THE SECOND PART: A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
The Ministry of John
Message Two
The Light, the Truth, and the Reality
Scripture Reading: 1 John 1:5-7; 4:2-3, 15; 5:6; 2 John 1-2, 4, 7-9; 3 John 1, 3-4, 8; John 17:17
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: (2007 ST, msg. 6)
A. Light is God’s shining, God’s expression; when God is expressed, the nature of that expression is light—1 John 1:5: (2007 ST, msg. 6)
1. To walk in the divine light is to live, move, act, and have our being in the divine light, which is God Himself—1 John 1:7. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
2. The shining of the divine light makes old things new—2:7-8. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
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. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
B. The divine light shines in the divine life—John 1:4; 8:12: (2007 ST, msg. 6)
1. A great principle in the Bible is that light and life go together—Psa. 36:9. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
2. Where light is, there is life, and where life is, there is Light—John 1:4. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
C. The divine light is the source of the divine truth—vv. 5, 9; 18:37: (2007 ST, msg. 6)
1. When the divine light shines upon us, it becomes the truth, which is the divine reality—8:12, 32. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
2. When the divine light shines, the divine things become real to us. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
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. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
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. 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: (2007 ST, msg. 6)
A. 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. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
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. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
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. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
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. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
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. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
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. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
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. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
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. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
III. 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: (2007 ST, msg. 6)
A. 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. (2007 ST, msg. 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. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
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. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
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: (2007 ST, msg. 6)
A. 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. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
B. The objective truth becomes ours; thus, the truth becomes subjective to us in our daily walk—v. 2; 1 John 2:24. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
C. 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—2 John 3-4. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
D. 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—v. 4; 3 John 3. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
E. 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. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
V. 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: (2007 ST, msg. 6)
A. This is the virtue of God becoming our virtue, by which we love the believers— Rom. 3:7; 15:8; 1 John 3:18. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
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 with footnote 3; 3 John 1. (2007 ST, msg. 6)
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. (2007 ST, msg. 6)