Manna Praxis

The Book of 3 John: Fellow Workers for the Truth

Introduction

Today’s Passage: An Overview of the Whole Book

This is the shortest book in the New Testament. Fourteen verses, and in the Greek only about two hundred and twenty words, which is less than a page of any book on your shelf. It is also, strangely, one of the most personal things in all of Scripture, because it is almost entirely about three named men and how each of them treated a group of travelling missionaries. The letter comes from “the elder,” the same voice that wrote the note we call 2 John, and the church has always heard the apostle John in it, an old man who had outlived nearly everyone and was still writing letters. He writes to a friend named Gaius, and the whole affection of it is in the first line: “the beloved Gaius, whom I love in the truth.” He prays for his health. He tells him that nothing gives him greater joy than hearing that his children are walking in the truth. Then he commends Gaius for something very concrete: he has been taking in travelling brothers, men he had never met before, and sending them on their way supplied. That, the elder says, makes him a fellow worker for the truth. Then the letter turns dark for two verses. There is a man in that circle named Diotrephes who loves to be first, who will not accept the elder’s word, who talks maliciously about him, who refuses to welcome the travelling brothers, and who throws out of the church anyone who tries to. Then a word of counsel, do not imitate what is evil but what is good, and a warm recommendation of a third man, Demetrius, who is well spoken of by everybody and by the truth itself. And then the ink runs out, the old man says he hopes to come and speak face to face, and he sends peace and asks that the friends there be greeted by name.

As you read, hold this: The truth travels on the hospitality of ordinary people, and the greatest danger to a church is often a man who simply loves to be first.

The name and what it means

The word to carry into this letter comes from the middle of it, at verse eight, where the elder says, “Therefore we ought to support such men, so that we may be fellow workers for the truth.” The Greek is συνεργός (synergos), pronounced soon-er-GOSS (Strong’s G4904), and it is built out of two plain pieces: syn, meaning with or together, and ergon, meaning work. A synergos is a co-worker, a partner in the labor, someone pulling on the same rope. Ordinary Greek used it for business partners and for men working the same field. Paul used it constantly for the people who labored beside him, Prisca and Aquila, Urbanus, Timothy, Titus, Luke, and he was bold enough once to say that we are God’s fellow workers.

Now look at what the elder does with the word here, because it is astonishing and it is easy to miss. The men on the road are the ones preaching. They are the ones who went out on behalf of the Name, taking nothing from the Gentiles, sleeping in strange houses and walking dusty miles. Gaius, so far as we can tell, went nowhere. He stayed home. What he did was open a door, set a table, wash out a cloak, hand over some money for the next stage of the journey, and stand at the gate waving. And John says that this makes him a synergos, a fellow worker for the truth. Not a supporter of the work. Not an admirer of the workers. A co-worker, in the same enterprise, with a share in the same harvest.

Sit with that for a moment, because it changes how you count your own life. There is a way of thinking about Christian service that quietly divides the church into the few who do the real work and the many who watch and admire, and this one word demolishes it. The truth moved through the ancient world on two things: the courage of men who went, and the open doors of people who stayed. Take away either one and it stops. The person who packs the bag is a fellow worker with the person who carries it. The woman who feeds a preacher’s family is not on the edge of the gospel enterprise; she is inside it. Every quiet, unnamed, unapplauded act of hospitality for the sake of the Name is written down in heaven under the same heading as the sermon it made possible. Praise God for a Lord who reckons it that way.

The world of the book

To understand this letter you have to understand the roads. The Roman Empire had built the best road system the world had yet seen, and the sea lanes of the eastern Mediterranean were busy, and the gospel travelled on both. But travelling in that world was hard and dangerous and, above all, it was homeless. Public inns existed, and the ancient writers are almost unanimous in their contempt for them: dirty, expensive, thick with fleas, frequently attached to a brothel, and not safe for a man carrying anything worth stealing. So the ordinary way to travel was to rely on hospitality, either from relatives, or from a friend of a friend, or from someone with whom you shared a guild, a trade, or a faith. A traveller carried letters of introduction. He arrived, presented himself, and hoped for a door.

