New Testament · Book 63 of 66

2 John

The elder writes to ‘the elect lady and her children’, thirteen verses of truth and love, with a warning not to welcome those who bring another doctrine.

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Gustave Doré (1866) — public domain — "The Word Made Flesh" (the incarnation this letter's "truth" guards)

1
Chapter
13
Verses
Truth + love
Twin notes

“And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it.”
2 John 1:6

All 1 chapters

1Walk in truth and love

If you only read a few chapters

1
The elder's letter
‘This is love, that we walk after his commandments.’

New Testament · 2 John

Truth and Love, Guarding One Door

Thirteen verses that open on relationship "in truth and love" (v.3) and close on a real household forced to decide, in real time, whether a traveling teacher who denies "Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh" (v.7) gets welcomed through the door. Truth and love are not two things to be traded off, they are one thing seen from two sides, and vv.10-11 are truth guarding love, not truth cancelling it.

Summary

2 John is thirteen verses that braid truth and love as one thing, not a trade-off, until a household must decide in real time whether to open its door to a teacher who denies the incarnation. Verses 10 to 11 are truth guarding love, not truth cancelling it.

The verse-by-verse weave below marks which strand, truth, love, or commandment, runs through each verse, then bands verses 7 through 11 off as the household test.
The confession at stake is 'Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh' (v.7); denying it is named the mark of the deceiver and the antichrist.
Contested points include whether the author is the apostle John or a distinct 'John the Elder,' and whether the 'elect lady' addressed is an individual or a personified church.
The letter pairs with 3 John as the Bible's two 'postcard' epistles, written to fit a single sheet of papyrus.

Truth and Love, Braided

every verse marked by which strand runs through it: computed, not drawn

The letter opens with truth and love interleaved (vv.1-6), then bands off into a single crisis zone (vv.7-11) where the household must apply what it has just been taught, before closing on hoped-for joy (vv.12-13). The banded verses are not a third theme: they are the moment the first two are put to the test at somebody's front door.

1Whom I love in truth 2The truth's sake, abiding in us 3Grace, mercy, peace... in truth and love 4Walking in truth: the commandment 5That we love one another 6This is love... this is the commandment 7Many deceivers: the antichrist 8Lose not what we have wrought 9The teaching of Christ: hath not God 10Receive him not into your house 11Partaker in his evil works 12Face to face, that joy be made full 13Thy elect sister salutes thee

truth (alētheia) love (agapē/agapaō) commandment (entolē) the household test

Structure

2 John in 1 part. Each card opens one focused stretch of the book — what it is for, the verse it turns on, and where Christ stands in it. Roughly five minutes each.

01 · 1
Walk in truth and loveGrace and peace; walking in truth; a new commandment which we had from the beginning; deceivers who confess not Christ come in the flesh.Christ in this partWhosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God (v.9). Doctrine and love held together in one short letter.

What 2 John Alone Teaches

Truth and love, said in one breath

The word truth appears five times in the first four verses and every time it is attached to people rather than to propositions in the abstract. The writer loves 'in truth' (1:1), and so do 'all they that know the truth' (1:1). The truth 'abideth in us, and it shall be with us for ever' (1:2). Grace, mercy and peace come 'in truth and love' (1:3). And what gives him joy is finding 'certain of thy children walking in truth' (1:4). Then love is defined by obedience rather than by feeling: 'And this is love, that we should walk after his commandments' (1:6). The pairing is the point of the whole letter. A congregation that keeps love without truth will open its door to anything, and one that keeps truth without love will have nothing worth defending. The letter asks for both in the same paragraph and then acts on both.

2 John 1:1 · 2 John 1:2 · 2 John 1:4 · 2 John 1:6

Jesus Christ coming in the flesh

The test is stated in one clause and it is about a body: the deceivers are 'they that confess not that Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh' (1:7). The tense is worth noticing. 1 John had used a past form of the same confession, that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, and here the participle is present, which reads as a standing description of who he is rather than a report of a past event. The incarnation is therefore not something Christ passed through and left behind. He is the one who comes in flesh, and he is that permanently. That is why the denial is treated as fatal rather than as a difference of emphasis, and why the letter attaches the two hardest names it has to the men who hold it, calling such a one 'the deceiver and the antichrist' (1:7).

