The fellowship of truth, 2 John

I thought I was going to be through with John last week.  We finished up 1 John last Sunday, and I had planned on beginning the book of Mark, which is something I wanted to do months ago actually.  But when I began to study Mark in preparation for this week, I did not feel that God was leading me to do so at this time.  I think that there is still some more that He wants to teach us from John’s letters.  And so this Sunday we are going to look at this very small book of 2 John in it’s entirety.  Just think, you will be able to tell your friends back home that the pastor preached on a whole book of the Bible in one sitting.  

But if you will remember from our studies in 1 John, the theme of that book was fellowship.  And as I said, I thought we had finished all that God had to say on that subject and could move on.  However, I believe that this letter of 2 John also speaks to this subject of fellowship.  As I have said repeatedly, I believe John is teaching that the purpose of the Christian life is fellowship; fellowship with God and fellowship with His people.  So in that vein, I have titled today’s message “The Fellowship of Truth.” Fellowship by definition means like mindedness.  And there is a commonality in fellowship, Christian fellowship, that can only be found in the context of truth.  There is no fellowship of light with darkness.  

The Apostle Paul said in 2Cor. 6:14-18 “Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness?  Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?  Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, "I WILL DWELL IN THEM AND WALK AMONG THEM; AND I WILL BE THEIR GOD, AND THEY SHALL BE MY PEOPLE.  "Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE," says the Lord. "AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN; And I will welcome you.  "And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me," Says the Lord Almighty.”  

So the truth is the plumb line that delineates fellowship.  You are either walking in the truth, or walking in darkness. As a church we are a fellowship of God’s people. Our whole purpose as a church is to learn the truth, preach the truth, and walk in the truth of God.  And as we do those things, we have fellowship with God and with one another. Jesus said in the gospel of John, “I am the way, the truth and the life.”  He went on to say that “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  He said on another occasion, “God is Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” Before He was crucified Jesus told His disciples He would send them the Spirit of Truth, who would lead them into all truth.  Truth is essential to fellowship.  And Christian fellowship is impossible if it is not in the truth.

As I said last week, I sometimes feel inferior to other churches because we do not have all the bells and whistles that people often associate with church.  But as far as I am concerned, the most important purpose of the church is to declare the truth,  defend the truth and walk in the truth.  Everything else is gravy.  And if you don’t get the truth right, then nothing else matters.  Fellowship without the truth is of no greater value than membership in a social club. 

Now as I see it, there are five divisions of this letter.  The first is the theme of the letter, which is the fellowship of the truth.  Secondly, we see five blessings of the truth.  Thirdly, John talks about walking in the truth; fourthly, the opposition to the truth, and finally, the joy of fellowship. 

So let’s look first at what we have already introduced, that is the fellowship of the truth.

John addresses this letter to the chosen lady and her children.  He identifies himself as an elder, which can indicate his apostleship over the churches, as well as possibly his age.  Some have said that he would have been in his 90’s by this point.  I think it has more to do with his position in the church, rather than his age.  Ephesians says the church is built on the foundation of the apostles.  And perhaps by this point, John is the only apostle still living, 

But the interesting thing is who it is addressed to; the chosen lady and her children.  Theologians are split between this being an individual, and it being a pseudonym for a particular church.  My view is that he is addressing a church.  John’s favorite name for Christians in the epistle of 1 John is “little children.”  So I think that the chosen lady is a way of referring to a corporate body of believers, who have been chosen of God, to be the bride of Christ, and her children being the family of God, those that John refers to as being born of God.  So it makes more sense to me that he is speaking to a church, and this letter was shared with other churches who had similar problems and concerns in those days, and as such it came to be accepted in the canon of scripture.

