Walking in Love
Walking in Love, Truth, and Obedience: The Inseparable Three
There is a moment many of us have experienced — the moment someone we love treats us as though we have not grown at all. Perhaps a parent, meaning well, reminds us that no matter how capable or accomplished we have become, we will always be their child. It can sting. It can frustrate. But buried inside that moment is a truth that, when applied to our relationship with God, becomes one of the most liberating realities in the Christian life.
What if the posture God most desires from us is not the confidence of an accomplished adult, but the complete dependence of a small child?
That question sits at the heart of what the apostle John communicates in 2 John — a brief, concentrated letter of only thirteen verses that functions as a kind of booster shot of spiritual truth. It distills the sweeping themes of 1 John into their most essential form: walk in love, walk in truth, and walk in obedience. These three are not separate instructions. They are three expressions of the same reality, like three sides of a single coin, inseparable and mutually sustaining.
The Love That Has to Come From Outside Us
To understand what John means by love, we have to understand that the English word does not carry enough weight. The ancient Greek language used four distinct words for love, and three of them — eros, the love of physical intimacy; storge, the dutiful love of family; and filio, the deep bond of friendship — are part of every human being's natural makeup. We are born with these. They are gifts, and when used rightly, they are good.
But the fourth kind of love, agape, is different. It is not inborn. It does not arise naturally from within us. It comes only from God, and it can only be received through a posture of humility — the humility of a two- or three-year-old who knows they cannot provide for themselves and reaches up to a loving parent.
This is the love that John returns to again and again throughout 1 John — forty times across five chapters, with nearly forty percent of those occurrences concentrated in the fourth chapter alone. The so-called "love chapter" of Scripture may be 1 Corinthians 13, familiar to anyone who has attended a wedding. But in sheer density and depth, 1 John chapter 4 may have the stronger claim to that title.
In 1 John 4:19-20, John makes the connection explicit. The summary is this: we love because God first loved us, and anyone who claims to love God while holding hatred toward a brother or sister in the faith is deceiving themselves. Agape love flows downward from God into us, and then outward from us toward others. If we try to hold it for ourselves alone, it evaporates. It only remains as it moves.
The Truth That Grounds the Love
John's letter does not allow love to float free of truth. The ancient churches he wrote to were being visited by traveling teachers who were spreading ideas about Jesus that sounded plausible but were fundamentally wrong — and John was clear that getting Jesus right was not optional.
Three distortions were circulating. The first, known as Docetism, held that Jesus only appeared to have a physical body — that he was essentially spirit wearing the costume of flesh, because surely God would never truly suffer and die. The second, Gnosticism, taught that salvation came through secret spiritual knowledge, and that those who attained it were no longer bound by moral standards. The third taught that Jesus the man and the divine Christ were two separate beings — the divine spirit descending at his baptism and departing before his crucifixion.
John's response to all three is the same: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, as summarized in 2 John 7. This is not narrow-mindedness. It is the load-bearing wall of the entire structure. Because if God did not truly unite himself with humanity — fully God and fully human in one person — then the Holy Spirit was never released to dwell within believers. The incarnation, the suffering, the death, and the resurrection are not theological fine print. They are the engine of everything.
The Question Everyone Asks
But what about those who have never heard? What about sincere people of other faiths, or those who never had a fair encounter with the gospel? Is the truth about Jesus simply a gate that excludes the well-meaning and the seeking?
Paul addresses this directly in Romans 2. His point, summarized, is that those who have never received the law of Moses can still show by their lives that the law's requirements are written on their hearts. Their consciences bear witness. And the judgment of all people — their secrets, their motivations, their inner lives — will take place through Christ Jesus.
The image that emerges is something like a mountain. All paths lead upward toward its peak. Whether someone approaches from one side or another, through a dream or a moment of conscience or an unexpected encounter with grace, every path that follows the law written on the human heart is moving toward the God-man who stands at the summit and who alone has the authority and the knowledge to judge what no human court ever could.
This is not a loosening of truth. It is a deepening of it. It means the truth about Jesus is not a tribal password but a cosmic reality that touches every human life.
The Daily Practice
So how does any of this become lived experience rather than doctrine? The answer is the same as it has always been: draw near. Not through trying harder, but through becoming more dependent. Like a child who does not pretend to have resources they do not have.
Consider approaching each day with a kind of internal communion — morning, midday, and evening — returning to the broken body and shed blood of Christ, asking again to receive what cannot be manufactured from within. To love the unlovable brother. To speak truth without cruelty. To obey not out of fear but out of trust.
Walking in love, walking in truth, walking in obedience. Not three separate efforts, but one continuous act of coming back to the source.
