THE THIRD LETTER OF
JOHN
Gaius and Demetrius were two men who remained faithful to the church and to the apostle John. Another man, Diotrephes, was improperly controlling the church and rejecting the apostle and his emissaries. This small personal letter provides a window into some issues of leadership and conflict in the early churches.
The apostle John wrote this letter in the same time period as 1 John and 2 John. Some teachers and leaders, claiming to be spiritual, taught a different doctrine about Christ and did not make the same disciplinary demands upon the members of their churches (see 1 John Introduction). They assumed their own authority and refused the authority of John. They also perverted the teaching of the apostles. Diotrephes was one of those who had broken away from the apostolic fellowship (cp. 1 Jn 2:18-19). As a leader in one of the local churches, he rejected John’s authority and refused to accept the teachers John sent to the church. He even excommunicated those in the church who did receive them and provide them with hospitality.
Knowing this situation, John wrote this letter to Gaius, a faithful member of that church, encouraging him to continue welcoming and hosting John’s emissaries and to remain faithful to John’s teaching and fellowship.
Of all the NT letters, 3 John is most typical of personal letters in first-century Greece and Rome. As with all the letters of this era, 3 John begins (vv 1-4) with an identification of the writer (“the elder”) and the recipient (“Gaius”), followed by a wish for his welfare.
In the body of this letter (vv 5-12), John commends Gaius and reproves Diotrephes. Gaius acted commendably in welcoming the traveling teachers, and these had in turn reported to John that Gaius was living according to the truth. This gave John great joy. John commends Gaius for giving hospitality to the traveling teachers who worked “on behalf of the Name” of the Lord Jesus Christ (see note on v 7) and encourages him to continue giving them this hospitality.
In contrast to Gaius, a church leader named Diotrephes earned the apostle’s censure (vv 9-10). Diotrephes’ love for prestigious leadership caused him to rebuff John’s authority and to persuade others to do the same. Diotrephes even excommunicated those who didn’t follow his own leadership. Gaius is warned not to submit to the aggressive leadership of Diotrephes or be influenced by his bad example.
There is no doubt that 3 John is a real letter from the elder to his friend Gaius, fitting in with the pattern of ancient letter-writing, but transformed by Christian usage.
I. HOWARD MARSHALL, The Epistles of John, p. 9
The author of this epistle calls himself “the elder” (see v 1), a position of authority because of his age and especially because he was a disciple of Christ. Most think that this is John the apostle, an elderly man and an elder of the churches in Asia Minor during the last decades of the first century (see 1 John and 2 John Introductions, pp. 2138, 2148). Third John was probably written during the same period as 1 John and 2 John, before AD 90.
It is clear from the less polemical tone of 3 John that truth and love were two of the fundamental terms in [John’s] theology, and it would not be difficult to write a summary of his thought centered on these two terms.
I. HOWARD MARSHALL, The Epistles of John, p. 52
John’s third letter is concerned with a problem introduced in 1 John: Some church leaders followed false teaching and ignored the authority of the apostles. Diotrephes is a clear example of one who falsely claimed to know the truth. By rejecting those sent by John, Diotrephes was destroying the unity of the church. He did not love other Christians and he rejected those who truly knew Jesus Christ. We cannot claim to love God and the truth if we don’t love apostolic teaching and if we don’t join in fellowship with God’s church, the members of the Father’s family.