1 From the ·Elder to the ·chosen lady[1]: I love all of you in the truth [about the Gospel of Jesus Christ], and all those who know the truth love you. 2 We love you because of the truth that ·lives in us and will be with us forever. 3 Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, will be with us in truth and love.
4 I was very happy to learn that some of your children are living as the Gospel requires, as the Father commanded us. 5 And now, dear lady, this is not a new command I am writing, but is the same command we have had from the beginning. I ask you that we all love each other. 6 And love means living the way God commanded us to live. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is this: Live a life of love.[2]
7 For many ·false teachers have gone out into the world now who do not confess that Jesus Christ came to earth ·as a human. Anyone who does not confess this is ·a false teacher and ·an enemy of Christ [the antichrist].[3] Be careful that you do not lose everything you have worked for, but that you receive your full reward.
9 Anyone who ·goes beyond [runs ahead of] Christ’s teaching and does not ·continue to follow only his teaching does not have God. But whoever ·continues to follow ·the teaching of Christ has both the Father and the Son. 10 If someone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not ·welcome that person or ·accept them into your house (into your house church and acknowledge them like a brother in Christ). 11 If you welcome such a person (this way), you participate in the evil work.[4]
12 I have many things to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk face to face so our joy can be complete. 13 The children of your ·chosen sister greet you.

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I’m going to start toward the end then get back to the beginning.

Anyone who ·goes beyond [runs ahead of] Christ’s teaching and does not ·continue to follow only his teaching does not have God. But whoever ·continues to follow ·the teaching of Christ has both the Father and the Son.

Two ways to do false teaching: stop short of the full revelation of Jesus and the Bible, or go beyond the revelation of Jesus and the Bible. We don’t need another prophet or any additional revelation to see and know Jesus the way that God intended. This is one reason we as Christians offer crucial correction to religious orientations that do the following (and I’m just going to focus on the Abrahamic religions rather than do a survey of all of them):

stop short of Jesus (Othodox Judaism)
demand more than Jesus (Islam)
add to (Islam, Mormonism[5]) or distort (Jehovah’s Witnesses[6]) the revelation of Scripture to accommodate a warped view of Jesus

And speaking of the revelation of Jesus – the Incarnation – that’s the linchpin holding this letter together. So, back to the top.

And now, dear lady, this… is the same command we have had from the beginning. I ask you that we all love each other. And love means living the way God commanded us to live. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is this: Live a life of love.[7] For many false teachers have gone out into the world now who do not confess that Jesus Christ came to earth as a human. Anyone who does not confess this is ·a false teacher and ·an enemy of Christ [the antichrist].[8] Be careful that you do not lose everything you have worked for, but that you receive your full reward.

There is an interesting connect-the-dots going on here:

Many false teachers were denying the Incarnation of Jesus.
Because of this, church members were being deceived about the nature of Jesus.
One result of this deception: they were struggling to love each other well.[9]
In failing to love each other well, they were losing a reward for which they had worked.

But here John specifies that they don’t want to lose everything they have worked for. This can’t be salvation[10], which is a free gift of unmerited grace. This must be something into which they invest sweat equity as part of God’s plan. If our reward is a combination of

what awaits us in terms of the richness of this life by staying on the path of life (fullness of life in the Kingdom: maturity, virtue, honor, integrity, peace, joy, hope, etc.)
what awaits us in the world to come (a glorious eternity in the New Heaven and New Earth in full communion with God and the saings)

then a reward we work for is something less than salvation but something very important in experiencing the fullness of life that Christ offers.

I think John is referring to some kind of reward that correlates with sowing and reaping in the Kingdom of God.[11] To use a flawed analogy: my wife and I live in a marriage ‘kingdom.’ We have a covenant life together. But the quality of that life is going to reflect our investment into and love of each other. We have been given a land in which to flourish (covenental marriage), but we will plant, water, cultivate and harvest in our marriage. And here we are 31 years in, and we don’t want to lose what we worked for.

The Bible uses an analogy of Jesus and the church as married (church=bride). There is a covenant reality in our salvation that gives us a sure foundation, but we will plant, water, cultivate and harvest within that that reality.

And all of this – salvation, life in eternity, a full life now, the ability to love each other as Jesus loved us - hinges on the reality of the Incarnation of Jesus. If we understand that, good things follow. If we don’t, bad things follow. So let’s take some time to look at the Incarnation and the implications that ground us and guide us.

