Truth and Love

Well, the preaching this afternoon will be from the first few verses of the letter of 2 John.

God willing, over time, we can get to the parts 2 and 3 of this message, but this morning, or this afternoon, part 1 will just be the first three verses, but we'll read the entire letter.

So if you stand for that when you have that, 2 John. Don't be concerned that you're going to have to stand for a very long time.

The whole letter is 13 verses. 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 a new commandment, but the one that we 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 Jesus Christ 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, for 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. God bless the reading. Now the proclamation of His word, once again, please be seated.

Heavenly Father, thank you for once again bringing us together. Thank you, Father, for feeding us this morning by Pastor Brian's word from Luke, and I pray,

Father, that you would do the same through my words from 2 John. I pray that you would be blessed by the worship that you receive, even in the proclamation and the hearing of your word this afternoon, and that your blessing would be upon us, for we ask it on Jesus' name and for His sake.

So 2 John, the author of 2 John is, of course, John, and that's the disciple whom

Jesus loved, his own self -description in the Gospel of John. And he's writing here in 2

John to one of the home churches scattered through Asia Minor. Probably Ephesus, but we can't be positive of that.

And although it's the shortest book in the Bible at 13 verses, it's packed with theology.

It's almost dense with doctrine and theology. It's got clear instructions for their day 2 ,000 years ago, as it does for our day here.

It has encouragement for those who lived then, according to that special brand of truth that's the wellspring of genuine love.

A truth that is antithetical to what's outside the walls of the church and a love that is foreign to the world outside then as it is now.

There is already heresy. There are already disunifying doctrines that have crept into the church.

One of the major ones that I think is one that John is addressing here is called Gnosticism. Gnosticism already flexing its considerable muscle and misleading many people then even as today.

Now they taught unhealthy dualism, this strict division where the physical side was only bad and the spiritual side the only good.

We even talked about that a little bit this morning in our catechism question that God has blessed the physical universe which he made.

And he sent his son in a physical body. So we have to eschew this idea of this strict

Gnostic type of dualism. And on top of that, they taught that the path to true spirituality, to this understanding of how to divide and get rid of the physical side, came from a special secret knowledge available only to the initiates.

Sort of that secret handshake idea. And then there are those who taught that Jesus Christ was something other than literal flesh and blood.

He only seemed to be a man. And eventually they were called docetists from the

Greek word doceo, which simply means it seems, something seems to be. Jesus was doceo, they said.

He only seemed to be man, but he really wasn't man because God couldn't become flesh and blood. And this is what they taught.

And this corrupted, and still today corrupts, the doctrine of Jesus' divinity.

As John calls him the son of God. As John, in the opening of his gospel, makes it so clear that Jesus Christ, the eternal word, became flesh and dwelt among us.

The docetists would deny that. It corrupted his divinity. It corrupted the idea of his substitutionary death.

It corrupted the idea of his resurrection, even his ascension, and even his current place at the Father's right hand.

These are what he is fighting. These were the main doctrines that were corrupting the church.

The main body of this letter is verses 4 through 11, and that addresses these concerns. So, let's ask ourselves, how does the church guard itself from these and other errors?

Well, the first three verses, which are our text for this morning, what is called the salutation or the greeting of the letter, is going to address this for us.

They set the tone. If the whole letter, all 13 verses of it, are surprisingly dense with doctrine and theology, the opening wastes not the single stroke of a pen, but gets right to the point.

It sets the tone and gives the defense that we need, that they needed then and that we need today, to guard ourselves from such heresy.

You see, God's abiding truth, producing godly love, is our first defense against heresy. God's abiding truth, which is proclaimed as well as we can possibly proclaim it, all our effort, all our skills,

Brian's, Connie's, and mine, to declaring the truth, God's abiding truth, producing godly love, is the first, and I would argue the primary defense against these heresies.

So this morning, verses 1 through 3 is the salutation, which gives us these tools, this immediate parameter that we need to have before we dive into the rest of the letter.

Let me read those verses to you again. 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, verse 2, because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever.

Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God our Father, and from Jesus Christ, the

Father's Son, in truth and love. So right away we see something, a very important idea, if not a doctrine.

Truth does something. Truth produces love. Truth is the basis for love.

Love is the product of truth. Love without truth is subject to our whims, and it tends towards sort of a soft -headed tolerance of all things.

Truth without love is likewise subject to our whims, and it leads to a hard -headed harshness that denies everything, and sets parameters and walls against people.

No, love without truth, soft -headed tolerance. Truth without love, unnecessary hard -headed harshness.

Pilate infamously asked, what is truth? The truth is that he found Jesus in truth to be innocent, but he chose to ignore that truth.

