Through the New Testament 2006
Walking in the Truth
2 John
Dr. Roger W. Thomas, Preaching Minister
First Christian Church, Vandalia, MO
Introduction: Some of you will remember the scene from the movie “A Few Good Men.” The 1992 film stared Tom Cruise as a rookie military lawyer who has to defend a squad of marines accused of murder. They claimed they were acting on orders. Jack Nicholson plays a tough guy marine officer. One climactic scene has Nicholson on the stand being interrogated by the Cruise character. Cruise is getting nowhere and finally yells, “I want the truth!” The Jack Nicholson character shouts back. “You can’t handle the truth!" [Herbert Agar Leadership, Vol. 17, no. 2.]
2 John is for those who can handle the truth. 2 John, the next book in our on-going series through the Bible. 2 John is of the shortest of the Bible’s sixty-six books. Chuck Swindoll calls 2 John one of the “New Testament postcards.” Clearly, if Romans or 1 Corinthians is a letter, the one chapter books of Philemon, Jude, 2nd and 3rd John are postcards. It is short and to the point.
The author of the little letter is simply identified as “the elder.” However, a quick comparison reveals that the postcard was penned by the same author as 1 John, 3 John, and the Gospel of John. Though none of those, name the author external testimony from early Christian writers and the internal evidence of the Gospel clearly identify John as the writer.
We know a few facts about John:
1. He was the brother of James and the son of Zebedee from Capernaum of Galilee.
2. He was one of the fishermen called by Jesus to become fishers of men.
3. Peter and Andrew worked for his father’s fishing business.
4. He was likely the youngest of the disciples, perhaps merely a teenager at the time.
5. Perhaps because of his youth, he was very close to Jesus. John refers to himself in the Gospel of John simply as the “disciple Jesus loved.”
6. Jesus nicknamed John and his brother James “sons of thunder” because of the eager with which they were wanted to call down fire from heaven on a Samaritan village that refused to offer Jesus and company hospitality.
7. He was the last surviving apostle. The best information says that he was well into his 80’s when he died at Ephesus. For obvious reasons, he was considered an elder statesman of the church in his later years. Note in 2 John, he is simply referred to as “the elder,” a term that could mean simply an older man. The term came to refer to the respected leaders of the church (and before that the Jewish synagogue).
8. He was also the only apostle to die of natural causes, if you don’t count the rigors that an extended exile and imprisonment may have had on him. All of the other apostles, according to tradition were martyred for their faith.
Barclay, Gospel of John Introduction—
Eusebius (3 : 28) tells another story of John which he got from the works of Irenaeus. We have seen that one of the leaders of the Gnostic heresy was a man called Cerinthus. "The apostle John once entered a bath to bathe; but, when he learned that Cerinthus was within, he sprang from his place and rushed out of the door, for he could not bear to remain under the same roof with him. He advised those who were with him to do the same. `Let us flee,’ he said, `lest the bath fall, for Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within."’ There we have another glimpse of the temper of John. Boanerges was not quite dead.
Cassian tells another famous story about John. One day he was found playing with a tame partridge. A narrower and more rigid brother rebuked him for thus wasting his time, and John answered: "The bow that is always bent will soon cease to shoot straight."
It is Jerome who tells the story of the last words of John. When he was dying, his disciples asked him if he had any last message to leave them. "Little children," he said, "love one another." Again and again he repeated it; and they asked him if that was all he had to say. "It is enough," he said, "for it is the Lord’s command."
Such then is our information about John; and he emerges a figure of fiery temper, of wide ambition, of undoubted courage, and, in the end, of gentle love.
The letter is addressed “to the elect lady and her children.” Several theories have been proposed to explain this phrase:
1. The term “elect lady” could actually be a name. If so, John would be writing to a specific Christian mother and her children. This takes the phrase literally.
2. The term might be a complimentary way of referring to a prominent Christian woman in whose house the church met. Remember, for hundreds of the years, the early Christians did not have large buildings to gather in. Until that became possible, the church met in public halls or more often in private homes. The children would be the people who gathered for worship in her home.
3. More than likely, however, the phrase is a symbolic term for the church. The nature of the letters seems more applicable to a congregation. If the lady is the church, then children are the members.
Regardless of whether we take the “elect lady and her children” literally or figurately, the message remains the same. In the later years of the 1st Century the church faced a lot of pressure from the outside and the inside. Persecution ran rampant. False teachers also arose (some from within the church) that threatened to deceive believers into turning away from the simple message of Jesus. John writes to warn these Christians of the dangers they face and the actions they need to take. The key word of 2nd John is truth. The message of the thirteen verses is simple: Followers of Jesus have three responsibilities to the truth. We must know the truth. We must walk in the truth. We must protect the truth. These still apply today. Let’s look briefly at each of these truth responsibilities.
