And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments (2 John 6).

In 1 Corinthians 13:6 Paul declares that love "does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth." In fact, that whole chapter treats love like a perfect and supreme entity to which everything else must take a back seat. This makes sense when love is understood in its proper context, where God embodies love, as John writes: "God is love" (1 John 4:8). Therefore, this love is not a touchy-feely affection most often portrayed in television melodramas. No, love is the embodiment of all that is good and right and pure and holy. This love was profoundly manifested in Jesus' perfect obedience to the Father in laying down His life for the sins of the world. Therefore, love is first and foremost an alignment with the Person and will of God, as Jesus taught: "If you love me, you will obey My commands" (John 14:23)"

When we "walk according to His commandments," we not only demonstrate love for God but also a proper love for one another. This is what John means in 2 John 6. He is exhorting a love that is grounded in the truth of the incarnation of Christ (2 John 7). In other words, no one can say that they love others while rejecting Christ, who is the perfect embodiment of God's love. It is in Christ that anyone can understand the true nature of God's love, for "this is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us" (1 John 3:16).

Love is not simply being kind to someone or even treating others better than yourself, but when you do these things in obedience to God and following the steps of Christ, then you are truly loving. True love, therefore, cannot be known or expressed apart from a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, for a Christ-less love is tainted by ignorance, idolatry, vanity and sin.

Therefore, friends, let us excel in love by exceling in our affection for the Lord Jesus Christ. Let us truly love one another by obeying God's commands. When our love is grounded in our obedience to God, we can love both friend and foe, both the lovely and the repugnant, both to our benefit and to our hurt. When we love in this way, there will be no confusion as to what we prioritize in love or to what extent we should love, for our love will not be self-directed but God-directed.

Therefore, choosing to love is synonymous to choosing to obey God.

Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son (2 John 1:9).

Notice that John says that those that do not continue in the orthodox doctrine of Jesus Christ, particularly that He came in the flesh, are not saved (i.e. "does not have God"). This has application to all the cardinal tenets of the Christian faith.

Even if someone professed faith since childhood and served in the church many years, if they deny the fundamentals of the Christian faith, they are not saved. John does not say that they lost their salvation but simply that they were not saved. In other words, they never had God in the first place. They were never saved in the first place. They may have simply lived many years going through the motions of faith without actually ever possessing saving faith.

Friends, as we encourage one another toward acts of service and as we serve others ourselves, let us never forget that we are not saved by these acts of service. They are the fruit but not the root. We are saved by something we had nothing to do with, namely, the content of our faith, a body of certain knowledge that came to us by way of the Word of God, the Bible. If we forget or neglect this, we might be found to be simply spinning our wheels. And Jesus will say in that day, "I never knew you." Remember also the admonition that Paul gives in his testimony about the Jews:

Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Since they did not know the righteousness of God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God’s righteousness (Romans 10:1-3).

I pray your zeal may not be in vain, but that you may be found to be zealous in truth.

--------------------

Dear friend, do not imitate what is evil but what is good. Anyone who does what is good is from God. Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God (3 John 1:11).

John, the Elder, says that "anyone who does what is evil has not seen God." What?! Does this surprise you? Remember these words?

If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him... No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God... This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child (1 John 2:29; 3:9-10).

Huh?! Who among us does not do evil or what is wrong or sin at least some of the time, and more likely most of the time? If we take these verses on the face, it would appear that none of us would be qualified to be Christians. What is more, John would be found to be contradicting himself, even in the very same letter, for he also wrote,

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8).

How else can we understand John's words? As I have written elsewhere, we can still take John's words just as they are given if we understand that John is emphasizing our God-secured position in Christ when he writes that we do not sin and cannot sin. In other words, he is speaking of our behavior in God's view rather than what we see of each other. And what is God's view?

God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21).

In Christ we are the righteousness of God! Therefore, at least where our heavenly inheritance is concerned, God sees only what is good and right and perfect in us, for this is the righteousness of God that Christ's sacrifice brings into our account. This is the nature of justification. We are "declared righteous."

