Putnam Church Message – 11/09/2025

Last week, we finished the letter of 1 John and explored how to have “A Confident Life: Absolute Assurance.”

This week, we will focus on the letter of 2 John, and as we explore the fine art of “Balancing Love and Truth” from 2 John 1:1-13 in the NIV, found on page 1905 of your Pew Bibles.

From its shallow headwaters on Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, the Mississippi River meanders southward to the Gulf of Mexico, spawning and sustaining life along its nearly 2,400-mile journey. To many, the river is a gentle giant, an untiring benefactor of good gifts. The mighty Mississippi is a bountiful, self-replenishing storehouse of nutrients for farmland, a habitat for wildlife, and a busy highway for barges. However, if it escapes its well-defined boundaries, that gentle giant becomes an unwieldy monster.

More than forty dams and about sixteen hundred miles of levees attempt to control the mighty tide, but there are frightening times when Old Man River puffs up his chest and pushes over these meager defenses. Disastrous floods turn prime riverside property into lakes, whole towns are erased from the map, and levees in multiple states are wiped out. Without its boundaries, the river brings destruction, not blessing.

In many ways, love is like the Mississippi River. Love flows with life-giving power, but without boundaries, it can do significant harm. This may sound strange at first, but it’s true: In the name of loving sinners, we can go too far, to the point that we tolerate, accept, justify, and—in recent years—even applaud sin. This kind of love calmly sets others adrift in dangerous waters rather than moving them from death to life.

The little letter of 2 John shows us how to keep love within safe boundaries by building into our lives two solid riverbanks—truth and discernment.

As we discussed at the beginning of 1 John, we already determined that the “elder” is the apostle John’s reference to himself. It’s quite evident by the personal tone of the letter that the recipient knew the author personally and would have identified him immediately. So why call himself the “elder”? Why not “the apostle”? Or simply “John”?

By using the title “elder,” John conveys a greater sense of intimacy and warmth in his letter. It would be similar to a modern-day minister writing a note to their congregation while away on a mission trip and signing the personal letter simply with “Your pastor.” John wasn’t giving himself a demotion, as if he had resigned from his position as apostle. Even the apostle Peter referred to himself as a “fellow elder” of the church leaders he addressed in one of his letters (1 Pet. 5:1).|

|The recipients of the letter are “the chosen lady and to her children” (2 Jn. 1:1). I take the position that the “chosen lady” is a literal individual, not a figurative personification of the church as a whole. |If this is the case, then the reference to her “children” could be addressing literal children or even spiritual children for whom she was responsible. Was the chosen lady a widow with a large family? A single woman devoted to caring for orphans? A diligent worker in the church who labored at ministering to younger members of the body—her “spiritual children”? We don’t know the details. Whatever the case, it remains true that much of what John writes is intended for a larger group (“her children”), even though the letter draws attention to this individual (“the chosen lady”).

Some commentators have understood the Greek word translated “chosen” (teknon) as a proper name. Likewise, the word translated “lady” (kyria) could be a proper name. In fact, the Aramaic equivalent of “Kyria” is “Martha,” the name of a well-known figure in the New Testament (see John 11:1). Could it be that John was writing a letter to the same Martha, the sister of Mary and Lazarus, mentioned in the book of John? Could the “chosen sister” mentioned in 2 John 1:13 be a reference to Martha’s sister, Mary (see Luke 10:38-42)? As intriguing as these speculations are, they are just that. We have no way of knowing who the “chosen lady” was. Nor does it matter for our understanding of the message of this letter.

John’s love for the chosen lady and her children is grounded “in truth.” And he’s not alone—all who know the truth have a love for them (2 Jn. 1:1). Yet John is writing “because the truth lives in us and will be with us forever.” (1:2). Notice that in 1:3, John inseparably links “truth and love” to the Grace, mercy, and peace, which come from God the Father and from Jesus Christ—the Son of the Father. Firm conviction in a saving knowledge of the truth should always be accompanied by love, just as unconditional love for others should be extended within the bounds of doctrinal truth. Maintaining a balance between these two requires discernment. Commentator John R. W. Stott puts it well: “Our love grows soft if it is not strengthened by truth, and our truth grows hard if it is not softened by love.”

It’s always encouraging when you see children and grandchildren walking in the faith in which they were raised. That he or she has maintained a Christian walk and is living their faith and passing the faith on to their own children. It doesn’t always work that way, and there’s no guarantee that all our children will faithfully walk in the truth.

The apostle John puts it a little more realistically. He says to the chosen lady that “some” of her children were walking in the truth. The way the Greek reads, the “some” who were faithful to their spiritual roots could refer to a majority or to a minority. The fact that John is overjoyed at what he has learned, though, suggests that the faithfulness of the lady’s children was the rule rather than the exception. Still, not all of them were faithful.

This highlights an important principle of spiritual nurturing and discipleship. Both our physical families and our spiritual families will have members who deviate from the teaching of parents or mentors. I’ve experienced this firsthand and have seen it in countless families throughout my life. It breaks our hearts when it happens. It drives us to prayer in the hopes that those children will one day return. However, when some go astray, we shouldn’t lose sight of those who remain on the “truth walk.” John didn’t dwell on those who had taken a spiritual detour but on those who had received the commandment of living according to the truth (1:4).

