2 John:7 "Many deceivers have gone out into the world..."

Comment:

Dear Friend,   You are asking about verse 7 in the writing known as the Second Letter of John: "Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist!" (2 John:7 NRSV)   The whole purpose of this brief letter is to instruct the church in question to exclude dissident teachers from any sort of hospitality. There were many teachers in the early days of the new church who traveled from place to place and spoke of their own experiences of Jesus Christ and/or their understanding of his message. It was several centuries before Christianity became codified into a set of specific beliefs.   Among the different teachings there were several different views on just who Jesus had been. Some taught that he was a mortal who had become a great teacher and prophet. Others taught that he was fully God, and had not really been mortal at all. The view of Paul and the author of this letter – and the view that was to become the central teaching of the Christian Church – is that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine.   That has always been the prevailing view in Unity as well, although we perhaps see it from a slightly different perspective. Certainly Jesus of Nazareth was a mortal man, fully as human as any of us. He contained within his human expression the Christ – the full and complete creative Presence and Power of God. And he not only understood his Christ Presence, he expressed it so fully and perfectly that he became Jesus Christ – the divine expressing in mortal form. We, too, are in spiritual Truth expressions of that same Christ energy. The whole purpose of Jesus' ministry was to awaken us to that truth and to call us to become fully as expressive of the Christ as he was, so that every choice we make expresses the creative power of God and contributes to the new consciousness Jesus calls the kingdom of heaven.   Blessings!

Rev. Ed