"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 at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth." In fact, that whole chapter treats love as supreme, with everything else taking a back seat to it. This makes sense when love is understood in its proper context, where God Himself embodies love, as John writes: "God is love" (1 John 4:8). So this love is not the sentimental affection portrayed in television dramas. Love is the embodiment of all that is good, right, pure, and holy. It was most profoundly displayed in Jesus' perfect obedience to the Father in laying down His life for the sins of the world. Love, therefore, is first and foremost alignment with the person and will of God, as Jesus taught: "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (John 14:15).

When we "walk according to his commandments," we demonstrate not only love for God but also a proper love for one another. This is what John means in 2 John 6. He is urging a love that is grounded in the truth of the incarnation of Christ (2 John 7). In other words, no one can claim to 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 "by this we know love, that he 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 in the steps of Christ, then you are truly loving. True love cannot be fully known or expressed apart from a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

So, friends, let us excel in love by growing 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 obedience to God, we can love both friend and foe, both the lovely and the difficult, both to our benefit and to our cost. When we love in this way, there will be no confusion about what to prioritize in love or how far love should go, for our love will not be self-directed but God-directed.

Choosing to love, then, is the same as choosing to obey God.

AI-Expanded Reflection

2 John is addressed to "the elect lady and her children," most likely a local congregation, and its two themes are love and truth held together. John says he loves them "in truth" (v. 1), urges them to love one another (v. 5), defines love as walking in God's commandments (v. 6), and then warns about deceivers who deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh (v. 7). Love without truth would embrace the deceivers; truth without love would be harsh. The letter insists on both.

On the comment's point about love outside of Christ, most Christians would add a nuance that John himself implies. Because all people are made in God's image, genuine and admirable love exists among those who do not know Christ — Jesus acknowledged that even sinners love those who love them (Luke 6:32) and pointed to a Samaritan as the model of neighbor-love. What the New Testament claims is that such love is a reflection of the God from whom all love comes, and that its fullest form and clearest definition are found in Christ: "In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us" and sent His Son (1 John 4:10). That is the love believers are called to imitate.

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.

AI-Expanded Reflection

Second John places doctrinal faithfulness and mutual love within the same short letter. The elder rejoices that some of the recipient’s children are walking in truth, recalls the command to love one another, and then warns about deceivers who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ coming in the flesh. The warning in verse 9 therefore concerns a real departure from the apostolic witness to Jesus. It should not be reduced to the idea that enthusiasm or sincerity makes the content of faith unimportant.

The language about going ahead while failing to remain is particularly searching. A teaching can present itself as spiritual advancement while abandoning the truth that makes Christian faith Christian. Novelty is not automatically insight. Yet remaining does not mean refusing all growth in understanding. It means that growth continues within allegiance to the Christ proclaimed by the apostles rather than treating that foundation as something mature people eventually outgrow. The incarnation matters because the Son truly entered human life; salvation is not an escape from the historical Jesus into a more impressive private spirituality.

The original emphasizes that saving faith has an object and recognizable content. Romans 10:1–3 supports the broader concern that zeal can be misdirected when people seek righteousness on their own terms. Nevertheless, knowledge should not be treated as an independent saving accomplishment. The issue is trusting the true Christ rather than possessing an exhaustive theological education. A new believer may understand much imperfectly while genuinely relying on him; a highly informed person may know orthodox formulations while refusing the love and obedience the letter commands.

A distinction is also needed concerning the history of an individual’s faith. Second John 9 describes the person who does not remain as not having God. That statement directly addresses present allegiance and fellowship. By itself, its wording does not narrate whether such a person once possessed salvation. The original’s conclusion that apostates were never truly saved belongs to a wider theological understanding of perseverance and should be argued from the relevant passages as a whole, rather than presented as a detail explicitly supplied by this verse.

The immediate practical challenge is to keep discernment and love united. A church should teach clearly enough that members can recognize denials of Christ, while also showing how that confession shapes welcome, honesty, sacrifice, and care. Love is not a reason to endorse destructive teaching, and doctrinal accuracy is not a reason to become harsh or self-congratulatory. Second John joins walking in truth with walking according to God’s commands. The healthiest response to its warning is therefore neither suspicious isolation nor careless acceptance, but a community whose affection is governed by the truth about the Savior it confesses.

Do you notice a common emphasis between 2 and 3 John? John, writing as "the elder," praised the recipients of both letters for "walking in the truth" (2 John 4; 3 John 3–4). A persistent threat to the early church was false teaching, especially from people who claimed to be Christians but distorted the truth about Christ. They were particularly dangerous because they were insiders — part of the community of faith, and often influential. As in his first epistle, John connects loving others with obeying God's commands (2 John 5–6; 1 John 5:2–3), and the central command was believing the right teaching about Jesus Christ: that He is the Son of God (1 John 5:4–5) and that He came in the flesh (2 John 7–9). Those who denied this, John called liars, antichrists, and deceivers (1 John 2:22; 2 John 10–11). In 2 John 10 he even warned believers not to receive such people into their homes, since that welcome might signal acceptance of their teaching. Interestingly, 3 John mentions a man named Diotrephes who did the reverse of what John commanded — rather than rejecting false teachers, he rejected the true ministers of the gospel (3 John 5–10). John expected the church to discern between true and false teachers, which is why knowing the truth mattered so much. One distinction worth making: John wasn't commanding the church to refuse hospitality to unbelievers generally, but specifically to those who professed faith while denying the central truths about Christ.

Turning to Jude, we encounter the same threat. Jude had intended simply to encourage the church about their common salvation, but found it necessary instead to urge them to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints (a paraphrase of Jude 3). He identifies the false teachers as men who crept in unnoticed, turning God's grace into license and denying Christ (a paraphrase of Jude 4), comparing them to the rebellious wilderness generation, to fallen angels awaiting judgment, and to Sodom and Gomorrah (Jude 5–7). He describes them as dreamers who defile the flesh, reject authority, and speak evil of dignitaries (a paraphrase of Jude 8) — the "dignitaries" appearing, from verses 9–11, to be heavenly beings. Years ago I watched a preacher perform a loud war chant directed at Satan, complete with dramatic body motions. At the time I thought little of it, but reading Jude's criticism of those who revile celestial beings, I've grown wary of such practices. We're told to resist the devil's enticements and flee temptation, but we're never commanded or encouraged to address him directly or revile him. The archangel Michael didn't do it (Jude 9), and neither should we. Jude further calls these teachers "spots in your love feasts" (Jude 12) — love feasts being the shared fellowship meals that accompanied Communion — because they showed no reverence and served only themselves.

AI-Expanded Reflection

The distinction this comment draws — between false teachers inside the community and unbelievers generally — is worth emphasizing, since 2 John 10 is one of the more frequently misapplied verses in the New Testament. Read as a blanket instruction about hospitality toward non-Christians, it would contradict Jesus's own practice of eating with those His culture considered outsiders. Read in context, it addresses a narrow and specific situation: itinerant teachers claiming apostolic authority while denying that Christ came in the flesh, whose welcome into a house church would have functioned as public endorsement. The difference between "don't extend hospitality to outsiders" and "don't lend your platform to someone actively undermining the gospel from within" is substantial, and this comment is right to name it.