Amen. Please turn with me in your Bibles to the second John, the second of John’s letters. John writes, ‘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 you a new commandment, but the one 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, 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 to you face to face, so that our joy may be complete. The children of your elect sister greet you.’
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray.
Lord, your word speaks to us; it is the way that we most clearly hear from you. Sometimes we hear things that cause us to be concerned or fearful. Help us to understand the good that you mean. Help us to love your purposes and to hear and receive your teachings and the teachings of no others from out in the world. We love you and praise you in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So now, having been assured of this text’s authorship by the Apostle John and its rightful inclusion within the Canon of scripture, we get to explore it more deeply. I said previously that Second John reads like a condensed Reader’s Digest summary of First John, and that is mostly true.
However, just as we will later see that Third John is a companion correspondence to Second John, this letter also seems to have been intended as either an immediate follow-up to First John or a companion to it, likely serving as particular application for the Apostle’s teaching. Why do I suggest that? Well, there is a very close similarity in the outline; the same emphases are found in both, taken to such a degree that the condensation really does seem reasonable.
Then John’s particular commendation of his intended audience for doing what he encouraged them to do in First John—here, John is praising the congregation for how well they are following Jesus Christ in their faith. They were doing what they were supposed to be doing; they were doing a good job as a church, doing all the things that he had told them to do. They were continuing to walk in the light and truth, and they were encouraging others. He commended them because they were a vibrant, fruitful, successful, flourishing, healthy, and disciple-making church. John rejoiced in this congregation because he had clearly gotten a good report about them—a good report.
But it couldn’t have been a perfect report, because after his glowing praise, he says, ‘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.’
So First John praised them, and then he issued them a reminder and a warning to avoid Antichrists; otherwise, they might lose what they’d already gained in Christ. Previously, John had written about the Antichrists out there in the world, but now he is writing about Antichrists who have infiltrated the church.
But hold up; wait just a moment. How can we lose what we’ve worked for? I thought that once someone was saved by Jesus Christ, once someone was regenerated by the Holy Spirit, once someone was numbered among the elect of God, that they could not and would not lose their salvation. Because Jesus said, ‘And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.’ That’s pretty clear.
But Jesus also said, ‘While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you’ve given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.’ The son of destruction that he’s talking about was Judas Iscariot, his betrayer, and certainly someone whom we can reasonably expect lost a place in the Kingdom.
So, is someone once saved always saved? Yes, they are, because God is sovereign and omnipotent; therefore, his purposes and decrees cannot be thwarted or denied by any mere human creature. Otherwise, God would not be God; God would not be omnipotent if someone was more powerful and able to override his will.
But also no, because being saved is much more difficult than just saying a prayer to invite Jesus into your heart, or by being baptized, or by going to church and Sunday school every Sunday morning. Salvation requires actual repentance and the evidence of a transformed life. It requires confession, profession, and active, consequential faith and dependence upon God.
So while a person cannot be saved by Jesus Christ and then later decide to not be saved any longer, a person can believe they are saved, and they may claim to have been saved, but they are actually deluding themselves, because they’ve not been regenerated and are not being sanctified by the Holy Spirit for holiness.
Please understand, there are a lot of decent moral people out in the world who try to obey much of what the Bible teaches, but without the component of consequential faith, they’re not Christian, even if they claim His name for themselves. Judas was also numbered among the disciples of Jesus’s 12 closest followers, but he proved himself to be a liar, a thief, and a betrayer.
So, a person can say that they are a Christian, but not actually be one. A person can say that they believe in Jesus Christ alone, but still trust in themselves more. A person can say all of these things for a very long time and even believe that they mean it, but unless they have experienced the transformative power of the Holy Spirit, then they are not actually a Christian and will eventually prove that they were never actually saved at all.
Deception is a powerful tool of Satan, especially self-deception. How many people are so convinced, have so convinced themselves, that they are a Christian that they do not hear the Holy Spirit’s call, or refuse to repent of their sins because they are socially and culturally acceptable now, thinking that maybe what God called sin then, God will not call sin now because of our human progress?
Nor does our perseverance in the faith, our choosing to remain within the Orthodox Christian faith, secure us God’s election unto salvation. However, fortunately, God’s solely sovereign, unconditional election of a person will secure them and persevere unto salvation.