2 John 1:7

Going onward, and abiding

'Whosoever goeth onward and abideth not in the teaching of Christ, hath not God: he that abideth in the teaching, the same hath both the Father and the Son' (1:9). The verb rendered goeth onward means to run ahead, and it is likely the teachers' own word for themselves, taken up and turned around. They were advancing; the letter says a man who runs ahead of the teaching leaves God behind him. What is set against advance is not standing still but abiding, which is this writer's word for a settled dwelling. And the stake is stated as high as it goes: the man who abides has both the Father and the Son, and the man who runs on has neither. The teaching of Christ here means the apostolic teaching about him, which verse 7 has just summarized in a single confession.

2 John 1:9

A door closed, and how far the instruction reaches

'If any one cometh unto you, and bringeth not this teaching, receive him not into your house, and give him no greeting: for he that giveth him greeting partaketh in his evil works' (1:10-11). The instruction is exact and its limits are in the text. It concerns a person who comes bringing a teaching, so it is about a teacher on a mission rather than a neighbour or a relative. Receiving into the house in that world meant giving a travelling teacher lodging, food and a base to work from, which is material support for the mission. The greeting withheld is the formal one that acknowledged a fellow worker. And the reason given is participation, since a host was understood to share in what his guest went on to do. What the letter is protecting is a congregation that met in a house, where an itinerant teacher taken in would be teaching by the evening.

2 John 1:10 · 2 John 1:11

Christ in 2 John

TypologyThe Son of the Father. 'Grace, mercy, peace shall be with us, from God the Father, and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love' (1:3). The phrase Son of the Father appears nowhere else in the New Testament, and in a letter this short it is doing deliberate work. The ordinary title is Son of God, which says what he is. Son of the Father says whose he is, and it names the relation itself. Set beside the error the letter is written against, the phrase answers it before the argument starts, since a teaching that made the Christ a temporary visitor upon a man could not use language of permanent sonship. The greeting also puts Christ alongside the Father as the source of grace, mercy and peace, which is how the New Testament ordinarily speaks of God. 2 John 1:3
TypologyComing in the flesh. 'even they that confess not that Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh' (1:7). The confession the deceivers withhold is the one that holds together everything the New Testament says about salvation. If he did not take real flesh, he did not die a real death, and there is nothing to raise. The letter does not argue the case; it uses the confession as a test, which is what a settled truth is for. The word flesh is the plainest one available, the same word the Gospel uses when it says the Word became flesh, and it means the ordinary material of a human being. The permanence carried by the tense matters too, since the man who ascended is still the one who comes in flesh. 2 John 1:7
ProphecyThat ye receive a full reward. 'Look to yourselves, that ye lose not the things which we have wrought, but that ye receive a full reward' (1:8). The sentence looks forward to a reckoning, and it puts two outcomes side by side: work lost, and a reward received in full. What is at risk is described as things wrought, so the labour of the writer and of the congregation over years is what a wrong turn now would waste. The New Testament speaks elsewhere of work tested by fire and of a builder who is saved while his building burns, and this verse belongs to that family. It also explains the letter's urgency. Thirteen verses of warning are written because a congregation can spend itself well and still come to the end with less than it might have had. 2 John 1:8

The Argument

the whole letter in three sentences

Author: "The elder" — traditionally John the apostle, writing from Ephesus
Date/Place: Traditionally c. AD 90-95, from Ephesus
Genre: A personal/pastoral letter: one of the two "postcard" epistles, 13 verses, roughly 245 Greek words
Shape: Greeting → the love-command → the crisis and the household test → closing

1
Genuine children of God are marked by truth and love held together (vv.1-6), not a new rule but the commandment the church had from the beginning, cashed out as "walking after his commandments."
2
That same truth-love pairing requires refusing hospitality to teachers who deny the incarnation (vv.7-11), because uncritical welcome would make the host complicit in corrupting the gospel: "he that giveth him greeting partaketh in his evil works."
3
The elder hopes to finish the conversation in person rather than by letter, the ASV reads "face to face," translating an idiom that is literally mouth to mouth (stoma pros stoma), the same picture Numbers 12:8 uses of God speaking with Moses. A small, human close to a letter about guarding a door.