He discarded the accurate assembly of facts. That's the kind of truth he had. The assembly of facts before him,

Roman law on the other side, they put them together and said, I find no fault in this man. That was the truth, but it was the assembly of facts, and that's all he could see.

The truth that John had in mind when he wrote this was something more than just the accurate recital of facts.

You know, you can know every date in the Civil War and have no idea what it was fought over, or how it came out, just a recitation of facts, of dates, and have no idea of the truth behind them.

Well, John is speaking of something other than just being able to recite things. He writes of a truth that abides in us, abides in us, and will be with us forever.

I think he's referring back to what Jesus said in John 17, or 16, and I'll ask the

Father, and he will give you another helper to be with you forever, even the spirit of truth.

An abiding truth, not just an assembly of facts, not just something we could put into a spreadsheet, but something within the believer, something that is within the church as the body of believers comes together, an abiding truth.

You know, it's true forever, I think, that two parallel lines might stretch into eternity, yet never meet.

I learned this in high school geometry. But that truth, factual as it may be, cannot approach the quality of the truth that John means, the truth that the

Scripture has in mind, God's truth, divine truth, the truth as it is in Jesus.

You see, the truth is really a person. It's the Holy Spirit.

Christ calls him the spirit of truth. It's a person.

He's a person. He's the member of the Trinity that Jesus calls that spirit of truth.

And he does something that no other truth can do. The divine person of the

Trinity. You see, he abides with us. He actually takes up residence in Jesus' people as truth amongst us and in us.

And John says it's something he does forever. He will never leave or forsake his people. An abiding truth that is doing something, it's a catalyst for something, binding us together and producing something amongst

God's people. Something that is so powerful and so unifying and so, can we just say, right, that it gives us those guardrails against the heresies that, since the church has been founded, have tried to make incursions against it.

John writes to the elect lady whom I love in truth. He loves this church in truth. There are some scholars, and I would not debate them, but they believe that the elect lady is actually a person who is a lady, and he's writing to her and her family.

I believe it's a church. It's a church that, in truth, God or John loves. You see, what he's saying is within the sphere of a particular truth in which he finds the root and source of love.

More than love of the truth, but love in truth. Did you hear the difference in the prepositions?

More than love of truth, but love in truth. This has to work together. Have you ever worked with epoxy?

You know, when you buy epoxy, you get these two tubes, and to make it work right, to make it bond together and become the glue that's supposed to be so rock hard, you have to squeeze out equal amounts of each component.

You have epoxy, and then you have the hardener or the catalyst. And you get them right next to each other, and you don't want them to mix, and you want each line to be the same diameter and the same length, and get them just as close as you can.

And then you stir them together until the two are so well blended that it's now just one substance.

And it's really something new, and something ready to fill this purpose of gluing things fast together.

Well, we love truth, don't we? Don't we love truth, but do we combine our truth with love? Do we mix our truth with love the way

John has it in the opening here? Even like you would have to do with epoxy, getting the catalyst and the hardener together, and mix them together rightly.

You see, just as an example, this same John and his brother

James, when they were with Jesus, they knew a lot of truth, didn't they? They knew a lot of truth about Jesus.

They had been empowered by Jesus to heal the sick and cast out demons. Do you remember when he sent the disciples out, and they came back so excited and said, even the demons are subject to us.

They had power. They knew the truth of Jesus. There's something divine about him. They assembled some facts about him, accurate facts, right facts, truth.

And what did they do with that truth? Well, did they mix it with love when they came to Jesus, and they said,

Lord, after the Samaritans refused to receive him, and they said, Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?

Well, they had the truth that Jesus could grant that to them. Jesus could do that through them, by them.

That was true. Do you want us to do that? Do you want us to call down fire from heaven? Let's get those guys who won't be hospitable to you,

Lord. Well, he turns and rebukes them, as we have it in our English Standard Version. The King James Version has him saying, you do not know what manner of spirit you are of.

I sort of like that response. Without going into all the language difficulties between that and our

ESV, I sort of like that response because he turns to him, and can we hear him saying, well, that's true that I could have you do that in my name if I should so desire, but James, John, where's the divine love that mixes with that divine power that you want to use?

Another time, these same two brothers came to Jesus, and they asked him, do you remember this? They asked him if they could sit on his right hand and his left hand.

We want you to do whatever we ask. What do you ask? Oh, when you go into your glory, let one of us sit on your left and one of us sit on your right.

You're probably thinking David's throwing Jerusalem at the time. So here's truth. Here's a fact. Jesus would sit as Israel's glorious king.

They knew that. That was true. A right assembly of data. That's truth.

