<p>1:4 <em>I rejoice greatly that I have found some of your children walking in truth, even as we received commandment from the Father</em>- This is a case of seeing the glass half full rather than half empty; he rejoices that &quot;some&quot; of her converts were walking &quot;in truth&quot;, or as Paul puts it, &quot;in Christ&quot;. Some had fallen away; but some had remained, and that for him was wonderful.</p><p>John&rsquo;s greatest joy was that his converts, and his convert's converts, &lsquo;walked in truth&rsquo;, they &lsquo;walked after the Father&rsquo;s commandments&rsquo; (2 Jn. 4,6). Paul likewise speaks of how his converts are his &quot;joy and crown&quot;. They walked in life honest to themselves and to the Father, and walked &quot;in truth&quot; in that they walked in &quot;the spirit of truth&quot;, in step with the leadership of the Spirit, walking in the Spirit as Paul would out it (Rom. 8:1; Gal. 5:16,25). Walking or living &lsquo;in truth&rsquo; is thus put for living a life pleasing to God as guided by the Spirit within us. It surely doesn&rsquo;t mean that we simply live our lives holding on to the same intellectual understanding of doctrines which we had at our baptism. We &lsquo;keep&rsquo; the commandments by &lsquo;doing&rsquo; them (1 Jn. 2:3 cp. 5:2), not by merely holding to a true theoretical definition of them. There is so much more to walking in truth than this. We rightly emphasize the need for true doctrine; but the issue of this in practice is that true doctrine leads to a true life, a life true to God, to our brethren, to ourselves, in the power of the Spirit of truth. John parallels walking in the light with walking in the truth (1 Jn. 1:7; 2 Jn. 4); and yet Jn. 3 defines the true light as ultimately the light of the crucified Christ and the Spirit given as a result of that death (Jn. 7:39). To live life self-analytically in the shadow of the cross, of Him as He was there, is the only way to walk in the spirit of truth. This is the true life; to merely hold certain interpretations of Scripture in intellectual purity is not all there is to &lsquo;walking in truth&rsquo; or &lsquo;in the light&rsquo;. This kind of truth sets us free (Jn. 8:31,32); for where the spirit of the Lord is, there the heart is free (2 Cor. 3:17). Discerning the correctness of sound exposition will not of itself bring any freedom. But living a life that we know broadly corresponds to the image of the crucified Jesus and under the influence of His Spirit will give a freedom unknown in any other sphere of human experience.</p>