First, followers of Jesus must know the truth.
To the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in the truth—and not I only, but also all who know the truth—2because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us forever:
3Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love.
Americans Are Most Likely to Base Truth On Feelings
Pontius Pilate asked the classic question, “What is truth?” Do you know what Americans think about truth? Find out in this week’s report.
• By a 3-to-1 margin (64% vs. 22%) adults said truth is always relative to a person’s situation. The perspective was even more lopsided among teenagers.
• People are most likely to make their moral and ethical decisions on the basis of whatever feels right or comfortable in a situation. The Bible or religious teachings were primary for a small percentage of adults and teens.
• Whites, blacks and Hispanics differed substantially on these matters.
• While born again Christians were statistically different from non-born again individuals, the differences were minimal; a minority of born agains believe in absolute truth; and a minority base their moral choices on Scripture.
The Barna Update: 2/12/02
A world of relativism: sincerity and believing is not enough.
Medicine bottle
Jumping from water tower
From What About the Foundation?, Citation: Ravi Zacharias, "If the Foundations Be Destroyed," Preaching Today, Tape No. 142.
A few weeks ago, I did a lectureship at Ohio State University.
As I was being driven to the lecture, we passed the new Wexner Art Center.
The driver said, "This is a new art building for the university.
It is a fascinating building designed in the post-modernist view of reality."
The building has no pattern.
Staircases go nowhere.
Pillars support nothing.
The architect designed the building to reflect life.
It went nowhere and was mindless and senseless.
I turned to the man describing it and asked, "Did they do the same thing with the foundation?"
He laughed.
You can’t do that with a foundation.
You can get away with the infrastructure.
You can get away with random thoughts that sound good in defense of a world view that ultimately doesn’t make sense.
Once you start tampering with the foundations, you begin to see the serious effects.
Yet the foundations are in jeopardy; the foundations of our culture do not provide coherent sets of answers any more.
Why do we need to know the truth?
1. Our salvation is at stake (know God/knowing Christ –Jn 17:3)
2. Our growth and strength is at stake. (doubt undermines)
3. Our witness is at stake (1 Pt 3:15)
4. Our future is at stake (2 Jn 8Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully.
The Christian truth is Jesus Christ. A person and historical events, not a philosophy or magic rituals. Who Jesus is and what he did.
Galatians 1 6I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—7which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! 9As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned!
2 Corinthians 11 1I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness; but you are already doing that. 2I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy. I promised you to one husband, to Christ, so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him. 3But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ. 4For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough. 5But I do not think I am in the least inferior to those “super-apostles.” 6I may not be a trained speaker, but I do have knowledge. We have made this perfectly clear to you in every way.
The challenge to then and now:
7Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.
A certain type of heresy which was very widely spread in the days when the Fourth Gospel was written is called by the general name of Gnosticism. Without some understanding of it much of John’s greatness and much of his aim will be missed. The basic doctrine of Gnosticism was that matter is essentially evil and spirit is essentially good. The Gnostics went on to argue that on that basis God himself cannot touch matter and therefore did not create the world. What he did was to put out a series of emanations. Each of these emanations was further from him, until at last there was one so distant from him that it could touch matter. That emanation was the creator of the world.
By itself that idea is bad enough, but it was made worse by an addition. The Gnostics held that each emanation knew less and less about God, until there was a stage when the emanations were not only ignorant of God but actually hostile to him. So they finally came to the conclusion that the creator god was not only different from the real God, but was also quite ignorant of and actively hostile to him. Cerinthus, one of the leaders of the Gnostics, said that "the world was created, not by God, but by a certain power far separate from him, and far distant from that Power who is over the universe, and ignorant of the God who is over all."
The Gnostics believed that God had nothing to do with the creating of the world. That is why John begins his gospel with the ringing statement: "All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that was made" (Jn. 1:3). That is why John insists that "God so loved the world" (Jn. 3:16). In face of the Gnostics who so mistakenly spiritualized God into a being who could not possibly have anything to do with the world, John presented the Christian doctrine of the God who made the world and whose presence fills the world that he has made.
The beliefs of the Gnostics impinged on their ideas of Jesus.
(a) Some of the Gnostics held that Jesus was one of the emanations which had proceeded from God. They held that he was not in any real sense divine; that he was only a kind of demigod who was more or less distant from the real God; that he was simply one of a chain of lesser beings between God and the world.
