Via Emmaus on the Road: 2 John

December 1, 2025December 18, 2025 / davidsschrock / Leave a comment

Further Resources

2 John (ESV)

Greeting

¹The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth, and not only I, but also all who know the truth, ²because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever:

³Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father’s Son, in truth and love.

Walking in Truth and Love

⁴I rejoiced greatly to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as we were commanded by the Father. ⁵And now I ask you, dear lady—not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning—that we love one another. ⁶And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments; this is the commandment, just as you have heard from the beginning, so that you should walk in it. ⁷For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. ⁸Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward. ⁹Everyone who goes on ahead and does not abide in the teaching of Christ, does not have God. Whoever abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. ¹⁰If anyone comes to you and does not bring this teaching, do not receive him into your house or give him any greeting, ¹¹for whoever greets him takes part in his wicked works.

Final Greetings

¹²Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete.

¹³The children of your elect sister greet you.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Four Loves: The Path to True Fellowship

January 22, 2024January 21, 2024 / davidsschrock

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Four Loves: The Path to True Fellowship (A Sermon on 2 John)

In 2020, ESPN published a ten-part series call The Last Dance. The series followed the 1998 Chicago Bulls, the team led by Michael Jordan. This was the sixth and final championship series, the one that ended the dynasty.

As a basketball player growing up in the 1990s, this series was pure nostalgia. Every episode brought back memories and added backstories. It was the best of the old and the new. It returned me to a period of basketball glory, and it scratched a prevalent modern itch—the need to know all the details of what happened behind the scenes.

It’s funny a thing that today we live at a time when people think they need to know everything. Undercover surveillance, tell-all documentaries, and best-selling books by whistle-blowers are all uber-popular, and all of these feed the belief that we deserve all the facts.

Yet, such a god-like desire to know everything is confronted by the fallout of The Last Dance. That is to say that by bringing everything out the open, The Last Dance did untold harm. For not only did it reveal tensions and troubles from the 1990s, but it also started new fires. Continue reading →

Willingly and Truthfully: How a Pastor Demonstrates His Love

January 19, 2024 / davidsschrock

herd of sheep on focus photography

The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth, . . .
– 2 John 1 –

In 2 John 1, the Beloved Apostle declares his love for the church. This love is for the church (“the elect lady”), as well as for her members (“her children”), and it sets the tone for his whole letter. As John expresses it, his love motivates him to write, and his love leads him to warn the church against false teachers. Indeed, such is the love of a pastor. Love that is biblical must lead others to the truth. And any love devoid of truth is not truly loving.

Throughout the New Testament love and truth are joined as one. For example, Paul says that love always rejoices in the truth (1 Cor. 13:4). Likewise, John’s love for the church moves him to rejoice when God’s children are walking in truth (2 John 4). The author of Hebrews urges us to spur one another on towards love and good deeds (Heb. 10:24–25)—good deeds defined by the truth of Scripture. And even Jesus is identified as the one who is fullness of grace and truth (John 1:14, 17), or, as these two words come from the Hebrew pair hesed (lovingkindness) and emet (truth/faithfulness), he is full of love and truth. Just as John highlights in 2 John 3 reads, “Grace, mercy, and peace will be with us, from God the Father and from Jesus Christ the Father’s Son, in truth and love.

In short, those leading the church are to love the people of God in truth. Yet, to echo Pilate: What is truth? Or, for that is matter: What is love? In this blogpost, I will begin to explore that question: What does it mean for a pastor to demonstrate love?

Love Must Truth

In our modern age, love is defined by unbounded affirmation and the willingness to celebrate self-expression, whatever that expression may be. Accordingly, those who love in truth, or attempt to love others with the truth, may not be well-received. They may be hated!

For those catechized by the world and its therapeutic ideas of self-esteem, challenging someone may be received as harsh or even hateful. And more, any pastor who dares to disciple a church or a church member in ways that the recipient does not esteem acceptable may easily be assigned as unloving or even unsafe. In such a world, the truths of God’s Word do not change, but appreciation for them do. And thus, Christians face the difficulty of returning to the old paths.

In generations gone by, generations forged by Christian convictions, correction was received, if not pursued; authority was respected; and love was evidenced by service, sacrifice, and selflessness. Today, vestigial remains of true love remain, but not without careful attention to what love actually is and isn’t. And if this is true in general; it is especially true for pastors.

How do pastors love God’s church? What should congregations expect of those who lead them? And what does Scripture say about the pastor and his responsibility to love the flock? Those questions could easily invite a book on the subject, The Pastor and His Love perhaps. Yet, short of that project, let me offer two answers. And in the days to come, as the Lord allow, I’ll add more. Continue reading →

The Whole Truth: Why One-Sided Truths Are the Most Effective Way to Introduce Error

March 5, 2021 / davidsschrock / 3 Comments

Since its inception, the church has been a community created by truth (Eph. 1:13; Col. 1:5) and engaged with confronting error. Both proactively and reactively, the church and its heralds of Scripture have been called to preach the truth of God’s Word and reject falsehood (see e.g., Titus 1:9). Yet, in every generation this calling has been compromised through half truths masquerading as whole truths which become untruths, as the late J. I. Packer once put it.

