Reading: 1 John 5, 2 John, 3 John, Psalm 38
Today we wrap up John’s general epistle to the churches, and read two personal letters from the apostle to members of churches with whom he was clearly quite familiar. The second and third epistles of John are very short and address very specific issues surrounding hospitality, support for Christian workers, and discernment as to who is a true and false leader of the church. These issues were extremely important in the early church, because teachers tended to travel from city to city, and churches met in homes. The earliest examples of churches meeting in separate building do not show up for at least a hundred years after John’s death. Ministers that lived and worked in the church were not yet a thing, so anyone who spent their lives proclaiming the gospel had to rely on the hospitality of the people wherever they were. Even if they worked at a trade, as Paul occasionally did, they still had to have somewhere to stay.
The closing chapter of 1 John brings together his arguments about true faith and practice being shown by love for one another as Jesus commanded. By this we know that we are children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. He says that there have been three testimonies that Jesus is the Son of God: water, blood, and Spirit. He does not exactly spell these out, but it seems natural for the water to be God’s proclamation at Jesus’ baptism by John, the blood to be his resurrection from the dead, and the Spirit to be the witness of the apostles at Pentecost, along with direct revelation like Paul on the road to Damascus. John’s point is that God has gone out of his way to make it clear that Jesus is the means of salvation and the King of his Kingdom, and to reject him is the reject God. You cannot serve God but reject Jesus. Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.
In the closing of John’s gospel, he told us why he wrote it. These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. He closes this letter with a different take on the same idea. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know you have eternal life. He wrote his gospel account to convince. He wrote his epistle to encourage confidence. This confidence is needed because the world is at war with the Kingdom of God. The whole world lies in the power of the evil one. Confidence is found in asking anything according to his will. The weapons of this war are what John has spent the whole letter talking about: obedience to the will of God. Loving one another. Loving God, loving neighbor. All those words calling the believers to holy living were a battle cry.
The second and third epistles are personal. The second is to the elect lady and her children. Some believe the lady references a church, but I think was an actual person whose identity it was important to keep somewhat quiet. The meeting places of the church in early centuries were often targets, and John may have been attempting to protect this woman’s home from assault in case his letter was intercepted. But I could be wrong. That isn’t the point of the letter. John is concerned that this lady not be manipulated by deceitful teachers, such as those we heard about in 1 John. He is warning her not to accept any who do not accept both the Father and the Son. This is eminently practical, because traveling Christian workers would come to such meeting houses and be lodged there, as we saw with Paul and company throughout Acts. John praises this lady for her hospitality, but cautions against extending hospitality and giving a platform to dangerous people.
The third epistle is to someone named Gaius, whom John appears to know quite well. He compliments him on taking care of traveling brothers who have now come to where John is and testified to your love before the church. But he also issues a warning about some not so honest church leaders, specifically a guy named Diotrephes, who has refused to support those same traveling brothers, and gone so far as to kick those who did support them out of the church. On top of that, he ignored letters from John correcting him. It would be nice if this seemed exceptional, but unfortunately it is not. Pride in leadership and the inability to tolerate those who are more righteous than you is an age old problem, going all the way back to Cain and Abel, as John talked about in 1 John. For anyone in leadership, 3 John is both an encouragement, to be like Gaius, and a warning, that it is all too easy to become Diotrephes.