Written to fit a single sheet of papyrus (v.12) — one of two "postcard" epistles, the other being its sibling letter. The 3 John hub →

Where 2 John Points to Christ

the confession that decides who is at the door

The confession test: "Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh"v.7 → Jn 1:14

The letter's Christological center: an anti-docetic confession that the eternal Son took genuine, real flesh, the same claim the Gospel's prologue makes at greater length ("the Word was made flesh"). Denial of it is named "the deceiver and the antichrist" — not a minor variance but the disqualifying error.

"The teaching of Christ" as the boundary of fellowship with Godv.9

A phrase that can carry both teaching about Christ and Christ's own teaching, either way, the substance of apostolic Christology functions as the non-negotiable center of the letter. Whoever abides in it "hath both the Father and the Son"; whoever goes onward beyond it "hath not God."

Father and Son named together as the source of grace, mercy, and peacev.3

"From God the Father, and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father" — high Christology stated in passing: the Son is co-source of grace, mercy, and peace alongside the Father, not merely their messenger.

Continuous with the Gospel's prologue and 1 John's openingv.7 → 1 Jn 1:1-3; 4:2-3

2 John compresses into one verse the confessional battle line the Gospel and 1 John establish at greater length: the incarnation is not raw material for theological creativity, it is the confession that marks out who actually has the Father.

The Hinge

v.7: the crisis the whole letter turns to answer

2 John 7 →

"For many deceivers have gone out into the world, refusing to confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist."

An anti-docetic confession compressed into a single clause: the eternal Son took genuine flesh, and denial of it is named "the deceiver and the antichrist", not a minor doctrinal variance but the disqualifying error the rest of the letter (vv.8-11) has to act on.

Themes

six load-bearing lines through thirteen verses

Truth and love inseparable

2 John v.1, v.3

Five uses of alētheia in the first four verses, bracketed by agapē: the letter's single theological burden, worked out concretely in vv.7-11: truth without love curdles into harshness, love without truth curdles into complicity.

The love-command as old-yet-ever-new

2 John v.5

Not a novel rule but "that which we had from the beginning" — the same move 1 John 2:7-8 makes. Love of the brethren is apostolic bedrock, not innovation.

Walking as the idiom for obedience

2 John v.4, v.6

A thoroughly Johannine metaphor (cf. 1 Jn 1:6-7; Jn 8:12) for a life visibly shaped by the commandments: truth and love are not private sentiments but a public gait.

"The teaching of Christ" as the boundary of fellowship

2 John v.9

Doctrinal fidelity is not incidental to relationship with God in John's theology, it is constitutive of it.

Guarding the fruit of labor

2 John v.8

"That ye lose not the things which we have wrought" — perseverance language; the deceivers threaten not just individual belief but the harvest of prior ministry investment.

The limits of hospitality

2 John vv.10-11

Love does not mean uncritical openness; truth polices love's boundaries precisely so love isn't weaponized against itself.

Author: The apostle John (traditional), styling himself ‘the elder’ (v. 1)
Date: Late 1st century, c. AD 85–95
Audience: ‘The elect lady and her children’ (v. 1): either a specific woman and her household or a particular local church

As the earliest witnesses report them; positions and holders under Who Wrote It.

The world behind this book

The book of 2 John

Where

A single sheet of papyrus written from Ephesus and carried to a household church in the surrounding region.

The history, and what it meant to them

The history

The early church ran on hospitality. There were no church buildings and no hotels worth the name, so apostles, prophets, and teachers moved from town to town living in believers' homes. That generosity was the gospel's transport system — and its weak point.

An early manual called the Didache, written around this same period, gives congregations blunt rules for handling travelers: how many days a genuine prophet may stay, and how to spot the ones who "traffic in Christ" for money. John's letter tackles the same problem from the front door.

The teachers he is warning about denied that "Jesus Christ is come in the flesh." Take one of them in, feed him, and send him on with your blessing, and you have just funded the tour. That is why John's instruction is so sharp: do not receive him into the house, and do not wish him well.

What it meant to them

To a household that prided itself on being welcoming, this was a hard word — and John frames it as love, not coldness. Truth and love are held together all through these thirteen verses; a love that helps a lie travel is not love.