Through The Incarnation, We Are Reconciled With God.

“When the eternal Word and Son of God ‘became flesh and dwelt among us’ (John 1:14), God decided in his omnipotent freedom to become who we are, without ever ceasing to be fully who He has always been, and always will be. He did this in order to grant us a life-giving, life-transforming share in His communion with the Father through the Holy Spirit, the glorious first-fruits of his reconciling all things in heaven and earth in Himself (Eph. 1:10; Col. 1:20).
Assuming our humanity… the man Christ Jesus personally lives and acts in our name, in our place, and on our behalf. Born of Mary to live out his divine life… in our human nature, all Christ is and does as our incarnate Savior he is and does for us—that is, in solidarity with us as one of us. Stating the matter clearly and concisely, Christ works out our salvation within the constitution of his own vicarious humanity.
To speak of the vicarious humanity of Christ is thus to say that he assumed our humanity and made it his own in order to be for us who we could not and would not be, and to do for us what we could not and would not do.. God gives himself and all his saving benefits to us in and as man in our incarnate Savior. God draws near to us, and we no less draw near to God, in and through the God-man.
The saving acts of Christ secure ‘at-one-ment’ between God and the redeemed because those acts occur within the being and life of our Mediator, within the very incarnate constitution of the One who unites God with man as the God-man. God the Son healed and saved the corrupted, estranged humanity he assumed from us so the incarnate Christ might himself be the ground and source of every aspect of our salvation—so the one Mediator of salvation might mediate the salvation that is his alone to give in and through the very humanity he healed and saved.[12]

Through The Incarnation, We Are Humbled

“The incarnation accomplishes the severe mercy of rendering absurd any notion that [a harmonious relationship] between God and humanity is accomplished from the side of humanity. We do not seek and find a reclusive God[13]; he pursues and overtakes a rebellious people. We do not perforate his unapproachable light; he penetrates our unsearchable darkness… that infinite and eternal God storms space and time to confront us face to face in the face of Christ.
The incarnation scandalizes our desire for heroism without humility, for glory without grace, for human ascent without divine descent. That is because the incarnation sets before us the unsettling yet liberating reality that [a harmonious relationship] between God and humanity is accomplished only and ever from the side of God.”[14]

Through The Incarnation, We Are Shown What Mercy Looks Like.

“He [Jesus Christ] condescends to assume my flesh and blood, my body and soul. He does not become an angel or another magnificent creature; He becomes man. This is a token of God’s mercy to wretched human beings; the human heart cannot grasp or understand, let alone express it.” (Martin Luther)

Through The Incarnation, We Know Our Mission

“As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” (John 20:21)
“Paul writes in 2 Cor. 5:20, ‘we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.’ God intends to save the world by sending people. Who are you actually calling to drop nets and follow you as you follow Christ? Who are you ‘becoming flesh and dwelling amongst’? The incarnation is a critical doctrine when it comes to orthodoxy, but beware lest you fail to give it sufficient voice in orthopraxy.”[15]

Through The Incarnation, We Learn Love

“The incarnation, therefore, serves as a model of sacrificial love, and it should exemplify for us not just who we are as people, but also who we are as workers. When we see problems at work or in our communities, we shouldn’t dismiss them as the problems of other people. Christ took on our problems, our sin and death, and provided a solution. As Christians who are now united to Christ, we reflect the love of God and the work of Christ when we sympathize with others and serve and love them.”[16]

The birth of Jesus was God’s being “with” us at the most fundamental and committed level…. And it’s our commitment to be with others which is one of our most distinctive responses to the incarnation. Our response to God’s gracious commitment to us has surely to be our commitment to be with our struggling neighbors with whom we paddle through the mud of life… we have a responsibility to go and be with them in whatever way we reasonably can.[17]

Through The Incarnation, The Church Becomes The Body

Christ became one flesh with His Church (Eph. 5: 31-32). Without the Incarnation, the Church could not have become what it is: the body of Christ.

