1-3 John - 2nd John 1:5-6 Love and Obedience

So we're in 2 John verses 5 and 6, and what I thought we would do is, I'm kind of annoying with the repetition, but each time I get back up here, I'll kind of just give us a running start into where we are from a bigger perspective with 2 John. So, I've got a couple paragraphs here that summarize the larger context of 2 John.

Just get our mind kind of wrapped around what's going on with this particular letter. Second, John warns against the same false teaching mentioned in John's first letter. And this letter, however, was addressed to the elect lady and her children. And we'll talk a little bit about that, but we decided last week that that was a woman of notability, possibly Martha. And we'll look at that again because she's mentioned in our verses today. And this particular letter is focused specifically on Christian hospitality. false teachers were using the kindness of Christians to gain access to the homes and influence John's congregation. And so John's letter spoke to this danger and warned against opening one's home to these destroyers of the faith.

So, there was quite a reality for these folks of just friends that had gone out, potentially, and I say friends because They would have spent time together with them for quite a while, and you might be able to, in your mind, relate to having folks that you were warm and welcomed your home to and then all of a sudden things shifted and changed and you had to deal with your responsibility to this person and their new message that they seem to be proclaiming. And so John's talking about that and also the basic theme of 1 John was holding fast to truth, love, and obedience.

These are also additionally here in this book But we have that Christian hospitality and what it's all about and only when you find agreement on sound doctrine We find meaningful fellowship That was a huge thing for less than I as we got started in the Christian faith. We both came from different backgrounds we had you know different influences of teaching and And very early on we were fortunate enough to have a good teacher that came along and said, you know, true fellowship with any church is going to be based on the doctrine and the understanding of that doctrine. And that doctrine is going to point you to a person. So it's an acquaintance of a person through sound doctrine that gives us fellowship.

And John hits on this quite a bit throughout this particular letter. Big picture, context. So we'll go ahead and jump into 2 John 5 and 6. Can someone read from the board here these two verses for us? 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. Okay, so these would be the two verses that we focus on today.

And by virtue of the fact that, and this was kind of the case with my wrap up to the end of 1 John, we're not getting a whole lot of new information here in terms of the larger context of our study with 1 John. And so I'm going to try to cover some things from a little bit of a different angle, maybe get street level on some of this a little bit in terms of the practicality of it. I want to go through and try to unravel some of the terms here, but we've already gone through this so many times that I thought, you know, I'm going to take a little bit of a different spin with some of this. But let's make sure that we are on the same page as far as what we're reading here. And then I'll kind of share some stuff that was on my heart in light of these verses. So we'll deal with the first two parts of verse five.

And now I ask you, dear lady, So the word ask, to request, to entreat, to beg. I mean, John's saying, I'm begging you. It's coming across in such a way that it's important. And he's really wanting to make sure that the lady, who we could say, the word lady here in Greek, kyria, it's the feminine form of kyrios, and it's translated often lady or mistress, and it's also the Greek form of the name Martha, and we mentioned that last week. Could this be Martha? Possibly. But look, we decided that we shouldn't maybe necessarily get hung up on that, but that it was a woman of notability, she was a believer, she was prominent, and she had children that were walking according to the faith.

We saw that in the previous verse. And John was excited to find out about that. And then he goes on to say, and I beg you, after telling you how excited I am about your children walking in the faith, I beg, or I ask you, dear lady, and he says, not as though I am writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning.

We've had this verbiage frequently throughout these last many classes with 1 John. So, let's just break that down a little bit. Someone want to read 1 John 2, 7-8 for me? Dear friends, I am not writing you a new commandment, but an old one. which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command. Its truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining. So we have this old and new.

And in fact, Leviticus 19.18, someone want to read us that one?

And then someone else grabbed John 13.34.

So Leviticus 19.18. We'll get real old with it. And then let's find out how it became new. See, 1918 says, You shall not take vengeance nor bear a grudge against the sons of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. Okay. Not new, right? Not new. John 13, 34. Someone.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. So was it a new commandment in terms of its content or was it new in light of what was a reality with Christ being present in the Apostle's life? And then now with Christ being our Savior and now with Christ being the beginning of our Christian experience, the commandment is new because the way it's expressed is altogether fresh and new and unique. The way that the Israelites would have expressed love for a neighbor would have been an empowerment that is totally different from what the apostles were now becoming acquainted with in the person of Christ, and now what we are acquainted with, with the person of Christ literally being our life. So it's altogether new in that way, but it's also an old... It is the very character of God, isn't it? To love, and that's one of his attributes, is love.