That is the ancient word. And it is still the living one.
There is a moment many of us have experienced — the moment someone we love treats us as though we have not grown at all. Perhaps a parent, meaning well, reminds us that no matter how capable or accomplished we have become, we will always be their child. It can sting. It can frustrate. But buried inside that moment is a truth that, when applied to our relationship with God, becomes one of the most liberating realities in the Christian life.
What if the posture God most desires from us is not the confidence of an accomplished adult, but the complete dependence of a small child?
That question sits at the heart of what the apostle John communicates in 2 John — a brief, concentrated letter of only thirteen verses that functions as a kind of booster shot of spiritual truth. It distills the sweeping themes of 1 John into their most essential form: walk in love, walk in truth, and walk in obedience. These three are not separate instructions. They are three expressions of the same reality, like three sides of a single coin, inseparable and mutually sustaining.
The Love That Has to Come From Outside Us
To understand what John means by love, we have to understand that the English word does not carry enough weight. The ancient Greek language used four distinct words for love, and three of them — eros, the love of physical intimacy; storge, the dutiful love of family; and filio, the deep bond of friendship — are part of every human being's natural makeup. We are born with these. They are gifts, and when used rightly, they are good.
But the fourth kind of love, agape, is different. It is not inborn. It does not arise naturally from within us. It comes only from God, and it can only be received through a posture of humility — the humility of a two- or three-year-old who knows they cannot provide for themselves and reaches up to a loving parent.
This is the love that John returns to again and again throughout 1 John — forty times across five chapters, with nearly forty percent of those occurrences concentrated in the fourth chapter alone. The so-called "love chapter" of Scripture may be 1 Corinthians 13, familiar to anyone who has attended a wedding. But in sheer density and depth, 1 John chapter 4 may have the stronger claim to that title.
In 1 John 4:19-20, John makes the connection explicit. The summary is this: we love because God first loved us, and anyone who claims to love God while holding hatred toward a brother or sister in the faith is deceiving themselves. Agape love flows downward from God into us, and then outward from us toward others. If we try to hold it for ourselves alone, it evaporates. It only remains as it moves.
The Truth That Grounds the Love
John's letter does not allow love to float free of truth. The ancient churches he wrote to were being visited by traveling teachers who were spreading ideas about Jesus that sounded plausible but were fundamentally wrong — and John was clear that getting Jesus right was not optional.
Three distortions were circulating. The first, known as Docetism, held that Jesus only appeared to have a physical body — that he was essentially spirit wearing the costume of flesh, because surely God would never truly suffer and die. The second, Gnosticism, taught that salvation came through secret spiritual knowledge, and that those who attained it were no longer bound by moral standards. The third taught that Jesus the man and the divine Christ were two separate beings — the divine spirit descending at his baptism and departing before his crucifixion.
John's response to all three is the same: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, as summarized in 2 John 7. This is not narrow-mindedness. It is the load-bearing wall of the entire structure. Because if God did not truly unite himself with humanity — fully God and fully human in one person — then the Holy Spirit was never released to dwell within believers. The incarnation, the suffering, the death, and the resurrection are not theological fine print. They are the engine of everything.
The Question Everyone Asks
But what about those who have never heard? What about sincere people of other faiths, or those who never had a fair encounter with the gospel? Is the truth about Jesus simply a gate that excludes the well-meaning and the seeking?
Paul addresses this directly in Romans 2. His point, summarized, is that those who have never received the law of Moses can still show by their lives that the law's requirements are written on their hearts. Their consciences bear witness. And the judgment of all people — their secrets, their motivations, their inner lives — will take place through Christ Jesus.
The image that emerges is something like a mountain. All paths lead upward toward its peak. Whether someone approaches from one side or another, through a dream or a moment of conscience or an unexpected encounter with grace, every path that follows the law written on the human heart is moving toward the God-man who stands at the summit and who alone has the authority and the knowledge to judge what no human court ever could.
This is not a loosening of truth. It is a deepening of it. It means the truth about Jesus is not a tribal password but a cosmic reality that touches every human life.
The Daily Practice
So how does any of this become lived experience rather than doctrine? The answer is the same as it has always been: draw near. Not through trying harder, but through becoming more dependent. Like a child who does not pretend to have resources they do not have.
Consider approaching each day with a kind of internal communion — morning, midday, and evening — returning to the broken body and shed blood of Christ, asking again to receive what cannot be manufactured from within. To love the unlovable brother. To speak truth without cruelty. To obey not out of fear but out of trust.
Walking in love, walking in truth, walking in obedience. Not three separate efforts, but one continuous act of coming back to the source.
That is the ancient word. And it is still the living one.
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