1, 2, 3 John / Jude
Marked by Truth and Love
All right, church, it is good to see you here this week. Can you believe it? We are just about done with our Generations series. It has been going on for the better part of a year now. Next week, Brad is going to take us home in the book of Revelation. Maybe we will get lucky and Christ will return, culminating this series right off the bat! That would be fantastic.
In the meantime, we are taking on no simple task today. We are going to look at the four books right before Revelation—four short books: 1, 2, and 3 John, and the book of Jude. Go ahead and jump to Jude; we are going to start there. It is the second-to-last book in your Bible. Four books, eight chapters total, and hopefully we are going to learn a little bit about the Lord and what He desires for His church.
While you are turning there, let me share one of the things the Bible communicates over and over again when it comes to Christ’s church, when it comes to us as His body and His bride. Of all the characteristics that mark us as followers of Christ, two stand out in the Scriptures probably more than any other: that you and I, as followers of Christ, would be a people passionately committed to the truth of Christ and passionately committed to the love of Christ. We are called to be marked by both truth and love.
Throughout the Scriptures, the Bible is absolutely clear about truth.
John 8:32 (NASB)
and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’
John 14:6 (NASB)
Jesus said to him, ’I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.
In John 17, Jesus prayed for His church—He prayed for you and me—asking that God would sanctify us, mature us, and set us apart in the truth. Even Paul told a young Timothy that he must rightly handle the word of truth. In John 4, when Jesus spoke with the woman at the well, He said true worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. All throughout the Scriptures, we see that we are to be marked by a passionate pursuit of the truth of Christ.
John 17:17 (NASB)
’Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth.
John 4:24 (NASB)
‘God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.’
2 Timothy 2:15 (NASB)
Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.
Likewise, the Scriptures tell us repeatedly that we are to passionately pursue the love of Christ. We should be a people of love. In 1 John 4, we are told that God Himself is love; that is His very nature. In Matthew 22, echoing Leviticus, Jesus gave the Great Commandment: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. Over and over in the Scriptures, we are commanded to love one another. In Matthew 5, Jesus even told us to love our enemies—to love those we do not naturally want to love.
1 John 4:8 (NASB)
The one who does not love does not know God, for God is love.
Matthew 22:37-39 (NASB)
And He said to him, ’‘YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND.’ ’This is the great and foremost commandment. ’The second is like it, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’
Matthew 5:44 (NASB)
’But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
The Pendulum Swing of Church History
All throughout Scripture, we are called to be marked by truth and by love. But the problem is, this has been a real struggle for the church over the centuries. Finding that balance somewhere in the middle—how to be fully committed to truth and fully committed to love—has been difficult. Church culture over the last few decades has often polarized these two virtues.
Prior to the 1960s, on the heels of the modernistic era, the church was largely marked by truth—a vigorous, tenacious drive for truth. The culture understood and embraced the idea of absolute truth: that there is truth that is true for all people, at all times, in all places. Church culture centered on that, giving birth to conferences and seminars where we could drill down and learn how to rightly handle the Word of God.
Then came the 1960s, and everything began to shift. I am not just talking about the counterculture in the secular world; I am talking about right within our own church culture. We began to realize that as awesome as the previous generation was in its pursuit of truth, so many people had been neglected in the process. There were civil rights injustices that had been met with a blind eye, and cultural issues that were handled poorly and without compassion. People looked at the church and said, “Yes, you are committed to truth, but where is the love?”
Following the sixties, the pendulum swung hard to the other side. As a church, we are notorious for swinging between extremes. We went from all truth and no love to all love and no truth. We began to see a massive rise in interest in social justice and caring for the marginalized. An old saying attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi became popular again: “Preach the gospel at all times; when necessary, use words.” The emphasis became making sure people saw our love rather than just hearing our doctrines.
We love to polarize. To find that balance where we are known as a church absolutely marked by love and truth at the exact same time has been our great struggle. But what you will find in these four short books—1, 2, 3 John, and Jude—is that the authors show us exactly what it looks like to be a people marked by both truth and love.
Jude: Contending for the Faith
Let us start with the book of Jude. When it comes to defending the truth, contending for Christ, casting down false speculations, and rightly handling doctrine, Jude is a classic text. It is only one chapter, just a handful of verses, but Jude addresses truth with intentionality.
Jude was written around 68 to 70 AD, likely just a few years after 1 and 2 Peter. We know Jude was the brother of James and the half-brother of Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph. He writes to dispersed Jewish Christians who were being plagued by false teaching invading the church.
