Watch yourselves, so that you do not lose what we have worked for, but that you may be fully rewarded.
In this principal part of the epistle we find, I. The ill news communicated to the lady-seducers are abroad: For many deceivers have entered into the world. This report is introduced by a particle that bespeaks a reason of the report. "You have need to maintain your love, for there are destroyers of it in the world.
Commenting on 2 John 1:7-9
Look to yourselves,.... This is an exhortation to the elect lady, and her children, to look about them, and take care of themselves, and beware of these deceivers, and their doctrines: that we lose not those things which we have wrought; or as the Alexandrian copy, and many other copies, and the Vulgate Latin, Syriac, and Ethiopic versions read, "that ye lose not those things...
Verse 8. Look to yourselves. This seems to be addressed to the lady to whom he wrote, and to her children. The idea is, that they should be particularly on their guard, and that their first care should be to secure their own hearts, so that they should not be exposed to the dangerous attacks of error.