors of something that you live inside of. To walk, even, is the metaphor. To order your life according to something. To walk in the truth is to let truth shape your steps, organize your priorities, determine your choices. No, walking in the truth means that the revealed reality of Christ Jesus governs how you think. how you love, how you endure suffering, how you resist sin, how you welcome outsiders and others.
John is deeply encouraged, but he’s also subtly concerned. He says, some of your children. That naturally insinuates not all, some. There are some of the congregation who are living in truth, but others are drifting. And that drifting isn’t merely moral, At its core, it’s theological, it’s doctrinal. It has to do with what they believe about God. For when your beliefs go astray, often your walk follows shortly thereafter.
And this matters because in the next verse, John warns them about these traveling teachers who deny that Christ has come in the flesh. These traveling teachers aren’t merely people who are mistaken. John presents them as deceivers. And when a church loses its grip on the truth about Christ and who He is, by these deceptions, everything else unravels.
Worship becomes hollow. Truth, a mere sentiment. Obedience becomes optional. To stop walking in truth is, it’s not first to stop behaving, but it is to stop believing rightly. It is to step off the solid ground of who Christ is, what he has done, as revealed in his word, and to begin drifting into something that feels spiritual, but is now detached from the anchored reality of his word.
That’s why John rejoices still. He rejoices when he sees believers who are not doing this, who are walking in the truth. It means they are still rooted in the word. They are still grounded. They are still being shaped by the gospel as the only thing that they know, Christ and Christ crucified. He rejoices that their roots run deep.
And that prepares us for what he says next, because he says next that truth does not exist for its own sake. but has always moved toward love. Verses five and six we see this, love really is obedient walking. Because he moves from that thanksgiving to the exhortation.
What’s this about? I’ve greeted you, I’ve blessed you, I’ve introduced my concern, but still joyful that so many of you are following, but I have worries. Now he moves to that concern, and now I ask you, dear lady, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning. simply that we love one another. This is vintage, robust Johannine language. He’s not introducing something novel. That’s what these traveling teachers do. He’s not unveiling a new spiritual technique. No, he’s calling the church back to what it has known from its infancy and its inception.
The command to love one another is not new. It goes back to Christ himself. As he say in Matthew and in John, and all the Gospels, I suppose, a new commandment I give to you, and that you love one another just as I have loved you. But it’s not new when he says that, not in time at least, but certainly in depth, in the way that Christ has defined it and embodied love in his life. It is new. And yet John knows how easily love can become vague. This word that we use all the time, we say we love God, we love people. We love the church, but God, John, will not allow that love to float free from truth, from obedience.
So he defines it then very clearly for us. This is love, that we walk according to his commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it. Notice what he’s doing there. Love is not first a feeling or a mere affection, not tolerance, not indulgence. It is a way of walking, a pattern of life shaped by God’s revealed will as it overflows and bubbles up out of the believer. The Old Testament has already taught this. To love God was to walk in his ways as we read in Deuteronomy 6 verse five. As Jesus then later gathers the whole law into a single heartbeat, famously says, to love God and love your neighbor.
And John is saying that this is still the shape of the law. This is still the shape of the Christian life. Love is not something that replaces obedience. Love is obedience from the very heart. The singular commandment love here expresses itself then, which is ironic, through the plural commandments in the text if you see. The commandments, the concrete ways then God tells us and informs us of how we ought to express this love. How do we live out love to one another, to him, to unbelievers? Here really is the crucial hinge in many ways of this letter.
Because love does not compete with the truth. It doesn’t soften truth. Love is what truth produces. If someone claims to love but rejects who Jesus is, Corvette, they’re not loving, but deceiving if they are denying Christ and his revealed word. If someone claims to know the truth, though, but walks not in love, they’re not walking in the truth. Scripture says they’re walking in darkness.
And true Christianity is always both. Truth believed, love embodied, which brings us to the heartbeat of why John is writing. This truth and love and Christ really at the center. So at this point, we can see why John has written the letter the way that he has. He begins with truth. He moves to walking in truth. He then defines love and truth as obedience to that truth.
Why? Because the church is being threatened by people who claim to live spiritual, enlightened, loving, faithful lives, but deny the truth about Christ. Later in this short letter, he says, many deceivers have gone out into the world that do not confess him coming. That is the danger in the background of every line in verses one through six. These teachers were not openly hostile, but they’re persuasive.
