Today’s Podcast
Today’s Scriptures
Today’s Bible reading plans include:
Ready – 2 John
Set – Psalms 79; 2 John
Go! – Jeremiah 37-39; Psalms 79; 2 John
2 John
1 I, the elder, to you, a lady chosen by God along with her children. I truly love all of you and am confident that all who know the truth share in my love for you. 2 The truth, which lives faithfully within all of us and will be with us for all eternity, is the basis for our abounding love. 3 May grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Jesus the Anointed, the Father’s own Son, surround you and be with you always in truth and love.
4 I was so filled with joy to hear stories about your children walking in truth, in the very way the Father called us to live. 5 So now, dear lady, I am asking you to live by the command that we love one another. I’m not writing to you some new commandment; it’s one we received in the beginning from our Lord. 6 Love is defined by our obedience to His commands. This is the same command you have known about from the very beginning; you must live by it. 7 The corrupt world is filled with liars and frauds who deny the reality that Jesus the Anointed has come into the world as a man of flesh and blood. These people are deceivers and antiChrists. 8 Ensure that you do not lose what we have worked for so that you will be fully rewarded.
9 Any person who drifts away and fails to live in the teachings of the Anointed One, our Liberating King, does not have God. But the person who lives in this teaching will have both the Father and the Son. 10 If any person comes to you with a teaching that does not align with the true message of Jesus, do not welcome that person into your house or greet him as you would a true brother. 11 Anyone who welcomes this person has become a partner in advancing his wicked agenda.
12 I have so much more to tell you, but I would rather meet with you personally than try to capture these sentiments by ink on paper. I hope to come and see you so that our joy will be complete.
13 The children of your chosen sister send you warm greetings.
Today’s Devotional
From today’s background scripture God might say:
This isn’t the only personal letter John wrote to prominent people in the early churches, but it is typical. John wants to make sure individuals, including you, understand My commands. John got it. He learned well from Me as he walked with Me for those three years as one of My faithful disciples. He figured out that God is love, something taught to every child in Sunday School class.
Throughout all My teachings to all the crowds across all those towns we visited, the message was the same. Love. Sometimes it came with different words and with different expressions. Sometimes it came through healing. Sometimes it came through feeding thousands with the gift of a boy’s lunch. Sometimes it was showing pity at the funeral of a widow’s only son and raising him to life again. I expressed My love for others in a lot of different ways, but always I showed My love to those around Me. Even as I addressed the Pharisees with harsh words about their wrong teaching, it was because of My love for them and wanting to show them the falacy of their teaching and My desire to bring them back to a right relationship with the Father.
John understood My command to love Me and to love others. So in all his letters he emphasizes the need to live in a constant state of love. He admonishes his readers to be wary of anyone who doesn’t recognize Me as coming from the Father because My message and My life personifies the Father and shows that He and I are One. The false teachers alive in John’s day have not gone silent, either. Still their voices cry out.
Today false prophet declare that I am not one with the Father. Some will say I am God but not man. They will tell you I never walked in the flesh and that all flesh is corrupt and cannot possibly live in this world without sin. They cannot believe I could have lived a sinless life in this world for thirty-three years, so I must not have been a real man, only spirit. Others will say I was a real man, but only a prophet, a good man, a good teacher, but not God.
John clears the air in his letter to the chosen lady and makes clear hear and in his other writings that I am both fully God and fully Man. You cannot understand how it works because you are not God. It is beyond your understand how I managed to make it happen. But you can trust that I did. My word is true. Everything I have said would happen has or will happen. All the archeologists are uncovering all those facts that naysayers said never happened. Believe Me. I am who I say. Just trust Me. Listen to My commands and love.
The Voice Bible Copyright © 2012 Thomas Nelson, Inc. The Voice™ translation © 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society All rights reserved. In accordance with the requirements for FTC full disclosure, I may have affiliate relationships with some or all of the producers of the items mentioned in this post who may provide a small commission to me when purchased through this site.