The Second Epistle of John, the “postcard epistle,” is the shortest book of the New Testament. While it is short, it’s a great work of exhortation, calling its audience to action. The theme of 2 John is that of truth and deception. John’s greatest concern is that his sheep are walking in truth (2 John 4, 3 John 3,4). And the truth he is referring to is love. The command from the beginning is that we love one another. And loving one another is walking according to his commands (2 John 6). Simply put, we are to walk in love.
The deception of that truth comes in the form of what we confess. In verse 7, John writes, “Many deceivers have gone out into the world; they do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.” I emphasize those last few words because of their importance in our understanding of Jesus Christ. In fact, this phrase is so important John says the one who does not confess it “is the deceiver and the antichrist.” Pretty damning words. Failing to confess this truth cuts at the very heart of the Christian faith: the Incarnation. Therefore, John exhorts his listeners to “Watch yourselves.” If they run after new and spurious ideas, thus losing sight of this truth that they heard from the beginning, then they will lose their full reward (v. 8).[1]
The deceivers and false teachers were promoting a rancid understanding of Christ, which denied his flesh-ness. Some scholars contend that these false teachers held to a docetic Christology.[2] Docetism, from the Greek word Dokeō, means “to seem or appear.” Christ’s coming in the flesh, this heresy asserts, was merely an appearance, an illusion, or an apparition of physical flesh.[3] Christ was just a spirit-creature who seemed to be human. In his First Letter, John makes the affirmation, in very strict terms, that the Incarnation was a real, physical manifestation of the Son of God in human nature. He writes, “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” (1 John 4:2, emphasis mine). The phrase “has come,” in the Greek, is a perfect active participle, denoting the “abiding reality of the incarnation.”[4] It has happened and is actively happening. The one who confesses this reality, John writes, “is from God” (1 John 4:2). As we can see, affirming this truth is of salvific importance. And Second John aims to emphasize this point again.
Now we come to verse 9, the focal point of this article. John writes, “Anyone who does not remain in Christ’s teaching but goes beyond it does not have God. The one who remains in that teaching, this one has both the Father and the Son.” When I came across this passage a few days ago, I immediately noticed its importance in defending the deity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. I searched various apologetics books, specifically those engaging with Jehovah’s Witnesses, to see if this passage was utilized in argumentation. And to my surprise, the text was absent from their Scripture indexes. So, let’s break some new ground.
We see in this text two parallel statements, which are contrasted negatively and positively, but state the same thing in different terms. I am going to bolden some key words to examine.
The one who remains in that teaching, this one has both the Father and the Son.”
John’s statement is a warning. The word “remain” is a common word John utilized in his writings. He uses it to emphasize one’s standing with Christ, whereby if one follows the Lord’s commands, that one remains in the Lord and God remains in him (cf. 1 John 3:24; 4:12–15). In this passage, we see John focus on remaining in Christ’s teaching. What is Christ’s teaching?[5] As observed already, previous passages tell us that we are to walk in love (v. 6) and hold to the confession that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh (v. 7). When looking at the two passages together, we see that Christ’s teaching yields two conclusions: having God and having both the Father and the Son. We can rearrange this passage to identify the astonishing implications of John’s theology:
Remaining in Christ’s teaching = one has God
Remaining in Christ’s teaching = one has both the Father and the Son
We must remember that John is a Jew and thus a monotheist. He affirms that there is only One, True God (cf. Deut 6:4). He is emphatic about exclusive worship and abiding in God. He concludes his First Letter, stating, “Little children, guard yourselves from idols” (5:21). So, when we look at the passage above, what are the implications? John has placed the Son with the Father, denoting that to have both is to have God, and the inverse, to have God is to have both. Grammatically speaking, this is an appositive statement, whereby the author clarifies, identifies, describes, or otherwise renames another noun or noun phrase. And in this passage, he clarifies further who God is: God is both the Father and the Son. And the Father and the Son both are God.
In John’s identification of God as the Father and the Son, we have a tight case to affirm that Jesus Christ is God. And we have another text of affirmation that while God is One, there are persons within the divine essence, indicating that God is not a monadic being. It is the biblical text, not philosophical speculation, that presses us to that conclusion. If we understand the Apostle John is an inspired writer, then we must conclude that he wouldn’t write statements that conflict with other passages.
For example, John 1:3 says, “All things were created through him [the Son], and apart from him [the Son] not one thing was created that has been created.” Compare this with Isaiah 44:24, which says, “I am the LORD who made everything; who stretched out the heavens by myself; who alone spread out the earth” (emphasis added). And then the author of Hebrews writes, “For in bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was entirely appropriate that God—for whom and through whom all things exist—should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings” (2:10, emphasis added). The work of creation is a work of God alone, in that no other being created except the LORD; yet, the work was done by the Father and the Son (and the Holy Spirit). The phrases “by myself” and “who alone” (in Isaiah 44:24) refers to the divine being, not the modes of the divine essence, the persons of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. It is mysterious to us. But we must affirm it because Scripture teaches it.
In First John 5:11–12, John writes, “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. The one who has the Son has life. The one who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” Eternal life can only come from God. And if the Son is the one who gives it, then what does that imply about the Son? This testimony is Christ’s teaching. It is the teaching that the eternal Son of God has come in the flesh. And John’s statement in 2 John 9 says if one does not have this teaching, then one does not have God, both the Father and the Son. If one moves on from this teaching, as the Jehovah’s Witnesses have, then one is not of God.
~ Romans 11:36 ~
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[1] Colin G. Kruse, The Letters of John (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans Pub Co, 2000), 212.
[2] But as Andreas J. Köstenberger, A Theology of John’s Gospel and Letters: The Word, the Christ, the Son of God, 1st ed. (Zondervan, 2009), 95–6, observes, the specific heresy of Docetism is somewhat speculative. The text indicates these false teachers denied that Jesus was the Messiah, they didn’t keep his commandments, rejected the apostolic witness (1 John 1:1–5) and denied the atoning merit of the cross (1 John 5:6–8).
[3] Daniel L. Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, vol. 38, The New American Commentary (Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 229.
[4] Ibid.
[5] This could be understood as Christ’s teachings or the teaching of Christ.
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