“Jesus Christ is the present and living foundation of the church because by faith we have been incorporated in him – that is, united into his body. We are the recipients of his saving blessings and his communion with the Father through the Spirit, continually drawing our life and nourishment from his resurrected and glorified humanity, and thus participating in his mission of recreating and reconciling the world to God…
We are indeed the body of Christ… It was the confession of this profound and mysterious reality that drove Paul to one of the most breath-taking utterances in Holy Writ: “And God put all things under Christ’s feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all” (Eph. 1:23)…the Greek in this verse is emphatic: hestis estin to soma auto – the church “which is indeed, or in truth, his body.” [18]

* * * * *

We “form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Romans 12:5).

Let’s do communion as one body, in which God intends the legacy of the reality of Incarnation to live on: reconciliation, humility, mercy, mission, love.

In Communion, we acknowledge this: “I know this is commanded of me: to be ‘broken and spilled out’ for you in humility, mercy and love in honor of Jesus being broken and spilled out for us on the cross. May our redeemed lives, united in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, display God’s glory in the fullness of the earth as God makes His appeal through us: His body, His church.

May God give us the strength and holiness to ‘incarnate’ his ministry of reconciliation, his model of humility, his gift of mercy, his focus on mission, and his capacity to love.

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[1] “The elect lady —As κυρια, kuria, may be the feminine of κυριος, kurios, lord, therefore it may signify lady; and so several, both ancients and moderns, have understood it. But others have considered it the proper name of a woman, Kyria; and that this is a very ancient opinion is evident from the Peshito Syriac, the oldest version we have, which uses it as a proper name [Syriac] koureea, as does also the Arabic [Arabic] kooreea. Some have thought that Eclecta was the name of this matron, from the word εκλεκτη, which we translate elect, and which here signifies the same as excellent, eminent, honourable, or the like. Others think that a particular Church is intended, which some suppose to be the Church at Jerusalem, and that the elect sister, 2 John 1:13, means the Church at Ephesus…I am satisfied that no metaphor is here intended; that the epistle was sent to some eminent Christian matron, not far from Ephesus, who was probably deaconess of the Church, who, it is likely, had a Church at her house, or at whose house the apostles and travelling evangelists frequently preached, and were entertained.” (Adam Clarke)

[2] To love God is to obey. (See John 14:15, 21, 23, 24; 15:10, 14.) “And why call me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46).

[3] Just a quick note: this is likely the same John who wrote Revelation. We may want to consider that the Antichrist figure in Revelation comes from within the church, considering how John has used that term in both of his letters for false teachers.

[4] One of the early Christian documents, the Didache, gives similar instruction: “Let every apostle who comes to you be received as the Lord. . . . But not everyone who speaks in the spirit is a prophet; he is only a prophet if he has the ways of the Lord. The false and the genuine prophet will be known therefore by their ways” (Bettenson, 51). (Asbury Bible Commentary)

“The words mean, according to the eastern use of them, ‘Have no religious connection with him, nor act towards him so as to induce others to believe you acknowledge him as a brother.’" (Adam Clarke)

[5] The Quran and the Book of Mormon, respectively

[6] The New World Version of the Bible

[7] To love God is to obey. (See John 14:15, 21, 23, 24; 15:10, 14.) “And why call me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46).

[8] Just a quick note: this is likely the same John who wrote Revelation. We may want to consider that the Antichrist figure in Revelation comes from within the church, considering how John has used that term in both of his letters for false teachers.

[9] The other danger, of course, is that they begin to follow a false Jesus #idolatry.

[10] Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.

[11] The Bible has passages that refer to people being rewarded for what they have done both in this life and the life to come. Since John is focusing on how we love each other, my sense is that John is talking about implications for life together now.

[12] Johnson and Clark, The Incarnation of God: The Mystery of the Gospel as the Foundation of Evangelical Theology

[13] Romans 3:10-12; John 6:44; Luke 19:10. Jeremiah 29 – ““You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you” – is God’s people experiencing revival, not finding God for the first time.

[14] Johnson and Clark, The Incarnation of God: The Mystery of the Gospel as the Foundation of Evangelical Theology

[15] Nick Moore, https://baptist21.com/blog-posts/2014/incarnation-implications/

[16] https://www.thenivbible.com/blog/what-incarnation-should-mean-in-our-daily-lives/

[17] “What the incarnation means for the here-and-now,” JOHN PRITCHARD

[18] Johnson and Clark’s book, The Incarnation of God: The Mystery of the Gospel as the Foundation of Evangelical Theology