The First, Second and Third Letters of John (Part Six)

Part Six of the New Testament Survey Series

Khen Lim




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The estimates put these three letters as being written between 90AD and 95AD and in that time, John was in Ephesus on the west coast of Asia Minor where he remained until he was laid to rest. He moved there because of the outbreak of the Jewish War, which took place around 66AD to 70AD. They would have also been written after John had completed his Gospel. This would put the completion of the latter around 80AD to 85AD.

If we take this chronology to be true, we can then understand how and why the letters deal with the early elements of Gnosticism (which was becoming endemic by the turn of the first century) and the Gospel did not.

66AD – 70AD	Outbreak of the Jewish War
80AD – 85AD	Gospel of John is finished
90AD – 95AD	John’s three letters are finished

After saying all that, it seems bewildering that despite the convictions of the Early Church Fathers, the issue of authorship remains disputable from the modern biblical scholars’ standpoint at least when it comes to the second and third letters. According to them, the name ‘John’ did not have to imply the apostle who wrote the Gospel but could well be another disciple of Christ or perhaps even someone who was supposedly known as ‘John the Elder,’ allegedly a close companion of the John we know and apparently an elder in the church in Ephesus, which is convenient, considering that many agreed the letters were written in that city.

And yet the Early Church Fathers were so certain that they came from the same one author whose thematic styles, choice of words and arrangements appear sufficiently consistent throughout all the letters and that they were also convinced that they all came from the hand of the John who was the son of Zebedee. We will describe this more towards the end of this article.

As for ‘John the elder,’ the phrase appear in the second (2 Jn 1) and third (3 Jn 1) letters. Contrary to misguided modern scholarship, this term actually refers to the revered apostle John. The title given emphasises his role as someone with pastoral leadership (1 Pet 5:1) as much as his venerable age (Phm 9).

The centrepiece of John’s first letter is his attempt at addressing a common problem to do with faux teaching. It is the same problem that plagued James as well as Peter for you see similarities in their topical coverage. The consistency in this coverage tells us something about the infancy days of the Early Church; that the problem was not only endemic but made harder to tackle because there were no authorised texts back then for believers to hinge upon.

As a result, faux teachings would have had serious enough potential in derailing fledgling churches to have warranted such letters like John’s first. Furthermore these faux teachers also posed significant threat to church leadership – with their heretic teaching, this could spell the end of Christianity unless it was tackled earnestly.

It is therefore the goal of John to set things right and put things straight when it came to the identity of the Lord Jesus Christ. John was inviting readers to view their faith in a manner in which they could find honest answers to the fundamental notion of what it’s like to be a Christian (1 Jn 2:18-3:24) and by that, he was urging them to identity the basic foundation of their faith in Christ. John suggests that these honest answers can be found in their own actions, conduct and behaviour.

And so when it comes to a question like “Are we true believers?” he believes then that evidence of God’s presence in their lives can be found when they have enough love and care for one another (4:1-5:12). He does not say anywhere that one has to be perfect to be able to do all of this but he encourages us to simply train our focus on a faith that must be grounded on the admission of guilt in which we then seek God’s forgiveness and His hand in cleansing us of this guilt (1:5-2:17).

John’s second letter pretty much continues where the first left off – his deep concern over deceivers whose intentions were to deviate from Christ’s doctrines remains palpable. He points out, for example, the fact that Jesus rose not only in spirit form but also in the flesh but heretics are saying otherwise. John was therefore keen to persuade his readers that it is important to be aware of such deception and to have nothing to do with them (2 Jn 4-11).

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In his third letter, John focused not just on truth but he also express his gratitude towards a wealthy laymen called Gaius who not only lived a life of distinction in a city near Ephesus but was also exceptionally caring and hospitable to John’s messengers who were given the responsibility in relaying the Gospel in their travels from one place to the next. In encouraging Gaius to continue doing good and avoiding evil, John cites a person called Diotrephes as an infamous example of someone who in assuming leadership of a church somewhere in Asia, had also decided to antagonise John by rejecting his apostolic authority as well as his overtures and guidance (3 Jn 5-12).

Diotrephes not only maligned John with malicious slanders but he also deliberately barred anyone who had supported and cared for John’s messengers whenever they visited. Towards the ending of the third letter, John brings up Demetrius’ name as someone whose integrity is demonstrable by his excellent work and willingness to expose Diotrephes.

When it comes to who John’s readers were, there is no certainty since there were also no known addressees. However we may assume from his first letter that it wasn’t just the Ephesians in whose city he was living at that time but instead he could be universally addressing all churches throughout the province of Asia. In that sense, we may view it as a circular letter – a letter that does its rounds through all the churches within a defined circuit – to the Christian church at large.

His second letter, on the other hand, might poses a little more of a challenge because first impressions might not necessarily be lasting. Reading it on the surface, it appears that John had written it to a believing woman and her family (2 Jn 1:1) – in which the verse reads, “The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in truth” – but some are also saying that they are merely symbolic of the church and ‘her’ laity. The verse indicates that the recipient of the second letter was a lady; in fact a particular lady since the word ‘elect’ is taken to mean ‘chosen’ or in the NIV translation, ‘chosen by God.’

Scripturally all of this could be a reference to a part of the nation of Israel or part of the universal Church. Contrary to what some might assume, the word ‘elect’ also does not have to refer to a lady of Jewish persuasion but instead one who may be part of the universal church that stakes her belief in Jesus Christ as the Saviour who died on the cross, bore our sins and paid the heavy price and Who then defeated death at His resurrection.