What does this “living according to the truth” look like? To define this, John refers to Christ’s original command that we “love one another” (1:5; see John 13:34). This isn’t a new command, but one that had characterized the Christian life from the beginning. Loving one another and walking in truth were not meant to be an either-or prospect. If we love someone unconditionally, but they are distracting us from the truth, then we may need to infuse more truth into the relationship. John goes on to say, “Love means doing what God has commanded us, and he has commanded us to love one another, just as you heard from the beginning.” (2 Jn. 1:6).

It doesn’t have to be one or the other—either standing strong in the truth or showing love toward others. In actuality, the test of true love is whether it leads us closer to Christ. It never compromises Christ’s standards for the sake of a loosely defined unity. It never consents to sin in the name of grace and tolerance. This point bears repeating: Unconditional love must be balanced by discerning truth.

Love is like a hinge on which the door of generous hospitality turns. But doors also have locks and peepholes … and some even have alarms. So it is with authentic Christian love. Think about your own home. An open-door policy of hospitality toward friends and neighbors doesn’t mean you leave the front door unlocked at night. Nor does a generally welcoming attitude toward strangers mean you’ll fling open the door to a home invader bent on harming your family. True love never opens the door to a predator. This is the thrust of John’s instruction in 1:7-11.

If the “chosen lady” was prone to err on the side of openhearted hospitality in showing love to all who passed her way, the potential was great for allowing dangerous spiritual pathogens to get through her wide filter. Cautiousness was especially necessary when poisonous heretics were on the prowl, eager to infect well-meaning but unsuspecting believers wherever they could. John knew for a fact—both by experience and by word of mouth—that “many deceivers have gone out into the world” (1:7). They were guilty of denying the Incarnation. Jesus Christ, the true “Son of the Father” (1:3), Jesus Christ came in a real body (1:7). This is an essential foundation of Christian faith. Though the false teachers may have talked about “Jesus Christ” to get their feet in the door, they were deceivers—in fact, antichrists (1:7).

Most likely, John had in mind a heretical movement that was still in its early stages of development in the first century but would spread widely by the second century. This heresy, often called Gnosticism, was based on the Greek dualistic notion that spirit was good and matter was evil. The Gnostics believed that Christ could not have come in the flesh; otherwise, He would have been tainted with evil. Instead, they argued that Christ only appeared to take on human form.

Considering the presence of deceivers in the world, the practice of hospitality could potentially put the lady and her family at spiritual risk. This is why John urges his readers—this time both the lady and her children—to “Watch out that you do not lose what we have worked so hard to achieve.” (1:8). The consequences for being led astray into wrong teaching and wrong practice would be dire: not a loss of genuine salvation, which can never be forfeited (see 1 Jn. 5:11–13), but a loss of “full reward.” This is probably a reference to what many call “the judgment seat of Christ,” when “each of us will give a personal account to God” (Rom. 14:12).

When we stand before our Savior and Lord,/Christ will not judge believers to determine innocence or guilt—heaven or hell. That judgment of “not guilty” was already rendered when God declared us righteous at our conversion based on the saving death of Christ (2 Cor. 5:21). Because of the finished work of Christ, received as our own by faith, that is our loyalty in Him, our resurrection is guaranteed and our place in the kingdom of heaven is permanently assured (2 Cor. 1:21–22; 5:5; Eph. 1:13–14). However, at the judgment seat of Christ, our future reward, or actually our position in the kingdom of God, will be determined by the quality of our deeds and the motives behind them (see 1 Cor. 3:10–15; 4:4–5). Thus, John says, we must take seriously the balance between unconditional love and discerning truth in this life. If we allow the truth to be compromised (even in the name of love), then we open ourselves up to being led astray, which can have serious consequences (1 Cor. 3:12-15).

Of course, some go “too far” and fail to “remains in the teaching of Christ” (2 Jn. 1:9). That is, they are not guilty simply of being deceived or falling into sin; instead, they have completely abandoned the faith they once professed. They have demonstrated, through their actions, a total disregard for God’s truth and> love. In such acute cases, John says, such people “has no relationship with God” (1:9). Such a person is a deceiver and an antichrist (1:7).

John treats this kind of apostasy in more detail in 1 John 2:19, where he asserts that such false teachers never truly experienced the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Those who so radically depart from the core teachings of the true Christian faith demonstrate that “they never really belonged with us” (1 John 2:19). Had those antichrists been truly united to Christ by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit, “they would have stayed with us,” with the true church. Their departure makes it clear, however, that “they did not belong with us” (1 Jn. 2:19).

Again, this isn’t talking about Christians who entertain doubts, backslide into sin, or even temporarily stray from the right path. John’s definition of “antichrists” in 1 John and 2 John speaks to something more serious than the everyday struggles of faith we all experience. “Antichrists” are guilty of outright heresies that deny the core doctrines of the faith and fully embrace a lifestyle of sin contrary to God’s commands.

The world is full of deceivers—people who would lure us away from the truth and our eternal reward. Most false teachers use the very same Bible we use. But they twist it, adding to or taking away from its true meaning. John refers to “truth about Christ” (2 Jn. 1:9-10). We are to abide in the teaching. Those who do not bring this same teaching should be shown the door—or better yet, not invited into our homes (1:10).

What is the content of this fundamental Christian “teaching” to which John refers? Though this list is not exhaustive, the following fundamentals of our faith form a good checklist by which we can test the teachers who knock on our doors or come into our homes through TV, radio, print, or the Internet: