Scripture: 2 John 9 – “Everyone who does not abide in the teaching of Christ, but goes beyond it, does not have God; whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.” (NRSVue)
Buried way in the back of the New Testament are the letters of John. Whether this is the same John who was Jesus’ disciple or who wrote the Gospel according to John or the Revelation to John is unclear. But what is clear is this letter-writing John’s focus on love as the most important thing in Christian life.
In the First Letter to John, it famously says, “Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.” This same idea is continued in the Second Letter of John. This is the second shortest book in the Bible, only 245 words. The letter is written to “the elect lady,” who leads a congregation (who says there were no women leaders in the Bible?). While many of her “children” are faithful, there are new voices in the church. This letter is written to a second generation of Christians. Many have accepted Jesus as something more than just a prophet, but their imaginations run wild, and they begin to place Jesus in the complicated philosophical frameworks of the day rather than listening to the traditions about Jesus transmitted through the scriptures. They say that Jesus is really just a spirit and Jesus calls us to transcend the filthy world by recognizing an inner truth of our own transcendence of the world, a transcendence that lets us leave this world, and those who live in it, behind. Therefore, John writes to the elect lady instructing her to turn away from these new teachings and focus back on the true commandment: the commandment of love.
John warns that those who “go beyond” the teaching of Christ concerning love do not abide with God. What does this mean? I think it means limiting the importance of love by jumping onto other more complicated but less difficult things. How many times in our history and our world today to people just wave their hands at the many, many exhortations and commandments to love in the Bible? They look for secret connections or for rules that emphasize the world to come over the world that is or for excuses to reject or hate the people they want to. It is why so many call Christians hypocrites and reject the possibility of God and God’s love.
But the teachings of Jesus cannot be plainer. Do you love other people? Then you abide with God. Do you actively do things to help other people. Then you abide with God. Do you dismiss others or make excuses to hate them or ignore their needs? Then you are not following Jesus and not abiding in God.
It is hard to follow this teaching because it is both so simple and so difficult. What excuses we make! “If God is unknowable, then things must be more complicated.” “Loving others more than I do myself is unpleasant.” “There must be a good reason to sit back and let the world go by.” These challenging teachings are so radical that people wanted to kill Jesus rather than change. So, when John says that “God is love,” it is not some sentimental pablum. It is a call to a long and hard life, but one that is ultimately more rewarding in this world and the next, for ourselves and for others, than we want to imagine.
Prayer: Jesus, help me abide in you and in your love. May my greatest reward be the smiles on the faces of my neighbors and your shining countenance above me. Amen.
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