Both 2 John and 3 John are based on 1 John. Both 2 and 3 John indicate that we need to live in truth and walk in truth. The difference is that in 2 John there is the prohibition of participating in heresy, of participating in any teaching that is against this truth. We must stay away from any teaching or any person who is against the reality of the Triune God. But in 3 John there is the encouragement to help the fellow workers in the truth. We need to join ourselves to anyone who works for the divine reality of the Triune God that we are enjoying, and we need to do whatever we can to promote this work. Hence, in 2 John there is a negative attitude toward heresy and in 3 John, a positive attitude toward the work for the truth. Whether our attitude should be negative or positive depends on whether the particular situation is for the divine reality or against it.
The concern of the apostle John in writing his three Epistles was the enjoyment of the Triune God. This is also our concern today. Among believers there is a great lack of the divine reality and hardly any enjoyment of the Triune God. Instead of the enjoyment of the Triune God, Christians have religion with doctrines, creeds, rituals, and practices. Using a phrase from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, we may say that, as a whole, today’s religion is a “vanity fair.” Whereas John Bunyan used this term to describe the world, we use it to describe religion. Instead of reality and the enjoyment of the Triune God, with religion there is all manner of vanity. We, however, need to be careful not to merely talk about truth, reality, without having the genuine experience of the divine reality.
What is the truth, the divine reality, that John talks about in his Epistles? This reality is the Father in the Son, and the Son as the Spirit dispensed into God’s chosen, redeemed, and regenerated people so that they may enjoy Him as life, life supply, and everything in the new creation life. Actually, this truth, this reality, is the enjoyment of the Triune God. The Father in the Son became a man, who died on the cross to accomplish redemption and resurrected to become the life-giving Spirit. Now He can dispense Himself into His chosen people so that they may have Him for their enjoyment and also as their life, life supply, and everything they need for the life of the new creation. This is the divine reality as revealed in the Epistles of John.
Many Christians today do not pay attention to this divine reality. Instead, to them everything concerning God and salvation is objective. They have only an objective God, objective Savior, objective redemption, objective salvation, objective justification, and objective reconciliation. They may believe many fundamental doctrines, but all these doctrines are merely objective and are used to form a religion. In the spiritual lexicon of these Christians there is no such word as enjoyment.
The Bible reveals that God is our enjoyment and He is food to us. According to the pure Word, God is edible (John 6:57). After the creation of man, we have the tree of life. Then in God’s redemption and salvation as typified by the history of Israel, we see the eating of the Passover lamb with the unleavened bread. After the children of Israel entered the wilderness, they daily ate manna, which is a type of Christ. Although certain Christians realize that manna is a type of Christ, they do not realize that the Lord Jesus is edible. In chapter six of the Gospel of John the Lord Jesus reveals that He is the bread of life and that we need to eat Him. Furthermore, we remember Him at His table by eating and drinking Him.
The Lord Jesus established the table by taking bread, blessing it, passing it on to the disciples, and telling them to eat it. He charged them to do this in remembrance of Him. This indicates that the Lord’s way for us to remember Him is not by kneeling or prostrating ourselves. Rather, what honors Him is that we remember Him by eating Him. The principle is the same with the drinking of the cup.
It is vital that we all see what the divine reality is. The Divine Trinity should become our subjective enjoyment. This is the divine reality, and this is what has been neglected by Christians today. Therefore, in the Lord’s recovery we have been charged by the Lord to pay full attention to this matter.
In the recovery we should not have the words “reality” and “truth” as mere terms. If we have only terms, then we are still in the realm of doctrine, although it may be doctrine of a higher standard and more complete truth. We all need to see that the truth, the reality, is the divine Person—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit—becoming our enjoyment and even our constituent.
In both 2 and 3 John the apostle John speaks of loving in the truth. In 2 John 1 he also says that those who have known the truth also love the receiver of the Epistle in truth, because of the truth which abides in us and will be with us forever (2 John 2). Furthermore, both in 2 John 4 and in 3 John 3 and 4 John is happy to see that his children are walking in the truth, that they are walking in the enjoyment of the Triune God. The reason we love others is that we enjoy the Triune God and that the Triune God enjoyed by us is love. Because we enjoy the Triune God, love flows out of us to others. Because we take into us the God who is love, because we “eat” God as love, we become love. Concerning this matter, we are reminded of the saying, “You are what you eat.” The result of eating God is that we love others in truth.
Beginning in the first century, distractions and replacements of the divine reality began to creep in. Among Christians today there are a great many replacements, substitutes, for Christ. Many have Christ only in name.
In order to experience and enjoy the Triune God in a practical way, we need to see that He is the Spirit dwelling in our regenerated spirit. This Spirit is the all-inclusive, compound, life-giving Spirit, who is the consummation of the processed Triune God. This Spirit may be considered the “extract” of the Triune God. Just as the extracts of certain substances used as medicine or for cooking may be quite strong, so the Spirit as the extract of the Triune God is very strong. Today our God is the Spirit in our spirit. If we turn to our spirit, stay in our spirit, and exercise our spirit to call on the name of the Lord and pray-read the Word, we shall enjoy the Triune God. Then this enjoyment will change us, transform us, and shape our way of life.