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Scripture Reading: 1 John 1:5-7; 5:6; 2 John 1-2, 4; 3 John 1, 3-4, 8
I. The divine light is the nature of God’s expression, it shines in the divine life, and it is the source of the divine truth — 1 John 1:5-6; John 1:4; 8:12:
А. Light is God’s shining, God’s expression; when God is expressed, the nature of that expression is light — 1 John 1:5:
1. To walk in the divine light is to live, move, act, and have our being in the divine light, which is God Himself — v. 7.
2. The shining of the divine light makes old things new — 2:7-8.
3. If we are under God’s dispensing, we participate in God’s nature as light and are constituted with this element of His nature — 1:5; 2 Cor. 4:6.
B. The divine light shines in the divine life — John 1:4; 8:12:
1. A great principle in the Bible is that light and life go together — Psa. 36:9.
2. Where light is, there is life, and where life is, there is light — John 1:4.
C. The divine light is the source of the divine truth — vv. 5, 9; 18:37:
1. When the divine light shines upon us, it becomes the truth, which is the divine reality — 8:12, 32.
2. When the divine light shines, the divine things become real to us.
3. Because light is the source of truth, and truth is the issue of light, when we walk in the light, we practice the truth — 1 John 1:6-7.
D. The divine light, which shines in the divine life and issues in the divine truth, is embodied in the Lord Jesus, God incarnate — John 1:1, 4, 14; 8:12; 9:5; 14:6.
II. The truth concerning the person of Christ is the basic and central element of John’s mending ministry — 1 John 4:2-3, 15; 2 John 7-9.
III. In John’s writings the Greek word for truth (aletheia) denotes all the realities of the divine economy as the content of the divine revelation, conveyed and disclosed by the holy Word — John 17:17; 18:37:
А. Truth is God, who is light and love, incarnated to be the reality of the divine things for our possession — 1:1, 4, 14-17.
B. Truth is Christ, who is God incarnated and in whom all the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily, as the reality of God and man, of all the types, figures, and shadows of the Old Testament, and of all the divine and spiritual things — Col. 2:9, 16-17; John 4:23-24.
C. Truth is the Spirit, who is Christ transfigured, as the reality of Christ and of the divine revelation — 14:16-17; 15:26; 16:13-15.
D. Truth is the Word of God as the divine revelation, which reveals and conveys the reality of God and Christ and of all the divine and spiritual things — 17:17.
E. Truth is the contents of the faith (belief), which are the substantial elements of what we believe, as the reality of the full gospel — Eph. 1:13; Col. 1:5.
F. Truth is the reality concerning God, the universe, man, man’s relationship with God and with his fellow man, and man’s obligation to God, as revealed through creation and the Scriptures — Rom. 1:18-20; 2:2, 8, 20.
G. Truth is the genuineness, truthfulness, sincerity, honesty, trustworthiness, and faithfulness of God as a divine virtue and of man as a human virtue, and as an issue of the divine reality — 3:7; 15:8; 2 Cor. 11:10; 1 John 3:18.
H. Truth denotes things that are true or real, the true or real state of affairs (facts), reality, veracity, as the opposite of falsehood, deception, dissimulation, hypocrisy, and error — Mark 12:32; John 16:7; Acts 26:25; Rom. 1:25.
IV. Your truth (3 John 3, lit.) is the truth concerning Christ, especially His deity, by the revelation of which the recipient’s way of life is determined and to which the recipient holds as his fundamental belief:
А. The objective truth becomes ours; thus, the truth becomes subjective to us in our daily walk — 2 John 2.
B. Our life is determined, shaped, and molded by the revelation of this truth; this means that we live, walk, and behave in the divine reality, the Triune God, who is our enjoyment — v. 4.
V. To walk in the truth is to live in the truth; the truth concerning the person of Christ should be not only our belief but also our living, a living that testifies to our belief — 2 John 4; 3 John 3-4.
VI. To be fellow workers in the truth is to join ourselves to those who, as faithful workers of the truth, work for God in the divine truth, and it is to do whatever we can to support these traveling brothers and promote this work — vv. 5-8.
VII. It is crucial that we see the picture of the divine reality presented by John in his Epistles — 1 John 5:6; 3 John 12:
А. The central factor in 1 John is the divine reality — the Triune God dispensed into us for our experience and enjoyment — 4:13-14; 5:6.
B. The divine reality is the divine person — the Father, the Son, and the Spirit — becoming our experience, enjoyment, and constituent through incarnation, human living, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension — John 1:14, 29; 20:22.
C. The divine reality is the Father in the Son and the Son as the Spirit dispensed into God’s chosen, redeemed, and regenerated people so that they may enjoy Him as life, the life supply, and everything — 14:6, 12-13, 16-20.
VIII. Truthfulness is the revealed divine reality — the Triune God dispensed into man in the Son, Jesus Christ — becoming man’s genuineness and sincerity, that man may live a life that corresponds with the divine light and worship God, as God seeks, according to what He is — 2 John 1; 3 John 1; John 3:19-21; 4:23-24:
А. This is the virtue of God becoming our virtue, by which we love the believers — Rom. 3:7; 15:8; 1 John 3:18.
B. In such genuineness the apostle John, who lived in the divine reality of the Trinity, loved the one to whom he wrote — 2 John 1; 3 John 1.
C. To worship the Father in truthfulness is to worship Him with the Christ who has saturated our being to become our personal reality through our experience and enjoyment of the Triune God as the divine reality — John 4:23-24.