On the other hand, there are also opinions of the ‘elect lady’ being coded language to secretly refer to the local church and its congregation. During such times of persecution, the use of coded words was preferable when it comes to relaying messages.

As for John’s third letter, the addressee appears to be a person by the name of Gaius. However, that was apparently a fairly common Roman name and therefore, being specific might be difficult. We do see instances of this in the New Testament where the name has been mentioned in Rom 16:23 as well as 1 Cor 1:14 concerning a man from Corinth, or in Acts 19:29 of yet another (man) this time from Macedonia or even Acts 20:4-5 concerning another one from Derbe. It is fairly plausible that in all of these examples are different people who happened to share the same name Gaius. So exactly which Gaius that John’s third letter was addressed to is something we will never know for sure.

The faux teachings that were John’s focus in his first letter cannot be underestimated in view of the real threats that the Early Church was facing. These threats came in two forms, both of which bore falsified theories that concerned the person of Christ.

One was Docetism in which the human Jesus was claimed to be none other than a phantasm or a celestial existence as recorded by John (1 Jn 2:22-23, 2 Jn 9, 1 Jn 4:15). What Docetists wanted to claim was that Christ’s sufferings were simply an apparition in itself and nothing more.

The other was Cerinthianism, which originated from a religious sect called the Cerinthus, named after a Jew who sought to merge the doctrines of Christ with Jewish and Gnostic elements. Followers of this heretic group believed that “the Christ” had merely appeared upon Jesus at His baptism but had left Him to suffer and die at His crucifixion.

In other words Cerinthianism hinges on the principle that Christ and Jesus are not the same, in that they are mutually different beings that happened to have come together for a very brief period only. Irenaeus recalls that Gnosticism and also Egyptian wisdom had shaped Cerinthus’ heretic views in which the divinity of God was simply far too immaculate and perfect to be mixing it with the flawed material world. The view was therefore that the physical world could not have been the work of the Almighty God but by a lesser (inferior) god whose power is unmatched by the sheer supremacy of a perfect divine being.

Little wonder therefore that John had used his first letter to strongly label these faux teachers as ‘false prophets’ (1 Jn 4:1), ‘deceivers’ (2 Jn 7) and ‘antichrists’ (1 Jn 2:18, 4:3,2 Jn 7). He was emphatic in teaching his readers how to distinguish for themselves those who are nominal Christians (purely by name only) from those to whom he was assuring that their salvation in Christ was intact (1 Jn 2:26-27, 5:13).

Encouragement is the hallmark of John’s second letter even if the faux teaching theme (from the first letter) had survived and prevailed in caution and advice. Whether or not we identify his addressee as a woman in the flesh or in symbolic terms, John’s message was clear in the way he defines love. The apostle’s urging was to live in love for one another as Christ loves us and that this love must unreservedly come from submitting to Jesus’ commandment to love and live life in obedience to His Word.

Other than his complimentary expressions to Gaius, John’s third letter also served two important purposes. The first was aimed at Diotrephes whose dictatorial conduct was unbecoming and unacceptable of someone who calls himself a true leader of Christ’s church. He therefore used him as an example of someone who uses heresy to build his own power base against Christ. The second purpose was to honour Demetrius whose good testimony did not go unnoticed by John.

So far, we can see similarities among John’s three letters including his Gospel. They do justify the apostle as the true author in that these similarities can also reveal complimentary rather than contradicting relationships. Like in his Gospel, John reveals four opposites in his letters such as truths and untruths, love and hate, life and death, and also light and darkness. Yet we can also see other such similarities covered by John’s letters:

-         Man’s sinful nature and the nature of our worldly debaucheries

-         The manner in which God loves and inspires us in order that we do the same to others

-         The means by which we can attain eternal life through Jesus, Saviour of the world

-         The importance of knowing our life is in Christ, which is how we have life in the first place.

In each and every such instance, John’s penmanship is unmistakable. The words and phrases he uses are as identical in the letters as they are in his Gospel. In fact we can draw three lessons from his correspondences:

-         Firstly, as it is with the Pauline epistles, John’s writings help us to capture and imagine what a late first-century church looked like, the problems it weathered and the manner in which it behaved.

Just like what Paul, Peter and James discovered, heretic teachings were too visible to avoid and not do anything about and so John also set about to address them quickly and attentively.

-         Secondly, John’s writings offer us clear assurances that we must ground our Christian lives on values that endear us to Christ. His letters are invaluable in helping us discern right from wrong, true from false and good from bad.

-         Thirdly, John confirms that Christ’s doctrines are not to be messed with, for they are immutable or non-negotiable. Nothing that we learn from Christ can be reinterpreted differently.

We are to understand them in the way the Early Church Fathers expected us to. John emphasises that just as God is unchanging, so are His revelations. Even as the heretics try to drown the fledgling churches with divergent teachings, John wants us to remain upright, resolute and unflinching as we stand up for the Gospel.

It is in fact the third and final point that we can make full use of today. John’s precious lesson is that the church must withstand pressure from others to reinterpret the Gospel. We certainly see plenty of that today with modern biblical scholarship. We do know now that our biggest problems come from those who act from within for they do not act in the interest of Christ.

If there is anything invaluable we can take home from John, it is that we must gird ourselves against doctrinal and interpretational attacks from those who claim to have “something new” to teach us in no different a way to those who make spurious claims in challenging the veracity of any part of the New Testament.

Part Seven (Letter of Jude) will be available on January 20 2016