Carriers Of The Plague
CARRIERS OF THE PLAGUE
2 JOHN 7-13
Do your own particular views enhance the glory of Christ?
For verse 7, see 1 John 2:18; 4:3. In one way or another false teachers try to diminish the importance of Christ in order to emphasize their doctrine. Whenever anyone suggests that their views should take priority in a Christian’s life and thinking, they have become an antichrist. Unbalanced doctrine, even if not positively false, leads to unbalanced thought and action, and this will lead to an unbalanced reward, ie something will be missing (v.8). “Anyone who goes ahead” (v.9): Phillips gets the meaning excellently with, “The man who is so ‘advanced’ that he is not content with what Christ taught.” Where true love exists, there will be the willingness to believe that God’s love has revealed all that is necessary, and that, in any case, ideas that only puzzle my fellow Christians have no real place in Christian teaching. We generally assume they are too uneducated, too conservative, too unintelligent (how loving!) to understand; love would suggest that it is their spirituality that makes them turn from my ideas. The refusal of greeting (v.10) shows that John is not writing about the casual stranger, whose views would be unknown, but about a known teacher claiming the right to propagate their views. To receive such a false teacher would be as senseless as welcoming the carrier of plague or other major infectious disease. Probably John was thinking about certain teachers going round the area, but he did not wish to put too much on paper, in case the letter should fall into the hands of the authorities. The person who has given themselves to the perversion of truth will also twist the fact that I have given them hospitality and will claim that my action has given him a testimonial of respectability.
It is not always wise to write too much. Very much harm has been done to Christian work in the mission field and in lands hostile to Christianity by enthusiastic reports that have fallen into the wrong hands. So John was prepared to leave what else was to be said until he could visit the church to which he had sent his warning.