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"Whom I love in the truth." It was not an ordinary kind of friendship. It did not rest on kindred, nor on neighbourhood, nor on business, nor on country, nor on common tastes and pursuits, nor even on services rendered and gratitude for these returned; it was a friendship shared by "all who knew the truth," it was "for the truth's sake which dwelleth in us and shall be with us for ever." The Truth meant much for John and for such as he reckoned friends. It was a certain body of doctrine, no doubt, held by him and them very dogmatically indeed; but it was not abstract doctrine, it was doctrine subsisting in the personal, historical, living Christ. It is plain that friends who hold a common relation to the truth thus understood will be friends after a quite distinct and very lofty fashion. They have a birth and kinship not of this world (1 Peter 1:22, 23). They live by virtue of a principle the world cannot understand, even "the truth which dwelleth in us." And they are practically influenced in their daily conduct by the hope of sharing the "many mansions of the Father's house."

1. Those who love one another "in the truth" will love in truth; sincerity marks all friendship worthy to be called Christian.

2. This friendship is always fruitful. Ten thousand little things done or not done, and which the friend who benefits by them may not always know, are the habitual outcome of friendship for the truth's sake. And there is one fruit which from its nature is least of all seen or talked about, which yet is both the commonest and the best that friendship can yield — prayer for one another.

3. Christian friendship may sometimes be severe. A friend, in proportion to the purity and spiritual intensity of his love, will discern faults and weaknesses and dangers which, for friendship's sake, he must not wink at.

4. This friendship hallows and strengthens all the other ties that bind us to one another.

5. It is another distinguishing excellence of Christian friendship that it bears strain best. This love yields mutual gentleness and forbearance and tender-heartedness.

6. Christian friendship has the widest reach. It boasts of its comprehensiveness here — "And not I only, but also all they that have known the truth."

7. The crowning distinction of this friendship is that it is not dissolved by death itself.

(A. M. Symington, D.D.)

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KJV: The elder unto the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth; and not I only, but also all they that have known the truth;

WEB: The elder, to the chosen lady and her children, whom I love in truth; and not I only, but also all those who know the truth;