For this reason, Christians, and especially pastors, must be vigilant to defend the truth from half truths. On this point, A.A. Hodge insisted that the challenge of this duty stemmed from the many-sided nature of truth. Because we are one-sided people, who are both limited in our thinking, twisted in our desires, and easily deceived by our Enemy, we struggle to handle the many-sided nature of truth. Thus, we fall into error.

Though he wrote nearly 150 years ago, his observation is worth considering, with the added reflection on ways that one-sided truths lead us into error. Here are his words, which come from the opening pages of his book, The Atonement. Below I will offer four ways that one-sided truths can derail us and lead us into temptation and error.

The human mind was formed for truth, and so constituted that only truth can exert permanent influence upon it. But the truth revealed in the Scriptures is so many-sided in its aspects, and so vast in its relations, and our habits of thought, because of sin, are so one-sided and narrow, that as a general fact, the mind of any Church in any single age fails to take in practically and sharply more than one side of a truth at a time, while other aspects and relations are either denied or neglected. A habit of unduly exalting any subordinate view of the truth at the expense of that which is more important, or of overlooking, on the other hand, some secondary aspect of it altogether, is certain after a time to lead to a reactionary tendency, in which that which has been too much exalted shall be brought low, and that which has been abased shall be exalted. This principle is abundantly illustrated throughout the entire history of theological speculation as in the ever-repeated oscillations between extremes of Sabellianism and Tritheism as to the Trinity, of Eutychianism [Jesus was fully divine, but not fully human] and Nestorianism [Jesus was two persons (one divine, one human) not one person with two natures] to the Person of Christ, and in the history of speculations on the doctrine of Redemption.

Every prominent heresy as to the nature of the Atonement, as the reader will find carefully acknowledged and defined in the following work, embraces and emphasizes on its positive side an important truth. The power, and hence the danger, of the heresy resides in that fact. But on the other hand, it is a heresy, and hence an evil to be resisted unto death, because it either puts a subordinate principle into the place of that which is central and fundamental, or because it puts one side of the truth for the whole, denying or ignoring all besides the fractional truth presented. It is plainly the policy as well as the duty of the defenders of the whole truth, not only to acknowledge the truth held on the side of their opponents, but to vindicate the rights of the perfect system as a whole, by demonstrating the true position and relation of the partial truth admitted in the larger system of truth denied. By these means we double the defences of orthodoxy, by bringing into contribution all that is true, and therefore all that is of force, in the apologies of error. (A. A Hodge, The Atonement, 17–18).

Acknowledging Hodge’s warning, what can we do to guard against one-sided (half-)truths? The singular answer is to continue to press into the truth of God and the whole counsel of God’s Word. At the same time, we should recognize common paths to error. And that is what I want to offer here—namely, four ways we might be led to affirm one-side of the truth without holding fast to the other sides of truth. As a result, we misshape the truth by ignoring or denying other aspects of truth, which makes the truth we hold persuasive but also pernicious. Only truth in full flower is, what Francis Schaeffer called, true truth. And true truth is what we must always pursue. To that end let us beware of the following habits of thought. Continue reading →

Strong and Courageous: Why Resisting Tyrants is an Act of Love

January 28, 2021January 28, 2021 / davidsschrock / 2 Comments

jon-tyson-UK61KZPnpyY-unsplash Last week, a few members of our church put on our masks, boarded planes, and traveled to the Founders Conference, where we heard from the likes of Voddie Baucham, James Dolezal, Tom Ascol, and the leaders of Just Thinking, Virgil Walker and Darrell Harrison. In short, the trip, drenched in warm Florida sun, was encouraging, and the messages, saturated with biblical truth, were edifying—especially with respect to the subject of standing for Christ in an age that has become increasingly hostile towards Christians.

Addressing that subject and the new religion of universal autonomy and equality, Tom Ascol and Jared Longshore have released a new book called Strong and Courageous: Following Jesus Amid the Rise of America’s New Religion. Falling in line with newer books like Glenn Sunshine’s Slaying Leviathan and Rod Dreher’s Live Not by Lies, as well as older books like Francis Schaeffer’s A Christian Manifesto, and even older books like Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex: The Law and the King and Junius Brutus’s Vindiciae Tyrannos: A Defense of Liberty Against Tyrants, this new volume promises to bolster the church at a time when public silence and civil cowardice are spreading faster than COVID.

