Does Christian love have limits?
Today, many would say that the love of the church—institutional and individual—must be boundless, unconditional, and all-embracing. We constantly see professing Christians accept people in unrepentant sin and tolerate those who subscribe to false doctrine. In the name of love, the church honors what Scripture plainly condemns.
But the susceptibility of the church to this error is not new. Even in the lifetime of the apostle John, certain believers were welcoming people who falsely professed to belong to Christ. Deceivers were taking advantage of this Christian hospitality in order to peddle their false teaching and infect the church with their denial of Christ’s true humanity (2 John 7–8). Such a warmhearted reception, although it appeared to be loving, endangered the souls of true believers. That is why the apostle had to issue a strong warning against it in 2 John 5–8.
In his sermon on this passage, “Truth: The Boundary of Love and the Test of Loyalty,” John MacArthur explains the danger of undiscerning “love” and describes the duty that every believer has to the truth, despite the constant opposition to that task.
The church as a whole, and the souls of individual believers, are continually threatened because love and its boundaries have been misconstrued. This misguided love is a wide-open door for mischievous heretics. In John MacArthur’s words, it has “has sucked in false teachers on a sort of evangelical welcome wagon.”
That is why the church must labor for a better understanding of Christian love, and a greater commitment to upholding the integrity of the truth.
To that end, click here to listen to John MacArthur’s sermon, “Truth: The Boundary of Love and the Test of Loyalty.”
