Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 3 John · About this commentary
Fellow Workers for the Truth
3 John 1:5-8
5 Beloved, you do a faithful work in whatever you accomplish for those who are brothers and strangers. · WEB
Hospitality to those sent out for the Name is not kindness at the mission's edge; it is the mission, joined at the door.
What Gaius does for the traveling brothers the letter calls faithful work. Work, not warmth, done for strangers — xenos G3581. They have testified to his love before the assembly. The elder asks more: send them forward in a way worthy of God. The verb — propempō G4311 — is the escort word of the church's missions: workers supplied and set on their road Titus 3:13. The standard is the sender, not the travelers.
Their credentials fit in one clause: they went out for the sake of the Name — the Name that needs no completion Acts 5:41 Acts 4:12. They take nothing from the Gentiles they preach to; the gospel must never look like a trade. The believers' hospitality is therefore the entire supply line.
So verse 8 speaks of debt: we ought to receive such men. The reason lifts the host into the enterprise — that we may be fellow workers for the truth. Greeting the deceiver made a sharer in his evil deeds 2 John 1:11; receiving the sent makes a fellow worker in the truth's. The letter grants no neutral option — the door makes the household party to one work or the other.
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