And so, John's saying this isn't new, but Christ is saying it is new. But why do you think here, in this particular verse, why would John be telling the elect lady, I ask you, I beg you, dear lady, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, not anything new, but the one we've had from the beginning. Why do you think he would begin discussing the idea of why is this thing, I mentioned this last statement already in what I just said, but why did he say it's not new?

What do you think might have been going on in John's audience that would have challenged the concept of loving one another as being new? I'm asking you to put your thinking caps on here. What would have been going on in John's time and in John's audience that would have been challenging this particular commandment as being something that was altogether new? Who were the deceivers of John's day? What were they called? Gnostics. And in John's letter they're referred to as the Antichrist, that's right. And what were they doing? What was their message largely centered around?

Denying that Jesus came in flesh. That's right. Denying the incarnation of Jesus. And so if they took on the concept of love with the presupposition that Jesus was not the, did not come in the flesh, what do you think they would be saying about love, as an example?

We don't know exactly, but would they have been distorting it? They could have been distorting this whole concept of love because if you mess with the person of Christ, as it's revealed in the scripture, then you mess with love. They're tied, inherently. So, John's saying, this isn't new stuff. And it's almost as though there could have been this idea of deception that was going on that these Antichrists were deceiving John's audience, the Brethren, these believers, into thinking that love was somehow expressed in a new way that was devoid of the incarnation of Christ.

Is that the case for us today? Do you find Christian, and I use the term Christianese a lot, We all, you know, we use it ourselves, but there's a lot of Christianese that we just get comfortable with. It's maybe even not a biblical term, but we get real comfortable with the way we say something, and especially occurs when we start to have fellowship with believers that are just of a different flavor. I use the word flavor. to be synonymous with denomination and that kind of thing. But you start spending time with other believers, you start hearing their versions of words and Christianese and so forth, and it's not long until you start figuring out, wait a minute, I'm not so sure that we're saying the same thing here.

Interestingly, how do you get down to the bare facts of deciding whether or not you believe the same thing in terms of salvation with another possible believer? Someone that's communicating the fact that they love God, how do you actually get down to the bare facts of whether or not this person is believing in biblical truth or not?

That's right. That's a presupposition to the message of the gospel. If you do not understand that Christ came in the flesh, and that He is God, then anything you say about love is going to be what I'm going to phrase and use as a term for us in this study, is the world's type of love. Now you can dress it with Christianese all you want.

You can dress it with religious terminologies all you want, but the idea there is, and they may not be trying to deceive, they may not be aware that they're deceiving. I think John's challenge with these Antichrists, I think they were more aware of the deception than possibly some of the folks that we might come in contact with today. We talk about wolves in sheep's clothing. I find that a lot of times deception doesn't come across as being extremely... a person doesn't even know fully that they're being deceptive.

They've just bought into a non-truth about Christ not being the Son of God and they start talking about what we all have in common. With this faith and that faith and we're all kind of the one now. And they don't want to be deceptive. Their goal is to promote peace and tolerance.

And so I don't think that they're setting out to deceive with a kind of a wolves in a sheep's clothing where they've got the snarl and the dripping, drooling, kind of ready to devour attitude. You know what I mean? That's the pictures we see in church and you're all aware of what I'm talking about. I don't think that that's their attitude. I think that they have just bought into a non-truth about the Son of God, and it just begins to, like a domino effect.

Affect their thinking, affect their theology, affect their love for their brethren, and they become loving in such a way that they exhaust the truth for the sake of love. We talked about truthing in love and how important that is. Yeah, Roger. I was just thinking about the popular media today has the term people of faith, And that's put out there, and it has such a broad meaning.

It takes in almost anyone, including terrorists, just about, that they're people of faith. And somehow that's supposed to give you some impression that these people are, you know, they're spiritual and they have something going for them. But it can mean almost anything. It's so broad and so... Well, they're people of faith. Well, what does that mean? Actually, everyone's a person of faith. They believe in something. Otherwise, they couldn't operate in this world. Absolutely.

And so, along those same lines, what I wanted to do is kind of think about 1 John 2, 6 through 8. Can somebody read that one? And what I want to do is go back to how John talks about being aware of deception. Because I think that's what John's trying to communicate to the lady here. 1 John 2, 6-8. How do we learn how false teachers deceive?

The one who says he abides in him ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked. Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you have heard. On the other hand, is this the one you want me to read? 1 John 2, 6-8? Yeah. I thought Donald read that before.

On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. So the light of Christ and the truth of Christ exposes the darkness. So when we stick closely to the person of Christ and what the Bible has revealed about the person of Christ, that light is also evident through our obedience, as John says.

Remember, John is a black and white kind of guy. He's not saying this is how it all works, he's saying this is how it looks. So our life is a light, the truth is a light, and it shines on the deception of darkness and non-truth. Now John doesn't break it all down like I'm going to. This is going to be more of a carrying on of light giving clarity to the deception around us.

There's a couple different things that are principles that we see of the deceivers in scripture and particularly the antichrists of this era that John's talking about. And even for us, it hasn't changed at all. Deception works the same old way it did back when the serpent approached Adam and Eve to give us that first account of deception.

But the first idea is we add new ideas to the old established teaching. And you find this idea of a student, if you've been in a university setting or whatnot, you realize that the teacher is always, the student is always trying to excel beyond the teacher. We've got to take what the teacher is saying and come up with something new. Establish a yet altogether new idea beyond what we're being taught.

And so this idea of continual discovery in terms of knowledge is a very a very prominent thing in our university setting, and at first glance you think, well, that sounds awfully good. Why would we want to stop in a scientific endeavor? Why wouldn't we want to continue beyond that? Because that's brought us to the medical advancements that we see in our life today, and probably all of us have taken advantage of those medical advances, where somebody asked if there wasn't more to be learned.

The problem is when you take what I call a final authority, And everybody's God, okay? Every single person has a final authority, a set of principles and thinking that they believe is true regardless of anything else. And a lot of times we get accused as believers as circular reasoning. And this is how they say it.

You can't use the Bible to prove that the Bible is true. Well, the problem is that that is the very nature of a final authority. If there was anything beyond the Bible that proved that the Word of God, as we're saying the Bible is, if there was anything outside of the Word of God that was to give credibility to the Word of God, would the Word of God be final authority? It wouldn't.

It would be that other thing. And so you have this ongoing pushing back further and further and further until you find out who says, finally, what is the final authority. And no matter what a person believes, whether they're Buddhist or agnostic or atheist or whatever flavor of all of those things, there is, in their mind, a decisive amount of final authority that they are believing.

And so, what we're saying is that, for us, the final authority is... What is the final authority for our faith? God's Word. We could talk about the inerrancy and infallibility of scripture and so forth, but let's just keep it simple. For us, the final authority of our faith is God's Word.

And so the very nature of a final authority is that it does authenticate itself. And every single person's final authority is just like that. Whether it's the Book of Mormon or the Quran or whatever it is, you end up validating a final authority in and of itself. It has to be self-authenticating. Or else you have nothing. And that's not the case. Everyone has something to believe. Are you following me here?

I'm getting a little apologetical in the sense of what I'm saying, but the idea is that it's one thing to establish new ideas to an area of learning that is not in the area of final authority, but when you're getting into the final authority of something, to establish new ideas is to claim to have that ability to to write final authority into existence in the first place. And that's what they were doing. They're saying that you have this final authority of scripture, what John's saying, you have this truth that you are proclaiming that Jesus came in the flesh and he is the son of God.

And we're saying that we need to go beyond that and show love beyond this person. Let's not worry about if he came in the flesh or not. Let's just find love. We're going to come over to your house. We're going to fellowship with you. Who cares if we believe that Jesus is the son of God? Let's just find the fellowship that we had before we got into all this doctrine.

And let's move on with our concept of love. And that's exactly what our day has done, too. The emergent church has moved on with the concept of love. Let's embrace all faiths. When you bow down, you can bow down to Allah at a certain time of day, and I'll pray to Jesus, and we'll both be praying to the same God. That's love, guys.

And if you don't like it, you're in an intolerant space. And that's what we would be said of. We would be told that we are very intolerant. But that's how deception works. In the area of final authority, the idea of taking what God said and begin to establishing new teachings beyond that is very welcomed in our Greek-minded society. Because it's expanding. And the emergent church is emergent. What does the word mean? To continue.

