Bible Commentaries
2 John

THE

SECOND EPISTLE

OF JOHN

During John’s lifetime there were certain false teachers who had come into the church of Christ, and they were declaring that Jesus Christ was a mere man. They were not standing for the truth and were denying that Jesus is God manifest in the flesh.

The Gnostic heresy declared that since all matter and all flesh are evil and God is holy, therefore a holy God cannot dwell with that which is evil. Hence they said that Jesus Christ cannot be God but is a created being, possibly an emanation from God— higher than the angels, but still a created being.

John refutes this heresy in his Epistles.

May I say that if Jesus Christ is not who He claimed to be, God manifest in the flesh, the El Shaddai whom Abraham worshiped, then all the truth of the gospel is void. Then His work on the cross is of no redeeming value, and there is no resurrection from the dead. When Jesus Christ is not worshiped as God or when He ceases to be the center of our worship, then we no longer have a Christian fellowship.

In the First Epistle, John speaks of the nature and the place of the fellowship and how we know that we are saved in Christ Jesus. In the Second Epistle, he deals with the limit of the fellowship, that is, whom to exclude from the fellowship of God’s people.

In the Third Epistle, John talks about the extent of the fellowship, that is, whom to include in the fellowship.

In the Second epistle, he condemns heresy be­cause of departure from the truth and from the love of the truth.

In the Third Epistle, the apostle condemns divi­sions and schisms among God’s people.

The key to the Second Epistle of John is Walking in the Truth.