St John the Theologian writing his Revelations on an open scroll, Andreas Ritzos, 1449 to 1450. Public domain.
New Testament · Book 64 of 66
3 John
3 John is a short letter from the elder to his friend Gaius. He praises Gaius for welcoming travelling believers and warns against Diotrephes, who loves to be first and refuses them.
3 John is a short letter from the elder to his friend Gaius. He praises Gaius for welcoming travelling believers and warns against Diotrephes, who loves to be first and refuses them.
What is 3 John about?
3 John is a letter of one chapter from the elder to his friend Gaius. Brothers travelling for the gospel depend on believers for food and lodging. Gaius has welcomed them, though they were strangers, and the elder writes: “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth” (1:4). Diotrephes, who loves to be first, turns the brothers away and puts out those who would welcome them. The elder tells Gaius to imitate what is good, commends Demetrius, and hopes to speak face to face.
All 1 chapters
Every chapter of the book, in one grid. Each cell opens that chapter.
- Gaius1:1 to 8
- Diotrephes1:9 to 10
- Demetrius1:11 to 14
The book is one chapter, and its three movements are verse ranges of it. The cell opens the chapter's Study level.
Who wrote it, where, when, for whom, and why?
The writer calls himself the elder (1:1). He speaks of those who walk in the truth as his children (1:4), writes with the authority to expose a man's deeds when he comes (1:10), and says his testimony is true (1:12). 2 John opens with the same title (2 John 1:1).
The elder, To the beloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth:
3 John 1:1, Berean Standard Bible.
The letter goes to Gaius, who belongs within reach of the church the elder wrote to, where Diotrephes puts people out (1:9 to 10). The elder hopes to come there (1:10) and to see Gaius soon (1:14).
Churches stand in several places, with brothers travelling between them on the support of believers (1:5 to 8), and a leader in one church can refuse the elder's word (1:9). The date stands under the Hard Questions.
The letter is written to one man, the beloved Gaius (1:1), and every command in it is to him. The friends with him are greeted by name at the close (1:14).
The elder gives his reasons in his own words: to encourage Gaius to send the brothers on their way in a manner worthy of God (1:6), to warn him about Diotrephes (1:9 to 10), and to commend Demetrius (1:12).
Therefore we ought to support such men, so that we may be fellow workers for the truth.
3 John 1:8, Berean Standard Bible.
The elder's second letter tells a household not to receive a teacher who does not bring the teaching of Christ (2 John 1:10). This letter gives the other side: brothers who went out for the Name are to be welcomed and supported (1:7 to 8).
Sources. In 3 John, 1:1, 1:4 to 10, 1:12 and 1:14; 2 John 1:1 and 1:10. Every verse is read in the Berean Standard Bible.
How is 3 John arranged, and what is it for?
The three movements of its one chapter, then what it teaches and what it was given to do.
- Gaius1:1 to 8, 8 verses, the turn at 1:4
The elder greets Gaius, rejoices that he walks in the truth, and asks him to keep sending the travelling brothers on their way.
- Diotrephes1:9 to 10, 2 verses, the turn at 1:9
Diotrephes, who loves to be first, rejects the elder, slanders him, turns the brothers away and puts out those who would welcome them.
- Demetrius1:11 to 14, 4 verses, the turn at 1:11
Imitate what is good: Demetrius has a good testimony from all, and the elder closes hoping to speak face to face.
The theme
3 John is about the welcome the church owes to those who carry the gospel. Gaius opens his home to travelling brothers who are strangers to him, and the elder counts that as sharing in their work for the truth. Diotrephes shuts the door, on the brothers and on anyone who would open it, because he loves to be first. Between the two the letter sets its rule: imitate what is good, because the one who does good is of God.
The purpose
The letter was written to one man, to encourage him to keep welcoming the brothers when a leader in the church turned them away. It warns him about Diotrephes and names the deeds the elder will expose when he comes. It commends Demetrius so that Gaius will receive him, and it promises a visit in which the elder will say the rest face to face.
Three men, and the command between them
The command, 1:11“do not imitate what is evil, but what is good” “The one who does good is of God; the one who does evil has not seen God”
- GaiusThe host who welcomes the brothers
- “your devotion to the truth, in which you continue to walk” 1:3
- “you are faithful in what you are doing for the brothers” 1:5
- DiotrephesThe man who loves to be first
- “who loves to be first, will not accept our instruction” 1:9
- “he refuses to welcome the brothers” 1:10
- DemetriusThe man the elder vouches for
- “Demetrius has received a good testimony from everyone, and from the truth itself” 1:12
- “We also testify for him” 1:12
Gaius, who walks in the truth
What the text says in this movement, and the pages it opens on.