And what I read is deception. Deception in that it is dealing with the words of God. If you want to emerge on what I say, that's one thing. I'm not the final authority for all that we base our faith on, who we are, where we came from, why we're here, what are we doing, what is truth, and how can we know true truth is truth, and how do we live our lives, what is right and what is wrong. If you start expanding on the philosophy that God lays out in scripture for the believer, That's one little hook that gets you into the deceptive way of thinking.

Another area has to do with giving new meaning to words. Now, people don't like hearing this stuff in church because they want something new. They don't want to hear the same old, same old. Give me something new. Give me something that I can chew on and I can talk about over a nice dinner with my friends that sounds very unique and different.

And if you're not going to be unique and different, then say the same things but have a different meaning for what you're saying. That's a very easy way to deceive as well And that was some of the things that that took place to it as well, and and we see it with Satan in the garden You know we see the idea of communicating some of the same things, but meaning something totally different and so when I think about being deceived and when I think about John's and audience being deceived by these antichrists. These are some of the ways, these are some of the basic principles that deception works.

You don't want something altogether different. You can't sell something totally different. You've got to slowly creep in with a few little tweaks to words and a few little new ideas because new is always welcomed, typically speaking. And if you don't welcome it, then you're just an old fuddy dud. You know what I mean? Has anybody been accused of being an old fuddy-dud? The old Christian fuddy-duds.

That's probably what I'm thought of in some cases. Postmodernism has built itself completely on the concept of giving new meaning to words. And I mentioned this before. But it's a progressive thing. And that's what our environment today wants, is progressiveness. And what's interesting is that is exactly what the Antichrists wanted. Progressiveness in regards to the Son of God. Let's just be more progressive than this.

And so these new books that come out, the emergent thoughts and concepts, and I keep harping on this because this is where we live today, and it's not really that different. It's just got new clothing on the same old ideas. And deception, as far as the way they were being deceived, It's the same thing. So John probably, in very likely and high likelihood, was saying, this isn't new, guys. It's not a new thing. You had it since the beginning of the Christian faith, from the beginning of your Christian experience. It's the love of the neighbor and the walking in accordance with his commands. It's the new stuff.

And it doesn't express itself any differently than it has in the past, except that now we have the person of Christ revealed to us in history. whereas in Leviticus they were looking forward to a Savior that would come, that promised deliverer of Genesis 3.15. But now we get to look back and we get to partake in a heavenly citizenship with Christ. And that was kind of a transitional period that Jesus was in with his apostles there that we read earlier. I wanted to just bring these two things back because I mentioned that we've talked about the new commands, we've talked about love, we've talked about the elect lady, and so none of this is really new.

I just wanted to go back and say what are some of the basic principles of deception? How does this stuff go? Because if John is warning his audience and this elect lady against being deceived to new commands and new ideas, then we too need to kind of sharpen our minds about being deceived by new commands, and especially regarding the Son of God. Because that really strikes at the heart of our message. Does that make sense?

Kind of where I'm getting with the street-level recognition of deception? We've talked in past classes about not spending a whole lot of time on the counterfeit thinking, but spending more time on the truth, and the truth brings to light the counterfeit. But sometimes when we remind ourselves, this is how it's going to happen, these are the first basic things that are going to come across very sly and careful, and sometimes people don't even know they're being involved in deception. That's our job to say, is this lining up with our final authority, the word of God?

Because if it isn't, then somebody's trying to take something to a new place. And that's where deception lies. Or does this word mean the same thing? I've got to get some contextual questions in with this guy, because I'm not sure he means the same thing by God that I mean. And I can guarantee you, I love percentages and I love making them up, and this is now on record.

But 99% of people don't mean the same thing by God that you mean. That's just the reality. Maybe it's 98. Maybe 99. You'd like to hope it was 98. 99. You know which one? I don't know. But you get the generalization I'm making. Most of the world does not mean the same thing when they say God. So if you have a conversation with them, could you be deceived by them if we don't mean the same thing by those words? What about sin? Do they mean the same thing by sin that you mean?

