Biblion Bible Commentary
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Diotrephes, Who Loves to Be First
3 John 1:9-10
9 I wrote to the assembly, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first among them, doesn’t accept what we say. · WEB
The trouble in the assembly is not a doctrine but an appetite — a man in love with the first place, which Scripture assigns to Christ alone.
The elder wrote to the assembly — the second epistle, or a letter now lost; the text does not say. Why it failed, it does say: Diotrephes loves to be first — philoprōteuō G5383, a word Scripture applies to no one else, built on a verb it uses exactly once elsewhere, of Christ, to whom first place in all things belongs Colossians 1:18. The vocabulary is the indictment. The seat Diotrephes loves is taken.
Verse 10 files the particulars. He does not accept what the elder says. He accuses unjustly with wicked words — phluareō G5396, empty, damaging talk. He does not receive the brothers himself. And those who would receive them he forbids, and casts out of the assembly — exclusion wielded not to guard the teaching, as the second letter ordered against deceivers, but to guard a seat. The Gospel has seen this door before: the man born blind, cast out by the gatekeepers and found by Christ John 9:34–35.
The elder's answer is no counter-expulsion: if I come, I will call attention to his deeds — named in the open, where the assembly can weigh them. Authority is exercised as light, not force.
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