The elder writes to Gaius, whom he loves in the truth (1:1). He prays that all may go well with Gaius and that he may enjoy good health, as his soul already does (1:2). Brothers have come back and told the elder how Gaius holds to the truth and walks in it, and nothing gives the elder more joy than to hear that his children live that way (1:3 to 4). Gaius has been faithful in what he does for the brothers, even though they were strangers to him, and they have told the church of his love (1:5 to 6). The elder asks him to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. They went out on behalf of the Name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles, so the churches ought to support them and so share in their work for the truth (1:6 to 8).
I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.
- Study
3 John 1one chapter of 14 verses: Gaius who welcomes the brothers, Diotrephes who turns them away, and Demetrius who has a good testimony from allShow the summary and 5 pagesShow summary, 5 pagesHide the summary
The shortest book in the New Testament, and the only one whose whole subject is hospitality and a church quarrel. 'The elder, To the beloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth: Beloved, I pray that in every way you may prosper and enjoy good health, as your soul also prospers' (v2). Brethren bore witness to the truth that is in him ('I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth' (v4)) for he receives strangers who went forth for the sake of the Name, taking nothing of the Gentiles. Against him stands Diotrephes, 'who loves to be first,' who casts out those who would receive the brethren. 'Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good' (v11).
On this chapter (5)
- The Name
The name of God, and what it means to act for the sake of it.
- Love One Another
The command John's letters return to, and how it is kept.
- What was Diotrephes?
Answered under Where do readers disagree, lower on this page, with each reading and who holds it.
- What does the prayer of 3 John 1:2 promise?
Answered under Where do readers disagree, lower on this page, with each reading and who holds it.
- The verse of the command
The verse on its own page, with the commentators on it by era.
- The Name
The road of the brothers
- Station 1, 1:7Gone out for the Name“they went out on behalf of the Name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles”
- Station 2, 1:5Received by Gaius“what you are doing for the brothers, and especially since they are strangers to you”
- Station 3, 1:6Their testimony before the church“They have testified to the church about your love”
- Station 4, 1:6Sent on their way“send them on their way in a manner worthy of God”
- Station 5, 1:8Fellow workers for the truth“we ought to support such men, so that we may be fellow workers for the truth”
Characters (3)
Who the text names. A name with a page carries its door.
- The elder
The writer, who calls himself the elder (1:1); the church has read him as John the apostle.
- Gaius
The beloved friend the letter is written to, who walks in the truth.
- The brothers
Travelling workers who went out for the Name, strangers to Gaius, whom he welcomed.
Places (1)
Where these verses stand.
- The church that heard the report
Where the brothers testified to Gaius's love (1:6).
Themes (3)
What these verses raise, each on its own page where one stands.
- Walking in the truth
A life that keeps to the truth over time, the elder's measure of his children.
- The welcome of strangers
Food, lodging and help on the road for workers who were strangers to Gaius (1:5).
- On behalf of the Name
The reason the brothers went out, accepting nothing from the Gentiles (1:7).
Where these chapters take up the Old Testament (2)Every word of these verses is the elder's own.
The store links these verses to the words of Jesus and to the elder's second letter:
- Probable allusion, Matthew 10:40
Jesus sends the Twelve out and says that whoever receives them receives him; the elder asks the churches to support the brothers who went out for the Name (3 John 1:8).
“He who receives you receives Me” (Matthew 10:40)
- Companion letter, 2 John 1:4
The elder's second letter rejoices in the same words over the children of the chosen lady, as 3 John 1:3 to 4 rejoices over Gaius.
“walking in the truth” (2 John 1:4)
Diotrephes, who loves to be first
What the text says in this movement, and the pages it opens on.
The elder has already written to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will not accept what he says (1:9). The elder names four things he has done. He rejects the elder's word, he spreads malicious slander against him, he refuses to welcome the brothers himself, and he stops those who want to welcome them, putting them out of the church (1:9 to 10). The elder will answer in person: if he comes, he will bring these deeds into the open (1:10).
I have written to the church about this, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will not accept our instruction.
The four charges against Diotrephes
Characters (2)
Who the text names. A name with a page carries its door.
- Diotrephes
A man in the church who loves to be first and will not accept the elder.
- Those who would welcome the brothers
Members of the church whom Diotrephes forbids and puts out.
Places (1)
Where these verses stand.
- The church of 1:9
The congregation the elder wrote to, where Diotrephes puts out those who welcome the brothers (1:9 to 10).
Themes (2)
What these verses raise, each on its own page where one stands.
- The love of being first
The desire for the first place, which the letter names in Diotrephes.
- Authority in the church
Whose word the church accepts, and how a leader uses his place.
Where these chapters take up the Old Testament (0)Every word of these verses is the elder's own.
Their words are the elder's own, written to one friend.
Demetrius, and the good to imitate
What the text says in this movement, and the pages it opens on.
