Love in truth

 This week's verses are 2 John 1:5-8:

But now I ask you, lady (not as if I were writing a new commandment to you, but the one we have had from the beginning), that we love one another. (Now this is love: that we walk according to his commandments.) This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning; thus you should walk in it. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, people who do not confess Jesus as Christ coming in the flesh. This person is the deceiver and the antichrist! Watch out, so that you do not lose the things we have worked for, but receive a full reward.

 I thought these verses were an interesting perspective from John. In the context of urging us to love one another, he gives a really severe warning about people who don't think that Jesus actually came and died for us. He says they are the antichrist and the deceiver! He might as well be calling them Satan himself!

People want to spiritualize Jesus sometimes. They don't want to be confronted with his reality, that he encountered the same challenges we do, but handled them better. These people don't want to submit to being "second best." They don't like the idea that someone else could be better than them, more worthy of praise, more worthy of being followed. The antichrist wants to hold the top billing.

Or sometimes people don't want to accept the brutality of what Jesus suffered. To accept a God who was tortured to death on account of their sin is beyond what they are willing to face. They want to view their God in antiseptic terms, to minimize the sacrifice to something they themselves would accept or find comfortable to imagine. The deceiver doesn't want people to know the full price Jesus paid. He doesn't want that act of love to be recognized by us.

Worst are the people who just describe Jesus as a nice story or metaphor. These are the people who are so threatened by the mystery of Christ that they try to turn it into mere symbolism. Symbolism and metaphor are subject to our artistic and imaginative whims. They take the real Jesus and turn him into a two dimensional idol of their own creation.

But our ability to love one another depends on seeing Christ as he really is, as a real person who walked in a real body like ours on the same earth we inhabit now. A real God who suffered real injustice on our behalf to address a real need. How are we going to love each other on his behalf if he himself is not real to us? How can we follow his example if we are made to believe that it's just a fairy tale?

John warns us to watch out that we don't miss the full reward of our faith. He doesn't want us to be deceived into believing that Jesus didn't live among us and pay the ultimate price. He doesn't want us to puff ourselves up by pretending our savior is just a metaphorical character in a nice story for our superstitious ancestors. John wants us to see things as they are and live our lives fully conscious of the consequences.

So, be on guard this Advent against those popular voices and TV specials that try to inject these deceptions into your mind. Withhold your support of these things that may nominally be Christian but hide the antichrist's agenda inside of them. We believe in a real God who really lived, really died for us, really returned to prove it, and will really come again in the end. Anything less than that drains the gospel of its power.