Date: 23 March 2025, 9.30 am
Speaker: Ps Luwin Wong Sermon Text: 2 John 1-13
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TRANSCRIPT
A few weeks back I was speaking to Inez, and at the time she had just returned from Australia. She visited Sidney, in Tasmania. Her friend’s name is Sidney, she lives in Tasmania. I feel like her friend should just move to Sydney and live there, instead of confusing everybody.
Apparently, Sidney, born and bred in Singapore, but having moved to Australia, has since forsaken all fundamental tenets of Asian home living. She told Inez to please wear her shoes indoors.
Imagine that, coming from outside, walking over the gravel and the dirt, and then stepping indoors with the same shoes?
Inez is like, “No, I shouldn’t”. Sidney says, “Don’t worry, it’s carpeted”.
“What do you mean, don’t worry? The fact that it’s carpeted only makes it worse. It makes us more worried about wearing shoes indoors, right?”
If I walked into my house with my shoes on, and stepped on my mum’s carpet in the living room, I wouldn’t need shoes anymore. No more legs.
But it goes to show that acceptable behaviours varies widely from culture to culture.
Consider this list of cultural faux pas around the world complied by Alta.
Faux pas #1: Japan and China – Pointing chopsticks upright in a rice bowl.
Faux pas #2: Italy – Ordering a Cappuccino after midday.
Faux pas #3: Korea – Don’t smile at strangers.
Considering the various faux pas you may unwittingly commit when travelling abroad, I, prior to visiting the US for the first time last year, decided I should google to find out what are the taboo subjects I should avoid when making small talk in the US.
Apparently, there are three conversation topics to avoid in casual social settings. in the US: “Religion, politics and sexuality”. Why? Because these subject matters are prone to be divisive, they very easily lead towards division.
Why? Because these issues are deeply personal and people can’t see eye to eye on them. They can’t find agreement. People can have very different, polarising beliefs on these very deeply personal subjects.
If all you watched on TV was MSNBC, and all you read was The New Yorker, you would think Trump is the source of all your problems. But if all you watched was FOX News, and all you read was The New York Post, you’d think Trump was the answer to all your problems.
Because people on both sides of the spectrum believe different things, what is true for one side is fake-news for the other, and vice versa.
So, if you want to peace, and harmony and unity around a dinner table, avoid these personal topics that requires you to sort out truth from lies and black from white.
Apparently, the uniting, harmonising, peace-keeping thing to do, is to steer clear away from topics that deal with truths that are deeply held by people. Why? Because people don’t always agree, they don’t always see things the same way, they don’t always hold the same beliefs. Truth tends to be divisive.
And so, in our experience, we understand and recognise the reality of the saying, “Truth divides, but love unites”, or to frame in Christian terms, “Doctrines Divide, but Love Unites.”
Indeed, Christian authors have even titled books attesting to this fact.
In other words, it appears, that to our modern sensibilities, a dividing line has been drawn between truth and love. And we are obliged to make a choice between them.
Do we go emphasise doctrine, and diminish our love, or do we prioritize love, and compromise our doctrine?
I suspect that if you put this choice to the apostle John, he would say that’s asking him to choose between two wings of a plane. It can’t be done. Love and truth, like the two wings of a plane, are not at odds with each other; rather work together, the serve the same ends, they pull in the same direction.
Consider how he speaks of the relationship between truth and love in letter on 2nd John.
2 JOHN 1-3
1 The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth, 2 because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever:
3 Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father's Son, in truth and love.
The elect lady does not refer to a particular individual, it’s the way John addresses the church, the lady – the bride of Christ – to whom he writes.
And what does he say? He says he loves them in the truth. What a way to frame love – in the context of truth.
And he is not the only who loves them in the truth, it is also all who know the truth. They too love them in the truth.
Why? “Because of the truth that abides in them”. In some way, which we will look into more closely later, the love that believers have for one another, is couched in the context of truth; their love for one another is because of, it is the consequence of, it is by reason of, the truth.
In John’s theology, truth and love are not opposed, they are in fact allies.
Which is why John, who is called “the apostle of love”, writes so much about the “truth”.
