Language, Letters, & LoveReflections on 2 JohnWhat does God have in common with Romeo?When I first started dating my wife, I wanted to speak like Romeo, but without the tragedy part. What I didn’t realize is that the way we write and speak is already influenced by Shakespeare. Every language is a product of its great artists. And it’s all the better when the theme of our art is love. Love is the language of the early church, and thus the main subject of John’s letters.Christianity has its own Romeo and Juliet story: Jesus dying for his people. But it’s even more dramatic because Jesus was with God from the beginning.“That which was from the beginning … we have seen with our eyes,” John penned. “We looked upon [him] and touched [him] with our hands.… Our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:1). This is our love story.Through Jesus, God is reclaiming his world, which has fallen to dreadful antagonists: “Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh” (2 John 7). God loved his people so much that through Jesus, he died for them. That’s why John says: “We love because [God] first loved us” (1 John 4:19).Unlike Romeo there is no self-serving purpose in Jesus dying for us, or loving us. And we shouldn’t be self-serving in our love for him. John says: “love one another.… this is love, that we walk according to his commandments” (2 John 5–6).We are to “love in truth,” like John (3 John 1). May you find the courage to tell this love story.