In closing, the Elder told Gaius that he wanted to tell him many things, but he wouldn’t put it down in pen and ink (3John 1:13; cp. 2John 2:12). Paul wrote many epistles some very long (Romans, the letters to the Corinthians and Hebrews etc.) and some very short (Philemon, and his letters to the Thessalonians), but 2nd and 3rd John are the shortest in the Bible. It may appear that 3rd John is larger than 2nd John, but the additional 14th verse of 3rd John is deceiving. There are actually 249 Greek words in 2nd John to only 219 Greek words in 3rd John.[1] Philemon and Jude come in next with 339 words and 454 words respectively. While there is valid purposes for writing short letters (Philemon and Jude), I have to wonder why the Elder thought it necessary to keep from writing down all he would have liked to tell his recipients, the Elect Lady (2nd John) and Gaius (3rd John). Both Paul and Jude seem to have communicated all they wished to say to their recipients in their short letters, but not so John. Why might that be?
To begin with, the nascent church was of Jewish origin. It may have been believed to be a kind of denomination of sorts, but it was considered Jewish by the Jews (cp. Acts 25:14-19). Moreover, it is actually because it was considered a Jewish entity that the high priest sought to assume authority over it to at first keep the disciples of Jesus from preaching certain things (Acts 4:5-7, 18). Awhile later, they decided they needed to send spies into the assembly of the disciples in order to bring them under the authority of the rulers at Jerusalem.[2] When these things didn’t work out as planned, they openly persecuted and judged certain disciples of Christ who were considered more liberal, as was Stephen and the Hellenist believers who had to flee Judea in order to save their own lives (Acts 7; 8:1).
The Gospel of Luke was written during this persecution, and a copy was given to Theophilus, the high priest and son of Annas, who was the man directly responsible for Jesus’ crucifixion. The threat of Luke 21:20 led the Jewish leaders to repent of their persecuting the church (Acts 9:31) and pleaded for their own lives before the Roman general, Petronius, who had positioned is armies at Ptolemias, just north of Caesarea, intending to march on Jerusalem after winter and place a statue of Gaius Caesar in the Holy of Holies within the Temple. Josephus records some very miraculous events that transpired to save the Jewish state, because the persecution had stopped.[3]
As the church prospered and began extending into foreign lands, another of Annas’ sons, the high priest Matthias, encouraged King Herod Agrippa to reach out to kill the Apostles (Acts 12:1-3). Moreover, the Jewish authorities sought to undo the work of Paul in the cities of Galatia where he and Barnabas had spent three years. They sent certain men of authority to Galatia in the name of James, the Lord’s brother (Galatians 2:12), and this necessitated not only the Council of Jerusalem of Acts 15, but Paul also had to follow up on his missionary effort with his letter to the Galatians. James denied sending the men (Acts 15:23-29), and wrote out what Luke called the decrees of the Apostles (Acts 16:4), which were given to the churches affected by the Jewish rulers’ disinformation in an effort to show the churches that Paul’s Gospel was an authentic Gospel of Christ.
So, we see the beginning of the use of political power in the Jewish community to curtail and / or stop the preaching of the Gospel. Lies were told to slander the Apostles (Romans 3:8), and evil men were used to tarnish the names of those preaching the Gospel (cp. Acts 16:20-21; 17:5-6; 18:12-13). However, when all else failed, the Jewish authorities sought to kill the leaders of the church and so stop the preaching of the word of God (Acts 21:27-30; 23:12; 24:5-7). When another of Annas’ sons was named to the high priesthood, he had James, the brother of the Lord, slain with other prominent men in the church, and with this an all out effort was made by the Jerusalem authorities to arrest and slay the leaders of the church worldwide. Through the writer of John’s epistles, who identifies himself as **the** Elder, and he was known by that title throughout the universal church, it seems this man could have been the last remaining witness of Jesus’ life and works. The lack of names in John’s 2nd and 3rd epistles seem to indicate an effort to keep the wrong folks from identifying the author of the letters, should they fall into the wrong hands. Moreover, the brevity of the letters, themselves, knowing there was much to write, seems to indicate, given the church’s history, the dangerous times in which they were written.
The Elder, had hoped to see Gaius soon after writing this letter (3John 1:14), but nothing is known if that meeting transpired. Moreover, the Elder also used the word friends, which seems to indicate by whom he wanted his letter read. Greet the friends by name, perhaps, indicates let only the friends read this letter. These were dangerous times and special efforts needed to be made to remain safe from harm.
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[1] The English is shorter and varies with the translation, but in the Greek it is as I’ve said above.
[2] See the account of Ananias and his wife in Acts chapter 5. See also Galatians 2:4.
[3] See the full account in Josephus: Antiquities of the Jews, book 18; chapter 8.
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