John simply writes with this perspective. He can, therefore, easily distinguish between the true and false teachers, the true and false believers, the righteous and the wicked. The distinction will be based on one's standing with respect to Christ. Everyone who rejects Jesus as coming in the flesh would be among the false teachers, false believers, the wicked, and those that remain in their sins. But for true believers, the blood of Jesus cleanses us from every sin (1 John 1:7,9; 2:1-2).

What is more, even when John speaks of loving one's brothers and sisters, which he does often, he can still speak in an absolute sense, because that is based on the certain reality of who we are in Christ. In Christ we always love one another. In Christ we always do what is righteous. John's purpose in writing this way is so that believers may live in line with who they are in Christ:

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin (1 John 2:1).

This is very similar to Paul's approach. First, he writes,

We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? (Romans 6:2).

Speaking of our position in Christ, it is impossible for us to sin; however, he then writes,

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires (Romans 6:11-12).

How can Paul write so absolutely of believers not sinning and then in the next breath write as if they continue to struggle with sin? The key exhortation is found in the words, "Count yourselves dead to sin..." In other words, live as those who have died to sin. Even though what Christ accomplished for us will not fully be realized until heaven, we can live with that certain hope today.

We are like kings and princes, who have not yet received full coronation and all the benefits of the position. Yet, even before we are finally crowned, we are encouraged to behave as kings and princes, for that is what we are. Peter encourages believers to live like "foreigners" in this world. And Paul encourages us to live as "citizens of heaven."

So John also writes this way in order to encourage believers to live godly lives in keeping with their position in Christ. As he also writes,

Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure (1 John 3:2-3).

We will be like Jesus. And while this reality has not fully been realized by us, we live in line with this hope, by which we are purified and also we purify ourselves. This is how Paul expresses it:

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me Galatians 2:20).

Paul recognizes his position as one crucified in Christ. He practically lives out this reality by faith.

Friends, since we are holy and perfect in Christ, let us pursue holiness and perfection in keeping with this glorious hope that we have in Christ, which is guaranteed by the Holy Spirit, and secured in heaven for us by God.

----------------

For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord. Though you already know all this, I want to remind you that the Lord at one time delivered his people out of Egypt, but later destroyed those who did not believe (Jude 1:4-5).

Jude warns these believers that false believers "have secretly slipped in among you." He compares this to those God delivered out of Egypt in the great Exodus. Even though over two million Jews were delivered from bondage to Egypt, only a few were saved. Except for Joshua and Caleb, every adult twenty years and over were killed by God over forty years in the desert. These Jews were killed because of their unbelief. These unbelieving Jews are like those John describes as "certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago."

The danger of this group is not only that they are in the church, but they twist the gospel of Jesus, so that they make the grace of God a license for immoraility. In other words, since believers are forgiven of their sins, they argue that believers can freely live in sin. This is the same group that Paul dealt with in his letter to the Romans:

What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? (Romans 6:1-3)

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you have come to obey from your heart the pattern of teaching that has now claimed your allegiance. You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness (Romans 6:15-18).

Friends, even though it is true that all our sins, whether past, present or future ones, are forgiven by the grace of God through the blood of Christ, this is not a license for us to sin. In fact, those that think this way show themselves to have misunderstood the nature of God's grace and are still lost. The grace of God, rather than being a license for evil, provides a new incentive to do good:

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good (titus 2:11-14).

------------------

In the very same way, on the strength of their dreams these ungodly people pollute their own bodies, reject authority and heap abuse on celestial beings (Jude 1:8).

Notice, friends, that these false teachers, who Jude warns against, found their strength through dreams. They were not like Martin Luther, who, up against a corrupt and powerful Roman church, found his strength in the Word of God:

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Holy Scriptures or by evident reason-for I can believe neither pope nor councils alone, as it is clear that they have erred repeatedly and contradicted themselves-I consider myself convicted by the testimony of Holy Scripture, which is my basis; my conscience is captive to the Word of God. Thus I cannot and will not recant, because acting against one's conscience is neither safe nor sound. God help me. Amen (Luther: Man Between God and the Devil by Heiko Oberman: English edition Yale, 1989).