In other words, this book comes at a time when Christians and especially pastors need courage. And this will be a book I hand to many pastors, as it provides bold and biblical arguments that stand against the online pablum that undercuts biblical courage with Christian civility (read: niceness). Indeed, when a Christian’s best testimony to his neighbors is found in waiting patiently for governing officials to permit churches to gather again, thus denying Christ’s command to gather, we have a new instance of Corban—replacing the law of God with human traditions. But thankfully, some are seeing through this misguided application of Scripture and are providing solid food for God’s flock. And in Strong and Courageous, Ascol and Longshore do just that. Continue reading →

A Sincere and Pure Devotion to Christ: Why the Sufficiency of Scripture Means Rejecting Secular Sociology

January 5, 2021January 5, 2021 / davidsschrock / 5 Comments

But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. ⁴ For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.
— 2 Corinthians 11:3–4 —

In his book, Doctrine of the Atonement, nineteenth century evangelist and pastor James Haldane wrote about the ways Scottish churches fused biblical doctrine with modern philosophy. In his opening chapter, he makes a case for a pure and undiluted biblical orthodoxy, over against those who unite Scripture with philosophy. He writes,

True philosophy consists in our sitting at the feet of Jesus, and receiving the truth as He has been pleased to reveal it. The Scriptures teach us, that the understanding of fallen man is darkened, and that the Holy Spirit alone can illuminate its inmost recesses with the light of truth. (22)

Though written more than 150 years ago, Haldane’s words still ring true. In his day, various Enlightenment philosophies, especially those arguing for morality sans biblical revelation, were infiltrating the church. As an evangelist, he saw thousands come to Christ who had received instruction in their churches on morality, but had not on Christianity. And in response, Haldane exposed the errors of combining biblical Christianity with worldly philosophies, a pastoral practice we should continue today.

Sociology Can Be a Vain Philosophy

In our day, the fusion of truth and error is equally pernicious, but perhaps more difficult to discern. For, instead of seeing a fusion of Christianity and Enlightenment philosophy, which we have been trained to observe and reject, it is more often the case that we see the fusion of Christianity and sociology. Sociology has become a leading assistant in churches today who are employing diversity training and all other forms of cultural awareness. Continue reading →

His Mercy is More: God’s Surprising Kindness to Liars and Self Reliars (Joshua 9)

October 29, 2019 / davidsschrock

His Mercy is More: God’s Surprising Kindness to Liars and Self Reliars

Lies and liars. Our world is filled with them, and we often struggle to know what to do with them. This is true when are deceived, but it is also true when we are the deceiver.

On Sunday we saw another deception story in Joshua. And to play on words—Joshua 9 teaches us again that (first) looks can be deceiving. For instead of seeing how the lies of Gibeon are met with swift punishment, we find that God’s mercy overshadows their wrongdoing. At the same time, we also learn how Israel’s self-reliance is covered by the wise mercy of Joshua. Thus, in this chapter we find great hope for liars and self-reliars, which is to say we find hope for all of us!

To see how Joshua 9 leads us to appreciate more of God’s mercy and to become more merciful, you can listen to the sermon online. You can also find response questions and further resources below.

Soli Deo Gloria, ds Continue reading →

Entrusted with the Gospel, We Can Speak With Confidence of What We Know

February 14, 2019February 14, 2019 / davidsschrock

matrix How do you know what you know?

Few questions may be more important for standing firm in a world full of competing voices and conflicting views. Yet, the follower of Christ does not need to fear the truthfulness of his or her faith, when that faith has been grounded in God’s revealed Word.

In contrast to every other religion that derives its views from the perspective of man, the testimony of the Bible is one where God has revealed himself to his people through Spirit-inspired Prophets and Apostles. From Moses receiving God’s Law on Sinai to the Spirit bearing witness by means of signs and wonders to the Apostles’s teaching (Heb. 2:1–4), God has entrusted his Word to men who rightly communicated his message.

In the Pastoral Epistles, Paul speaks often about the truthfulness of his message and the error of false teachers. And in these letters, he speaks in two ways that highlight the way God has communicated himself to the Church. The first has to do with the agreed upon truth (i.e., the content of the gospel) that God gave his disciples; the second has to do with the way God entrusted (passive tense of “believe”) his people with his words.

In his commentary on The Letters to Timothy and Titus, Robert Yarbrough nicely organizes the places where Paul speaks in this way. And he show how Paul’s language of knowing (“we what we know”) is a technical term for the revealed word of God. Likewise, Yarbrough lists the places Paul speaks of the gospel (or God’s Word) entrusted to his people. Consider the way Paul speaks and what this means for our confidence in Scripture. Continue reading →

Four Ideas That Led Margaret Sanger and Others to Deadly Consequences

January 23, 2018January 22, 2018 / davidsschrock / 1 Comment

sanger Because ideas have consequences, it matters what a leader believes. This is true in general, but it is also true with the mother of abortion in America, Margaret Sanger.

Over the last week, I read the book Killer Angel: A Biography of Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger by Presbyterian pastor George Grant. The book, commended by R.C. Sproul and Michael Milton, uncovers the dark life of Margaret Sanger. In Grant’s book, he exposes many of the underlying ideologies which fueled Sanger. To understand what drove her and what still drives her disciples, its vital to know her story, and Grant’s book is excellent. (Here’s my summary of it).

In what follows, I want to make four summary observations from Sanger’s life and legacy that show how her views of sex, culture, eugenics, and money led her to start an organization that continues to prey upon the most vulnerable in our country. My prayer is that by knowing more of her story it will help us to be better equipped to expose Planned Parenthood’s lies and bring hope to those who women targeted by their organization. Continue reading →