In 2 John, Christ is revealed as the source of grace, mercy, and peace.
Verse 3 says, “Grace, mercy, peace will be with us from God the Father and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love.” Truth here denotes the divine reality of the gospel, especially concerning the person of Christ, who expressed God and accomplished God’s purpose; love is the believers’ expression in loving one another through receiving and knowing the truth. These two matters are the basic structure of this Epistle. In them grace, mercy, and peace will be with us. The apostle greeted and blessed the believers with grace, mercy, and peace, based on the fact that these two crucial things existed among the believers. When we walk in the truth (v. 4) and love one another (v. 5), we will enjoy the divine grace, mercy, and peace.
If truth and love do not exist among the believers, there is no way for them to enjoy grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and from Jesus Christ. Grace, mercy, and peace can be unto us only when the basic factors of truth and love are present. All of us need to live a life of truth and love.
Verse 7 continues, “For many deceivers went out into the world, those who do not confess Jesus Christ coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.” The deceivers mentioned here were heretics, like the Cerinthians, the false prophets (1 John 4:1).
These deceivers do not confess Jesus Christ coming in the flesh. This means that they do not confess that Jesus is God incarnate. Thus, they deny the deity of Christ. Jesus was conceived of the Spirit (Matt. 1:18). To confess Jesus coming in the flesh is to confess that, as the Son of God, He was divinely conceived to be born in the flesh (Luke 1:31-35). The deceivers, the false prophets, would not make such a confession.
John says in 2 John 7 that those who do not confess Jesus coming in the flesh are not only deceivers but also antichrists. An antichrist differs from a false Christ (Matt. 24:5, 24). A false Christ is one who pretends, deceivingly, to be the Christ, whereas an antichrist is one who denies Christ’s deity, denying that Jesus is the Christ, that is, denying the Father and the Son by denying that Jesus is the Son of God (1 John 2:22), not confessing that He has come in the flesh through the divine conception of the Holy Spirit (4:2-3). Whoever denies the person of Christ is an antichrist.
Anyone who rejects Jesus Christ coming in the flesh rejects His humanity and His human living. Such a one also rejects Christ’s redemption. If Christ had not become a man, He could not have had human blood to shed for the redemption of human beings. If He had not become flesh through the conception of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin Mary, He never could have been our Substitute to be crucified to bear our judgment before God. Therefore, to deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is to deny His holy conception, His incarnation, His birth, His humanity, His human living, and also His redemption. The New Testament makes it emphatically clear that Christ’s redemption was accomplished in His human body and by the shedding of His blood (Eph. 1:7; Heb. 9:22).
Anyone who rejects Christ’s incarnation and thereby rejects His redemption also denies Christ’s resurrection. If Christ had never passed through death, it would not have been possible for Him to enter into resurrection.
Denying that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is a great heresy. This heretical teaching makes it impossible to have the enjoyment of the Trinity. According to the revelation of the Trinity in the New Testament, the Son came in the flesh with the Father and in the name of the Father. The Son was crucified, and in resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). Therefore, we have the Spirit as the reality of the Son with the Father. This includes incarnation, human living, redemption by the shedding of human blood, death in a human body, burial, and resurrection. All these are components, constituents, of our enjoyment of the Triune God. If anyone denies Christ’s incarnation, that one denies Christ’s holy birth, humanity, human living, redemption through crucifixion, and resurrection. This utterly annuls the enjoyment of the genuine Trinity.
We must love all the dear brothers in the divine fellowship, but we must be strict with certain persons. We should not even greet them because they are not in the fellowship and even oppose the fellowship. On the one hand, they claim to be Christians, but on the other hand, they do not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, who was incarnated as a man. Not only are there modernists teaching these things today, but also from the beginning of the church in the first century, before the early apostles had passed away, there was already this kind of persons. In the words of the apostle John, they do not confess Jesus Christ coming in the flesh (2 John 7). Although they claim that they are Christians, John called them deceivers and antichrists. These persons went beyond the teaching concerning Christ, as today’s modernists do, inventing something beyond the truth.
Second John 9 says, “Everyone who goes beyond and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God; he who abides in the teaching, he has both the Father and the Son.” Literally, the Greek word translated “goes beyond” means to lead forward (in a negative sense), that is, to go further than what is right, advancing beyond the limit of orthodox teaching concerning Christ. This is in contrast to abiding in the teaching of Christ. The Cerinthian Gnostics, who boasted of their advanced thinking concerning the teaching of Christ, practiced this. They went beyond the teaching of the divine conception of Christ, thus denying the deity of Christ. Consequently, they could not have God in salvation and in life.
The teaching in verse 9 is not the teaching by Christ but the teaching concerning Christ, that is, the truth concerning the deity of Christ, especially regarding His incarnation by divine conception. The modernists today go beyond and do not abide in the teaching of Christ. They also claim to be advanced in their thinking. According to them, it is out of date to say that Christ is God, that He was born of a virgin through divine conception, that He died on the cross for our sins, and that He was resurrected both physically and spiritually. Denying the truth concerning the deity of Christ, the modernists claim to be advanced in their philosophical thought. In principle, they follow the way of the Cerinthian Gnostics.
According to verse 9, the one who goes beyond and does not abide in the teaching of Christ does not have God, but he who abides in the teaching of Christ has both the Father and the Son. To “have God” is to have “both the Father and the Son.” Both the Father and the Son are God (Eph. 4:6; Heb. 1:8); God is triune—the Father, Son, and Spirit (Matt. 28:19). It is through the process of incarnation that God has been dispensed to us in the Son with the Father (1 John 2:23) to be our enjoyment and reality (John 1:1, 14). In the incarnated God we have the Son in His redemption and the Father in His life. We are thus redeemed and regenerated to be one with God organically that we may partake of and enjoy Him in salvation and in life. Hence, to deny the incarnation is to reject this divine enjoyment, but to abide in the truth of incarnation is to have God, as the Father and the Son, for our portion in the eternal salvation and in the divine life.
This point in 2 John 9 concerning having both the Father and the Son helps us to interpret the full reward spoken of in verse 8. The full reward is to have both the Father and the Son for our enjoyment. Today’s modernists, like the ancient Gnostics, do not have the Father and the Son, for they do not abide in the teaching of Christ.