Today, there are many claims by self-declared "apostles" and "prophets" to dreams of God speaking to them or of conferences with Jesus. These people find their confidence and boldness to make radical claims on the basis of their dreams.

In light of this warning from Jude to believers, we would be wise to be wary of all such claims and to be careful to test every claim on the firm foundation of God's Word.

Friends, do you notice a common emphasis between 2 & 3 John? John, the "elder" (or perhaps the "older one"), praised the recipients of both letters because they were "walking in the truth" (2 John 4; 3 John 3-4). A common threat to the early church from its earliest beginnings to the time of John's letter was the threat of false teaching, especially by those who claimed to be Christians but perverted the truths about Christ. They were especially dangerous because they were on the inside, a part of the community of faith, and often very influential. 

As he did in his first epistle, John connected loving others with obeying God's commandments (2 John 5-6; 1 John 5:2-3). And the central commandment was believing the teaching regarding Jesus Christ, namely, that He is the Son of God (1 John 5:4-5) and that He had come in the flesh (2 John 7-9). And those that denied this teaching about Christ John called "liars", "antichrists" (1 John 2:22) and "deceivers" (2 John 10-11). In 2 John 10 he even warned believers not to receive such people into their homes, for such a welcome might communicate acceptance of their teaching (2 John 11). 

It is interesting to note that in 3 John a certain Diotrophes is mentioned. But instead of rejecting the false teachers, as John commanded in 2 John, Diotrophes was rejecting the true ministers of the Gospel (3 John 5-10). John expected the church to discern between the true and the false teachers; therefore, it was critical for them to know the truth, and it was to those that knew the truth that he was addressing his encouragements and warnings in these letters (2 John 1b; 3 John 3).

Just as an aside, it is important to make a distinction between false teachers and unbelievers. John was not commanding the church to refuse hospitality to all unbelievers per se but only to those that profess faith yet deny the central truths about Christ. These latter ones were unbelievers also, but they were a particularly dangerous brand of unbelievers. 

-----------------------

When we come to Jude, we once again encounter the threat of false teaching. Jude intended to just encourage the church with respect to their "common salvation" (Jude 3a), but he found it necessary to write to them, exhorting them to "contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints" (Jude 3).

Jude identifies the false teachers as "certain men (that) have crept in unnoticed...ungodly men, who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ" (Jude 4). He compares them to the rebellious Jews that God killed in the wildnerness of Sinai, to fallen angels awaiting judgment, and to Sodom and Gomorrah (Jude 5-7).

Jude identifies the false teachers as "dreamers (who) defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries" (Jude 8). What is the "authority" and what are these "dignitaries" they are disdaining? From what Jude describes in verses 9-11, they appear to be heavenly beings, whether the devil or demons (Jude 9-10), or those whom God has blessed, exemplified in Abel, Israel or Moses (Jude 11).

Some years ago a preacher from Hawaii demonstrated a certain war chant, which he loudly directed against Satan along with body motions that resembled what a sumo wrestler might perform. It was actually kind of scary. I didn't think anything of it at the time; however, when I read Jude's criticism of the foolishness of those that criticize celestial beings, like the devil, who, while defeated, is still a dangerous and powerful foe, I am leery about such practices. While we are to resist the devil's enticements and to flee from his temptations, we are never commanded or even encouraged to address him directly or to revile him. The archangel Michael did not even do it (Jude 9), and neither should we.

Jude futher identifies these false teachers as "spots in your love feasts" (Jude 12) Love feasts were general meals that Christians would come together to share for fellowship and that accompanied the celebration of Communion. Jude says that the false teachers are spots because they show no reverence and serve only themselves. Paul also warned against being irreverent and self-serving on these occasions in 1 Corinthians 11. 

