by Beth Moore
Be still my soul. Set your heart at rest in His presence. Let not your heart condemn you.... for God is greater than your heart, and He knows everything.
Let's stay with our microscope one moment longer as we consider the letter called 2 John. My favorite words in this brief letter are "love in the truth." Truth breeds trust. We also considered that trust is often developed more deeply through truth than even love.
Many of us have been loved by unhealthy people who proved deceptive in other ways. We were left injured and confused. Incidentally, if we didn't let God heal us, we likely became unhealthy people ourselves who continued the process. Unhealthiness is contagious, and deceived people deceive people.
Truth sets us free. God, the great I AM, is the totality of wholeness, completeness, and self-existence. He is both truth and love! While Satan approaches us with hate and lies, we can be "loved in the truth" by God and those His Spirit fills. Our God will only tell us the truth, and one of His chief truths is that loving is always worth doing.
I feel much better. Sometimes I just have to talk it out. I'm ready to put up my microscope and go back to my bifocals because 2 John also has a few other things to say. I love trying to figure out a good mystery, and this small piece suggests a marvelous one.
The letter bears an address "to the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in the truth" (v. 1). Scholars admit that 2 John may very well have been written to an actual woman and her children. Many, however, believe that the address was more likely metaphoric to hide the identity of New Testament believers in a time of fierce persecution. If the letter fell into the wrong hands, no one could be singled out. The letter may well have been written to a church.
Ephesians 5:25-27 compares the love of a husband for his wife to the love of Christ for the church. In that passage the Word gives the church the metaphorical female gender. John's reference translated in the NN "to the chosen lady" could certainly have spiritual implications.
In 2 John 1 we see another possible hint in John's proclamation of love for "the chosen lady and her children ... and not I only, but also all who know the truth." What individual would be loved by "all who know the truth"? Yet all who know the truth love the church (as the corporate body) and "her" children (or individual believers).
John's reference to "we" in 2 John 5 may suggest an additional hint. In the exhortation to love one another, he wrote, "I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning." Also, don't miss the exclusion of any mention of the father of the children. None of these suggestions on its own may lend strong support to "the chosen lady" constituting a metaphor for the church but, considered together, make me inclined to lean toward a corporate intention.
After calling the chosen lady and her children to walk in love, John gives them a warning. "Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully" (v. 8). No sooner does God reveal truth than Satan goes on the warpath with lies. Deception is his specialty, and his obvious goal is to get us to believe the lies. Therefore, they can't be blatant or we'd recognize them.
Notice John said nothing about these false teachers refuting all doctrine concerning Christianity. Some of the false teachers in John's day did not refute that Jesus was divine. They simply said He wasn't man as well as God. John focused on this exact false teaching in his first letter: "Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God" (1 John 4:2-3).
The issue of Christ coming in the flesh is so vital because we "enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body" (Heb. 10:19-20). Satan is ever trying to undermine the issue of salvation. Think about this with me.
God created man in His image. John 4:24 says, "God is spirit." You and I were created in three parts: body, soul, and spirit. I believe the "spirit" part of us is that which is created most pointedly in God's image. The spirit-when distinguished in Scripture from the soul-is the part of each human being that has the capacity to know and have a relationship with God. Our Maker literally equipped us with an inner longing to find Him.
First Corinthians 6:17 says that "he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit." When we receive Jesus as our Savior, our spirit or the part of us with the capacity to know God unites with the Holy Spirit, and they become one.
Because I am a believer in Christ, when I refer to the spirit within me, I am talking about the Holy Spirit. Satan wants to do anything he can to keep people blinded to the truth and lost. He knows all of us are created with a longing for God that we often confuse with a longing for anything "spiritual."
The good news of Jesus Christ was running rampant all over the Middle Eastern part of the world in John's day and heading north, south, east, and west. Jesus was a hot topic of conversation. Once Satan established that he couldn't squelch spiritual hunger or stop the talk about Christ, he determined to supply a new story that made best use of both. He suggested through false teachers that Christ indeed came but not in the flesh. Therefore, the spiritually hungry could still have a belief system involving God but remain, as my relatives would say, as lost as a goose. Why? Because our access to God is through the torn flesh of Jesus Christ. To deny the incarnation is to deny the one and only means of salvation.
I imagine you know someone at work or elsewhere that may be very "spiritual" but doesn't believe in the incarnate death of Christ as the means to salvation. Do you see what Satan has done? He has tried to feed their need for the spiritual and still keep them blind to the truth. Clever and terribly destructive, isn't he?
Don't judge them. Pray like mad for them! Pray for the veil to be removed and the torn veil of Jesus' flesh to be made clear! Pray as well for those who teach such false doctrines.
John warned "the chosen lady" not to take any such teacher into her house. In those days, of course, most gatherings of believers met in what we now call house churches. In many countries they still do. Though John's directive is certainly important for any individual believer, you can imagine how vital it is for an entire church gathering. Traveling teachers were very common. I think John was saying, "Don't even consider giving anyone who teaches such false doctrine freedom to speak in your gatherings!"
