3 John: A Letter That Names Names

Third John is addressed to one man, Gaius, and it spends most of its short length talking about two other men by name — one commended, one condemned. Gaius gets praised for welcoming traveling teachers he’d never met before. Diotrephes gets called out for the opposite: refusing to welcome them, spreading wicked nonsense about John, and throwing out of the church anyone who disagreed with him.

Read it in the terminal: bible 3john 1

Gaius: hospitality as partnership

John treats Gaius’s willingness to house and feed itinerant workers as active participation in their ministry, not a passive favor.

“Beloved, you do a faithful work in whatever you accomplish for those who are brothers and strangers.” — 3 John 1:5

Diotrephes: a small tyrant in a small church

What’s striking about Diotrephes is how ordinary his sin is — not heresy, just the love of being first. He wants control of the room more than he wants the truth in it, and he’s willing to expel people to keep it.

Demetrius, mentioned almost in passing

A third man, Demetrius, gets a brief good word — testified to by all, and by the truth itself — as if to say: this is what a good reputation, quietly earned, actually looks like next to a manufactured one.

“Beloved, don’t imitate that which is evil, but that which is good.” — 3 John 1:11

Questions for study

1. Why might loving to be first, Diotrephes’ apparent motive, be more dangerous to a church than open heresy?
2. What does treating hospitality as “a faithful work” rather than a courtesy change about how you’d offer it?
3. What’s the difference between Demetrius’s reputation and the kind Diotrephes seems to be chasing for himself?

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