He keeps it short on purpose. There is much more to say, he writes, but he would rather come and speak "face to face," so that "our joy may be full."

Sources cited

J. B. Lightfoot, trans., The Apostolic Fathers (the Didache)
Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Every work MannaFest builds on →

Who Wrote It, and When

Author: The writer gives a title and no name: 'The elder unto the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth' (1:1). The same title opens 3 John, and the two letters are so alike in length, vocabulary and closing that they plainly come from the same hand. That hand also wrote 1 John or worked very close to it, since the marks of the longer letter are all here in miniature: truth and love as a pair, the commandment held from the beginning, the deceivers who will not confess Jesus Christ come in the flesh, and the word antichrist, which occurs in the New Testament only in these letters. Irenaeus quotes this letter as John's before AD 200. The question later readers raise is which John, since the writer's own chosen title is elder rather than apostle.
Date: The letter is dated with 1 John and 3 John, in the province of Asia, most often between AD 85 and 95. The error it warns against is the same one 1 John answers, stated in almost the same words, and it is described as already loose in the world, 'For many deceivers are gone forth into the world' (1:7). Whether this letter came before the long one, as a short warning later expanded, or after it, as a note to one congregation that already had it, cannot be settled from the text. The outer limit is Irenaeus, who quotes it before the end of the second century.
Audience: 'The elder unto the elect lady and her children' (1:1). Two readings of that address have been argued since antiquity and both fit parts of the letter. The verbs are the difficulty. Verse 5 addresses one person, 'And now I beseech thee, lady' (1:5), while verses 6, 8, 10 and 12 all use the plural, as at 'Look to yourselves, that ye lose not the things which we have wrought' (1:8). The closing greeting is the strongest single clue: 'The children of thine elect sister salute thee' (1:13), which reads naturally as one congregation sending greetings to another and less naturally as one woman's nephews and nieces sending word to their aunt. The letter never names a place, and the tradition puts the circle in the province of Asia.
Occasion: Teachers were moving between congregations, and some of them carried an error about the person of Christ. 'For many deceivers are gone forth into the world, even they that confess not that Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist' (1:7). Because a travelling teacher in that world stayed in a believer's house and was sent on with support, welcoming one was an act of endorsement as well as of kindness. The letter therefore does two things in thirteen verses. It repeats the old commandment, 'that we love one another' (1:5), so the congregation does not answer error by becoming cold. And it draws a line at the door for the men who carry this particular denial: 'If any one cometh unto you, and bringeth not this teaching, receive him not into your house, and give him no greeting' (1:10). The writer keeps the rest for a visit, 'I would not write them with paper and ink: but I hope to come unto you, and to speak face to face' (1:12).

The Years of 2 John

2 John timeline

c. AD 85-95
The letter is written to a congregation in the province of Asia, with 1 John and 3 John.
2 John 1:1
the same period
Travelling teachers carrying a denial about the flesh of Christ are moving among the churches.
2 John 1:7
c. AD 108-110
Ignatius of Antioch writes against the same error in Asia, that Christ only seemed to have a body.
c. AD 180
Irenaeus quotes this letter as John's in Against Heresies, the earliest surviving citation of it.
c. AD 240
Origen reports that John left one short epistle and perhaps a second and a third, and that not all regard them as genuine.
c. AD 325
Eusebius places 2 John and 3 John among the disputed books while noting they are well known in the churches.
c. AD 392
Jerome records that many attribute 2 John and 3 John to John the elder rather than to the apostle.
AD 367
Athanasius lists the twenty-seven New Testament books in his festal letter, 2 John among them.
early 5th century
The Syriac Peshitta is completed with twenty-two books and does not include 2 John.
AD 507 or 508
The Philoxenian Syriac version supplies 2 John and the four other books the Peshitta had lacked.

