2 John 7-9

v7: If their faith is undermined, so will the believer’s love for God and one another be. We need to be aware that “deceivers are about,” who deny the truth about the person of the Jesus. We might think “it is strange that after” all the evidence given by eyewitness accounts, that “anyone would deny that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Son of God and Saviour of the world,” and yet “there are deceivers who oppose the Lord Jesus Christ’s name and honour now,” just as “there were such people in former times, even in the days of the apostle.”

v8: “The more deceivers and deceits there are, the more watchful disciples must be.” There have been many who “have gained not only a good reputation for religious faith but also much light in it, much conviction of the evil of sin, the worthlessness of the world, the excellence of religion, and the power of God’s word,” but because they did not remain true to Christ to the end, lost the ground they gained and the full reward of faith.

v9: To abandon “the teaching of Christ that is appointed to guide us to God,” which is revealed to us in the gospel, is to abandon God because faithfulness to the gospel “unites us to Christ… and so to the Father, because they are one.” By the teaching of Christ, we are enlightened “to know the Father and the Son,” and “we are sanctified for the Father and the Son,” and we “are prepared for the eternal enjoyment of the Father and the Son.” Therefore, “we must keep that holy teaching in faith and love if we hope or desire to reach that blessed fellowship with the Father and the Son.”