No. And that's the hard part about using a tract or some extremely quick method of sharing the gospel, because while you may share the gospel, you may share the absolute message of the gospel, your meaning is coming across in their cultural mindset as being something totally different. And that's why we have to define the words that we use to share the gospel.

A lot of times. Now, has that always been the case? Has the world always been completely ignorant, especially in Western society? Has it been completely ignorant of these terms? No. Some of you guys grew up in homes where these words were contextualized with the stories of the scripture. You read the scripture. You knew it. Even if you didn't believe it until you got older, it was in school. You know, you read of the biblical stories in school and so when you read about God or Yahweh, you would have had context to who he was and where he introduced himself to Moses and how he defined himself personally to the Israelites through this journey of years and years and years. Man, you say God to somebody on the street and they don't think that stuff at all. They just don't think that.

And so, we have to be really careful that just because someone's saying some of the same things as we are, they could be meaning something totally different. And John would have wanted them to say, hey, get down to the person of Christ and figure out if they're talking about the incarnate Son of God or not. Because if they're not, we're not talking about the same God. And that's what John was dealing with in his day. Does this make sense? What I'm saying? Let's look at the last part of this verse.

That we love one another. So the commandment was to the effect that Christians should love one another. This is not a new command, you've had it since the beginning. The verb is in the present subjunctive, stressing continuous action, and the distinctive word for love here is the agape love. And this is the kind of love that exists between believers and between God and believers. This love with which a saint should love another saint is produced by the Holy Spirit in the heart of the saint and its amount and intensity are determined by the degree of abiding on the part of that saint. Here's how I'll explain it from a street level.

You can fake it. We can fake loving one another, can't we? But true love exists when you're abiding in Christ, and Christ is doing the loving. Otherwise, you're living in such a way that is not who you are. Question? So, could you then say that the commandment has already been there, but with Christ dying and who He is, and who we are in Him, we now have the capability of Absolutely. I do believe that that's the case. Our being in Christ and Christ doing the living through us allows this type of love.

Now John doesn't go into that. He just tells us to love one another. Paul's the one that explains the abiding process and how love is expressed between brethren through the abiding. That was Paul's job. John's job was to say love one another. It's not new. WC. That's John's job. We spent a year doing that.

But it's good because at the end of the day, you need to be able to define your thinking really quickly and John defines it for you and then Paul explains it. Paul's kind of hard to get out in the open with people. John's words are really simple, you know, and it just kind of takes you back to the Paul's like the textbook, John's like the flashcards. And we need the flashcards so we can remember what we learned in the textbook.

That's kind of how I see those two guys working together. But let's delve into this a little bit more. This is where I wanted to get, so we looked at a little bit of street-level deception that's going on that they were dealing with. I want to look at a little bit more of the street-level differences between the world's love and God's love.

Now what I am not saying with this, I'm not going into the Pauline understanding of the abiding process and being in Christ. That's assumed here. What I'm going to talk about is the outer the outer ideas that are associated with the world's love and God's love. So that you can look at things and recognize it, but realizing that when we're talking about God's love, it is contingent on the entire abiding and identification truths that we would talk about in another class next semester. Let's look at these.

So we've got the world's kind of love, it's focus is on getting and using. 1 John talks about it. Does someone want to read 1 John 2, 15-16? Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.

Let's talk a little bit about that here in a minute, but recognizing that just to summarize in an easier way to think of it. For the world is always about getting something and using something. And I'm going to explain how that looks. So we can just kind of recognize maybe when we're not abiding or when we need to pray for our brother or sister who's not abiding. Because these are the ways that this kind of love or this idea of love is expressed.

The world's kind of love does not have the Holy Spirit and the world values things and people based on their usability. That's been very helpful for me to recognize is that when I'm looking for something to be usable to me, I'm starting to buy into a worldly type of love. Did God love us because we were usable? No. Did God love Israel because they were usable?

It goes on and on and on. And because that is going to define what we're about to say is God's type of love. His focus is on giving and serving. We're familiar with John 3.16. That summarizes the kind of love that God has and equips us through an abiding relationship where we are fully identified in Him and enables us, not even enables, but Christ through us is expressed.

That's what I say here. Having the Holy Spirit, we see people and situations as opportunities for God to demonstrate the reality of His love through the abiding believer. You got a stinky situation with a friend, or a neighbor, or at work, guess what? That's your opportunity. to abide and have Christ express His love through that circumstance, through that situation, and that changes the whole way we see things. I'm excited about that. What is God doing in the life of the believer is a course that we went through last semester with Vern.