Original Language

the vocabulary of truth, love, and testing: each word a door

ἀλήθεια

alētheia

truth (v.1 twice, v.2, v.3, v.4): five uses inside four verses, the signature of the letter's opening

ἀγάπη

agapē

love, noun (vv.1, 3): bracketing alētheia as the letter's twin keynote

ἀγαπάω

agapaō

to love, verb (vv.5, 6): "that we love one another"

ἐντολή

entolē

commandment (vv.4, 5, 6, three times in three verses): what walking in truth and love cash out as

πλάνος

planos

deceiver, seducer (v.7): "many deceivers are gone forth into the world"

ἀντίχριστος

antichristos

antichrist (v.7): a word that appears nowhere in the New Testament outside 1 and 2 John

μένω

menō

abide, remain (v.2, v.9×2): a load-bearing Johannine verb defining what it means to stay within the teaching of Christ

ἐκλεκτός

eklektos

elect, chosen (v.1 "elect lady"; v.13 "elect sister"), frames both the primary recipient and the closing greeting's sender

διδαχή

didachē

doctrine, teaching (v.9×2, v.10): "the teaching of Christ" as the confessional boundary

Three more words repay a look. Kyria ("lady," vv.1, 5) is either a proper name or a title, and which it is decides whether this letter was written to a woman or to a congregation. Proagō (v.9) means to go on ahead, the teacher indicted here is not lagging behind the teaching but running out in front of it. And chairein (vv.10-11) is the ordinary word for a greeting, which is what makes the prohibition so sharp: what is refused at the door is not fellowship or funding but hello.

Further Reading on 2 Johnwith the work named

Chuck Misslerbrief quote

I, II, III John: An Expositional Commentary (Koinonia House)

the founder's formative teacher, and the one roster voice with a commentary covering all three of John's letters together. His whole-Bible method reads the antichristos of v.7 inside the larger Johannine framework, while keeping the spirit of antichrist already present distinct from the eschatological figure still to come.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brownpublic domain

Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), on 2 John

The standard public-domain verse-by-verse treatment of the letter, strongest exactly where the letter is hardest: the deceiver, the antichrist, and the closed door of vv.7-11.

John Wesleypublic domain

Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament (1754), on 2 John

The practical-holiness reading of the household test: what a believer receives into the house is what a believer is understood to endorse.

Three honest gaps, named rather than papered over. Calvin wrote no commentary on 2 or 3 John, a real absence in the public-domain shelf for these letters, not an oversight here. No work by R. C. Sproul has been confirmed treating 2 John, and no Spurgeon sermon on it has been located, so neither is cited, though both would be at home on v.9's non-negotiable "teaching of Christ." within a tier, all voices are equal, no single voice is elevated above its rating.

Contested Points

the positions, and who holds each

Authorship: the apostle John, or a distinct "John the Elder"?

The strongest case: a distinct elder

Papias (early 2nd c., preserved in Eusebius) is widely read as distinguishing "the elder John" from "the apostle John" among his named sources; the author identifies himself only as "the elder," not "apostle," unlike Paul's typical self-designation even in short notes, some read this as evidence of a distinct, lesser-known figure close to but not identical with the Twelve.

The strongest case: apostolic authorship

"The elder" is a natural, humble self-designation for an aged apostle addressing churches pastorally (cf. 1 Pet 5:1, where Peter, an undisputed apostle, calls himself an elder too); the vocabulary, style, and theology of 2 John are essentially identical to 1 John and the Gospel, and early testimony tracing back through Polycarp attributes all three epistles uniformly to John the apostle.

Where the readings meet — Both readings argue from the same early testimony. The apostolic-authorship case reads "the elder" as pastoral self-humbling from the aged apostle, matched to 1 John and the Gospel's vocabulary and style; the distinct-elder case leans on Papias's language as preserved in Eusebius. Neither this historical question nor a single "John" behind all three epistles is adjudicated here.

The "elect lady" — an individual, or a personified church?

The strongest case: an individual

The most natural reading of a personal letter with named children (v.1, v.4) and a named "elect sister" with her own children (v.13) is real family correspondence: comparable in kind to 3 John's address to Gaius, a real individual.

The strongest case: church-personification

"Lady" functions like a title in some readings (compare 1 Peter's closing greeting from "the church... elected together with you," 1 Pet 5:13, arguably a similarly coded reference); "children... walking in truth" fits a congregation's collective conduct at least as naturally as biological children, and the whole concern (guarding the door against traveling false teachers) is inherently a house-church-level responsibility.

Where the readings meet — Held open, presented at full strength on both sides: reputable interpreters land differently, and the letter's practical instruction applies identically either way; the ambiguity affects a historical particular, not the doctrine being taught.