Recently I spoke in a denominational church I haven't often had the privilege to serve. The pastor stood in the back of the sanctuary and listened to every word I taught. Someone asked me if I was bothered by his presence. I assured them I had nothing but respect for a pastor who watched over his flock so carefully. I also was quite relieved when I passed his test!
Pastors aren't just the shepherds of the men of the church. I have met pastors who I could tell were totally unconcerned about what their women were studying or to whom they were listening. Some of them think we're all just sipping tea and talking girl talk. I find myself thinking, Mister, with all due respect, if your women catch afire of false doctrine, they can burn down your whole church! Watch who you take into your "house"! Watch me, for heaven's sake! Watch all of us! Many would never knowingly teach deception or distortion, but all are dreadfully human.
Well, well, well. In his second letter John certainly said volumes in so few words. If only I could do the same. One of the things I like best about him is his balance. "Love one another!" And while you're at it, "Test the spirits!" Now that's a fine teacher.
Chapter 35
BODY AND SOUL
Dear friend I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well. (3 John 2)
We conclude our brief look at John's letters with 3 John. While you and I may still have much we'd like to explore in these rich epistles, I believe we have met our goals. We've peeked further into the heart of John and centered on the elements I believe he wanted us to explore most: koinonia, love, and truth.
I enjoyed the mysterious elements involved in tryi
ng to identify "the chosen lady and her children" in our previous letter. In contrast, John's third letter leaves no doubt that he addressed it to a specific individual. In fact, John drops several names in this one-chapter letter. Gaius appears as John's dear friend. Diotrephes loved to be first and excluded others. Demetrius bears a good name so that not only others but even the truth speaks well of him.
Imagine being named in a letter that turned out to be inspired Scripture for all the world to see! Whether in commendation or criticism, having your name immortalized in Scripture is a heavy thought! When I see a portion of Scripture with brief testimonials, I almost shiver. After all, if just one sentence were written about each of our lives in Scripture, what do you suppose it would be? What would we want it to be?
A number of times in my life, I would have been anywhere from devastated to humiliated over what might have been written in a one-sentence statement about my life. I love knowing that as long as we're kicking and breathing, we can change our testimonies. God hasn't put a period at the end of our sentences yet, but that tiny little dot doesn't take long to jot. We may think we're only mid-sentence when we're not.
Attending as many funerals as I do is a constant reminder to me. Let's not put off working toward what we hope God's testimonial for our lives will state. As the writer of Hebrews said, "Today, if you hear his voice, / do not harden your hearts / as you did in the rebellion" (3:15).
I love the insight we're gaining into the lifestyle and practices of the apostle John. We're getting to see him engaged with people-which I believe was his specialty. As we determined in the previous chapter, nothing is more refreshing than a Christian leader who practices what he preaches. Obviously you can see that John also had people in his life who were difficult to love. Poor Diotrephes. You'd think with a name like that, he wouldn't have wanted to be first. Can you imagine such a one-sentence testimonial? "Beth loved to be first and didn't like to have anything to do with the common folks." Egads! The hair on the back of my neck is standing up!
Notice John didn't say the man was lost. He was obviously a member of the church. Though his actions weren't loving, he could easily have been a Christian. If gossip and divisiveness are unquestionable signs of "lostness," the few folks that go to heaven are liable to have considerable elbow room. Thank goodness we won't have hard feelings and conflict in glory. Otherwise, I could almost imagine Diotrephes saying to John, "Did you have to go and write it down? Why couldn't you have just gossiped like I did?"
Gaius, on the other hand, was obviously easy for John to love. I don't prefer the NN rendering of John's term of endearment for Gaius. The original word translated "my dear friend" is agapeto, meaning "beloved." Gaius wasn't only John's dear friend. He was John's dearly loved friend. The Gaius to whom John's third letter is addressed could very likely have been the one by the same name mentioned several other times in Scripture.
A companion of Paul named Gaius suffered at the hands of the mob in Ephesus (see Acts 19:28-3 1). When we went to Greece and Turkey on the Beloved Disciple tour, we stood in the very amphitheater where the riot took place. This same Gaius appears again in Acts 20:4-5, where he traveled ahead of Paul. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:13-15 that he baptized a man named Gaius.
The fact that Paul's Gaius and John's Gaius can both be traced to ministries in and around Ephesus strongly suggests the same individual. If so, I love to imagine the conversations that took place between them. John was old. Gaius couldn't have been young. Don't you know John and Gaius had a great time talking about Paul? What a character he was! Surely John and Gaius must have shared some good laughs about him.
You'll laugh when I tell you I'm sitting here with a lump in my throat. You see, I love these guys! I've spent months and months getting to know Paul and now John from the pages of Scripture. They were real men with real relationships. They agreed and disagreed just as all of us do. Imagine all of them knowing, loving, appreciating, and getting aggravated with one another. The stuff of real life. Every time Jesus Christ touches the hard hearts of human beings, a divine drop of rain hits the carnal sod of earth, and it is refreshed.