(b) Some of the Gnostics held that Jesus had no real body. A body is matter and God could not touch matter; therefore Jesus was a kind of phantom without real flesh and blood. They held, for instance, that when he stepped on the ground he left no footprint, for his body had neither weight nor substance. They could never have said: "The Word became flesh" (Jn. 1:14). Augustine tells how he had read much in the work of the philosophers of his day; he had found much that was very like what was in the New Testament, but, he said: "`The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us’ I did not read there." That is why John in his First Letter insists that Jesus came in the flesh, and declares that any one who denies that fact is moved by the spirit of antichrist (1Jn. 4:3). This particular heresy is known as Docetism. Docetism comes from the Greek word dokein (GSN1380) which means to seem ; and the heresy is so called because it held that Jesus only seemed to be a man.
(c) Some Gnostics held a variation of that heresy. They held that Jesus was a man into whom the Spirit of God came at his baptism; that Spirit remained with him throughout his life until the end; but since the Spirit of God could never suffer and die, it left him before he was crucified. They gave Jesus’ cry on the Cross as : "My power, my power, why hast thou forsaken me?" And in their books they told of people talking on the Mount of Olives to a form which looked exactly like Jesus while the man Jesus died on the Cross.
So then the Gnostic heresies issued in one of two beliefs. They believed either that Jesus was not really divine but simply one of a series of emanations from God, or that he was not in any sense human but a kind of phantom in the shape of a man. The Gnostic beliefs at one and the same time destroyed the real godhead and the real manhood of Jesus.
Barclay, John intro
Ray Stedman: PBC.org
Two things are said here that describe the fundamental types of Christian perversions. There are only two; all Christian error and heresies gather about one or the other of these.
(deny the person of Christ)
(deny the sufficiency of Christ)
(deny the availability of Christ)
There are, first of all, those who are deceived about the person of the Lord Jesus. There is one sign of the true redeemer and savior -- he is the one who came from God into the world and became man. The incarnation is an essential doctrine of Christian faith. If you can trace a man’s origin from his birth, and you know that he entered this human stream though the normal reproductive faculties, and he claims to be a savior, you can write it off, because he is not God’s savior. And if he claims not to believe nor to accept this incarnation of the Lord Jesus, then the man is in error. No matter what else he may say, he is not speaking as the spokesman of God.
There is another type of error, however, that gathers around a misunderstanding or false conception of the teaching of the Lord Jesus: Any one who goes ahead [literally, goes beyond] and does not abide in the doctrine [the teaching] of Christ does not have God. (2 John 1:9)
That is very revealing. That takes care of all groups that hold that the Bible is not an adequate revelation of God, and that say we need something else. Someone with such a view may be very persuasive and sincere. He may be a very great personality. but this is the test: if he does not abide in the doctrine of Christ, then he is not of God.
There are many people today who say that the teachings of the Scriptures are infantile. Modern man has grown beyond all this and can no longer accept these simplistic teachings of the Bible. The modern mind must find satisfaction in more scientific approaches. It cannot rest upon these simple things. Do you see that that is another example of exactly what John is talking about here? Someone who goes beyond, departs from the revelation of Jesus, considering it too simple, and tries to add something to the teachings of the Word of God.
9 This verse explains the loss referred to in verse 8: not having God, which results from not staying in Christ’s teachings. abideth not—lit., “leading forward,” hence, “to go before” or “to run ahead.” “Perhaps this is a sarcastic reference to the way in which the false teachers themselves proudly claim to be offering ‘advanced’ teaching. The elder claims that they have ‘advanced’ beyond the boundaries of true Christian belief” (Rienecker; Marshall). the doctrine of Christ—This is the true apostolic teaching concerning Christ, which was based on the teachings the apostles received from Christ. To remain in this teaching is to remain in the Son and the Father (see comments on 1 John 2:22, 23).
II. Believers must also walk in the truth.
3Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Father’s Son, will be with us in truth and love.
4It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. 5And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. 6And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.
1. The need for balance: speak the truth in love Eph 4:15Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. 16From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
2. The danger of contending for the truth: cf. Ephesus in Rev 2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.
3. 4Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.
4. Sodium is an extremely active element found naturally only in combined form; it always links itself to another element. Chlorine, on the other hand, is the poisonous gas that gives bleach its offensive odor. When sodium and chlorine are combined, the result is sodium chloride - common table salt - the substance we use to preserve meat and bring out its flavor.
5. Watching world wanting to know if we care before they are interested in what we know
34“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”
III. We must know the truth and walk in the truth. We must also protect the truth.
7Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist.
8Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully.
9Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. 10If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him. 11Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work.
1. Not just reactive; Teaching proactively: not blow about by winds of doctrine, Eph 4
1It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, 12to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.
14Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming. 15Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. 16From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.
2. Reality of many denominational trends; our history with DOC in 1950’s
3. Preachers, elders, teachers, curriculum, missions support
Conclusion: The coming challenge The Da Vinci Code”
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--It’s only fiction.
That’s Dan Brown’s final line of defense when the author of runaway bestseller "The Da Vinci Code" is confronted about shoddy research or challenged about his Gnostic beliefs, according to the authors of a new book to set the record straight about Brown’s postmodern worldview.
"The Gospel According to the Da Vinci Code: The Truth Behind the Writings of Dan Brown" by Kenneth Boa and John Alan Turner will be released May 1.
The new book, from Broadman & Holman, refutes the worldview behind The Da Vinci Code, the best-selling hardcover adult novel of all time and soon to be major motion picture. Boa and Turner also look at Dan Brown’s other books, most notably "Angels and Demons," to form a clearer picture of the spiritual relativism that guides his writing.
The Da Vinci Code, however, may do for orthodox Christianity what the movie "Inherit the Wind" did for the debate over religion and education -- replace fact with fantasy, Boa and Turner warn. Inherit the Wind was a fictional account of the famous Scopes Monkey Trial and inaccurately cast evolutionists as reasonable men and women of science, while creationists were depicted as bumbling simpletons. "Monkey Business: The True Story of the Scopes Trial," released last year by Broadman & Holman, sets the record straight on that historic event.
"Dan Brown says that faith is a continuum and that he is a Christian -- in his own way," Boa and Turner write. "But the views Dan Brown showcases through his characters’ discussions are irreconcilable with traditional, orthodox Christianity.
"We’re not terrified by Dan Brown or his ideas and we’re certainly not asking you to be either. However, ideas have consequences."
According to the authors, Brown promotes a postmodern worldview akin to the age-old heresy of Gnosticism, which became the greatest doctrinal challenge to the church in the second century.
Gnosticism, while taking on many complex forms, is basically a philosophical approach to the Gospel that promotes secret "knowledge" ("gnosis" in the Greek), resulting in a denial of both the full deity and humanity of Christ, among other false teachings. Paul, John, Peter and Jude all addressed the germ of Gnosticism in their New Testament writings.
And therein lies the rub, Boa and Turner point out in their book. Dan Brown claims, on the first page of The Da Vinci Code, that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate." In other words, he insists that he has built a work of fiction on solid church history. But in fact, his scholarship is slipshod and his sources have long been proven spurious, Boa and Turner note. Still, because the church today lacks doctrinal depth and often ignores its historical roots, many Christians have gullibly swallowed Brown’s alternative gospel.
For example, some of the "secrets" that the characters in The Da Vinci Code claim to know include:
-- Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and they had a child whose descendants may still be alive.
-- This made Peter jealous, so he covered it all up after Jesus died.
-- The early church engaged in a massive cover-up to conceal Jesus’ marriage and His humanity in order to put men, rather than women, in control.
-- Jesus was not considered divine until centuries after His death when the Emperor Constantine suppressed the ancient documents that tell the real story so that the Council of Nicaea could cobble together what we have today in the New Testament.
All of these "secrets" are in fact unbiblical falsehoods, Boa and Turner note.
"Saying that Dan Brown’s book is about Christianity is like saying ’Finding Nemo’ is about marine biology," the B&H authors write. "We have just as much evidence to suggest that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene as we have that clown fish talk."
--30--
The story is told of a man who came to visit his old friend, a music teacher. As the man came in, he said, “What’s the good news today?” The old teacher was silent as he stood up and walked across the room. He picked up a small hammer and struck a tuning fork. As the note sounded throughout the room, he said, “That is ‘A.’ It is ‘A’ today; it was ‘A’ 5,000 years ago, and it will be ‘A’ 10,000 years from now. The soprano upstairs sings off-key, the tenor across the hall flats on his high notes, and the piano downstairs is out of tune.” He struck the note again and said, “That is ‘A,’ my friend, and that’s the good news for today!”
The only hope for a world out of tune is to know that Jesus is the truth: “Yesterday, today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). That’s the good news of truth! (Dr. Clyde McDowell, Focal Point, Spring, 1997, p. 3)
***Dr. Roger W. Thomas is the preaching minister at First Christian Church, 205 W. Park St., Vandalia, MO 63382 and an adjunct professor of Bible and Preaching at Central Christian College of the Bible, 911 E. Urbandale, Moberly, MO. He is a graduate of Lincoln Christian College (BA) and Lincoln Christian Seminary (MA, MDiv), and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (DMin).