The harshness of vv.10-11: does refusing greeting cut against love?

The tension at full strength

Taken as a general principle, "receive him not... neither give him greeting" seems to cut against the letter's own emphasis on love, against wider NT hospitality ethics (Ro 12:13; Heb 13:2; 1 Pet 4:9), and even against Jesus's own table fellowship with sinners. Read broadly, it risks becoming a proof-text for shunning anyone holding wrong doctrine.

The resolution: truth guards love, it doesn't cancel it

Context narrows the command's scope to an itinerant teacher coming specifically to propagate denial of the incarnation, using the host's house as a base for that ministry, the customary hospitality extended to traveling Christian workers is exactly what the deceivers were exploiting. To extend it here is to fund and lend credibility to the corruption of the gospel: "he that giveth him greeting partaketh in his evil works."

Where the readings meet — Truth and love are not in tension in 2 John: love without truth degenerates into complicity, truth without love degenerates into harshness, and the letter's whole burden is holding both together. Verses 10-11 are the truth-boundary that keeps love from becoming naïve, not a warrant for a broader ethic of exclusion.

"We cannot have communion with saints and with Antichrist at the same time."

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory (1871), on 2 John 1:11, public domain

Drafted from MannaFest's research brief on 2 John — public-domain commentators (JFB, Wesley) paraphrased with attribution, with modern voices briefly quoted.

The Book’s Shape

Truth and love at both ends, the deceiver at the center

proposed structure

AThe elder to the elect lady: love in truth, and grace, mercy and peace from the Father and the Son1:1-3
BJoy over children walking in truth, and the old commandment to love one another1:4-6
XMany deceivers are gone forth: they will not confess Jesus Christ coming in the flesh1:7
B'Look to yourselves: abide in the teaching, and do not take such a teacher into the house1:8-11
A'More to say than paper and ink will hold; a visit hoped for, and greetings from a sister congregation1:12-13

Mapped by the ring is proposed here from the letter's own frame rather than claimed by one commentator: truth and love stand together at 1:1-3 and again at 1:6, the commandment held from the beginning opens and closes the middle section, and the single sentence about the deceivers at 1:7 is the hinge on which the letter turns from commendation to warning.

Key Words, with Doors

The Hard Questions, Honestly

The places a careful reader stops, with the readings named and their holders.

Who is the elect lady?

'The elder unto the elect lady and her children' (1:1). The address has been read two ways since the early centuries and the evidence is genuinely divided.

The evidence, and the readings

For a congregation: the letter shifts to plural verbs from verse 6 onward, the concern with lodging travelling teachers fits a house where a church met, and the closing line reads like one assembly greeting another, 'The children of thine elect sister salute thee' (1:13). For a woman: the address is singular and so is verse 5, 'And now I beseech thee, lady' (1:5), and the writer's habit elsewhere is to name real people, as he names Gaius, Diotrephes and Demetrius in the companion letter. A third line of reading takes one of the two Greek words as a proper name, so that the addressee is either a woman named Kyria or a woman named Electa. Nothing in the letter's teaching turns on the answer, and its tone changes with it, since one reading makes verse 10 a rule for a congregation and the other makes it advice to a hostess.

A local congregation, personified as a lady with her members as children
held by the majority of ancient and modern commentary, resting on the plural verbs, on the greeting from a sister at 1:13, and on the New Testament habit of speaking of the church in feminine terms
An individual Christian woman and her family
held by Athanasius and some later Greek writers, and modern commentators who take the address plainly and note that the companion letter is written to one named man
A woman whose name is one of the two Greek words, either Kyria or Electa
held by a proposal found in some older commentary; the difficulty with Electa is that verse 13 would then give the addressee's sister the same name, and the difficulty with Kyria is that it is the ordinary Greek word for lady

2 John, argued in full →

Does verse 10 forbid ordinary courtesy to people who are wrong?

'If any one cometh unto you, and bringeth not this teaching, receive him not into your house, and give him no greeting' (1:10). The sentence has been used to justify shunning, so it is worth reading exactly what it says and what it does not. It describes a person who comes bringing a teaching, which is a travelling teacher on a mission rather than a neighbour, a customer or a family member. What is refused is lodging and the greeting that acknowledged a fellow worker, both of which were the ancient world's way of supporting and endorsing an itinerant. The teaching in question is the one verse 7 has just defined, a denial that Jesus Christ comes in the flesh, so the line is drawn at the person of Christ rather than at a disagreement about practice. And the letter that says this is the same letter that spends its opening on love and its close on a hoped-for visit. The instruction protects a house church from being used as a base by a man who would be teaching in it by evening.