If you guys haven't listened to that, please listen, because it explains what's going on here in a way that just really will grip you. It's a reality that we need our needs, and our needs are there and designed so that God can get His love into the presence or the witness of something or someone. Not something, but someone. So we need our needs, and I'm not going to go into that a great deal, but someone read 1 John 4, 7-8.

Again, the flashcard view of God's type of love. We love and let us love one another, for love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love. So God's type of love is bound up in the person of love.

Paul talks about that a ton in different ways. But we recognize here, just based on the first John letter that we've been studying, we've got the world's kind of love and God's kind of love. Let's just do kind of a survey of, across the board, what the world's kind of love looks like and what God's kind of love looks like. First of all, from a worldly perspective, the source, ultimately, self.

Love is sourced out of yourself, from a worldly perspective. From a godly perspective, love is sourced out of God and Christ Jesus. If it's not Christ through you, it's not love. It's fake love, and you can still do it. Because of the availability of the sin nature, and the old man's been crucified and is dead, but the sin nature is what we call spiritual hallucination.

It's like a spiritual insanity. It's altogether not what you are. It doesn't have anything to do with your history. It doesn't have anything to do with your person. It's fake. It's not who you are anymore. But, you can fake it. You can fake it for a while, right? You can fake it for a while. And then what happens? It falls apart.

Well, the motivation from a worldly perspective is to get. To get something. I mean, the idea is to acquire or accomplish something that self needs. God's motivation is to give. The purpose, worldly, is to use. Usability. Our purpose is to be used. That's what loving...

And again, could I go through these things and miss out on the identification truths and how love is expressed through an abiding relationship with Christ? Could I? Could I sit here and show this to you and be a law-based mindset and say, you've got to do this. You've got to just muster up the strength, pull your bootstraps up tall, and wave through the world in love. I could teach it to you that way.

In this particular slide, these next set of slides, they don't have anything on here about the identification of the believer with Christ, but I'm presupposing that we understand some of that from Paul. I'm now just explaining what does it look like on the outside. What's going on? Just a basic comparison here.

The worldly kind of love exalts man at the end of the day. Exalts God. the worldly kind of love requires no faith. That was one of the things, when I saw that, and I started thinking about that, I was like, you know, that's one of the ways that I can pick up on the idea that I might be faking love a little bit. Faking it. Because if there's no faith required in my expression of love, then I'm not operating out of God's type of love. Because abiding requires faith, doesn't it? What am I walking by faith in, right? I mean, what's going on here?

Well, there's nothing to believe really, I'm just gonna...blah blah blah. And then you just blah blah blah all over the place and it's just a bunch of fake stuff. I know because we all know when we are not operating by faith, but yet we're still trying to act like we love one another. We know that. Because it requires no faith.

It's natural. It's easy because it's not requiring you to put your mind and your focus on the Lord. and the abiding relationship through faith that we have in Him, but it just comes out real natural. There it goes. Now, as you walk in Him, and you grow in maturity, and you are conformed, transformed, these things that we talked about in that class, what's God doing in the life of the believer, it becomes not natural to you at all, and your continuing person on this side of heaven begins to conform, be conformed to the fact that this is what becomes natural to you. And by natural, the spiritual reality, the heaven reality, the blessings that are in Christ and the heavenlies becomes your environment to operate from. And you're looking down instead of looking directly across from a natural perspective. Does this make sense? Question?

Well, I'm just wondering because I think as the unbelievers, they do have faith. they have faith in themselves. They have faith in the natural world and the things around them. It's the only thing they can believe in. And they do believe that. That's true. So maybe a better way to say this particular point right here is it requires no faith in the God of the scripture. But it does require faith in some final authority that they're holding on to. You're exactly right.

And that faith is defined by natural And by natural I don't mean that it's natural in the sense of what is physical on this earth, but it's natural in the sense that it's possessed by natural human mental efforts. That could be Buddha, that could be Darwin. It's still natural because you're not experiencing a faith that is focused on Christ. It's focused on something and driven by something natural.

