Truth the Bond of Love.
Consider the moral atmosphere which surrounded, and the motive power which created and sustained, that strong bond of affection which bound the heart of St. John to the Christian lady and her family.
I. The atmosphere of this friendship was sincerity: "Whom I love," not in the truth (there is no article in the original), but "in truth." Not "truly": St. John would have used an adverb to say that. What he means is that truth truth of thought, truth of feeling, truth of speech and intercourse was the very air in which his affection for this Christian lady had grown up and maintained itself. And the word which he uses to describe this affection points to the same conclusion. It does not mean instinctive personal affection affection based on feeling and impulse, such as exists between near relations; still less does it denote that lower form of affection which has its roots and its energy in passion and sense. It stands for that kind of affection which is based on a reasoned perception of excellence in its object; and thus it is the word which is invariably used to describe the love that man ought to have for God. But such a love as this between man and man grows up and is fostered in an atmosphere of truthfulness. It is grounded not on feeling or passion, but on a reciprocal conviction of simplicity of purpose; and being true in its origin, it is true at every stage of its development. It is mortally wounded, this "love in truth," when once it is conscious of distinct insincerity. When once it has reason to doubt the worthiness of its object, when once it falters in its utterance of simple truth, from a secret fear that there is something which cannot be probed to the quick or which cannot bear the sunlight, then its life is gone, even though its forms and courtesies should survive. It may even be strengthened by a temporary misunderstanding when each friend is sincere. It dies when there is on either side a well-grounded suspicion of the taint of insincerity.
II. What was the motive power of St. John's love? St. John replies, "For the truth's sake, which dwelleth in us, and shall be with us for ever." He adds that all who know the truth share in this affection. Here we have an article before "truth." "The truth" means here, not a habit or temper of mind, but a body of ascertained fact, which is fact whether acknowledged or not by the mind to be so. What is here called "the truth" by St. John, we should in modern language speak of as "the true faith." This was the combining link, as sincerity of purpose was the atmosphere, of the affection which existed between this Christian lady and St. John. Among the counteracting and restorative influences which carry the Church of Christ unharmed through the animated, and sometimes passionate, discussion of public questions, private friendships, formed and strengthened in the atmosphere of a fearless sincerity and knit and banded together by a common share in the faith of ages, are, humanly speaking, among the strongest. One and all, we may at some time realise to the letter the language of St. John to this Christian mother. Many of our brethren must realise it now. They have learnt to love in truth, not by impulse; they have learnt to bind and rivet their love by the strong bond of the common and unchanging faith. All who know anything of Jesus Christ know something of this affection for some of His servants; some of us, it may be, know much, much more than we can feel that we deserve. Such love is not like a human passion, which dies gradually away with the enfeeblement and the death of the nerves and of the brain. It is created and fed by the truth which "dwelleth" in the Christian soul, and which, as St. John adds, "shall be with us for ever." It is guaranteed to last, even as its eternal object lasts. It is born and is nurtured amid the things of time; but from the first it belongs to, and in the event it is incorporated with, the life of eternity.
H. P. Liddon, Easter Sermons,vol. ii., p. 195.
Reference: 2. Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 299.