And he continues:
3 Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father's Son, in truth and love.
The great blessings of God, the grace, mercy and peace of the Father and the Son, comes to us, and is with us, in truth and love.
So truth and love is not just essential for our relationship with one another. It is not applicable only to our horizontal relationship. But our relationship with God. Our vertical relationship is likewise grounded in truth and love.
And there’s more:
2 JOHN 4-6
4 I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father. 5 And now I ask you, dear lady—not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one 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, so that you should walk in it.
I’m not going to expound on these verses just yet. I just want us to notice the relationship that the apostle John posits between truth and love.
We begin by walking the truth, which the apostle says is what God has commanded, and then the commandment, he says, is to love one another.
So what is the commandment? Is it to walk in the truth, or to love another? It’s both really. It seems like they’re two sides of the same coin; the twin prongs of God’s commandment.
And he reiterates:
This is love, that we walk according to his commandments; the commandment, we should walk in it.
And so we come full circle. This passage opens with the idea that walking according to the commandment is to walk in the truth. Which John now says is the description of love.
It’s almost like John uses the terms truth and love interchangeably, when he speaks of God’s commandment, of God’s will for his people.
So no, Christians don’t choose between truth and love. We don’t choose between the two wings of a plane. Truth and love, in the Christian’s worldview are allies, they are concomitant. They serve the same the ends, they pull in the same direction, they obey the one and the same commandment.
Now how can this be? Does it not run counter to our lived experience? Does not our experience attest to the statement: “Truth divides, but Love unites”?
Well, not exactly, if we dig deeper beneath the surface.
The reason we desire truth is because it is best for us to live according to the truth.
We want our doctors to give us the truth, even if it makes us sad, even if it makes us mad, because only if we have a truthful diagnosis, can we determine the best prognosis.
We want our politician to tell us the truth, because only if they are truthful, can we make the best possible choice when vote.
We value truth because we want what’s best for our lives.
And friends, love seeks the same thing. Love seeks what is best for the beloved. We want what is best for the one whom we love.
Do you see how truth is necessary complement to love?
Let me give you an example.
During COVID-19. There arose an anti-vax movement in Singapore, which repercussions are still being felt in our courts today. MOH had to repeatedly shut down websites with false information about vaccine safety and issue statements and infographics to educate the public with the truth about vaccinations.
Now there are some parents today, in Singapore, who refuse to vaccinate their children not just from Covid-19, but the entire slew of recommended and mandatory childhood vaccinations, which includes hepatitis, tetanus, polio, and measles.
Why? Because they love their children, and their love seeks what’s best for their children.
Ironically, because they have believed in falsehoods about vaccinations, they end up doing what is actually risky and even harmful for their children.
In other words, to be a truly loving parent, your love must be accompanied by the truth. Any lies you embrace are inherently harmful and are therefore incompatible with love, which seeks the greatest good of the beloved.
But let’s bring the conversation back to religion. I met someone recently whose father is a Christian, and whose mother is a Muslim. And he embraced a faith which believes that all religions are legitimate ways to God.
So I asked him, “Christianity believes Jesus is the only way to God. Islam believes that the Prophet Muhammad is the only way to God. You believe that both Jesus and Muhammad are different ways to God. You can’t all be right. Someone’s got to be wrong. How do you navigate this tension within your family.”
He said, “There is no tension, we just focus on the common ground.” That is certainly one way to maintain peace and harmony and unity within the family.
But given the monumental and eternal consequences of truth and error when it comes to religion, I wonder if a Christian can be truly loving by simply focusing on the common ground.
Truth and love walk according to the commandment of God. And they walk hand in hand.
And one of the things that the alliance of truth and loves does, is unite. Truth and Love unites.
We have seen this already.
2 JOHN 1-3
1 The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth, 2 because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever:
The truth unites the apostle, the church to whom he is writing, and even the saints all over the world. All who know the truth are united in love.
In other words, if you asked John, why do you love the church? Why do Christians love each other? He tells us, “because of the truth of the truth that abides in us”.
Does love unite? Of course it does. But so does truth.
