Walking in love and truth
1
📚The elder 📖 to the elect 📖 lady 📖 and her children, whom I love in the truth 📖; and not I only, but also all those who have known the truth; 2 📚for the truths sake, which dwells in us 📖, and will be with us forever 📖. 3 📚Grace be with you, and mercy, and peace, from God the Father 📖, and from the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.4 📚I greatly 📖 rejoiced because I found some of your children walking in truth 📖, just as we have received a command from the Father 📖. 5 📚And now I urge you, lady (not as though I wrote a new command to you, but that which we have had from the beginning), that we love one another. 6 📚And this is love: that we walk according to his commands. This is the command: just as you have heard from the beginning you should walk in love.
1:6 John 14:15, 21, 23. It is useless and deceptive to think or say we love God if we do not do what He tells us to do.⚜
Warning about false teachers
7 📚For many deceivers 📖 have gone out into the world, who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh 📖. This is a deceiver and an antichrist 📖.
8 📚Watch yourselves so that we do not lose those things for which we have worked, but that we receive a full reward 📖.
1:8 By listening to false teachers and falling under their influence true believers will not lose their salvation, but they may lose everything else. Compare Rev 3:11; 2 Tim 2:5; 1 Cor 9:27.⚜
9 📚Whoever transgresses, and does not remain in the teachings of Christ, does not have God. He who remains 📖 in the teachings of Christ has both 📖 the Father and the Son.
1:9 Some people believe they are advanced thinkers and can leave the truth of Christ behind. Such people only reveal that they are without God. Compare 1 John 2:19.⚜
10 📚If anyone comes 📖 to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house, and do not greet him. 11 📚For he who greets him shares in his evil deeds 📖.
Closing remarks
12 📚Having many things to write to you, I would not write with paper and ink, but I trust to come to you, and speak face to face, that our joy 📖 may be full.
13 📚The children of your elect sister greet you. Amen.
1:13 Evidently her sister was a believer and this sister’s children were living in the same city where John was at the time.⚜