THURSDAY April 13th
2 John 1:5-6
‘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.’
We come to the second word that John had used in verse 3, ‘in truth and love’, and he echoes what he had written in his first epistle that God’s children should ‘love one another’ and that this love is outworked as we walk according to his (the Father’s) commandments.
Genuine love leads to obedience toward God and to a wholehearted devotion toward God and towards one another in the body of Christ. We have touched on the importance of love in our devotions from first John, but here I want to emphasize the need for our love toward truth or for the truth, because John continues to say that many deceivers have gone out into the world (v7) these are those we have already learned of who are anti-Christ or anti-God and deny that Christ has come in the flesh. John wanted that those of this sister congregation also guard themselves against error, and one way to do this was to remain in or abide in the teaching of Christ, for in so doing they would have both the Father and the Son (v9).
How can we make sure that we are abiding as we should be, well, in the context of John’s letters the evidence of abiding is seen by our loving one another and by being found in fellowship with both the Father and the Son and by ensuring that we remain in obedience to the commandments of the Father. We need also to remain in the truth and we can do this by being found in a place of communion with God through personal prayer, by the regular reading of his word which is our daily bread and of the committing ourselves to the regular fellowship of a local Church. The word regular is so important, as a pastor, I have emphasized fellowship many times both in the devotions and from the pulpit, and of the many things we learn from John’s letters the importance of fellowship or togetherness as believers is one of them. We should as Christians make every effort to be regular in our attendance to the house of the Lord, for me it should be our priority to be there every week, we manage to commit ourselves to turning up for work every day, or to be attending whatever else we fill our week up with, but what about the prioritising of our time to be in fellowship with other believers. Please be encouraged toward regular attendance to the house of God, as I have said before I know there are legitimate reasons for some, but may we never make excuses or be deliberately neglectful toward being in fellowship with other believers. We NEED each other.