They likely spoke of love, they spoke of spirituality and enlightenment and the correct way to live, but they rejected everything. They rejected the truth that Christ has come in the flesh, that the eternal Son of God had become man, lived for us, died for us, and rose again incarnate.
And John knows that when you remove this, when Christ is removed, The whole house of cards comes tumbling down. Without Christ as our Savior, living for us, dying for us, being raised to new life, truth is speculation. Faith becomes a blind leap, commands become moralism, and love is then left as sentimentality only. That’s why John hinges everything about the truth in this core doctrine of the faith, the incarnation.
Truth that abides in us forever is not just an idea, no, it is a reality that God has come to you in Christ Jesus. So that the love that we share is not vague goodwill, it is love shaped by the cross. The obedience we walk in as we walk out this love is not self-salvation, it is a grateful response of a redeemed sinner. So that the gospel stands behind everything that John says here in this letter. We do not walk in truth in order to be God’s people. We walk in truth because God has made us his people. We do not love in order to be accepted. No, we love because we have first been loved.
When God sent his son to be the atoning sacrifice for your sins, he loved you, but you were yet his enemy. That’s why the false teaching is so dangerous that assails them. If you get Christ wrong, You get love wrong. If you get Christ wrong, you get obedience wrong. If you get Christ wrong, you get God wrong. But when Christ is known rightly, when the incarnate Son who died and rose again is believed in, trusted in, and truth abides, love grows, obedience flourishes, and becomes joyful and not a crushing thing.
This is what John longs to protect in the church. Same thing he longs to protect in us. What does 2 John 1-6, this small little section of a small little letter, call us to be? They call us to be a church, a people that abides in truth, a people who walk in love, a body that lives in obedient faith to Christ, not drifting with the world, not reshaping Jesus to fit the moment or the cultural narrative not redefining love to avoid holiness, but a people who are rooted in the Son, and the Son who came in flesh, who loved you to the end, who calls you to walk in the light.
And the promise then that frames this letter in the midst of that struggle, grace, mercy, peace will be with you from God the Father from Jesus Christ in truth and in love. Nothing you manufacture, beloved, but something you receive. The pronouncement of this great blessing that is received by faith, rested in, trusted in, and relied upon. So we return again and again, not to something new, not to something novel, but to the same thing, Lord willing, you have heard since the beginning and will hear every Lord’s day, The gospel, the truth, Christ Jesus who came, sent by the Father, who loves you, who died for sinners, who lived perfectly, died an atoning death on the cross, who raised to new life, vindicated as innocent, ascended on high in his ruling and reigning and coming again. And as those who believe in Him, who repent and believe, who are united to Him by faith, by the Holy Spirit, we can walk in truth and love. Despite opposition, despite whatever obstacles or turbulent waters lie ahead, we can walk in all of His ways, abiding in Him as He abides in us, as we are mere vines attached to Him, or branches, excuse me, attached to the vine. Beloved, we do this As we do this, His grace, His mercy, and His peace will remain on you now and forevermore into the age to come. Let’s go to our God in prayer.
Almighty Lord, it’s easy to overlook that which is small. It’s what our world does. It’s easy to do that even when something is like scripture, a small little book. for the purpose that you have given to your people, for their edification, for their teaching, correction, reproof, for training in righteousness, Lord, we thank you for this small letter and that it carries with it such an eternal, weighty concept, the importance of your incarnation, the importance of truth and love undivorced but walking together.
We pray now, Father, truly work this word into our hearts that we may grow in the riches of the knowledge of you, which you have revealed to us by your holy word. We may commit ourselves to that reality. Likewise, God, grant us character, virtues, and habits in a life that reflects that as we walk out the truth that we believe and assent to, we show and demonstrate grace and mercy and love, the virtues and character of all those who have been called by you. Grant us endurance, Father, for when the truth is attacked, for when lies and perversions sound sweet but are destructive. Grant us discernment that we may hear them and test the spirits, particularly for our children, for young new believers, Father, that they may be able to discern. Likewise, Lord, grant us hearts of love that we never divorce those things. that we speak the truth in love, that we focus on that reality, that our character and our virtue reflects the very gospel that we cling to so delightedly.
Apply your word to us, Lord. Protect this church, protect the OPC from any form of perversion, of doctrine, or life, and keep her pure. And when she falls or fails in any way or deviates, Lord, let her come running back. and any of her local expressions to the truth and the love and the gospel message that you have revealed in your word of Christ and Christ crucified. I pray all this in your glorious, holy name. Amen.