The saints united in love because of truth are also united with God in truth and love.
Truth and love unites, not least because they walk the same path, they’re on the same lane, the fulfil the same purpose – namely, the commandment of God.
Now, “Walking in the truth” is a term that is unique to the apostle John. It means to live in a way consistent with the revelation which Jesus Christ has brought to mankind.
To walk in the truth means to assume a distinctive Christian worldview. To view reality through the lens of the Gospel. To think about the world with the mind of Christ.
And because Jesus, as John writes in his gospel, is “the way, the truth and the life”, a life of walking in the truth can be described as walking in the steps of Christ.
And interestingly, walking in the steps of Christ, imitating the life of Christ, is to walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
In other words, the incarnation of Jesus Christ is the hub of the wheel from which truth, commands, and love emanate.
When we follow Jesus Christ,
we will necessarily obey the commandments of God,
we will walk in the truth of his revelation,
we will walk in love for the saints.
In Christ, it all comes together. For the God whose name is love is the God who says, “I am the truth”.
As an illustration, we can think of truth and love as a magnet.
A magnet attracts, it pulls together, it unites the people of God, it brings into fellowship the disciples of Christ.
But magnet also repels, that which is opposite to it, falsehood.
So while truth will unite those who seek it and walk in it, it will repel, and thereby divide those who walk in falsehood. If you love the truth you must resist and repel and reject falsehood.
So the alliance of Truth and Love unites, but they also divide.
And that’s what we see in the latter part of this letter.
2 JOHN 7-9
7 For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. 8 Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward.
9 Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.
John is warning the church, whose in whom the truth abides, those who walk in the truth, that there those who are the opposite of them. That is, there are such people in the world in whom the truth does not abide, who do not walk in the truth.
They are the deceivers, and in so far as Christ is truth, they are thus the anti-Christ.
And he warns them that if they are not careful, their reward in Christ, can be lost to these deceivers, these anti-Christs, who do not confess Jesus Christ.
In other words, horizontally speaking, these deceivers are divided from the church. They are not on the same side.
And these deceivers are also, divided vertically.
9 Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God.Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.
Just as magnet attracts, it also repels.
And those who do hold on to the truth and divided from those who do, both in their horizontal and vertical relationships.
So what is the church to do with these deceivers, who do not abide in the teaching of Christ? Who preach a different Gospel. Proclaiming fake news instead of good news?
2 JOHN 10-11
10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching (that is, the apostolic teaching), do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, 11 for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.
The apostle John is emphatic in his call for Christians to love one another.
He is intent and intense on stressing to the church the command to love one another.
In this letter, he writes, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning- that we love one another
He records the same thing in the gospel, in the words of Christ “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another”.
And in his first letter, which we heard just weeks ago, he says: And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
So we John say, “Love one another, love another, love another”, but these group of people, do not welcome and do not greet.
He draws a clear divide between the church and the deceivers. He commands a clear separation between those who hold to the teaching of Christ and those who preach a different Christ.
Why? Because truth is inseparably wed with love, they are two sides of the same coin, two wings of a plane.
John has told us before, “The truth is not in you, if there is no love for your brother in you” Here he says, “There can be no brotherly love, for those who do not have the truth”.
Why? Because it us unloving to deceive your brother. Love does not do that. Love wants what’s best for the beloved, so love protects against harm; love guards against deception.
So we tell our children, don’t we, don’t hang out with these group of people, they are bad influences, they will you astray. And we say it because of love.
We do the same for our church family. We warn one another against false teachers, we guard one another against false teaching. That is an act of love. Love insists upon the best, and therefore insists upon the truth.
I was once in a Christian Whatsapp chat group, which included many members. And they will send one another bible verses every now and then, share their takeaways from their devotions and books they are reading, or sermons they listened to.
And I wasn’t active contributor to the chat, I just read what others post. I was happy to just be a passive member of the group. Until one day, one of them started posting stuff which promoted the idea of universalism – that is, everyone will be saved in the end, there will be no one going to hell, because God’s sovereign grace will triumph over universal human sin. Which is heresy. You believe in that, you run the risk of compromising not just the mission of the church, but the salvation of your soul.