Where's love? Nowhere in sight. They're concerned only for themselves.

Truth for their benefit and no others. And Jesus says to them, this is not mine to grant you.

And we can almost have a parenthetical there. It's not there, but I can kind of feel a parenthetical of who do you think you are?

What are you asking? Who are you trying to leave behind? Of course, the other ten disciples were offended by it.

You see, James and John at this time, John, the same author in 2 John, they had that harshness that comes from plumbing the depths of truth, but only to know the truth.

To have truth in abundance, but never poking a hole in that top of that tube that has the epoxy or the other, the catalyst.

And what would that be in this case? They had the truth and they opened that up and they poured that out. They forgot the other side.

The other tube in the package. Love. Love. Truth and love in equal proportion, thoroughly mixed together, producing just what

Jesus intended, which is what? Unity within the body. A body unified together by the truth as it is in Jesus.

A body unified together in the truth of the Scripture and by that truth clearly understood, proclaimed to you, lived out by us all, protected from those incursions of heresy.

In his day, the Gnosticism, the Docetism, and those things still exist today, and we won't turn this into a lecture and give you all the different doctrines of the different sects that would hold to what

John was fighting against some 20 centuries ago. You see, truth is the catalyst that makes love useful.

Truth is the catalyst that makes our love useful. Now right here, the commentator

Simon Kistemarker wrote, quote, truth unites Christians because it is basic, resides with them, and remains forever.

It unites us because it is basic. It's fundamental. It's like Vince Lombardi when he was coaching the

Green Bay Packers and they were just like the Three Stooges on the football field. They didn't know what they were doing. And he was watching the practice, and he finally stops it all.

He calls them together, brings them around him. He says, let's get to the basic here. I'm the coach.

You're the players. This is football. These are the grid irons. Get it? I've used this illustration before, but it works really well.

And it really happened, and they turned into a great team. This is basic to us, this truth that unites us, the truth of the

Scripture, the truth as it is in Jesus, and this truth that resides. Remember, it's like a living thing within us, and it is truly a living thing, but not a thing.

The Holy Spirit, who Jesus calls the Spirit of Truth. I would only add to what

Kissed Marker said, that truth unites us because truth produces love. We need to be aware of truth without love.

Truth without love. Just a loving assembly of facts. Being able to recite things quickly and accurately.

You know, the expression, and I don't rebuke people who use this expression, but just me personally, I don't really like it when they say,

I gave them a verse. You go, what does that mean? I recited a verse, usually what it means.

I pull a proverb out, usually it's a proverb, and I gave it to them. I always wonder, where's the love with that?

As I look at 2 John, is that truth for truth's sake? Is that truth to show that I have this encyclopedic mind, and I can give you a verse?

Where's the love that wants the person to grow like Jesus because of that verse, because of the truth of the

Scripture? We need to be aware of truth without love, because truth without love is an encyclopedic knowledge that produces,

I think, as Paul says, unhealthy craving for controversy and quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are of a depraved mind and deprived of the truth.

We need to be careful that we don't just assemble the facts of our theology and our doctrine and the

Scripture in order that we know them and can recite them. It needs to be in love, in healthy

Christian love. Facts may be truth, not the kind that John had in mind there, not truth that is a catalyst for love, that's what is missing.

And he goes on, he says, And not only I, but also all who know the truth. Now see here he says, all who know the truth.

That's not blind ecumenicalism. The rest of the letter, where heretics aren't even allowed to set foot in the church, that eliminates that idea.

It's not wide -open tolerance, where love covers every sin under the sun, which is what comes of love without truth.

We've heard this before ourselves, haven't we? All let love cover that multitude of sins. Well, that doesn't mean sin that corrupts the person or ruins the body.

Oftentimes, if we have just love without truth, we just say we're going to let that cover the sin and we won't confront sin at all in ourselves or in others.

That's that soft -headed tolerance I was talking about earlier. No, not wide -open tolerance, where love covers everything.

That's not what he's talking about. He says, not only I, but all who know the truth. There's a necessary love amongst churches of like minds.

If you're in Sunday school this morning, you'll know that the Roman Catholics are, with us, not like -minded.

Where they say the pope is the vicar of Christ, and with all that freights along with that, authority over scripture, authority to forgive sins,

Mariology, all that, we would say they don't know the truth, and therefore, we have at best a civic kind of love, but not the residing love of the

Holy Spirit and the truth that he brings to us. The truth.

Here's a truth. And here's a truth that John sets forth and says,

Here's a primary. Here's your basic truth. Here's foundational. Jesus Christ came in the flesh against Gnosticism, which says that everything fleshly and spiritual is just evil and only evil.