The elder turns to Gaius with a command: do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does good is of God, and the one who does evil has not seen God (1:11). Then he names a man to imitate. Demetrius has a good testimony from everyone and from the truth itself, and the elder adds his own, which Gaius knows to be true (1:12). The elder has more to say than he will put in pen and ink, and hopes to see Gaius soon and speak face to face (1:13 to 14). He closes with peace, greetings from the friends with him, and a charge to greet the friends with Gaius by name (1:14).
Beloved, do not imitate what is evil, but what is good. The one who does good is of God; the one who does evil has not seen God.
The command of this movement and the men it weighs are drawn as three men, under The book as a whole.
Characters (2)
Who the text names. A name with a page carries its door.
- Demetrius
A man with a good testimony from everyone, from the truth itself and from the elder.
- The friends
Those with the elder who send greetings, and those with Gaius to be greeted by name.
Themes (3)
What these verses raise, each on its own page where one stands.
- Imitation of what is good
The command of 1:11, to imitate what is good.
- Testimony
A man's name vouched for by those who know him and by the truth.
- Love one another
The love the brothers reported of Gaius before the church (1:6).
Where these chapters take up the Old Testament (0)Every word of these verses is the elder's own.
Their words are the elder's own, written to one friend.
- Author
- The apostle John (traditional), again ‘the elder’
- Date
- Late 1st century, c. AD 85–95
- Audience
- Gaius, a beloved member of the Johannine churches
Where do readers disagree?
One list: the readings with their holders, and what the evidence does not settle.
Which Gaius is this?
- A Gaius known only from this letter. Held by Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John, Anchor Bible (1982).
- The Gaius who became bishop of Pergamum. Held by the Apostolic Constitutions (about 380), book 7, chapter 46, which names a Gaius as the first bishop of Pergamum; the tradition is reported on this verse by Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871).
What the evidence does not settle: The letter tells of Gaius only that he is beloved, walks in the truth and welcomes the brothers (1:1 to 5), so each reading rests on the name alone.
The argument in full
A Gaius known only from this letter. Gaius was one of the commonest Roman names, and the letter tells of this man only his walk in the truth and his welcome of the brothers (1:3 to 5), too little to join him to the Gaius of Macedonia (Acts 19:29), of Derbe (Acts 20:4) or of Corinth (Romans 16:23; 1 Corinthians 1:14).
The Gaius who became bishop of Pergamum. A church in the province of Asia remembered a Gaius appointed in the apostles' time, which fits a friend of the elder in that region.
What was Diotrephes?
Elders and Deacons→- The first single bishop known by name. Held by Adolf von Harnack, "Über den dritten Johannesbrief", Texte und Untersuchungen 15.3 (1897).
- A bishop who counted the elder a teacher of error. Held by Ernst Käsemann, "Ketzer und Zeuge", Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 48 (1951).
- The host of a house church who refused hospitality. Held by Abraham J. Malherbe, "The Inhospitality of Diotrephes", in God's Christ and His People (1977).
What the evidence does not settle: The letter names Diotrephes by his love of being first and by his four deeds (1:9 to 10), and each reading infers his place in the church from those deeds.
The argument in full
The first single bishop known by name. Diotrephes rules one church and shuts out the travelling workers, the older order the elder speaks for, which is the rise of the single local bishop.
A bishop who counted the elder a teacher of error. Diotrephes acted as a bishop defending his church, and he put out the elder's party because he judged the elder's teaching suspect.
The host of a house church who refused hospitality. The four charges are all about receiving guests, so Diotrephes is best read as the householder who shut his house to the elder's men.
What is the letter the elder wrote to the church in 3 John 1:9?
- A letter now lost. Held by B. F. Westcott, The Epistles of St John (1883).
- 2 John. Held by Theodor Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament (English translation 1909).
What the evidence does not settle: The elder says of that letter only that he wrote it to the church (1:9), and each reading rests on the matter it supposes the letter carried.
The argument in full
A letter now lost. The letter of 1:9 went to the church and was set aside by Diotrephes, and its matter, the welcome of the travelling brothers, is the matter of 3 John rather than of 1 John or 2 John.
2 John. 2 John is addressed to a church under the figure of a chosen lady and deals with whom to receive, so it is the letter Diotrephes set aside.
What does the prayer of 3 John 1:2 promise?
- The customary wish for health that opened a letter. Held by Gordon D. Fee, The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospels (1985).
- Outward prosperity promised with the soul's. Held by Oral Roberts, Expect a Miracle: My Life and Ministry (1995).
- The soul's prosperity as the measure of the rest. Held by Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on 3 John 1:2.
What the evidence does not settle: The verse is a prayer for one named man at the head of a letter; how far it reaches beyond Gaius is decided by how a reader weighs that setting.
The argument in full
The customary wish for health that opened a letter. Greek letters of the time regularly opened with a prayer for the reader's health, and the verse is that greeting, a wish for one named man.
