THURSDAY April 20th
3 John 1:5–8
‘Beloved, it is a faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers, strangers as they are, who testified to your love before the church. You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God. For they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth.’
Following on from our previous devotion, we have returned to the same verses and will today look at the word ‘support’.
Remember we saw in the previous devotion there will be those who support the building of the Church and those who will oppose. We will consider ‘oppose’ in our next devotion.
John writing to Gaius, acknowledges that he is faithful in all his efforts towards his brothers, even though they are strangers, the verses then identify these who are strangers as being those who ‘have gone out for the sake of the name’, that is they are brothers in the faith, who are what we would call today missionaries taking the good news of the gospel to others. And John says, ‘therefore we ought to support people like this’. In other words we can all become supporters of the building of the Church by not only being a part of it, by reason of our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, but by the giving out of our own means to enable the gospel to be shared elsewhere so that others can come to faith. John says we become fellow workers for the truth.
As a local church we support three mission groups that work outside of the UK and we also support The Christian Institute that works for the benefit of and the protection of the Christian faith in the UK. In the context of the verses before us it is right that we support people like this, and in doing so we become fellow workers with them, so this is one of the areas that your giving into the local church is used for the sake of the furtherance of the gospel.
John says to Gaius in verse 5 ‘You will do well to send them on their journey in a manner worthy of God’. May we individually and collectively as a fellowship always do well in that we remain faithful in our giving for the sake of the gospel so that the Church will continue to grow as men and women accept the challenge to go into the world with the gospel. May we be faithful, loyal supporters of the building of the Church.