Is there any other spiritual reality outside of what God has defined? There's false spirits. But he defines that. But what I mean to say is that, is the spiritual reality of Buddhism real? Does it exist? No. It's conceived of by natural abilities of the mind and doesn't find any final authority in the scripture. And so that's one way of maybe refining that perspective.

Thanks. That's good. The value is determined by usability of the object or the person, whereas God's kind of love is value determined by the opportunity to let Jesus show his love through us. You're not out of the way, you become less, you become more.

I would not maybe use that in exactly the way that I want to there because I value eternal opportunity to let Jesus show his love through us. We could say that from a law perspective. Let Jesus shine through you and we could still be law-centered loving, Christian law-centered loving. But by this, I'm again presupposing the abiding relationship through faith in who we are in Christ.

Selfish in nature and focuses on others. And the thing about what John does, if you didn't have Paul, you'd just say, go do this. And that's what I spent a lot of my Christian life doing. Just go do these things. Be these things. If you start thinking about yourself, stop. Start thinking about other people. That's how it's spoken of in many of the sermons all across the world right now. So let's do a little bit more, and then I think we'll wrap up this final verse pretty quickly.

Controlling and manipulating versus yielding and serving. This is just the outer shell. This is what it looks like. Controlling and manipulating versus yielding and serving. There's a jealousness. And there's a lack, there's a not jealous. Okay? Fails, doesn't fail. Where does this come from? You can attach verses to every single one of these, right?

Hate suffering endures suffering. Does it mean we like it? No, but we understand its purpose in our life, to conform and transform, and all the things that are wrapped up in what God's doing in our life, and so our love endures the situations because it's God's kind of love, and that's what God's kind of love does. based on temporal values, based on eternal values.

You know in 1 Corinthians 13, rejoices in the truth is part of that love picture. And rejoices in the truth is good to bring up because isn't that what John is talking about here in these previous verses? It is. Rejoicing in the truth and having fellowship in truth. Because truth and love from a Christian perspective are never at risk of being separated. They're one and the same. They exist together. And as Roger mentioned last week, they are a person. Truth and love are a person. Yes.

And along with that I was just thinking that the world's truth is truth. And they're contradictory to one another. Well, that's okay for you, that's your truth, but my truth... And so there's confusion. Right. The world has confusion. At best. Whereas the other truth, God's truth, is singular. It's singular. To the world, tolerance is more important than truth. Tolerance is more important than truth, that's right. Political correctness. That's right. No power to unify, perfect bond of unity. Now this is critical for John because Otherwise, we're not going to have fellowship. So unity exists in the truth and in love. And I almost want to change this slide.

God's kind of truth love, versus the world's kind of love. Based on feelings, based on facts, and finally can be angered and offended, cannot be angered or offended. You get offended. I get offended. I know what kind of love that is. I'm idolizing them in the first place. I'm allowing them to tell me something different than what my Savior tells about me. Driven by emptiness and driven by fullness.

So just some, this could be put into any context of any Christian church across the nation. What's interesting is that we are presupposing the entire identification truths behind this, which makes this altogether more exciting for me, and hopefully for you.

And I'm presupposing again that that's there in your mind. Awesome. Let's do it with the last verse. And this is love. We just talked a lot about it, and we've talked a lot about it in previous classes. That we walk according to His commandments. Again, flash card.

Don't forget, love walks according to His commandments. It doesn't do anything different because you're abiding. Of course you're walking according to His commandments. And this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it. Saying the same thing from a different perspective. It's interesting that love is expressed in obedience.

Without understanding at all what Paul talks about, in the abiding relationship, the Romans 6, 7, 8 experience and understanding and faith. We're left with a bootstrap kind of love, and that's what I call it. I had a teacher that told me, you know, I've never owned a pair of boots that had straps, but I'm from Texas. And I haven't said y'all, either.

You need to let Vern know that, Vern. Anyway, the bootstrap, the idea of just, let's get it done, you know? Get her done, as they say. You can get her done, if you neglect other portions of scripture and fail to understand that John is not saying that.

It's a relationship that these believers had with the Son of God. that cause their desires to be aligned with Him and their want to obey to be natural. I always find it funny in my own heart or even with someone in conversation when we talk about the obedience of following God's commands to be like a burdensome thought. I mean, I've felt that way before.

