Introduction

Three Men and a Household Dispute

Third John is the shortest book in the New Testament, a private letter from “the Elder”—again received as the Apostle John, writing near the end of his life—to a Christian named Gaius, and it reads exactly like what it is: one leader’s note to a trusted friend about a local church quarrel. Theophylact’s own summary states its whole content in a sentence: John commends Gaius, well known for his hospitality to traveling brethren, and urges him to keep it up; he then rebukes a certain Diotrephes, “who loves to be first,” refuses to receive John’s own messengers, and even expels from the church anyone who does welcome them; and he closes by commending a third man, Demetrius, of good repute with everyone. No doctrine is argued and no error refuted—the letter’s entire concern is a practical one, the right and wrong use of Christian hospitality within a single congregation.

A Small Letter, Honestly Read

Theophylact’s comments run to only a handful of remarks, and there is no reason to expect more from so short a text; he pauses mainly to explain how John’s plain warning that he will “call attention” to Diotrephes’s conduct squares with the general Christian command not to repay evil with evil—answering that a wrong done to the faith and to the whole community, and not merely to oneself, may rightly be exposed rather than quietly absorbed. He also lingers, briefly and warmly, on the letter’s closing wish to speak “mouth to mouth” rather than by letter, the same preference for presence over paper that closes Second John as well. Read together with its companion letter, Third John shows the apostolic Church working out something very ordinary—how a traveling teacher should be received, and what to do about a local leader who will not receive him—in words few enough to fit on a single page, but weighty enough that the Church kept them.