Now John testified about the purity of the church earlier when he wrote this concerning Antichrist: ‘They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might become plain that they all are not of us.’ According to John’s testimony, at one time, these Antichrists were among us, among the church, which means that there may be some among us within the church even now.
Eventually, those who are among us will reveal themselves and prove themselves to be Antichrists when they separate from us or from the Orthodox faith. The author of Hebrews wrote about people like this within the visible church as well, saying, ‘For it is impossible in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, it is impossible to restore them again to repentance since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding Him up to contempt.’
See, they were enlightened, so they’re without excuse. They have heard and know what the gospel is, but they’ve not received it or accepted it. They do not live new lives transformed by the Holy Spirit. They can see His work in the hearts and lives of people around them, but their own hearts are hardened.
They’ve tasted the heavenly gift because they’ve received and enjoyed the tangible benefits of temporal Christian community, but they do not contribute to it in return. They say that they believe and they say that they have repented and turned away from their sins, but in their heart, they really ask, ‘Why should I buy the cow when I get the milk for free?’
What all that means and teaches us is that we do not know, and we cannot know, definitely who else, whether within or without the church, actually is a true Christian believer or is not a true Christian believer, or is not a Christian believer yet. That’s why John spent so much time explaining why and how we may know that we have koinonia with God for our own benefit and not so that we may judge another person’s state of salvation.
We must not judge a book by its cover, because even though something may look like a duck and quack like a duck, it may not necessarily be a duck. Conversely, something that may not look like a duck nor quack like a duck may not be a duck. Has anybody ever seen a mccoi? They don’t look like ducks at all. So, appearances can be deceiving, especially our human appearances.
Am I confusing you yet? Now, I’m not spouting some kind of postmodern, deconstructionist, unliteral anti-reality nonsense; I’m actually being very serious.
I’ll prove my point. This past summer, I introduced my wife to Moon drop grapes. Has anybody had them? No, they really do not look like grapes at all. My wife says they look like eggplants—little tiny eggplants. They really do not taste like grapes either, at least not real grapes. They taste more like the artificial grape flavoring, like what you get in grape soda or grape Kool-Aid. However, they actually are Vitis vinifera, common grapevine. They don’t look like real grapes; they don’t taste like real grapes, but they still actually are real grapes.
Yet, on the other hand, Jesus once told the story about a man who planted a fig tree. That man waited three years for that tree to produce fruit, but after three years it never produced a single thing. So, if it’s called a fig tree, if it looks like a fig tree, has leaves like a fig tree but never produces a single fig, then is it really a fig tree? Since it does not produce figs, it does not fulfill its purpose.
See, that is why we will rightly refrain from authoritatively declaring that someone is or is not a Christian, because we do not and cannot know the secret truths of a person’s heart, and we cannot know what God’s sovereign plan for them is. That knowledge belongs to God alone.
This is why we have the doctrines of the visible church and the invisible church. The invisible church is the church which we cannot definitely identify by our mere human sight or understanding but who are definitely identified and known by and in Christ. This is the true Catholic and universal Church, comprised of all the elect, past, present, and future, which includes everyone who ever was, is, or will be saved in both time and space.
Whereas the visible church is the church that we can see and includes everyone who professes faith in Jesus Christ. This church includes all the members of a particular congregation and is truly part of the family of God, apart from which a person cannot ordinarily be saved.
It’s important to note, lest we think too highly of ourselves as we consider this doctrine, because we need to remember that particular churches and the particular denominations which they are members of are considered more or less pure depending upon how the gospel is administered, how public worship is performed, and how the ordinances of God are administered. Even the purest churches under heaven are subject both to impurity and error.
No matter how much we will ever get right as a church or as individuals, we are certain to still be wrong somehow and in some way. Such is the case for every Christian church denomination and every Christian person. Therefore, again, it is not our place to judge another person’s status as a Christian because of our minor differences in opinion.
That is the positive side to our denomination’s motto: ‘In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; and in all things, charity.’ However, our denomination’s inability and unwillingness to define and enforce what we actually consider to be essential to the faith is the negative side. Yet every Christian, every one of us, is still responsible to identify, minimize, and avoid all the errors that we can, and we must choose between the potential interpretive errors that we’re willing to accept and tolerate.