Jesus Christ came in the flesh. God became man without ceasing to be

God, and as man paid the penalty for man's sin. That Jesus Christ in his human body gave up his spirit.

Quick note. The cross didn't kill him. I was discussing this with a brother,

I think it was just last week, and it's a correct point he made. The cross didn't kill him. He gave up his spirit when his work on the cross was done.

And he was buried. Here's truth. He was buried, he was raised up from the grave on the third day, and we will one day follow in a resurrection like his.

Bodily, physically, following after him. This is what binds us together in love because of the truth, both here and abroad.

So all who know the truth say love this church. And then he concludes,

With grace, mercy, and peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father's Son. Now we've heard this before in many letters that we've read in the

New Testament. Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father. This is the way Paul will sign off many of his salutations.

But there's an important difference here between Paul's salutation and how he says that, and what

John has for us here. Where Paul says grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, John writes of the close residence of those divine attributes in Christ's people, in the church.

He says grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father. That's true.

Paul wrote it. That is true. But John says grace, mercy, and peace will be with us. Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us.

Much as he says that the truth abides in us and will be with us forever, so too grace, mercy, and peace.

Do you see how these all work together? Abiding with us as a living being, as it were, and growing with us, and turning us into a body, and building us up as the body of Christ.

This is from God the Father who sent his Son to be the catalyst, who brought grace, mercy, and peace by way of his perfect life, by way of his perfect and complete sacrifice for our sins on that cruel cross, and by way of his resurrection from the dead.

These are the truths which bind us. And these are the truths which the Holy Spirit, who abides in us and with us, testifies to us.

And these are the truths that bring love and unity amongst us. Grace, mercy, and peace.

Not just what one wishes. And so often as we hear on television, on the newscast, when something has happened, when there's been a tragedy, our prayers are with you, our thoughts are with you.

Here we have grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father, and from his Son, Jesus Christ. Not just well wishes, but an actual bringing down from heaven, and through the

Spirit in the church, these qualities, grace, mercy, and peace. A current possession because of Jesus.

And just as God's truth will be with us forever, so too these gifts that flow from that same fountainhead. God the

Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. It says forever. Forever will be with us.

Yeah, forever. As God says through Malachi, For I, the Lord, do not change.

His grace, his mercy and peace doesn't change from day to day. It's not a different kind of grace depending on the context or the situation.

He doesn't decide one day to show mercy, and another day he's cranky and he doesn't show mercy. No, these are ours forever.

I, the Lord, do not change. And he also says, I will never leave you or forsake you. And so many more verses we can go to.

What does grace, mercy, and peace mean? That it's going to be with us forever? It's from God the Father and from Jesus Christ?

Well, it's God the Father who gave Aaron the blessing of God's people, how we normally end our service.

The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

But how do these come to us? It's God the Father's wish, and they're brought to us by Jesus Christ, his

Son, God who became flesh. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you.

What does John say in the Gospel of John? We beheld his glory. He is the image of the invisible

God. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature.

There's his face shining upon us. And what is that face shining upon us? It's Jesus Christ, his Son. And be gracious to you.

Aaron blessed the people. And be gracious to you. The glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Gracious to you. Amen. And forever because of Jesus Christ who brought

God's grace. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you. What does Jesus say?

Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. But we see him, says the author of the

Hebrews, we see him who for a little while was made lower than the angels, namely Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

What does Paul say to the Galatians? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified.

The Lord lift up his countenance upon you. We see Jesus, the very countenance of God. And finally, and give you peace.

Therefore, says Paul to the Romans, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God.

Not so much a peace treaty. I've heard it called that before. Not a peace treaty. Men break treaties all the time.

It's like World War II and the whole Treaty of Versailles and all that. No, men can break a treaty. All you have to do is sign it and say,

I don't want to do this anymore. Not God who never changes. Not Jesus Christ who says,

I'll never leave you or forsake you. We're justified by faith. We have peace with God. Grace, mercy, and peace from God the

Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. God willing, we be that church that properly mixes truth with love.

That we don't have truth simply as an assembly of facts because that leads to such pride. And it builds walls against each other.

Not to say the outside world. Do we know a lot of truth? Do we know a lot of facts from the

Bible? Yes. And each one mixed with the same amount of love is what

John says, that truth produces love. And love is the offspring of truth.

It may be that way in this church. It may remain that way in this church, I should say.

That as we speak the truth to another, we speak the truth in love, says the Apostle Paul. And that whenever we speak the truth, it's not just to prove that we've memorized something, but because of love.

And we speak the truth in love to one another. And by that, we guard ourselves and the unity we have, and we remain a true and pure church in Jesus Christ who resides with us forever.