Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble, and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.

New Testamenters, today we finish books 25 and 26, and whole Bible crew, we finished

books 64 and 65. We only have one book left. Both of today's books are written by

someone who refers to himself as the elder, which was a common way of referring to a pastoral leader in the

church, which John certainly was. And church history tells us that this is John the Apostle. So while there

are other viable theories about who wrote these books, the prevailing opinion

is that it was John the Apostle, aka the disciple Jesus loved, aka author of the gospel of John,

and First John. And many believe he also wrote Revelation, which will start reading tomorrow

and will finish on our last day of this trip through Scripture. Second John is addressed

to the elect lady. Which lady? It could be a person, but more likely that's

John's way of addressing a specific church, the bride of Christ, God's elect. Why is that more

likely? There are a few reasons, but the most straightforward is that when John uses the word

you in this book, it's typically the plural form of the word you. In other words, John is using the Hebrew

for y'all or you guys. He starts out by saying he loves the church and its people, and that all

people who love the truth love the church and its people. This is hard for some of us. Some of us have

been wounded by the church and its people because it's made up of sinners like us. Some of us have

done some

of the wounding of other people, either intentionally or accidentally. God continually pours out

grace to help us heal wounds and bridge gaps and restore brokenness, just like with Paul and John

Mark. God is committed to the unity of his church, so he sends the spirit as our helper in aiming

for unity and in aiming for

truth. And in fact, those are the two things he drills down on in this letter, love and truth.

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