However, we are not free to approve of anything that is a clear and obvious error according to Scripture within our fellowship. Differing theological stances concerning capital punishment, women’s ordination, or the proper mode of baptism—whether a sprinkle or immerse—are all argued and defended using Scripture proof texts. However, clearly both sides cannot be correct; that also does not mean that one side or the other must be correct either, because both sides may be wrong.
This goes for the differences between Calvinists and Arminians, Lutherans and Romans, Presbyterians and Baptists. Whereas debates that concern things like the Trinity, the eternal and non-created nature of God the Son, or the acceptance and tolerance of what the Bible plainly defines as being sin—when we have clear biblical positions to which a Christian is called to be faithful as we walk according to his commandments—things like abortion on demand, which Scripture defines as murder, or like a culture’s redefinition of marriage and appropriate sexual relationships, when Scripture defines marriage as being between one man and one woman, and where such a marriage is the only appropriate context for sexual relations.
Sexual alternatives like homosexuality and transgenderism are also declared to be moral abominations. So, now with John’s words of caution telling us to watch ourselves ringing in our ears, he defines again who and what Antichrists are and how we may recognize them so that we can avoid them.
Antichrists are deceivers by nature; they do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh because they deny his physical incarnation. Nor do they abide in the teaching of Christ; they will deny the truths taught by Scripture. They will teach doctrines which are contrary and false according to the standard of Scripture as they try to lead the elect astray, although sometimes they might do this without malicious intention and through their own ignorance or because they themselves have been deceived and deprived of the truth.
But they still remain culpable, without excuse, because we’re all responsible for our choices. This is another reason why it’s so imperative that we know how to test the spirits, so that we know what truth is and immediately recognize falsehoods, deceptions, and errors.
It’s every Christian’s responsibility to correct the errors of others, to call them to repentance, and to help restore them into following the way of Christ. The only way for us to do that is by both knowing and properly understanding the teachings of Jesus and of all Scripture, because it is the word of God.
Now, about understanding the teaching of Christ, or what is otherwise called the science of interpretation, there are three things you must realize. Scripture says a lot about a lot of things, and it also says very little about a lot of things. It does not say something about everything specifically, yet it does speak about all things relationally.
When Scripture speaks, it speaks plainly and clearly. Scripture speaks most plainly and clearly in the original languages, in the original context, and to the original audience, none of which we are a part of. So, whenever it does not seem clear to us, we must interpret it by comparing it against other parts of Scripture that are clearer, and in light of whatever we know about the languages and their social and historical context.
When Scripture speaks, it speaks plainly, like ‘You shall not murder.’ But when Scripture is silent about a particular subject, then we will interpret whatever it says about something similar or related and then apply that interpretation to our subject.
Unfortunately, interpretation is a very subjective science, and everyone who interprets anything, but especially interpreting Scripture, is at risk of making errors. Then compounded with this is how we’ve gotten so many competing interpretations about different things contained within Scripture, such as the end times, baptism, and church government. This is why so many people fight over their interpretations because they honestly believe that theirs is the most clear and plain reading.
But regardless of theological differences, whenever we abide in the teaching of Christ, we are able to tell between Christians who think like us and Christians who think something else, and between people who say that they are Christian yet do not abide in the teaching of Christ.
Sometimes it may be the words of their mouths which portray their Antichrist nature, but most often it’s the things that they do—their actions—which betray them to those with open spiritual eyes and prove that they do not belong to God.
Please understand me when I say that no Christian—no one who has faith in Jesus Christ—ever sets out to become a heretic or an Antichrist. But every Christian heresy in recorded history began the same way—with a kernel of biblical truth that was misunderstood, misinterpreted, or misapplied. Then these errors were compounded as their falsehoods began to be believed and were taught as truth.
False doctrines appeared within the church. This was the case of the heresies that plagued the early church like Gnosticism, Arianism, Docetism—where the three persons of the Trinity were considered three separate and distinct expressions of one God, which changed depending upon particular circumstances—and many others.
Sadly, however, those heresies have not remained the problem of history. Even as the Orthodox Church in antiquity responded to and refuted each one, they get new leases on life as they’re cleaned up, reskinned, and updated in every generation.
As soon as we think they’ve been gotten rid of, the same old problems get new names and slip right back into the church and act as if they belong there. Many of you will recall that this was once a PC(USA) congregation, and back during the 1990s, a clause was added to that denomination’s polity in 1996, which was unaffectionately known as the Fidelity and Chastity Amendment.
