EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/4/2025 4:45 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 “Being Loyal To The Truth”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2 John 7-8
Message of the
verses: “7
For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge
Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the
antichrist. 8 Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what we have accomplished,
but that you may receive a full reward.”
I realize I did not get too far with my Spiritual Diary
on these verses and so I will try and get further now as I write this SD. It seems that the things that I am writing
about in 2 Timothy at this time are similar to the things that John wrote in
his second letter. Not really surprising
because they are all in the Bible and also second Timothy was the last letter that
Paul wrote before he was killed for the cause of Christ, and 2 John was the
last epistle that he wrote as I am not sure if Revelation was after he wrote
his letters or not, but if memory serves me correct Revelation was the last
letter that he wrote.
John MacArthur begins his comments on these two verses by
talking about love as he writes “Biblical love does not imply a naïve,
uncritical, undiscerning acceptance of anyone who claims to represent Jesus Christ.
Thus, having stressed the importance of love, John immediately set limits on
it. Believers cannot, in the name of
love, embrace any of the many deceivers who have gone out into the world. Followers of the true Christ cannot love
antichrists; those who are committed to biblical truth cannot have fellowship
with those who pervert it (cf. 2 Cor. 6:14-15).
Deceivers translates the plural form of planos, which literally means ‘a wanderer’ (the English word ‘planet’
derives from it). In this case, it
refers to those who wander from the truth of Scripture; who corrupt it; who
lead others astray from it; who are impostors (Paul called such people ‘false brethren’
in 2 Cor. 11:26 and Gal. 2:4; cf. Jude’s description of them as ‘wandering
stars’ headed for the ‘black darkness’ of eternal judgment [v. 13]).”
Now we get into some issues that can
be difficult to really understand when it comes to love. I think of the verse that tells us that we
are to be in the world but not of the world, and this to me, is something that I
think goes along with how we are to treat unbelievers, especially those who are
in what can be described as cults. The
Bible tells us not to allow those who belong to cults into our home, for they
can have the wrong kind of influence on us who are truly believers. I think of another Scripture reference that
is going through my mind and that is actually from the OT book of Malachi 1:1-3
which says “1 The oracle of the word of the LORD to
Israel through Malachi. 2 “I have loved you," says the LORD. But you say,
"How have You loved us?" "Was not Esau Jacob’s
brother?" declares the LORD. "Yet I have loved Jacob; 3 but I have hated Esau, and I
have made his mountains a desolation and appointed his inheritance for
the jackals of the wilderness.’” Now we
will look at Romans 9:13 “Just as it is written, "JACOB I LOVED, BUT ESAU
I HATED.’” Paul is quoting from the
passage in Malachi.
I
am going to now quote the meanings of the word “hate” from both verses, as the
one from Malachi is in Hebrew and the one in Romans is in Greek, first Hebrew:
08130 שָׂנֵא sane’ saw-nay’
a primitive root; v; [BDB-971a] {See TWOT on 2272 }
AV-hate 136, enemies 3, enemy 2, foes 1,
hateful 1, misc 3; 146
1) to hate, be hateful
1a) (Qal) to hate
1a1) of man
1a2) of God
1a3) hater, one hating, enemy
(participle) (subst)
1b) (Niphal) to be hated
1c) (Piel) hater (participle)
1c1) of persons, nations, God, wisdom
3404 μισέω miseo mis-eh’-o
from a primary misos (hatred); v;
TDNT-4:683,597; {See TDNT 497 }
AV-hate 41, hateful 1; 42
1) to hate, pursue with hatred, detest
2) to be hated, detested
I
am going to have to do some more thinking and also some more studying on this
subject of love and then I will put what I find out onto another Spiritual
Diary then.
5/4/2025 7:20 PM
No comments:
Post a Comment