Introduction to 3 John

Title and authorship

The writer is the elder, opening with the very formula of the second letter 2 John 1:1, and the two letters share their close as well — much to say, no wish to say it with ink, the hope of speaking face to face 2 John 1:12 3 John 1:13–14. One hand wrote both, and the voice is the voice of the first epistle and the Gospel behind it; the letter is read here as the apostle John's.

This is the most personal letter in the New Testament that names its recipient plainly: Gaius, a beloved friend, with two other men named beside him — Diotrephes the opponent and Demetrius the commended. Several men called Gaius appear elsewhere Acts 19:29 Acts 20:4 Romans 16:23, and Scripture gives no ground for identifying any of them with this one. What is known of him is what the letter says, and that is enough for the letter's purpose.

Date

The letter cannot be dated more closely than the later years of the first century, alongside the second letter: the twin openings and twin closings mark them as companions, written near one time to one region. Which came first, nothing in either letter settles.

Backgrounds

Behind the letter is the same road that runs through the second one. Missionaries traveled from assembly to assembly, and they went out for the sake of the Name 3 John 1:7, taking nothing from the Gentiles they preached to — so the hospitality of believers was their whole support, and receiving them made the host a fellow worker in their work 3 John 1:8. The second letter closed that road to carriers of false teaching; this one defends it for the true, and the two letters are best read as the two sides of one policy.

The crisis is local and personal. A letter to the assembly has met resistance from Diotrephes, a man who loves the first place, rejects what the elder says, and enforces his rejection — refusing the traveling brothers, expelling members who would receive them 3 John 1:9–10. Whether the letter he resisted was the second epistle or one now lost, Scripture does not say, and nothing in this letter depends on the answer.

Theology and purpose

The letter's theology is worked out in door policy, like its twin, but from the welcoming side. Hospitality here is not courtesy; it is participation. The one who receives a worker sent out for the Name becomes a fellow worker for the truth 3 John 1:8, exactly as the second letter warned that greeting a deceiver makes a sharer in his deeds 2 John 1:11. The door is where a believer joins one mission or the other.

Under the quarrel runs a question about greatness. Diotrephes loves to be first; the word is built on the verb Scripture uses once elsewhere, of Christ, in whom all things hold together and to whom first place belongs Colossians 1:18. The letter sets against him a plain test that reaches back to the first epistle: the one who does good is of God, and the one who does evil has not seen God 3 John 1:11 1 John 3:6. Conduct is the visible side of sight.

Outline

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