Right out of the gate, in verse 3, Jude reveals his original intention: he wanted to write about the great salvation we share in Christ. But because false teaching had infiltrated the church, he had to change direction.
Jude 1:3 (NASB)
Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints.
Just like in our day, competing heresies were seeking to water down the gospel and neutralize the truth of Jesus Christ. Jude says we cannot let that happen. We must actively proclaim and defend that truth.
Jude unfolds in roughly three movements:
First, in verses 5 through 7, he addresses the false teachers who preach against the person and work of Jesus Christ. He reminds his readers that judgment awaits them, just as it did throughout Genesis and Exodus. Those who preach heresy and water down the gospel will face God’s judgment. Jude warns the church: do not align yourselves with these false teachers or assume their words are harmless.
Jude 1:5-7 (NASB)
Now I desire to remind you, though you know all things once for all, that the Lord, after saving a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. And angels who did not keep their own domain, but abandoned their proper abode, He has kept in eternal bonds under darkness for the judgment of the great day, just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them, since they in the same way as these indulged in gross immorality and went after strange flesh, are exhibited as an example in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire.
Second, in verses 8 through 16, Jude tells us how to spot these false teachers. Some of them you can smell a mile away. They are marked by gratifying their own flesh rather than submitting to the will of God; their teaching is about their gain, not God’s glory. They rely on subjective, mystical experiences, claiming special revelations or elitist knowledge rather than resting on the Word of God. They are motivated by greed and self-advancement.
Other false teachers are harder to spot. Jude compares them to hidden reefs beneath the water. They look like you and sit in your gatherings, but beneath the surface, they are waiting to shipwreck your faith. They are like clouds without rain, trees without fruit, and wandering stars—they promise much, but deliver nothing.
Jude 1:8-16 (NASB)
Yet in the same way these men, also by dreaming, defile the flesh, and reject authority, and revile angelic majesties. But Michael the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment, but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you!’ But these men revile the things which they do not understand; and the things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals, by these things they are destroyed. Woe to them! For they have gone the way of Cain, and for pay they have rushed headlong into the error of Balaam, and perished in the rebellion of Korah. These are the men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever. [It was] also about these men [that] Enoch, [in] the seventh [generation] from Adam, prophesied, saying, ‘Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.’ These are grumblers, finding fault, following after their [own] lusts; they speak arrogantly, flattering people for the sake of [gaining an] advantage.
Third, in verses 17 through 23, Jude gives us the defense against these heresies. He tells us to remember the Scriptures, which already warned us that false teachers would come. Then, in verse 21, he provides the crucial balance between truth and love.
Jude 1:20-21 (NASB)
But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting anxiously for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to eternal life.
Jude says you must build yourselves up in the faith, pray in the Holy Spirit, and keep yourselves in God’s love. When I was taught Bible study methods in seminary, they explained that the US Treasury does not study every counterfeit bill in existence; they simply study the genuine dollar bill so thoroughly that they instantly spot a fake. In the same way, when you study the Word of God and embrace the genuine gospel deeply, you will spot false teaching immediately.
The church is not called to be a passive spectator against cultural heresies. We are called to actively contend for the faith, grounded in truth while guarding our hearts to persevere in love.
1 John: The Tangible Reality of Christ
Now flip back a few pages to 1 John. Between the writing of Jude and 1 John, about twenty-five to thirty years passed. That is the largest chronological gap between books in the New Testament. In that thirty-year window, roughly sixty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus, almost the entire first generation of the church had passed away. Paul was martyred, Peter was martyred, and every disciple was dead except one: the apostle John.
By this time, the church had spread all over the known world, but so had heresy. One of the primary heresies arising during this period was Gnosticism, from the Greek word gnosis, meaning knowledge. The Gnostics claimed to possess an elite, secret spiritual knowledge that only the spiritually enlightened could access. Whenever you hear anyone claim they have a secret word from God that no one else has, that has cult written all over it.
A core belief of Gnosticism was that all physical matter was inherently evil, including the human body. Because of that belief, they concluded that a holy God could never take on physical human flesh. Therefore, they claimed Jesus was merely a phantom or a hologram—He was never truly human. If you lose the physical humanity of Jesus, you lose the bodily resurrection. And as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, if Christ is not raised, our faith is futile, and we are of all people most to be pitied.
1 Corinthians 15:14-19 (NASB)
and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain. Moreover we are even found [to be] false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.