Refreshed. What a wonderful word! It just happens to be a word I'd like to target for the remainder of our chapter. I hope you didn't miss John's desire for Gaius to be as healthy in body as he was in soul. The Amplified Bible says, "Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in every way and [that your body] may keep well, even as [I know] your soul keeps well and prospers" (3 John 2).
My beloveds, you and I need to do what we can to watch after our health! Certainly our spiritual health is paramount, but while we're on this earth, the Spirit of God dwelling in each redeemed person is linked explicitly to our physical bodies. God created man as one entity made up of three parts: body, soul, and spirit.
In 1 Thessalonians 5:23 Paul penned a prayer we should all echo. "May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Most believers instinctively know that the health of their souls and spirits are vitally important, but notice Paul's plea that we would allow God to sanctify us through and through, meaning our entire soul, spirit, and body.
God has taught me serious lessons about the impact my physical body has on both my soul and my spirit. Think about the soul for a moment. If my body is completely exhausted, my soul is deeply affected and over time can absorb the physical weariness and translate it into depression or feelings of hopelessness. If we eat poorly, we can fuel anxiety and fear. Most of us know that stress is linked to heart problems, high blood pressure, and many digestive problems. As long as our souls and spirits are imprisoned in these physical bodies, they are greatly affected by their condition.
You and I live stressful lives. I've heard many of your testimonies, and I am astounded at some of your challenges. Some of you work all day then tend a sick loved one all night. Others of you hold down several jobs as you try to keep your children in college. I often hear from young mothers who have three or four children under five years old. Now that's stress! I can't even imagine some of your challenges. I never dreamed I would have the challenges I face today. I am so grateful and humbled by God's present calling on my life to minister to women, but I will not kid you. It is work! Yes, God does most of it all by Himself, but the little He requires from me is everything I've got!
Paul described the participation of labor between a believer and God in Colossians 1:29: "To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me." My dear colaborer, you and I can't effectively fulfill our callings if we don't watch after our health. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit. Each of us faces a life beyond our natural capabilities. My calendar is overwhelming, and I take each scheduled date very seriously. If I end up with a virus and can't make a conference that was scheduled a year earlier, I am devastated. If I'm going to be faithful to you, I've got to cooperate with God and do my part.
I take a handful of vitamins every day then pray to stay well. At times when I get sick, I either know my schedule is out of control again, Satan is on the warpath, or God is checking me out of the loop for a while. All of us deal with illness, but I think God's expectation is for us to do everything reasonable to avoid poor health. Meanwhile, we've got to keep our heads on straight about our motivation. Satan simply wants us in bondage. He loves the bondage of poor health, but he also delights in the yoke of excessive, compulsive fretting over the physical body. Ecclesiastes' directive to avoid all extremes speaks volumes to me about this subject (Eccles. 7:18). Scripture also frequently prescribes rest for the weary faithful (see Ps. 127:2; Matt. 11:28; Mark 6:30-32).
Beloved, I am convinced one of our severest needs is pure rest. Not only sleep, but refreshment and recreation. Recently God spoke to me about capturing what He and I are calling "Sabbath moments." Like many of yours, my schedule right now is particularly tough, and I see no time in the near future for a number of days off God spoke to my heart one Saturday morning while I was preparin
g for Sunday school: "My child, in between more intense rests, I want to teach you to take Sabbath moments." I wasn't certain what He meant. Just that morning God confirmed His desire for me to drive all the way to the other side of Houston to the medical center to visit a patient with brain cancer. I was very thankful for the privilege of visiting this patient, but I knew in advance it would be tough emotionally and far from restful.
I fought the traffic across Houston, then visited with my new friend and her husband while choking back the tears. They have two young sons, and unless God performs a miracle, their mother will go home to be with the Lord before they are grown. I got in my car and prayed. I pulled out of the parking garage, fighting the tears. A few blocks later as if on autopilot, I turned my steering wheel straight into the parking lot of the Houston Zoo!
Christ seemed to say, "Let's go play." And that we did. I hadn't been to the 200 in years. I heard about all the improvements, but I never expected the ultimate: Starbucks coffee! (OK, so I don't have all my health issues down pat.) Can you imagine watching a baby koala take a nap in a tree on a rare cold day in Houston with a Starbucks grande cappuccino in your hand? Now that's a Sabbath moment! God and I had a blast.
A few weeks later I kidnapped my hardworking staff for a few hours to go play a practical joke on another staff member who was running an errand. We hid in the store and had her paged to our department where we-grown Christian women-were hiding in the clothes rounders. We rolled, all over the carpet with laughter at the look on her face. After we made complete fools of ourselves, one of the salesladies walked up to me and said, "Don't I know you from somewhere?" We went to pieces. And then we went back to work ... the better for it, I might add.