Two of the great themes of all the letters of John are love and truth. Today we’ll be going deeper into those themes. We live in a world which is desperate for love, but has lost the truth. It finds neither love nor truth. In Christ we find both, as we shall see.
1. Truth and Love
John starts by sending his love to his friend Gaius. He prays for Gaius, that he will thrive, body soul and spirit. He says ‘I love you because of the truth.’ It literally says ‘in the truth’. Our world is searching for love, but without truth, it cannot find it. There are many substitutes for real love in the world. We have cheap relationships between men and women, where deception is normal. We have friendships between people who never meet. Parents exchange time with their children for money, promising that it’s to give the children what they need. Many people have a deep loneliness. Yet God loves us more than we realise. He cares about us deeply, and gave up his precious son, Jesus Christ for us. But unless we know the truth, we cannot know God’s love. And when we do not love each other, we are not following the truth. At the foundation of faith in Christ is the extraordinary love of God revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. So John wants both love and truth to be revealed in the church. This is obviously important for a church like ours. One Christian preacher said: “Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.” People will come to this church looking for love and looking for truth. Sometimes it is hard to tell people the truth.
You see here that John prays for Gaius’ life to go well. This is a normal and a natural prayer. It is part of his love for Gaius. We often pray for people in such ways, because God cares about every part of our lives. This doesn’t, of course mean that we will become immensely wealthy, or famous, but it does mean that we pray for the good and wellbeing of others, just as God cares for our wellbeing.
Key question: when is it hard to tell people the truth?
Continuing to live by the Truth
The word ‘live by’, literally means ‘walking in the truth.’ That is, it isn’t enough for us to know the truth, we also we have to live by it. When we know something but don’t live by it, our faith begins to wither. For example, if we know that that God wants us to only get married if it will lead us closer to Christ, and we marry for another reason, we are in spiritual danger. We won’t be able to speak the truth because we’re not living by the truth. Another example is money: we know that living money means hating God. But when we love money, we struggle to properly process and understand the truth. There are many other examples. What we do shapes our minds.
Continuing to live by the truth takes perseverance and determination. And it doesn’t happen by accident. People who go on walking in the truth often have a pattern of reading and understanding the Bible. They pray. That means that they can feed themselves spiritually. They make their relationship with God a priority. They spend time with other Christians. Their actions reflect their words. We will always face setbacks and difficulties. Things won’t turn out the way we expect. But if we invest into our relationship with Christ, we will receive so much more in return. And like Gaius, we will become a joy and an encouragement to others, who are also walking on that path.
Question: How do we develop a patient, enduring faith?
Finally, John commends Gaius and his people for accepting the messengers of the truth. In 2 John we saw that destructive people were coming into the church. John advised the church to have nothing to do with such people. This is another question of love and truth. There are destructive messengers in the church today. Their priorities are not the basic truths of Christianity: life with God through faith in Christ. Some teach human philosophy, some teach magic, and some teach invented ideas. But, John says, when we see teachers of truth, we should encourage them. Last week we celebrated the work of Graham and Kathryn. They taught truth here in Manchester and now they teach in the Dominican Republic. The leaders of the church here have taught the truth in different countries in Asia and Africa. John says that we should support the work of those who teach the truth. How can we support the work of such people? We can give financially, including to missions and the work of the church. We can receive Christian workers in our homes. John says that welcoming Christians who tell us the truth is a sign that we are one people, even though we live on different continents, and have different cultures and languages. It is an expression of our love for our brothers and sisters.
Conclusion
The Book of 3 John, like the books of 1 and 2 John, is very concerned with love and truth. We know the truth, so we know the love of God. That enables us to love others with a sincere love which comes from God. We persist in the truth. We do the things that embody the truth in our lives. We do this consistently and faithfully. And we encourage those who speak the truth to God’s people, because they are showing God’s love to us and the world.