The string of metaphors from nature show that these false teachers only gave the appearance of hope but in reality had no substance (Jude 12-13). Jude cites an extrabiblical prophecy, which predicted that the Lord, along with His saints, would judge the ungodly deeds and words of these false teachers.

But Jude is not finished. Jude says these false teachers are "grumblers, complainers, walking according to their own lusts; and they mouth great swelling words, flattering people to gain advantage" (Jude 16). In other words, these people are politically savvy, and they will criticize or flatter depending on which will give them the greatest advantage. In other words, their concern is not with the truth but with their own personal gain. 

In contrast Jude reminds His hearers, the "beloved" (Jude 3, 17,20), that the apostles of Jesus warned about these false teachers. They are "mockers." They "walk according to their own ungodly lusts" (Jude 18). 

Verse 19 reads "These are sensual persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit" in the NKJV. Likewise the NIV translates it "These are the people who divide you, who follow mere natural instincts and do not have the Spirit." However, a literal translation reads, "These are those setting themselves apart, natural men, the Spirit not having" (Young's Literal Trans.). 

The NKJV seems to take too much liberty in translating "natural men" as "sensual persons," which in today's culture implies sexual passion, which is not what John is saying here. He is rather once again emphasizing that these false teachers are led by a human self-interest over against a godly spiritual interest. 

Also, both the NIV and the NKJV seem to take too much liberty in translating a verb in the middle voice (lit. "setting themselves apart") as "who cause divisions" or "who divide you." The object "you" is not only absent but is not natural for the middle voice. The literal translation gives a better sense to the context, which shows these false teachers as self-absorbed, who "mouth great swelling words" (Jude 16). Such is also consistent with their linkage to Cain, Balaam, and Korah (Jude 11), who also sought recognition for themselves. Similarly, Paul wrote about the Judaizers, who perverted the Gospel by trying to enforce circumcision among the Gentile believers. He said that they did this so that they might "boast about their circumcision in the flesh" (Galatians 6:13). Again, you get the sense that they were trying to "set themselves apart" as more special than the others.

Finally, Jude describes these false teachers as "not having the Spirit" (Jude 19). Simply put, this is as clear as saying that they are not saved (Romans 8:9).

In contrast again, Jude exhorts the "beloved" believers:

But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. 
And on some have compassion, making a distinction; but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh (Jude 20-23).

In contrast to the false teachers, who are self-absorbed and self-motivated, Jude exhorts the believers to stay focused on God, which he gives expression to through each person of the Godhead, namely, God the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. 

Much is sometimes made of the expression "praying in the Holy Spirit;" however, this may simply be a contrast to the false teachers, who do things "according to their own lusts" (Jude 16, 18). Paul often wrote of walking by the Spirit so that believers might not fulfill the lusts of the sinful nature (Galatians 5:16, 25). Thus, "praying in the Holy Spirit" simply means making petition to God in keeping with the will of God (see also Romans 8:26-27).

There is some disagreement in translation of Jude 22, which some translations read, "And on some have compassion, making a distinction" (e.g. NKJV) and others "Be merciful to those who doubt" (e.g. NIV). There is good manuscript support for either translation; however, the context seems to support the first reading better. Jude has nowhere in his epistle addressed the matter of "doubters" per se; however, he has made a clear case between the true and the false among those who profess faith. Among true believers, he counsels "compassion" or "mercy;" however, the believer's attitude toward those that are false should be "save with fear... hating even the garment defiled by the flesh" (Jude 23). With the former there is no risk of corruption as there is with the latter; thus, the warning. 

Jude ends his epistle with a doxology for the sovereign grace of God, who is "able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you fautless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy..." (Jude 24). This is truly a praise and thanksgiving because, even in light of the dangers to the church from false teaching, true believers are not at risk of losing their salvation because God Himself will keep them "from stumbling" and God Himself will present them "faultless" before Him.