Second John was addressed, a bit mysterious, “to the lady chosen by God and to her children.” Third John, by contrast, is addressed concretely to a man named Gaius whom he also loves “in the truth.” But who was Gaius? The name appears several times in the New Testament. Is John writing to one of the Gaiuses mentioned elsewhere, or to someone else?

Unlike 2 John, 3 John is addressed directly to an individual, a dear friend of John’s named Gaius. It’s the shortest book of the Bible, but also one of the most personal; reading it feels a bit like reading someone else’s mail. In this episode, we begin our study of 3 John by sketching the situational background that helps us make sense of the letter.

There’s only so much that can be said in as short a letter as 2 John; at the end of the letter, the apostle expresses the desire to meet and talk with his readers in person instead. He suggests that to do so would bring him joy. But this is not necessarily the joy of being reunited with long-lost friends. Rather, it’s the joy of meeting people who are your brothers and sisters in Christ, even if they live many miles away.

In the previous episode, I introduced the distinction between bounded and centered sets as they might apply to congregations. The ideas complement each other. Though there may be times in which we need to draw hard boundaries, this is secondary to our commitment to embodying our shared core convictions. Without a balance between the two, we may fall too easily into the human tendency to make in-groups and out-groups.

In this episode, we come to one of the harshest statements in the letter, in which John advises his readers to not even let the secessionists into their homes. By this, he probably means to not let them participate in their house churches, so as not to give them a platform for their false ideas about Jesus. But can we draw such hard lines in a way that still embodies a gospel of love? We’ll begin exploring that question using the concept of bounded versus centered sets.

Innovation is important. Many of the technologies we take for granted and use constantly are the result of someone thinking outside the box. But not every innovation is progress, especially in the world of ideas and doctrine. Thinking about the beliefs and teaching of the secessionists, John warns that they have gone too far, running ahead and leaving behind the true gospel, and with it, their relationship to God.

When someone shouts “Watch out!” we’re immediately on the alert. Some danger is near, and we need to take immediate action. With the secessionists on the loose spreading false ideas about Jesus, John writes the letter we know as 2 John to tell others to watch out for them and their teaching. But as I’ll suggest in this episode, it might be better to translate his warning as “Watch yourselves,” because it may make an important difference in our attitude.

What does it mean to be a "Christian"? Is it about believing the right things? As we’ve seen already, it’s important to know and believe the truth about Jesus. But authentic faith is more than a matter of right belief; it’s a matter of living in a way that embodies that belief. John’s metaphor for this is “walking.” As he says in 2 John 4-6, walking in the truth of the gospel means walking in obedience to the command of Jesus. And the command that John emphasizes is for the followers of Jesus to love one another.

John’s community had gone through much pain and confusion, and he wanted to spare other communities the same heartache. That’s the purpose of 2 John, and some of what he says there seems harsh. How do you tell people something they may not want to hear? Start by saying something nice; ancient letters often began by establishing some goodwill between the sender and the recipient. But in trying to encourage obedience to the truth, was John paying his readers a left-handed compliment?

“True love” is one of our favorite cultural tropes; it’s shorthand for our romantic hopes. But when John addresses the “chosen lady” at the beginning of 2 John, and does so with love, we need a different interpretive context. Against the background of what we’ve already seen in 1 John, it’s clear that when John says he loves the chosen lady “in the truth,” he means the kind of love that befits and embodies the gospel.