Here comes John, writing from Ephesus in his eighties or nineties. This is the beloved disciple—the one who stood at the foot of the cross when everyone else fled. Imagine someone walking in today and saying, “I don’t think World War II or the Holocaust ever really happened,” until a ninety-year-old veteran stands up and says, “Be quiet, son. I was there. I saw it.” That is John. He steps into the conversation and shuts down the heresy.
1 John 1:1-3 (NASB)
What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life– and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us– what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.
John says, “We heard Him, we saw Him with our eyes, we looked upon Him, and our hands touched Him.” Jesus was not an illusion. He is the eternal Son of God who came in real human flesh.
Seven Marks of Hypocrisy
Starting in 1 John 1:5 through the end of chapter 2, John lays out seven characteristics of hypocrisy—someone who claims to have the truth, but whose life demonstrates the exact opposite:
- Claiming to have fellowship with God while walking in darkness (1 John 1:6).
- Claiming to have no sin, deceiving ourselves (1 John 1:8).
- Claiming to know God while disobeying His commandments (1 John 2:4).
- Claiming to abide in Christ while failing to walk as He walked (1 John 2:6).
- Claiming to be in the light while hating a brother or sister (1 John 2:9).
- Claiming to love the Father while loving the world (1 John 2:15).
- Claiming to have the Father while denying the Son (1 John 2:23).
1 John 1:6 (NASB)
If we say that we have fellowship with Him and [yet] walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;
1 John 2:4 (NASB)
The one who says, ‘I have come to know Him,’ and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him;
1 John 2:9 (NASB)
The one who says he is in the Light and [yet] hates his brother is in the darkness until now.
John shows us what sincere, authentic faith looks like. If you are truly a child of God, your life will reflect the character of your Heavenly Father. At the same time, John exposes the false teachers. Their lives did not align with the character of Christ, proving that their teaching was false.
Walking in Righteousness and Abiding in Love
From chapter 2:28 through chapter 3:10, John explains that children of God must walk in righteousness. Those who habitually, chronically practice sin with no conviction, no repentance, and no transformation do not bear the evidence of being children of God.
1 John 3:8-9 (NASB)
the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.
John is not saying Christians never struggle with sin. We all stumble. John is addressing the habitual, unrepentant duplicity that marked the false teachers. True children of God strive to walk in righteousness.
Then, from 1 John 3:11 through 5:5, John focuses on love. Four times in this section, he addresses his readers as “beloved,” reminding them of their identity. In chapter 3:16, he presents Jesus as the ultimate model of love: He laid down His life for us. In chapter 4:8, he declares that God is love. And in chapter 4:19, he gives us the foundation for all Christian affection.
1 John 3:16 (NASB)
We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
1 John 4:19 (NASB)
We love, because He first loved us.
Early in my walk as a believer, that verse grabbed my heart: we love because He first loved us. If it were not for Jesus, what would our standard of love be? Hollywood? Pop culture? Our only standard for true, unconditional love is how Christ loved us when we did not deserve it. That verse meant so much to me that I had it engraved on the inside of my wife’s wedding band as a reminder that we can only love each other unconditionally by looking to Christ.
Eight times in this section, John commands us to love one another. He concludes that if someone claims to love God while hating their brother, they are a liar. Genuine love must mark the body of Christ.
1 John 4:20-21 (NASB)
If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.
Right alongside this call to love, in 1 John 4:1-6, John tells us to test the spirits to see whether they are from God. If anyone denies the person and work of Jesus Christ, we must reject their teaching. If you ever hear anyone at The Well Community Church get up and preach a gospel of works, diminishing the sufficiency of Jesus Christ, please run out the door. We must remain firmly anchored in the truth.
1 John 4:1-3 (NASB)
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the [spirit] of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.
John closes his first letter in chapter 5 by reaffirming the testimony concerning Jesus through the Spirit, the water (His baptism), and the blood (His cross). You cannot claim to hold to the truth of Christ without manifesting the love of Christ. Nor can you demonstrate genuine love without it being rooted in the truth. They are completely inseparable.
1 John 5:6-8 (NASB)
This is the One who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.
2 and 3 John: Walking in Truth and Love
Now look briefly at 2 and 3 John. Both are single-chapter letters that communicate these same themes through personal narrative.
Third John was written to a faithful Christian named Gaius, a friend of John serving in a local church near Ephesus. In verses 1 through 8, John commends Gaius for two primary qualities: walking in the truth (verse 3) and abiding in love (verse 6).