So I felt compelled to speak up to refute this false and dangerous teaching of universalism. The person who posted it did not accept my arguments, and after some back and forth, a third person chimed in and said, “When Christians argue, Satan wins, so let’s agree to disagree.”
And I replied, “Let’s not. Let’s agree to agree with what God said, shall we?”
Long story short, they closed the group. How does it feel to be responsible for dividing community of professing Christians? Not great. But that’s the demand of truth and love.
Love rejoices with the truth. Tolerating deception which runs the risk of damnation is not loving.
Truth and Love unites, but Truth and Love also divides.
2 JOHN 10-11
10 If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, 11 for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.
But on this point, perhaps I’m preaching to the choir aren’t I?
After all, on pg 150 of the book, Heritage and Legacy of the Bible Presbyterian Church in Singapore, published by the BPCIS, it is stated: the BP Church will be remembered as a church born and bred on its stand of separation.”
Indeed when you look up the Wikipedia entry on The Bible Presbyterian Church in Singapore, you will find heading “divisions” right beneath a brief description of our history.
And when you expand the contents under the heading of Divisions, you will find a litany of recorded disputes, disagreements, dissolutions and even lawsuits in its midst.
But we weren’t dividing over the truth of Jesus Christ, we were arguing and dividing over things such as speaking in tongues and Bible versions, interpretations of the Millenium, whether or not we should support Billy Graham’s evangelistic rallies in Singapore.
We were at the time, the fastest growing Christian denomination in Singapore, all that was lost when we seemingly divided over anything and everything we found in the bible.
Our history is a cautionary tale that infighting among Christians about things that are not essential to the heart of the gospel, can be stumbling rather than edifying. Not every single teaching is the sort of truth that is necessary to divide over.
When every issue is defined as a life-or-death struggle for the gospel, the force of the apostle John’s prohibition is blunted and the command to love others is violated.
The reason we build walls, is not so much to attack the people without, but to protect the people within. Our walls must be constructed because of love, of what we are defending.
There is a danger of overfocusing on the wall. When you stationed yourself the wall for too long, there is risk that all your attention becomes focused on you on the enemies you must attack, rather than the city you must protect.
And then over time, we shall come to be better known for what we stand against, rather than what we stand for.
To avoid this there is a need for theological triage.
We are all familiar with medical triage.
When you go to A&E, they don’t work not a first-come-first-served basis. What happens is that they will prioritize your visit to the doctor according to the urgency of your case.
If you have a heart attack, you go straight into the treatment room. If you sprained your ankle, you hang tight in the waiting room.
Because not everything is a matter of life and death. And treating everything as if it were, will lead to the deaths of the people who are in actual emergencies.
There are two sides to a cliff, two equal and opposite dangers to avoid.
The first is minimalism – where we downplay the demands of truth.
The second is sectarianism – where downplay the demands of love.
Truth and love must go hand-in-hand.
We must divide, but we divide judiciously. We must divide only when necessary.
In his book, Finding the Right Hills to Die On: The Case for Theological Triage, Gavin Ortlund, gives three ranks of doctrinal importance.
First-rank doctrines are essential for the of the gospel. They are essential to proclaim or defend the gospel.
Second-rank doctrines are urgent for the church (but not essential to the gospel).
The third tier consists of both doctrines that are “important for Christian doctrine (but not essential to the gospel or necessarily urgent for the church),” and “indifferent (they are theologically unimportant)”
We must only divide on first-rank doctrines. Doctrines which are needed to defend the gospel, and to proclaim the gospel.
Why, because the command we received is essentially a positive command. It is a command to abide in the truth and to love the church. The command isn’t essentially a negative command to divide or separate. We must get our focus clear.
And so the apostle concludes his letter this way:
2 JOHN 12-13
12 Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink.
Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete.
13 The children of your elect sister greet you.
He ends, not on a note of separation or division, but on a note of love and unity, and of joy in fellowship. That’s the shape of the gospel. Joyful, personal fellowship with God and one another. That’s why Jesus came. And by his grace, where Truth and Love will lead us.
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