“WALKING IN TRUTH” Christadelphian thoughts based on the daily readings for 19th June 2016
“WALKING IN TRUTH”
Today we read those two short final and personal letters from the pen of the Apostle John. As we started reading (2 John) we were impressed by the fact that four times in the first 3 verses he uses the word Truth. We read on to see and appreciate that to “love in truth” is to “know the truth” and must lead to our “walking in truth”.
That last phrase especially jumps out at us. In his Gospel John recorded the words of Jesus about this – for e.g. John 8 v.31-32. Truth is not just something we know, it is something we do; it is a principle by which we live, that is in evidence in all our decisions and resultant actions.
John is alarmed that “many deceivers have gone out into the world”
[v.7]
who evidently had changed what the apostles taught. Such people, says John, are “those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh”. They were converts who thought they could re-interpret and ‘improve’ on what they had been taught by their own reasoning. After accepting the teaching that Jesus was the Son of God who had brought God’s message to human beings (John 5 v.19-20, etc.), these deceivers were saying Jesus could not really have been a human being; as he was a Son of God, he could not have been flesh and blood.
This is serious, John says, he states that such “a one is a deceiver and the antichrist.” John then immediately comments, “Watch yourselves, so that you do not lose what you have worked for”
[v.8]
. He further says that anyone who “does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God.”
[v.9]
.
John described those who were teaching falsely as doing “wicked works”
[v.9]
! In the end there is to be one particular “antichrist” – but there are to be a multitude of forerunners, all guilty of distorting the original “truth” and history testifies to the truth of this.
It would wonderful if all Christians could be of one mind, but it is impossible, human nature being what it is. We are in awe, thinking of the time when Christ, on behalf of the Father, has the final say as to whether we receive his wondrous eternal blessings.
We noted the reasons held out against those he rejects. In John’s third and final letter he writes more about “walking in the truth”
[v.3,4]
and identifies those like Diotrephes
[v.9]
who do not do so. Let us make sure we know the truth and then make sure we walk in it in what we say and in what we do each day.
Truth never changes. [see Ephesians 4 v.4-6,14-15, 25]
By Bro D.Caudery
