The Incarnate
We are told that the truth abiding
in us is the key to living the spiritual life and that becomes the emphasis for
the next three verses, vv.4-6.
2 John 1:4 NASB “I
was very glad to find {some} of your children walking in truth …” This begins
by expressing his joy, his enthusiasm, his excitement over the spiritual
advance of the members of this congregation. There is nothing that motivates, nothing
that challenges, nothing that encourages a pastor more than a responsive
congregation, a congregation that is responsive to the truth. The word “find”
is the perfect active indicative of heurisko
[e(uriskw] which means to find, to discover. He found them “walking
in the truth”—not just learning the truth but walking in the truth. Walking has
to do with their Christian lifestyle; they are applying the doctrine that they
have learned. The result of truth abiding in the believer is application. These
members of the congregation are walking by means of truth, so they have been
learning the Word and have been picking up momentum in their spiritual life.
They are living their life by means of
truth/doctrine—en [e)n] plus the dative of aletheia
[a)lhqeia]. Then he
says, “ … just as we have received commandment {to do}
from the Father.” We are to grow by means of grace and knowledge. It is
important to learn the Word, to know the Word, to be exchanging the human
viewpoint in our soul to the divine viewpoint of the Word. That is the mandate
for the spiritual life under the filling ministry of God the Holy Spirit. Truth
is something extremely practical, it is not just
abstract theology.
2 John 1:5 NASB “Now
I ask you, lady, not as though {I were} writing to you a new commandment, but
the one which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another.” “Now”
introduces a transition. He is going to introduce the main theme of this
epistle. “Now I ask of you” is an aorist tense, which is a past tense form, but
it is an epistolary aorist in that it is something written in an epistle. When
John writes this it is in the present time but it is going to be several months
before his readers read it and by then his writing it is three months in the
past so he writes it from their perspective. He says, “I have asked you,”
referring to the time in which he is writing. It is from the viewpoint of the
reader rather than his own perspective. “Lady” is the church.
“… not as writing” – ouk hos graphon [o)uk w(j grafwn], present active participle. The present tense
indicates continuous action, “not while writing to you.” The verb “writing” and
the fact that it is related to John’s activity as a human being introduces us
to the whole doctrine of inspiration of Scripture. There is a crucial parallel
between the written Word of God which is without error and the incarnate Word
of God who is sinless. The same dynamics are in place because the author of the
written Word of God is God the Holy Spirit writing through human means, and
even though he uses human means He guarantees that the product is free from
error. The same thing is true about the incarnation of Jesus Christ. God the Holy
Spirit oversaw that process. He overshadowed Mary, made Mary conceive, and
overshadowed the process so that the result of that pregnancy was completely
without error, without Adam’s original sin, without a sin nature, so that Jesus
Christ is completely free from all sin. It is the same process and there is an
important parallel there. So we will look at the parallel between the Holy
Spirit and written revelation and the Holy Spirit and the revelation of Jesus
Christ.
Why is this important?
- This is important because if the Bible is a word
about God rather than the Word from God then it would contain errors and
we cannot rely upon it exclusively. It would mean that the ultimate
authority would no longer be what the Bible says,
the ultimate authority would be what man says. If the Bible is the Word
from God then it contains eternal absolute truth and it is our job under
the ministry of the Holy Spirit to discern what God has said. We must
remember that God has revealed Himself in order to be understood and He
has given us in the church age the Holy Spirit, called the Spirit of truth
because that is His role to illuminate our minds and to help us understand
what the Scripture says. Today this is a crucial subject, and a crucial
one for today because it boils down to the basic issue of authority. Today
people want to make the authority man and so they constantly want to
challenge the veracity of the Bible. The Bible has always been
authenticated, not proved, through historical and archaeological evidence.
The Bible as the Word of God contains its own authority; it is
self-authenticating. When God speaks man knows it. He may question it, may
suppress it in unrighteousness (Romans 1:18) but nevertheless in his soul he reverberates to
the voice of God and knows that God has spoken.
- The key terms when talking about inspiration.
a)
The first is
revelation. The term means to disclose or uncover that which was previously
unknown. In the Scriptures it is God the Holy Spirit who discloses the hidden
thoughts of God to man through the message of the Scripture. He discloses to
man the basic problem of man which is sin and God’s perfect solution which is
Jesus Christ the son of God, the eternal deity who was made flesh and became
true humanity that He might go to the cross and die for us. Jesus Christ is the
highest and greatest disclosure of God to man. John 1:14-18 NASB “And
the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of
the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testified
about Him and cried out, saying, “This was He of whom I said, ‘He who comes
after me has a higher rank than I, for He existed before me.’” For
of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace. For
the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were
realized through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time;
the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained {Him.}”
b)
Inspiration. The
word comes from the Greek word theopneustos
[qeopneustoj], and is found in 2 Timothy 3:16 NASB “All
Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, for training in righteousness; [17] so that the man of God may be
adequate, equipped for every good work.” The word “inspired,” theopneustos, is a compound word from theos, meaning God, and pneustos, meaning breath. God breathed,
not man. God breathes out the information into the souls of the writers and
then the writers exhale that information into Scripture. That is the mechanics.
