2 John 1:1-4 (ESV)

[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.

[4] I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father.

Five times in these four verse John refers to truth. This little letter of 2 John is all about truth. John loves truth. He is writing to those who know the truth. Truth is in them and will be in them forever. God’s grace, mercy, and peace in connected to truth. Those to whom he is writing are walking in truth. The command of God in this chapter is connected to walking in truth. Those who are bringing untruth are not to be shown hospitality. It is all about truth.

The lie that we have bought into is that truth is relative. What is truth for one person does not have to be truth for another, but that belies the very meaning of the word. Truth is truth. It is that which aligns with what it true. It is the expression of that which really is. In Christ we have truth. We do not have truth for us. We have truth. We are not to walk according to truth for us. We are to walk according to truth. We are not to guard our truth, we are to guard the truth. Truth is truth.

It is a sad condition of our times that even in churches that claim to stand on truth, divisions regularly occur over perception rather than truth. It is a sad condition of our time that we often embrace poor arguments to support our positions not because they support truth, but because they support what we want truth to be. It seems almost impossible to have a conversation around the scriptures with the humility that allows us to actually study the scriptures. “Where stands it written?” used to be the cry of the Christian whether preacher or layperson. Today it seems that we are more interested in preserving our positions, protecting our feelings, and guarding our idea of truth rather than humbly seeking truth.

Imagine if Luther had taken that approach, or David Brainerd, or the five missionaries who gave their lives to reach the Aucas, or the Northwoods preachers who brought the gospel to the logging camps of northern Minnesota. Where would we be then? Luther would still be Catholic. David Brainerd would never have taken the gospel to the Indigenous communities of this continent. The Aucas would still not have the gospel, and many families in Minnesota would never have been exposed to the gospel. But these individuals were willing to study the scriptures with the humility that caused Luther to recognize he had been wrong, and that challenged others to take the gospel to people and places they had no natural inclination to go.

Too many of us like to think of ourselves as standing on truth and standing for truth. But standing for truth starts with humility. Too often we have been driven more by the need to be right, or the desire to be safe, than by the humility to search the scriptures honestly and stand on them. Today, let us search our hearts and our motives. Are we more interested in being right or safe than in knowing and walking in biblical truth? Let us pick up our Bibles today with humility and ask the Spirit to speak.