Lydia Cladek owned a car dealership in St. Augustine, Florida. She offered 15% interest to investors, promising their money would be backed with vehicles as collateral. Many invested sums totaling in the millions of dollars. When the checks stopped coming, investors and authorities eventually learned this was only an elaborate pyramid scheme. Knowing this, would you invite Lydia into your home, especially if anyone would conclude you were endorsing her sales pitch?

The epistle of II John was written primarily to warn a Jewish woman, who had believed on Christ as her promised Messiah, from extending hospitality to an abundance of spiritual “deceivers” (vs. 7). The nature of their deceit was rooted in denying “that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh” (vs. 7). All three of John’s short epistles were likely written within twenty years of the Savior’s resurrection. Yet, in that short time, Satan had been busy promoting a key doctrinal error about the Lord Jesus. Unbelieving Jews believed our Lord to have been an impostor instead of, as He claimed, the promised Redeemer who came as the ultimate King of Israel who would die for their sins. They taught the Lord Jesus was only a wicked man and an imposter deserving of death. A philosophical group, called “Gnostics,” were also beginning to gain a foothold. They taught that all matter is evil. Therefore, the true Messiah could not have come in the flesh, but only in the form of an angel or spirit. Many cults and unbelievers today teach that the Lord Jesus Christ was only a prophet, teacher, good man, or a fictional individual. Any of these views nullify the sinless substitutionary death of our Lord, who bore our sins and punishment that we might have eternal life through faith in Him. This is why the denial that Christ had come in the flesh was such an insidious doctrine so vigorously promoted by deceivers (I John 4:2-3; II John 7). In so doing, they were “an Anti-Christ” (I John 4:3) meaning over or against the real Christ. John’s instruction was not to receive anyone who teaches this false doctrine “into your house” (II John 10), to avoid the danger of being swayed from “the truth” (vss. 1-4) and lose one’s “full reward” (vs. 8) for proper faith in Christ.

We still have people teaching different perversions about who Christ is. They come to our doors or within our homes via television or literature. Beware and “receive him [or them] not into your house (vs. 10).”