“All Scripture,” the text says, not most; not some, is
breathed out by God. So we define inspiration: God the Holy Spirit so
supernaturally directed the human writers of Scripture that without waiving or
overpowering their human intelligence, vocabulary, individuality, literary
style, their personality, personal feelings, or any other human factor, His
complete and coherent message to mankind was recorded with perfect accuracy in
the original languages of Scripture, the very words bearing the authority of
divine authorship.
c)
Plenary, verbal
inspiration. Plenary means full, and the import is
that the whole of Scripture is inspired. Verbal refers to the principle that
every word is inspired, and this would go down to the very grammar, that it is
important to distinguish between a present tense and an aorist tense, between
an imperative mood and an indicative mood, etc.
- The role of the Holy Spirit. This is seen in 2
Peter 1:20, 21 NASB “But know this first of all, that no
prophecy of Scripture is {a matter} of one’s own interpretation,
for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by
the Holy Spirit spoke from God.” Here we see that on one side there is the
role of the Holy Spirit and on the other side human involvement. That
means that a message from God to the prophet was not a matter of that
prophet’s interpretation; he doesn’t originate it; it didn’t come from
him, it came from God. It was not generated by human will. The word for “move”
is a present passive participle of phero
[ferw]. The passive voice means that someone else does
the action and they receive the action. phero
is also used in Acts 27:15, 17 of a ship that is blown by the wind, and so
when the blew the sails of the ship it took the
ship wherever it went and the sailors had no control. So the Holy Spirit
is moving them, they are under the direction of God the Holy Spirit, so
that He is guaranteeing that the revelation he gives is being recorded
without error. The Holy Spirit is the agent of revelation and when sinful,
fallible men wrote, because the message didn’t originate from them, God
controlled the process making it free from error.
- This is the same kind of thing that we see in the
birth of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit overshadowed the fallible writers
of Scripture to guarantee that their product would be infallible and
inerrant. In the same way He overshadowed the sinner Mary. Luke 1: 26 NASB
“Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in
Galilee called Nazareth, [27] to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was
Joseph, of the descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary.” So
Jesus Christ is going to be a descendant of Mary, who is from the house of
David, biologically giving Him the right to rule as the greater son of
David. But not Joseph because Joseph is a descendant of Jechoniah. [28] “And coming in, he [the angel] said to
her, ‘Greetings, favored one! The Lord {is} with
you’. [29] But she was very perplexed at {this} statement, and kept
pondering what kind of salutation this was. [30] The angel said to her, ‘Do
not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor
with God. [31] And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son,
and you shall name Him Jesus. [32] He will be great and will be called the
Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His
father David; [33] and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and
His kingdom will have no end’.” Mary knows what that means; she
understands all of the messianic implications. [34] “Mary said to the
angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ [34] The angel answered and
said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the
Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be
called the Son of God’.” So we see how God the Holy Spirit is able to come
upon a fallible, fallen, sinful creature and still guarantee that the
result is without sin. The import of the term “Son of God” is that He is
full deity; He is divine. Matthew 1:18 NASB “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as
follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they
came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.” In Luke
we get the story of the conception and how she became pregnant by God the
Holy Spirit conceiving the new life in her womb. Then Matthew gives us the
birth. [20] “But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord
appeared to him in a dream, saying, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be
afraid to take Mary as your wife; for the Child who has been conceived in
her is of the Holy Spirit’.” Once again we have the emphasis that this is
the Holy Spirit and that Jesus does not have a human father. [21] “She
will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His
people from their sins. [22] Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the
prophet: [23] ‘BEHOLD, THE VIRGIN
SHALL BE WITH CHILD AND SHALL BEAR A SON, AND THEY SHALL CALL HIS NAME
IMMANUEL,’ which translated means, ‘GOD WITH US’.”
Luke
2:1 NASB “Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus,
that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth.
[2] This was the first census taken while Quirinius
was governor of Syria. [3] And everyone was on his way to register for the
census, each to his own city. [4] Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth,
to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David,
[5] in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with
child. [6] While they were there, the days were completed for her
to give birth. [7] And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and
she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room
for them in the inn.”
This is where our Saviour
was born. He is born the Son of God; He is born impeccable; He has no inherited
sin nature; He has no imputation of Adam’s original sin. He is guaranteed
perfect because He is born by the Holy Spirit. Just as the Holy Spirit was able
to overshadow fallen human flesh and still produce a Saviour who was without
sin, so God the Holy Spirit is able to overshadow human authors and guarantee
that their product was free from human error and flaws. So we have an inerrant,
infallible Word. This is what John refers to in 2 John 4 when he says, “I am
writing this to you.” He knows he is writing Scripture; He knows that God the
Holy Spirit is writing through him.