Wednesday Bible Study: The end of all things- 2 John

John beats a familiar drum across his 3 epistles, and that theme is the core of this one-chapter book.  Love one another, and Believe that Jesus is God become flesh.  His reason being much the same that we keep this message now...

2Jn 1:7  For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. 


The why of this coming up was that there were those coming behind the Apostles teaching a different way of seeing Christ.  They could not conceive that God would- or even could- become flesh.  How could He be God and man at once?  It was beyond their ability to understand- just like it's beyond OUR ability to understand.  Jesus Himself, though, taught us how to deal with this superreality:

Mat 18:1  At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?"
Mat 18:2  And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them
Mat 18:3  and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.
Mat 18:4  Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

A child has no problem believing what he doesn't understand, because he believes the parent that teaches him or her.  Now here's where atheists that I have jousted with would say, "Yep, children believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and God."  But that isn't the point.  Children believe when dad says the car will start and take them to the ball game; they believe mom when she says that mass of dough will turn into bread.  They have an innate knowledge that they don't understand everything- yet.  Adults tend to lose that essential quality, and THAT was Jesus's point.  Some things WE have to take with the faith of a little child, because that's what we are compared to God (and even that comparison is flattery).

So these men, then and now, try to convince others that Jesus COULDN'T be both at once.  They claim He was just a good man, who had the Holy Spirit possess Him at the baptism and release Him at the crucifixion.  Or, like the Muslims as I understand, do the old switcheroo and replace Him magically on the cross with Barabbas, because "God would NEVER allow His Son to really suffer".  These same people today believe in asking Mary for prayer because even though Jesus said HE is the way to approach the Father, HE is the curtain torn in two, they think that we need someone else to go to Jesus FOR us.  Or that His sacrifice couldn't possibly wash away ALL our sins, so we must go to purgatory where others can "pray for us" and put us across the finish line that Jesus just didn't quite make.

But He could, and He did.  And our lack of understanding isn't His limitation, it is ours.  And the fact that we think of ourselves as the pinnacle of wisdom and understanding, so that we even have to fight this fool's battle, hides from us something else we don't grasp- something becoming so much more evident of late- that need to love one another.  Media, politics, even the misunderstanding of God's Word, bring us to a point where we can go no farther than, "We love one another- EXCEPT..."  And until we get rid of the word except, we aren't any brighter than the ancient- or modern- gnostics that John preached against.