This amendment declared that those who are called to office in the church are to lead a life in obedience to Scripture and in conformity to the historic confessional standards of the church. Among these standards is the requirement to live either in fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness. Persons refusing to repent shall not be ordained or installed as deacons, elders, or ministers of word and sacrament.
Back then, the conservative side considered this provision a victory because it blocked the problem of openly gay and practicing homosexuals from being ordained to church office. It was condemned by all the social liberals within the denomination. However, those patient Antichrists rightly understood it as being the liberal victory, which every conservative compromise grants since it tacitly and implicitly permitted non-practicing, celibate homosexuals to be ordained by generating a moral equivalence between them and a normal unmarried man also being considered for ordination.
Nor did this slow their assault on the historic Orthodox Christian teachings about sexuality and marriage, because five years later, in 2001, that clause was deleted entirely by the General Assembly.
Now, yes, there was a kind of equivalency between a celibate heterosexual and a celibate homosexual; both are not overtly practicing and are actually engaging in sinful behaviors through their celibate discipline, and both would almost be considered equivalent in their sinfulness were they to succumb to their sexual lust—where lust is an inclination and feeling that is independent of action.
But John has already made the argument clear for us that their sinfulness is not morally equivalent, because one sin is natural and the other sin is unnatural.
Now, yes, all sin is unnatural and, therefore, a deviant affront against the holiness of God, but I’m using ‘natural’ to define something which is otherwise good and prescribed, like a man’s desire for a woman or a woman’s desire for a man, but which is applied in a sinful manner outside of the appropriate context—the confines of marriage.
I use ‘unnatural’ because homosexuality and homosexual inclinations are defined by Scripture as abominations and are clearly against the order of nature and God’s intention for human relationships.
So, the PC(USA) temporarily allowed the position, although it was written in a biblically faithful, Orthodox, and appropriate manner. This position was intentionally misinterpreted and misapplied by the Antichrists within their midst through the language’s imprecision and subjectivity.
Fast forward to our present day, where the status and acceptance of non-practicing and celibate homosexuals is now positively known as side-B Christianity, and this has been a subject of grave concern within the PCA—the Presbyterian Church in America—which is ordinarily considered slightly more conservative than ours. For about the past five or six years, a few years ago, one of their prominent pastors announced that he is gay from the pulpit one Sunday morning.
Then he began to advocate and promote the acceptability of this side-B Christianity through a series of conferences called ‘Revoice.’ His actions led to several ecclesiastical charges and defenses along with failed overtures and amendments to the PCA’s polity until finally he and his congregation chose to leave the denomination last year.
However, the PCA’s problem concerning the issue is not over, because he was merely a catalyst and a symptom of their wider problem. He enjoyed widespread support and encouragement from many within the denomination, more than enough to prevent official condemnation and sanctions by the necessary super majority.
This now former PCA pastor is a very clear modern and present example of a false teacher and Antichrist—someone who is clearly not abiding within the teaching of Christ and who is located within the body of the church and is actively working to subvert and corrupt her purity and beauty.
That is precisely the sort of person which John is now speaking against. He says, ‘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.’
Now ordinarily, such a self-described non-practicing and celibate homosexual, as a person who identifies as a gay Christian, should not meet our denomination’s required qualifications for holding office, which are according to Scripture. Those who bear office in the church should exhibit certain characteristics of life.
This includes being above reproach, sound in the faith, wise in the things of God, and discreet in all things. Persons who fill this office should exhibit a lifestyle that is an example to all, both in and outside the church. They fail to meet the standards of living an exemplary lifestyle and of being above reproach because, first, they identify themselves by their sin.
A person cannot identify themselves as a gay Christian, since Christ plus anything is not Christ; but a person can be a Christian that struggles against homosexuality, although they still would not be eligible for church office.
Second, they are proudly endorsing and approving of their own sinful inclinations and proclivities instead of mortifying their sin in cooperation with the Holy Spirit and by closer conformity to the image of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, there are presently some elders in our denomination willing to consider welcoming him and his congregation into our fellowship.
Two thousand years ago, the Apostle John was warning this church to watch yourselves, saying, ‘If anyone comes to you as a brother or sister in Christ who does not bring the teaching of Christ, anyone who teaches something contrary to Christ, or teaches something about Jesus, or teaches something against Jesus Christ—then do not welcome them; do not bring them into your home and give them hospitality. Do not greet them, talk to them, or listen to them.’