It concerns support and endorsement of a travelling teacher, and the boundary is the confession of Christ
held by most commentary, resting on the ancient practice of hospitality to itinerants and on the definition at 1:7; the standard applied is a denial about the person of Christ rather than any disagreement
It teaches a wider separation from those who hold serious error
held by readers in the separatist traditions, who take the words about greeting and about partaking in evil works at their widest reach
Those who take this line generally accept that the letter defines the error narrowly at 1:7, and the difference between the readings is how far the principle carries beyond the case named.
It is a rule for a specific first-century situation and is applied today by principle rather than by repetition
held by commentators who observe that a house church supporting a resident teacher has no exact modern equivalent, and that the principle is the refusal to lend one's platform to a denial of Christ

Why were 2 John and 3 John slow to be received?

Both letters sat among the books the early church discussed rather than simply accepted. Origen, writing in the third century, says that John left an epistle of very few lines and perhaps a second and a third, adding that not everyone regards these as genuine. Eusebius in the early fourth century places them among the disputed books, while noting that they are well known and read in most churches. Jerome reports that many attribute them to John the elder rather than to the apostle. The Syriac Peshitta leaves both out. Three ordinary reasons account for most of this. They are very short, so they were copied less and quoted less, and a book that nobody quotes leaves little trace. They are addressed to a single congregation and a single man, so their general usefulness was less obvious. And their author calls himself the elder, which raised the question of which John wrote them. Both stand in Athanasius's list of AD 367 and in the councils that followed.

Their brevity and private address explain the hesitation, and the letters are John's
held by most commentary; a thirteen-verse note to one congregation would be quoted rarely and preserved by accident of association with 1 John
The hesitation reflects a genuine ancient uncertainty about the author
held by Jerome and Eusebius, and modern scholars who take the title elder at verse 1 as evidence that the churches knew these letters came from a different hand than the Fourth Gospel
The churches applied the same test to these letters as to every other book and took time over them
held by commentators who read the whole record of the disputed books as evidence of care rather than confusion, since the same process settled 2 Peter, Jude and Revelation

Who Decided the Canon→

The Text and the Spade

Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus and Codex Alexandrinus4th and 5th centuries
All three carry 2 John complete among the catholic epistles, immediately after 1 John. These are the earliest surviving copies of the letter, and no earlier papyrus of it has been found, which is what one expects of a book of thirteen verses. The text is quiet. The variants are small ones of spelling and word order and none of them touches the argument.
Papyrus 746th or 7th century
A papyrus codex of Acts and the catholic epistles, badly damaged, preserving parts of 2 John among much else. It is late for a papyrus and it matters here because 2 John has so few early witnesses. What it shows is the letter still being copied inside the standard collection of the catholic epistles centuries after the canon was settled.
The Syriac Peshitta and the Philoxenian revisionthe Peshitta by the early 5th century; the Philoxenian version AD 507 or 508
The Peshitta contains twenty-two New Testament books and omits 2 John along with 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude and Revelation. All five were supplied a century later in the revision made for Philoxenus of Mabbug. The Syriac record is the clearest evidence that this letter came late to one large branch of the ancient church, and it should be stated plainly beside the fact that Irenaeus was already quoting the letter in the West by about AD 180.

The papyrus letters of Oxyrhynchus and the Fayumexcavated from 1896; the letters 3rd century BC to the 7th century AD
Tens of thousands of private letters have been recovered from Egyptian rubbish mounds and settlement sites, and they are the reason we know what an ordinary letter of this period looked like, how long it ran, what it cost and how it was carried. They give the physical setting for 1:12, where the writer says he has more to say and will not spend it on paper and ink. Papyrus was made from a reed, ink from soot and gum, and a sheet held a fixed amount, so the closing sentence describes a real constraint rather than a figure of speech.
House churches at Dura-Europos and elsewherethe Dura-Europos house church converted about AD 233 to 256
The best-preserved early Christian meeting place is an ordinary private house on the Euphrates, adapted for worship by knocking two rooms together and adding a baptistery with painted walls. It is later than this letter by well over a century, and it is the clearest physical evidence we have for what a congregation meeting in a house actually looked like. That is the setting the instruction at 1:10 assumes: receiving a teacher into the house was receiving him into the meeting.