Now notice that in his address, John covers all those elements which are essential to fellowship, which as I said, is the purpose of the church.  Three times in the first 2 verses he mentions truth. And in relation to the truth, he speaks of love and emphasizes the family of fellowship.  He says first of all that there is a love for those who are of the truth.  He loves them, and those who love the truth loves those in the church who are born of God.  Fellowship produces love.  Christian love is the natural outcome of fellowship with God, you will  grow to love Him and love His body, that is His church, His people.  But that love is within the context of truth.  Three times he mentions truth, as if to underline again and again the essential nature of truth to fellowship.  

There is another aspect of truth which is important to note, and that is where he says in vs 2, “the truth which abides in us and will be with us forever.” Jesus said in His high priestly prayer that God’s word is truth.  Listen, God cannot be separated from His word.  God is eternal, and the word of God endures forever.  Isaiah 40:8 says, “The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God endures forever.”  The word of God never fails, and it is an eternal truth that we will still be abiding in 10,000 years from now.  That’s why John calls Jesus the Word in John chapter 1.  The Word which was in the beginning with God, and the Word which was God. The Word of God is eternal truth which will be with us forever.  

Now let’s move on to the second point; the five blessings of truth. Vs3 “Grace, mercy and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.”  I say there are five blessings, but maybe another way of looking at this is that the first three come out of the second two.  Grace, mercy and peace, come out of truth and love. 

We could easily spend an entire sermon on these attributes.  But in the essence of time, let’s just give a brief explanation.  Truth and love are the major pillars of the fellowship of the church.   In my introduction I addressed  the essentiality of truth.  Preaching and practicing the truth are the essential functions of the church.  And we know that fellowship produces love.  Jesus said “they will know you are My disciples by your love for one another.”  Again and again in 1John we are told to love one another.  He is going to say that again in this epistle in vs.5.  So truth and love are the pillars of fellowship in the church. 

But let’s look at the familiar benediction “Grace, mercy and peace.” Apart from truth and love, we can never really know grace, mercy and peace.  Grace means getting what we don’t deserve; pardon for sin, a new life, eternal life, righteousness.  Mercy is not getting what we do deserve; we deserve death as the penalty for our sin, but God put Christ to death in our place.  And peace, means primarily peace with God.  It’s not the cessation of war, though that might be desirable.  But it’s making peace with God because our offense has been forgiven through the atonement of Jesus Christ by dying on the cross.

There are a lot of churches today that speak of grace, mercy and peace, but they see it as some sort of social panacea.  They reject the truth of God’s word, but still want the blessings of grace, mercy and peace. They do not understand that grace, mercy and peace outside of the redemption through Christ’s blood is impossible.   The truth shall make you free.  Not social justice, not welfare programs, not rehabilitation.  But the truth spoken in love.  Paul said in Ephesians 4:13 that the church body is to “all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.  As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ.”  So truth and love produces grace, mercy and peace through Christ, that we might become unified in the truth and conformed to the image of Christ.

Now that spiritual maturity comes through walking in the truth, John’s third point.  Let’s read vs4,  “I was very glad to find some of your children walking in truth, just as we have received commandment to do from the Father.  Now I ask you, lady, not as though I were writing to you a new commandment, but the one which 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, that you should walk in it.” Three times John emphasizes the need not only to know the truth, but to walk in the truth.

Some of the people in this church, John says, are walking in the truth. Some were being obedient to the truth and some were not.  As James said, we must be doers of the word and not just hearers only.  It’s one thing for the church to preach the truth, but it’s another to have the church walking in the truth.  Walking in the truth requires obedience to the truth.  Trusting in the truth enough to act upon it.

He goes on to describe walking in the truth as walking according to the commandments, and the commandments he sums up as loving one another.  Then in vs6, he tells us what love is; love is walking according to His commandments.  Now he isn’t just talking in circles.  But he is emphasizing what Jesus said, which is “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.”  Love then is tied to obedience.  Love is not an emotion, or sentimentality, but love is an act of the will, doing what God tells us to do. 

Jesus defined loving your neighbor as illustrated by the Good Samaritan.  He said a man had been set upon by robbers and was lying beside the road half dead.  Many people passed him by, perhaps thinking that in some way he was responsible for his own misfortune, or perhaps too busy with their own concerns to take the time to help a stranger.  But the  Samaritan got down off his horse, and cleaned him up, bandaged him, and took care of his needs.  He took him to an inn and left money with  instructions for the innkeeper to take care of him until he could return, and he would pay whatever more was necessary.  That was Jesus’s illustration of loving your neighbor, even a stranger  And loving one another in the church family should go even beyond that.  Love is sacrificing your priorities for the sake of another’s benefit.  

In essence, loving one another is the fulfillment of all the law, because if you love one another with the sacrificial love that Christ showed for us, then you cannot lie to one another, you cannot steal from one another, you cannot covet what your brother has, and certainly you will not murder or commit adultery against your brother.  So loving God and loving one another is the fulfillment, or the way to fulfillment, of all the commandments.  Walking according to the commandments then is the way to fellowship in the truth with God and with our fellow brother.

Now the devil knows that walking in the truth is the way to fellowship with God.  And he wants nothing more than to destroy that fellowship you have with God.  He wants to put distance between you and God and ultimately destroy your fellowship with Him and with His church.  Peter said that the devil goes about like a roaring lion seeking whom he may destroy.  And the way the lion destroys and kills an antelope, is he separates him from the herd.  Once he separates you from the church, then he can more easily take you down. And the way the devil works to separate you from the church is to first separate you from the truth. 

Jesus said in John 8:44 that the devil is a liar and the father of liars.  He is a deceiver.  So that is his modus operandi; to tell you a half truth, to twist the truth, to misinterpret the word, and to ultimately get you to believe his lies.  Now that opposition to the truth is John’s fourth point.  Look at vs7, “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.  Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished, but that you may receive a full reward.  Anyone who goes too far and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God; the one who abides in the teaching, he 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, and do not give him a greeting;  for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.”  

Now we could spend a month on these verses.  But I just want to hit the highlights for you today.  Notice that the devil has sent many of his emissaries out into the world, wolves in sheep’s clothing, pretending to be preachers of the truth, but instead they are deceiving people.  He calls them the antiChrist.  They are false prophets.  This is not some teaching on eschatology.  This was happening then, and it’s happened in every generation since John. 1John 2:18 says many antiChrists are in the world today, and they are teaching false doctrine.

Paul speaking to the elders of Ephesus said in Acts 20:29-30 "I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock;  and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.” So the church itself is the place where the antiChrists exalt themselves.

Jude speaks of these wolves in sheep’s clothing in Jude 1:4 saying, “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”  See, these false teachers are teaching grace without works, salvation without sanctification, that somehow you could be spiritual, but not have works that attested to righteousness. James 2:19-20 speaks to the impossibility of faith without works. “You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder. But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without works is useless?”

Here is the issue in the church at the end of the first century.  False teachers were promoting a teaching called Gnosticism.  And while this teaching involved a lot of heresys, one of it’s principle teachings was that we could worship God in Spirit, but our flesh did not have to be involved.  And they based that on the notion that Jesus had not really come in the flesh, only in Spirit. So they taught that spiritually you could be saved, but physically you could still live in the world.  Spiritually you were righteous, but physically you could live in sin and not have anything to worry about. That philosophy is still in the church today, just under different names.  

So what John is saying is that these people are teaching a form of the gospel, but not the whole truth of the gospel.  And as such they were causing Christians to lose fellowship with God.  They were causing people in the church to forfeit their reward, because there was no fruit to their salvation.  As James said in the 2nd chapter of his epistle which we quoted from a moment ago; “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.” (James 2:26)  The Spirit gives life to the body.  The body is sanctified by the Spirit, producing the fruit of the Spirit.  The body is brought under submission to the Spirit of God, and thus is conformed to the image of Christ.

This is still the issue in the church today.  Satan is still deceiving people into thinking that they can have grace, mercy and peace with God without truth and love, without obedience to the truth, without repentance from sin, without coming out of the world.  And when he is successful then he destroys your fellowship with God, he destroys your fellowship with His church, and he destroys your testimony before others so that you hurt the cause of Christ.  And ultimately he may even cause you to lose your life here on earth in your pursuit of worldly idols. 

So what’s John’s admonition to the church?  To avoid such people.  To not have fellowship with them.  To not show hospitality to them.  To see such false teachers as a cancer that corrupts the body which will spread until it destroys completely.  To have a holy horror of false doctrine.  That is what John is saying.  Don’t even eat with such people. Don’t even give them a greeting.  That’s what he said in vs. 10, “If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house, and do not give him a greeting; for the one who gives him a greeting participates in his evil deeds.”

So John says love has a limit, doesn’t it?  Love has no limit for the lost, for the broken hearted, for the afflicted, for the needy.  Love has no limit for the sinner.  But love has a limit for false teaching, for that which purports to be the truth and yet is a slick lie of the devil.  Don’t help those people.  Don’t fellowship with those people.  Certainly don’t support them.  2Cor. 6:17-18 "Therefore, COME OUT FROM THEIR MIDST AND BE SEPARATE," says the Lord. "AND DO NOT TOUCH WHAT IS UNCLEAN; And I will welcome you. And I will be a father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me," Says the Lord Almighty.”

The last aspect of the fellowship of truth which John gives us here is really just a passing reference to something he calls the joy of fellowship.  His goal he says in vs 12 is that their joy may be full.  Listen, there is no greater joy than complete fellowship with God.  You can have a great job, you can have all sorts of possessions, houses, cars.  You can have all that this world can offer and still be miserable.  But if you have complete fellowship with God, then you can have joy in pain, joy in suffering, joy in poverty, joy in being alone.  If your joy is founded in your fellowship with God, then that is full joy, complete joy.  

But sin destroys that joy.  When David sinned against God, he prayed for forgiveness in Psalm 51, and said, “restore unto me the joy of my salvation.”  He repented of his sin, he was restored to fellowship with God, and as a result the joy of his former fellowship was restored unto him.  Nehemiah 8:10 says, “For the joy of the LORD is your strength.” That is what sustains us.

Full fellowship with God results in full joy.  That is where we get the peace that passes all understanding; in the joy of the Lord.  In the joy of knowing you are right with God, and He is with you and you with Him.  Where you have sweet communion with God through the truth of His word.  Where you show your love to Him through obedience to His word.  Where sin has not broken the fellowship and intimacy of your love with Him or with His church. 

John says in 1John 1:4, “these things we have written to you that our joy may be complete.”  He was speaking of the writings of the apostles, the Holy Scriptures, the Bible.  Our joy comes from abiding in His word.  Now at the end of 2 John, he says, “Though I have many things to write to you, I do not want to do so with paper and ink; but I hope to come to you and speak face to face, so that your joy may be made full.”  So there are two aspects to having joy in the Lord. The first is through His word, abiding in His word.  The second is fellowship.  John said he wanted to come in person.  Face to face, person to person.  We are made for fellowship with His body.  We have joy when we have fellowship with one another and have love for one another in the body.  

I can pray for someone.  I can write to someone.  But even better, I can go to someone.  I can touch someone.  I can be the hands of feet of Christ.  That is how our joy may be full, and that is how the love of God is manifested in the church, when we love one another not just in word, but in deed.  We need fellowship.  God has designed us for fellowship with Him and with His family.  Don’t let the lie of Satan deprive you of that fellowship with the Lord.  Stay in the word, and do not neglect the assembling of yourselves together as the body of Christ.  Stay in close fellowship with the flock and do not give the devil an opportunity. 

Heb. 10:19-25 Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, 20 by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh,  and since we have a great priest over the house of God,  let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.  Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful;  and let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds,  not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.