Outward prosperity promised with the soul's. Roberts took the verse as God's will that believers prosper in body and in goods as their souls prosper, and made it the text of his ministry.
The soul's prosperity as the measure of the rest. The elder asks that Gaius's outward life go as well as his soul already goes, so the soul is the standard and the chief good.
How do the three letters of John stand to one another?
- All three by John the apostle. Held by B. F. Westcott, The Epistles of St John (1883).
- 2 John and 3 John by John the elder. Held by Jerome in On Illustrious Men (392), chapters 9 and 18, following the two Johns of Asia that Eusebius in the Ecclesiastical History (about 325), book 3, chapter 39, reads in Papias.
- One writer in the circle of the Gospel's community. Held by Raymond E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (1979) and The Epistles of John, Anchor Bible (1982).
What the evidence does not settle: Only 2 John and 3 John name their writer, and both name him by his title, the elder.
The argument in full
All three by John the apostle. The three share their words and manner of thought with one another and with the Fourth Gospel, and the church received them as the apostle's.
2 John and 3 John by John the elder. Both short letters open with the title the elder, and Papias spoke of an elder John in Asia beside the apostle.
One writer in the circle of the Gospel's community. The three letters come from one elder of the community that received the Fourth Gospel, writing after it to churches in dispute.
Does 3 John have fourteen verses or fifteen?
- Fourteen verses. Held by Robert Estienne, the Greek New Testament of 1551, whose verse division the King James Version (1611) keeps; the Berean Standard Bible in the store keeps it too.
- Fifteen verses. Held by Nestle and Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece (28th edition, 2012), followed by the English Standard Version (2001).
What the evidence does not settle: The words are the same in every edition; the editions differ only in where a verse number is set, and a reference to 1:15 in one is part of 1:14 in the store.
The argument in full
Fourteen verses. The greeting of peace and the greetings of the friends stand in 1:14 with the hope of meeting face to face.
Fifteen verses. The editors begin a new verse at the words of peace, so the closing greetings stand as a verse of their own.
Why was 3 John slow to be received?
Who Decided the Canon→- Among the books spoken against. Held by Eusebius in the Ecclesiastical History (about 325), book 3, chapter 25, which lists 2 John and 3 John among the disputed books while recording that they were well known.
- Received among the books of the New Testament. Held by Athanasius in the Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter (367).
What the evidence does not settle: The letter is fourteen verses on one church's quarrel, and it is seldom quoted before the third century, so the early record of its use is thin.
The argument in full
Among the books spoken against. Some churches doubted whether the two short letters came from the evangelist or from another John.
Received among the books of the New Testament. Athanasius lists three letters of John among the twenty-seven books the churches read as Scripture.
The Text and the Spade
- The private letters recovered from Oxyrhynchus and the Fayumexcavated from 1896; the letters 3rd century BC to the 7th century AD
Tens of thousands of ordinary letters have come out of Egyptian rubbish mounds and settlement sites, written by soldiers, farmers, traders and mothers. They are the reason the opening formula of verse 2 can be identified with confidence, since the same health wish appears in them again and again in almost the same words. They also give the physical setting for verse 13, where the writer says he will not use ink and pen for what remains, since a letter of this length is one sheet and the reed pen and soot ink are the tools he names.
- The Roman road network and the inns along itthe eastern roads built and maintained from the 1st century BC onward
Travel across the Roman east ran on a maintained road system with official stations and commercial inns spaced along it. The inns had a poor reputation in Roman writing, associated with dirt, theft and worse, which is why respectable travellers relied on private hospitality wherever they could find it. That is the world verses 5 to 8 belong to. Setting a worker forward meant food, money and often a companion for the road, and it explains why refusing to receive a man was a serious act rather than a discourtesy.
The pages 3 John opens on
Studies11
People and groups1
Words7
Sources for this page
The movements, the chapter entry, the figures and the Context are read off the text of 3 John and 2 John. The works behind the readings under Where do readers disagree are Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History (about 325); Athanasius, the Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter (367); the Apostolic Constitutions (about 380); Jerome, On Illustrious Men (392); Robert Estienne, the Greek New Testament (1551); the King James Version (1611); Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710); Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871); B. F. Westcott, The Epistles of St John (1883); Adolf von Harnack, “Über den dritten Johannesbrief” (1897); Theodor Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament (1909); Ernst Käsemann, “Ketzer und Zeuge” (1951); Abraham J. Malherbe, “The Inhospitality of Diotrephes” (1977); Raymond E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (1979) and The Epistles of John (1982); Gordon D. Fee, The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospels (1985); Oral Roberts, Expect a Miracle (1995); the English Standard Version (2001); and Nestle and Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece (2012). The two links in the first movement's fold are the store's cross references. Every verse quoted on this page is the Berean Standard Bible, read from the store.