Sunday, March 30, 2025
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: 2 John 1
Key Verse
2 John 1:7 — “For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist.”
Devotional Thought
The aged apostle John, writing near the end of the first century, addresses his second epistle to “the elect lady and her children.” Some scholars believe this is a specific woman of standing in the early church, others that it is a poetic name for a local congregation and its members. Either way, the warmth is unmistakable: John calls himself simply “the elder,” and he writes to people he loves “in the truth.” Truth, in this short letter, is not an abstraction but a dwelling place. It “dwelleth in us, and shall be with us for ever” (v. 2). Grace, mercy, and peace come “from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love” (v. 3) — the two words that bracket everything John has to say.
What moves him to write is news he has received: some of the lady’s children are “walking in truth” (v. 4). Picture the old man, exiled and far from these friends, hearing a report that stirs joy in him the way a letter from home stirs joy in any of us. Yet his delight is not mere sentiment. He presses on to the commandment they have had “from the beginning” — that we love one another (v. 5). And then he defines that love with a firmness we might not expect: “this is love, that we walk after his commandments” (v. 6). Love, for John, is not a feeling that floats free of doctrine. It is a path walked, a direction of life.
That is why the letter suddenly grows urgent. “Many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh” (v. 7). In that season, itinerant teachers traveled from house to house, and a Christian home was the natural place to lodge and support them. John warns the lady not to open her door, or even offer a greeting, to anyone who denies that the eternal Christ truly took on human flesh. This is a striking word in our own day, when hospitality is rightly prized and disagreement is often smoothed over. John is not against kindness; he is against lending our homes and our “God speed” to a message that dismantles the gospel itself. To abide in the doctrine of Christ is to have “both the Father and the Son” (v. 9). To drift from it is to lose everything.
We read this on the fifth Sunday of Lent, as the church moves toward the cross and the empty tomb. The Jesus who died and rose is the Jesus who “came in the flesh” — bone, breath, and blood. John’s closing wish is tender: he has much to say, but he would rather speak “face to face, that our joy may be full” (v. 12). Truth and love, doctrine and joy, belong together. Guard the one; practice the other; and let your joy be full.
Reflection
- John says love is “that we walk after his commandments” (v. 6). Where in your life has love toward someone been tested by your willingness — or unwillingness — to obey Christ?
- John warns against welcoming teachers who deny that Jesus came in the flesh (vv. 10-11). What voices in your daily life subtly reshape who Jesus is, and how do you “look to yourselves” (v. 8) in response?
Prayer
Father, we thank Thee for the truth that dwelleth in us and shall be with us for ever. We bless Thee for Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who came in the flesh, died, and rose again. Grant us grace, mercy, and peace as we walk in truth and love. Keep us from deceivers who would rob us of the doctrine of Christ. Give us wisdom to guard our homes and our hearts, and courage to speak the truth in love. Abide in us, that we may abide in Thee, and bring us at last to see Thee face to face, where our joy shall be full. Amen.