And so John continues to warn us the same today. John is commanding what seems to be a severe form of shunning, and yes, it does sound rather unloving; it does not sound like agape to others.
Nonetheless, remember that here within the context of John’s writing, Jesus commanded us to love one another and to not agape the cosmos, because every Antichrist belongs clearly to the cosmos and not to Jesus.
But my counter question is this: Is it loving? Is it agapic to invite danger into our midst and hold it close and fast to our bosom when we know that it does not belong to Christ? To agape others is to also protect them.
John is very savage and rather harsh on this point; yet he remains less so than Paul was in Galatians when he wrote, ‘But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be accursed (anathema).’
Or something that was anathematized was devoted to destruction in the Lord’s name. Paul said, ‘Let them be accursed, condemned, and destroyed by God.’ Well, John says, ‘Do not welcome them, show them hospitality, or even talk to them.’
So, I still think I’d rather hear from John than from Paul. Now, none of this means that we should not love them, respect them, and treat them well as human beings—people made in the image of Christ.
What this is all saying is that we do not bring them on in and put them in positions of authority in the church.
So, why the Apostles warn against folks like this and encourage such extreme measures? Because they wanted to protect the elder lady—the church—and to defend her children, us, from their corrupting influence. John tells us plainly that whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.
So, greeting them, welcoming them, fellowshipping with them, and engaging them in Christian koinonia is considered active participation with them in their wickedness, their sinfulness, and their fall into apostasy. Sadly, 2,000 years after writing this letter, the situation with the Church of Christ has not really changed that much at all.
If we think we’re that much better than they were because we have a printed Bible or six in every home and also one on our phones, because we have 2,000 years’ worth of church history and commentaries, because we’re free to gather for worship every Sunday without fear of persecution and martyrdom, because we have grocery stores and running water—then we are sorely mistaken.
We’re actually worse off than they were, because despite all the lessons of history, despite the test of time, we are even more apt today to doubt Scripture and everything that it teaches, because we have not yet learned our lesson. Sadly, too many people are still willing to allow Antichrists like that former PCA pastor into their Christian fellowship.
See, we each have a duty to Christ and to each other to preserve the peace, unity, and purity of the Lamb’s bride, and I, for one, do not want to be accused of being negligent in this duty. Happily inviting in or welcoming known Antichrists and false doctrines into the church of Jesus Christ is intentionally set to destroy the peace, unity, and purity of the church.
The problems of 2,000 years ago are today’s problems, and unfortunately, I expect they will continue to be tomorrow’s problems as well. Therefore, we must heed John’s warning, and we must watch ourselves.
Finally, after this critical warning, John ends his letter in hopeful anticipation as he looks forward to visiting this church in the future. ‘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.’
While Paul often wrote in hopefulness to visit his pen pals, he always seemed kind of uncertain about whether it would be possible or likely. John seems very confident that he will see his audience soon and that both sides will be joyful in their reunion. Perhaps he was so confident because he also included seeing them in the Eternal Kingdom as part of his possibilities.
Lastly, he closes the letter with a final greeting: ‘The children of your elect sister greet you.’
So not only does John include himself with the audience of his letter, he also includes the whole congregation that he’s a part of with him and with them. John, and both churches, are united together into the one perfect union of koinonia in Christ.
John, out of all the New Testament writers, most especially demonstrates and emphasizes the union every Christian ever shares together in Jesus Christ as the entire church and everyone who truly has faith in Jesus.
So what we must do as a church, together, is that we must remember that even with all of the good that we do and as faithful as we may be, we must remain diligent and stay on our guard, watching ourselves to protect ourselves, others, and future generations from the many Antichrists and deceivers who are constantly trying to infiltrate Christ’s Church.
We must be careful to discern between Christians with whom we might disagree and from the Antichrists who claim the Christian religion but whose works and words prove they belong to Satan and his dominion of the present cosmos.
The only and best way we can do this is through our knowledge and careful study of Scripture and the prayerful guidance of the Holy Spirit within us.
So study and pray; watch yourselves so that you may not lose what we have worked for but may win eternal life. Test the spirits and refuse to accept any falsehoods, the teachings of false teachers and Antichrists; refuse to accept either them or their heresy into your communion and fellowship.
The Son of God, Jesus Christ. Amen.