We've talked about previously in 1 John that it's not burdensome at all. Why? because of who we are in Christ. Christ bore the burden of fulfilling all those commands and now you're walking in them. I think you mentioned this to me a few months ago maybe, but the works that we have are all designed by God and we are simply walking right into them. This whole walk It's not burdensome.

It's not difficult when you abide. Question Jack. What I want to hear you describe about the walk-in hits. I've got my own thoughts that came to me that I'm not sure are totally on mark. Okay. What are you thinking? Truth and love are inseparable. And that's what the is about there is love and truth. So you're walking in Christ is walking in you and that's He is. Yep, I think you're right.

Any other thoughts about what the word it, this little straggler down at the bottom, the orphan word. In desktop publishing, you're never supposed to leave a word down like that. You'll never see that in a book where somebody knows what they're doing. I'll blame it on the tumbleweeds. They'll have time to put the it back up where it belongs. What about this little straggler down here? Anybody got a thought as to what it is referring to in the context of this verse?

Chapter 3, verse 23 of 1 John. This is the commandment of Him, that you should believe in the name of His Son, John Fleshgard, in 2 John, he doesn't mention the belief. He assumes that is part of the command. And you talked about the love one another, which is definitely what John's hitting on, but what's presupposed by loving one another?

The believing. Believing in Christ. I think that's the obedience too, isn't it, that you're mentioning? That's the only thing that we're required to be obedient about, is believing Christ. So the it here encompasses faith as well as the result of trusting God, love of one another. Interesting too, he uses the word one another of the same kind. He doesn't use heteros, he uses allos.

It's something that I've wrestled with a little bit, that the commandment is associated with brethren in Christ, his body, or to love, as he loved us. The word commandment, we've done a lot of study on it, encompasses what you're saying there. It also encompasses what we've learned about in 1 John. But is the idea to walk in that commandment? Or in Him? Ultimately, the commandment being in Him, yes. I would need to brush up, or not brush up, as if I had in the first place. I'm catching, I'm trying to catch up slowly with my audience in here.

You guys are sharp. But the should is catch her in the run too. So you should walk. Oh yeah, because I'm John, remember? Black and white. And you may not walk. And it's okay, because I do that to my kids too. I've explained the gracious methods of obedience. But sometimes I look at them and I go, should. Yeah, you may walk in it. It's a good point. But should works for me too.

You know, sometimes it's... I mean, there's other instances we need to remain contextual to what we're teaching, but there's definitely instances where John's just throw it down right in front of you. And you're like, whoa, that sounds so law-y. I spell that. Law-y. Could you go back a couple of slides to where you had the one that says, Opportunities for God to demonstrate the reality of His love through. I didn't start writing that down. That's okay. And if I had a handout, Jack, I would love a handout. I write it down so I can type it all in. You know why I don't have a handout? Because then you just read it. He studies it all week long. He studies it all week long? He studies it all week long. That is a good reason to have a handout. Yeah, right there.

Maybe you can give a handout at the end of the class. What's going on here? You need a handout, right? Give us a handout. At the end of class would be fine. Yeah, you can give it to us at the end. I know, I've gotten confuzzled. Troublemaker over there. Somebody else get that written down. Is this the right slide? I'm not sure, it's down at the bottom. Is it on the two, comparing one with the other?

Yeah. Contrast. Oh, is it the table? Yeah. Is it on here? No, it was before that. Are there any questions while I find this? Wait. Can't read that fast, Jim. No, I'm so sorry. I've got to brush up on my presentation. Well, I could write soon. Now, wait a minute. No. Not that one. Yeah, Jim. Never mind. It's okay.

You have copies maybe for folks they wanted? Yeah. We can do that. Why don't we get copies? I will cross over into the handout dark room. Or Jim, like someone said, give it to us at the end of the class. I could get it to him. That's right. That way he won't read it home. We need our needs. We need our needs. We need our handouts. I need a handout.

Okay, well let's go ahead and close in a word of prayer here. Father, I thank you so much for just good times in the Word and an opportunity to focus on who we are in you and how we can express that love to one another and what it looks like. Lord, I thank you that we can also be aware of your truth and just pray you give us the shrewdness of the serpent and the gentleness of the dove to detect deception around us. and that we might, in a Christ-centered motive, point them into the light of the truth, just as John was encouraging these believers here. We thank you now for the time that we've had together, focusing on you through your word. It's in your name we pray. Amen.