3 John "Walk in Truth"
Each book in the Bible gently guides God's people into a more intimate relationship with their Creator, as He knows must occur, for His people to receive Him in the depth of the relationship that He purchased for them. Each day we are covering, in sequential order, one of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament and explaining how each of them is revealing God in a more intimate way than has been given to this point in the scriptures.
Today is the twenty-fifth day of the series, “The Progressive Revelation of Jesus Christ” and the book is, 3 John, the twenty-fifth book in the New Testament as it appears in our Bible. 3 John is a letter written to a Christian who is “walking in truth.”
John addresses the letter to, “The elder unto the wellbeloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth.” “In the truth” would not be understood by non-Christians, but is the most intimate reference to Jesus Christ during a greeting in any of the Bible thus far. “In” is a statement of the orientation of the relationship, and “the truth” is what Jesus is. When God’s people are “in the truth,” they have received the state of perfection that He purchased for them being one with Him.
John’s first statement to Gaius is, “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” This displays how John thought of him, God looks at His people, and the depth of the revelation that can be received to understand who God’s people are even to themselves. This depth of revelation comes only two books before the final one in the Bible and is setting His people up to receive His truth as only He can on this amazing journey that He has sent all of His people to experience.
John conveys God’s message again that He made in his address in this letter, but even deeper by saying, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” To “Walk in truth” is the active state of being in the truth. This active state, instead of just the being state, is one of the final states of the relation.
John continues by writing, “Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath not seen God.” Clarifying that God’s people are directly united with Him and a portion of Him; thereby, seeing Him from the inside and understanding the portion they are; while, the others have not seen Him; because no man has ever seen God, but His people are more than man they are Spirit man.
The examples in this blog are only a limited sample of the deepening relational revelation described through the letter titled “3 John.”
The intent of the blog is to demonstrate the difference in the revelation that God gives to His people as they intently follow Him and focus on what He has told them through their individual lives, and the revelation they’ve received through the Holy Spirit and His Holy Bible.
Tomorrow I will share how “Jude” brings an even more intimate portrait of the relationship through writing, “Keep yourselves in the love of God.”
