1,2,3 John: Short, Sweet and Timely

First, Second, and Third John are so short, they just naturally get grouped together. I will group them in this brief blog post as well.

This time, I read them in my Greek-English diglot. That just means I read them in English but I could quickly refer to the Greek when I felt like it. This process made me more aware than ever of the similarities between 1 John and the Gospel of John.

1 John is, I think, known as the "Love Book." The word "love," or "agape" in Greek, is used about a zillion times. (I know, Greek students, I could easily look up the exact number of uses with one of my Bible tools, but I'm too lazy.)

One can't walk away from reading 1 John without some soul-searching on how seriously "we" take Jesus' commands to love one another. More often, we judge one another. We disdain one another. We are suspicious of one another. We get caught up in one another's life style or other choices. We love our neighbor very much less than we love ourself.

Really: What would happen if all of us in this highly charged election year started from a position of loving others? What if we were able to look past people's words, deeds, political convictions, moral choices, sexual orientation, etc., etc. and just begin by loving them? Would it cut down on the ideological standoffs, the political screed? Worth a try, don't you think?

"Love one another" is nothing less than Jesus Christ's New Commandment (1 John 3:23). Love, agape, is nothing less than the very nature of God (1 John 4:8,16).

1 John talks about sin, too. He chides us to discontinue our sins because a sinful life is inconsistent with a life steeped in God's love. And how do we move out of a sinful life? "If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). And, "This is love: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins....We love because God first loved us" (1 John 4:10,19).

"Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth" (1 John 3:18).

I have much less to say about 2 and 3 John. They are such short, personal letters. One wonders exactly why they were included in the canon of the New Testament, but apparently they were from the earliest times. Perhaps because they were attributed to the same author, who was so revered for his other writings. Maybe they were just tucked into the same envelope as they traveled about Christendom.

Still, the main thrust of both epistles is a warning against itinerant preachers of the day who went around spouting heretical teaching, probably an early version of Gnosticism.

I find it amazing that within just a few decades of Jesus' resurrection, the group of His followers were having to deal with heretical, charlatans who were twisting the message of the gospel just enough to attract slightly confused adherents.

Does that sound familiar, some 2000 years later?