3 John 1:3-6 (NASB)
For I was very glad when brethren came and testified to your truth, [that is], how you are walking in truth. I have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth. Beloved, you are acting faithfully in whatever you accomplish for the brethren, and especially [when they are] strangers; and they have testified to your love before the church. You will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God.
John also warns Gaius about a man named Diotrephes, who loved to put himself first, acted arrogantly, and refused to show love. John tells Gaius not to imitate evil, but to imitate what is good.
3 John 1:9-11 (NASB)
I wrote something to the church; but Diotrephes, who loves to be first among them, does not accept what we say. For this reason, if I come, I will call attention to his deeds which he does, unjustly accusing us with wicked words; and not satisfied with this, he himself does not receive the brethren, either, and he forbids those who desire [to do so] and puts [them] out of the church. Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does good is of God; the one who does evil has not seen God.
Second John was likely written to the church Gaius attended. In verse 4, John rejoices that they are walking in the truth. But in verses 5 and 6, he admonishes them to make sure they are also walking in love.
2 John 1:4-6 (NASB)
I was very glad to find [some] of your children walking in truth, just as we have received commandment [to do] from the Father. Now I ask you, lady, not as though [I were] writing to you a new commandment, but the one which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it.
John tells them not to let their heads get so full of doctrine that their hearts become cold and empty. Walk in truth, and walk in love.
Finding the Balance: Pit Bulls and Kindergartners
Across these four short books—1, 2, 3 John, and Jude—we are exhorted to be known by our unwavering commitment to the truth of Christ and our radical commitment to the love of Christ. We need to be faithful students of the Word of God, not simply feeding off a pastor’s sermon once a week, but owning the Scriptures for ourselves. At the same time, our zeal for truth must be thoroughly saturated with compassion.
Where do you find yourself naturally gravitating? Most of us have an innate bent toward one side or the other.
Some of you have a tenacious zeal for truth. You study hard, you mine the text, and you know how to contend for the faith. That is a wonderful gift to the church because you help keep us from drifting into cultural compromise. But on a bad day, if we are being honest, some of you can act like doctrinal pit bulls. You roam around looking for someone who doesn’t use the right study Bible or understand the Greek text, ready to attack. You end up biting and devouring your own brothers and sisters, turning open-handed issues into closed-handed battles.
If you are not careful, you will become like the church in Ephesus in Revelation 2. Jesus commended them for testing false teachers and contending for truth, but said, “I have this against you: you have abandoned your first love.”
Revelation 2:2-4 (NASB)
’I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them [to be] false; and you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake, and have not grown weary. ’But I have [this] against you, that you have left your first love.
You can commit bibliolatry—loving the Word of God more than the God of the Word, caring more about winning an argument than about the person standing in front of you. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 13, if you have all knowledge but do not have love, you are just a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
1 Corinthians 13:1-2 (NASB)
If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have [the gift of] prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
On the other end of the spectrum, some of you bleed compassion, grace, and care. You remind us to be the hands and feet of Jesus to the broken and the marginalized. But on a bad day, truth be told, some of you would not recognize false teaching if it bit you. Someone could walk in handing out false doctrine, and you would say, “Oh, look how sincere they are; let’s not be too harsh.” If you are not careful, you become like the spiritual children described in Ephesians 4—tossed back and forth by the waves, blown about by every wind of doctrine.
Ephesians 4:14 (NASB)
As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming;
Both extremes are dangerous. We need to be a church marked by both truth and love.
Rooted in the Gospel
If you find yourself waning in love, look at yourself in the mirror and sink deeply back into the gospel. Remember how you were saved—an undeserving sinner met by the relentless grace and love of Christ. When you abide in that grace, His love will overflow through you.
If you find yourself weak in truth, feeling a mile wide and an inch deep, lean into the resources and community here at The Well. Become equipped. Learn the Scriptures so you can stand firm, anchored in the truth of Christ and no longer tossed around by cultural tides.
May The Well Community Church always be known as a body of believers deeply marked by great truth and great love.
Let’s pray.
Father, we thank You. If it were not for You, if it were not for Jesus Christ, we would not know what truth is, and we would not know what love is. You stepped into our time and space and gave us Your Son. You showed us incarnate love—love that took our sins upon the cross, absorbed the wrath we deserved, and gave us Christ’s righteousness. May that reality fill us with deep gratitude and send us out with active compassion. Protect us from compromise and naivety, and anchor us in Your truth. Make us a church marked by great truth and great love. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.