Friday, May 2, 2025

PT-2 "Loving in the Truth" (2 John 5-6)

 

EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 5/2/2025 9:58 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                                    Focus:  PT-2 “Loving in the Truth”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                           Reference:  2 John 5-6

 

            Message of the verses:  5 Now I ask you, lady, not as though I were writing to you a new commandment, but the one which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. 6 And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it.”

 

            I will look at what John MacArthur has to say about these verses as I pick up where I left off on the 27th of April which was two days before I stopped writing Spiritual Diaries because of my wife’s cancer surgery.

 

            “But through the commandment John spoke of was from one perspective an old one, viewed from another it was new.  In 1 John 2:8 John wrote, ‘On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.’  There are three senses in which the commandment is new.  First, love is ‘true in Him’; that is, it has now been perfectly modeled in a human life by the Lord Jesus Christ. In his gospel John wrote concerning Christ’s love, ‘Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end (lit., ‘perfectly,’ ‘completely,’ or ‘to the fullest measure’) (John 13:1).  Jesus offered Himself as an example of how to love when He said, ‘A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another’ (John 13:34-35; cf. 15:13; Phil. 2:5-9).  Paul exhorted believers to ‘walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us’ (Eph. 5:2).”  There are different works in the Greek for love that are found in the Scriptures and agape is the kind of love that God has for His children. 

 

            “Christians also have a new understanding of love through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  As John pointed out in his first epistle, it is only possible for us to love ‘because He first loves us’ (1 John 4:19; cf. Eph. 3:16-19). Paul wrote in Romans 5:5 that ‘the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.’  The supernatural love is one aspect of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22); thus Paul could write that believers are taught by God to love one another’ (1 Thess. 4:9).

 

            “Finally, the commandment to love is new in that it belongs to the new age inaugurated by the coming of Christ.  We now live in the spiritual kingdom (Luke 17:20-21), which is growing (Luke 13:18-20) into the glorious millennial kingdom to be established when Christ returns, and after that the eternal kingdom.  During this present spiritual kingdom ‘the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining’ (1 John 2:8).  The ‘true light’ is Jesus Christ (cf. John 8:12; 9:5; 12:35), through whom God has ‘rescue[d] us from this present evil age’ (Gal. 1:4) and ‘from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved son’ (Col. 1:13).  We are blessed ‘with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ’ (Eph. 1:3), including divine supernatural love, which is a way of life for those in the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

 

            “The defining characteristic of love is that we walk according to His commandments.  Love and obedience are inseparably linked, as Jesus made clear in John 14:15 when He declared, ‘If you love Me, you will keep my commandments’ (cf. vv. 23-24; 15:10).  Believers manifest their love for God by their obedience to Him.  In his first epistle, John wrote, ‘For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments’ (1 John 5:3).  The Old Testament also views obedience to God as the ultimate expression of love for Him.  In Deuteronomy 11:1 Moses commanded Israel, ‘You shall therefore love the Lord your God, and always deep His charge, His statutes, His ordinances, and His commandments.”  Moses successor, Joshua, gave Israel a similar charge:  Only be very careful to observe the commandment and the law which Moses the servant of the Lord commanded you, to love the Lord your God and walk in all His ways and keep His commandments and hold fast to Him and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul’ (Josh. 22:5).  Love and obedience are also linked in such Old Testament passages as Exodus 20:6; Deuteronomy 5:10; 7:9; 30:16; Nehemiah 1:5; and Daniel 9:4).

 

            “Repeating himself to stress the importance of this truth, John wrote, This commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning that you should walk in it.  Those who truly love will walking obedience to biblical truth and vice versa.”

 

AV-love 169, lover(s) 19, friend(s) 12, beloved 5, liketh 1, lovely 1, loving 1; 208

 

1) to love

1a) (Qal)

1a1) human love for another, includes family, and sexual

1a2) human appetite for objects such as food, drink, sleep, wisdom

1a3) human love for or to God

1a4) act of being a friend

1a4a) lover (participle)

1a4b) friend (participle)

1a5) God’s love toward man

1a5a) to individual men

1a5b) to people Israel

1a5c) to righteousness

1b) (Niphal)

1b1) lovely (participle)

1b2) loveable (participle)

1c) (Piel)

1c1) friends

1c2) lovers (fig. of adulterers)

 

            This is the word love which is found in Deuteronomy 11:1, which comes from my online Bible dictionary.

 

5/2/2025 10:43 PM

 

 

 

             

 

 

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