This is a companion blog to Kingdom Come. The purpose is to explain some of the extra details left out in the posts there.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
2 John 7-11
“Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist. Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully. Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not take him into your house or welcome him. Anyone who welcomes him shares in his wicked work” (2 John 7-11).
This is talking about itinerant teachers who are teaching error, a very specific error. They are teaching that Jesus did not come to earth as a true human, that he only appeared to have a human body. The Elder warns that hospitality is not to be extended to such a person. This does not justify refusing hospitality to those who disagree with us on some point of theology. Return to Radical Hospitality.
Jesus was born in a stable because there was no room for him in the inn (Luke 2:7). He came to his own, but they rejected him (John 1:11). He was rejected in his home town (Luke 4:28-29). He had no place to lay his head (Luke 9:58).
“The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and “sinners” ’ ” (Luke 7:34).
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but being a short man he could not, because of the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a ‘sinner.’” But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:1-10).
Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisee’s house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them. When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner” (Luke 7:36-39).
This term is used for many different skin diseases that could be spread throughout the community. They were declared unclean by the Mosaic Law (Leviticus 13, Numbers 5:2). Jesus, however, touched a man with leprosy in the act of healing him (Matthew 8:3). Return to Radical Hospitality.