Now put a young church into that world. There were no church buildings anywhere in the empire for another two hundred years. Congregations met in houses, which means the house of a reasonably well-off believer was the local church building, guest room and all. And there were no seminaries, no ordination boards, no way for a congregation in one town to check on a man who had walked in from another. So when a preacher arrived, the household head had to make a judgment, and then a great deal followed from it: a bed, meals, laundry, introductions, the platform on the Lord’s Day, and money for the road ahead. The phrase in this letter about sending them on their way in a manner worthy of God is a technical one; it means outfitting a traveller with provisions, funds, and often an escort for part of the journey. That is what Gaius was doing. And notice the detail the elder adds about the missionaries themselves: they “went out on behalf of the Name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles.” They would not take support from unbelievers, which was a matter of integrity so that no pagan could ever say the gospel had been sold to him. Which meant, in practice, that if the church did not support them, nobody would.

That is the machinery of the whole letter, and it explains why a refusal of hospitality is treated so gravely. When Diotrephes shut the door and threw out the people who wanted to open it, he was not being merely rude. He was cutting a line the gospel travelled on. As for the men themselves, we know almost nothing beyond their names, and it is worth being honest about that. Gaius was one of the commonest names in the empire, and there are several men called Gaius in the New Testament; we cannot say with confidence that this is any of them. Demetrius we meet nowhere else with certainty. Diotrephes appears in Scripture exactly once, here, and his name happens to mean nourished by Zeus, which suggests a pagan background and a family with some standing, though it proves nothing about him. What we are told about the three is only what mattered: what each of them did with a door.

The shape of the book

The one thread to carry

Carry this through the fourteen verses: the truth travels on the hospitality of ordinary people, and the greatest danger to a church is often a man who simply loves to be first. Both halves of that are worth a lifetime’s attention, and the letter gives you the good half first.

"I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth." 3 John 1:4 (BSB)

That is an old man’s whole heart in one line, and it is a good place to measure your own. He does not say his greatest joy is that his children are impressive, or comfortable, or successful, or even that they are safe. He says walking. Still going, still on the road, one plain step after another in the truth. And he calls that his greatest joy, greater than anything else available to him in this world. If you have ever wondered what you should want most for the people you love, there is the answer, written by a man who had seen the risen Christ and still said that nothing gave him more gladness than this.

Then the other half. The letter’s villain is not a heretic. That is the thing to notice, and it is easy to walk past. In 2 John the danger was men who denied that Jesus Christ came in the flesh, a doctrinal poison from outside. Here the trouble is inside the church, and no false teaching is mentioned at all. The single thing said against Diotrephes is that he loves to be first. Out of that root grows everything else: he will not accept the apostle’s word, he talks maliciously about him, he shuts the door on the brothers, and he throws out the members who disagree. All of it from one small appetite that any of us can recognize in ourselves without looking very hard. That is why the elder follows it immediately with a rule simple enough for a child.

"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." 3 John 1:11 (BSB)

Notice the word imitate. We become what we watch. In a small congregation with a forceful man at the center, the real danger is not that people will agree with his arguments; it is that they will start to copy his manner. So the elder does not tell Gaius to fight Diotrephes. He tells him to keep doing good, and points him at a man worth copying instead, Demetrius, of whom everyone speaks well. That is the whole strategy: out of the argument, into the pattern.

So here is a tiny letter that names three men and weighs all three by one question, whether they welcomed people. Gaius opened his door to strangers and is called a fellow worker for the truth. Diotrephes closed his door and threw out those who would have opened theirs. Demetrius is simply well spoken of by everyone, and by the truth itself. No sermons are recorded, no theology is debated, no miracles are reported. Just doors. And that ought to be a great comfort to anyone who has ever felt that the real work of God was happening somewhere else, to more gifted people. It is not. It is happening at your table, if you will set it. Learn the Word, open your door for the sake of the Name, and give thanks.