Evil had successfully infiltrated the ranks of believers by the time the apostle John wrote what we call his third epistle. Evil had gained such a foothold among certain congregations that the leadership in at least one congregation had taken to rejecting even the apostle John himself! (See 3 John 1:9)
That particular congregation must have been a mess. They apparently lacked the discernment or the will, or both, to stop following a leader that was rebellious to the work of the kingdom. That leader, Diotrephes, apparently had undertaken the task of building his own little kingdom.
Writing in the environment of whole congregations being waylaid from Kingdom work by evil, John wrote to a trusted friend in the Gospel:
Beloved, follow not that which is evil, but that which is good. He that doeth good is of God: but he that doeth evil hath not seen God. (3 John 1:11 KJV)
Often, in a culture steeped in wrongdoing, and some congregations are steeped in such a culture, it can become hard to separate ourselves from wrongdoing. But that separation, or “sanctification,” from the world’s value system is exactly what we are called to do as New Covenant believers.
John’s words are clear: those that follow evil do not know YHWH. Those that follow good do. So it behooves us, who do know YHWH, to follow the good and reject the evil. That is who we are under the New Covenant.
Look around your own world today. Anywhere you turn, whether country, community, congregation, or even family, there is probably wrongdoing that might be easy to fall into imitating.
Where can we find refuge from all these bad influences and examples? It is not to be found outside of us, but within. The bastion of defense against evil is not our congregation, our family, our community, or our country. It is our heart and mind. That is where the fight takes place and that is where the defense is to be made.
Country, community, congregation and family can and should be set up to promote a culture of righteousness. But even when successful at doing that, the battle is still to be won or lost at the level of individual hearts and minds.
The battle is up to each one of us, wherever we are, as servants of the King and workers in His Kingdom. And we have been well equipped for that fight. But we must make the decision to follow the good and not the evil, as John wrote to his friend and partner Gaius.
How? Whole books have been written about that. Some great, some terrible. But the most basic starting point is simple. We must daily nourish our faith by feeding our mind with the Word of YHWH.
While doing that, we must let the Word be absorbed into our spirit by the Holy Spirit within us. He enables us to interact with, and receive, the Truth of the Word.
And finally we must exercise our faith in order to turn all of that absorbed nourishment into muscle. We exercise our faith by doing what the Word of YHWH says to do. We do that effectively by keeping in step with the Spirit who shows us how to apply the Word according to YHWH’s will.
Some become spiritual “couch” potatoes by engorging themselves with a little bit of the Word of YHWH, a whole lot of reprocessed and artificial theology, and then sit around as “armchair theologians” calling the plays for everyone else while judging everybody else’s performance and strategy but their own. Let’s not follow that way either!
It is a foundational concept of Scripture that those who follow evil are not of YHWH. We are of YHWH. So it is a given that we are followers of good and not evil. We should be like those famous monkeys: hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, and do no evil.
Beloved, John was writing to us even though his intended audience was Gaius. Let’s seek out the good and then follow it for we have indeed seen YHWH!
Abba Father, we thank you for calling us into your Kingdom and making us your people. You are indeed our Elohim and we desire to follow your way. We reject the way of evil. We ask for forgiveness, as you taught us to do, when we get off the track of good you have called us to. We thank you for your many mercies and great and precious promises whereby we might lay hold of life and godliness. Help us to understand and take hold of those gifts to us. We praise you and thank you, and ask these things, in the name of our Messiah, Yeshua. Amen.
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Copyright 2010 Jim Zboran. All rights reserved.
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