The private letter on a single sheet of papyrus

Greco-Roman, surviving in thousands of examples from Egypt3rd century BC to the 3rd century AD

The parallel

An ordinary Greek letter ran to a fixed shape and to a standard length, because a single sheet of papyrus held about the amount of writing that 2 John and 3 John each contain. Sender, recipient, greeting, body, closing greetings and farewell: this letter has every element, closing with a note about the writing materials themselves, 'I would not write them with paper and ink' (1:12), and then greetings, 'The children of thine elect sister salute thee' (1:13).

Read honestly

A real and exact parallel, and it explains the shape of the letter without explaining away anything in it. 2 John is a normal ancient letter of normal ancient length, written on one sheet. That is worth setting beside 1 John, which has no address and no farewell at all, since it shows that the same writer used the ordinary form when he was writing an ordinary letter.

Hospitality to travellers in the ancient Mediterranean

Greek, Roman and Jewish alikethe practice attested throughout the classical period and the early empire

The parallel

Public inns had a poor reputation and travellers depended on private houses, so a household that opened its door supplied lodging, food, and a base for whatever the guest had come to do. Jewish and Christian communities extended the custom to their own people moving between towns. The instruction at 1:10 works inside that system, and so does the warm command of the companion letter about travellers, 'whom thou wilt do well to set forward' (3 John 1:6).

Read honestly

The custom is genuine and knowing it settles the meaning of verse 10. Refusing the house was withholding the platform, the supplies and the endorsement, rather than turning a stranger away hungry. The two letters of John show both sides of the same practice: support for the men who go out for the sake of the Name, and a closed door for the men who carry the denial of verse 7.

Where 2 John leads

The heaviest chapters, the distinctive words, and the studies that cite 2 John

146 cross-references flow out of its 1 heaviest chapters · 8 words are distinctively its own · 2 featured studies cite it.

Counted from this book's own cross-references, its words, and the studies that cite it.

Heaviest chapter

2 John 1Sends 146 cross-references outward: the most connected chapter in the book.

Distinctive word

ἀλήθεια“truth” (G225): 5 of its 109 occurrences in all of Scripture fall in this book (5%).

ἵναin order that/to5 of its 668 uses are in 2 John
μήnot5 of its 1066 uses are in 2 John
G3778this/he/she/it5 of its 1381 uses are in 2 John
G3756no5 of its 1664 uses are in 2 John

Featured study

2 John — the Study GuideCites 2 John directly, one of 2 featured studies that walk through this book.

Antichrist — the Word and the Figure

Every study that reaches into 2 John

1 studies, grouped by shelf

The numeral beside each title is how many passages of 2 John that study works from.

Also cited here1 more study that reaches into 2 John

Antichrist — the Word and the Figure1×

The Cast

a letter with no antagonist named: only an unnamed danger at the door

The ElderAuthor, self-designated "presbyteros" — traditionally John the apostle, writing near the end of his life from Ephesus; the case for and against is set out in Contested Points.

The Elect LadyPrimary recipient, with "her children" — an individual family, or a personified congregation; the letter does not settle it, and neither does this page.

Her Elect Sisterv.13, sending greetings, with her own children; parallel ambiguity to the primary addressee, a literal sister or a sister congregation.

The DeceiversUnnamed itinerant teachers denying "Jesus Christ cometh in the flesh" (v.7), not identified by name in the text, unlike 3 John's named Diotrephes.

Places

EphesusTraditional place of composition, John's late-life base per Irenaeus and Polycrates of Ephesus.

Where 2 John Leads

the door out of this one letter

The 3 John hubThe matched pair: the same "elder," the same "walk in truth," the opposite hospitality case Read 2 JohnAll thirteen verses, one chapter, the whole letter The General EpistlesThe shelf this letter sits on, beside Hebrews, James, Peter, and Jude

Open the 2 John reader →