Do not receive them

If anyone comes to you and does not bring this doctrine, do not receive him into your house nor greet him; for he who greets him shares in his evil deeds. – 2 John 1v10-11

After all the talk about love we might be tempered to say something like, “Ah, but love has its limits” when we see this passage.

‘If anyone does not have the true doctrine of Christ comes to you, don’t receive him or even greet him with. If you greet him you are sharing in his evil deeds.’

That makes it look like we don’t need to love those who are false teachers. I don’t think that is the case. True love does not mean we accept any and everything that comes our way. Loves means that we have to deal with unpleasant situations.

We have a couple of things to note here. It would not be love for Christ to accept those who mangle His doctrine. False teaching about the Saviour is not love for Him and we cannot accept or tolerate it. It is the pure gospel that is the motivation for pure love. When it is misused it is corrupted.

Secondly, if we accept false teachers and their teachings into our homes we are not loving our families because we are allowing false teachings to infect their hearts and minds. Part of love is protection.

Thirdly, if we accept false teachers we are not showing love to them. There are in error. For us to accept and tolerate it shows that we support them and their error. If we really loved them we would want to show them the way out of their error.

When we accept and greet them we are helping them to spread their error to others. That shows a lack of love for those around us.

Sometimes love means taking a stand. Dealing with false teachers is one of those times.