Chapter 21
John (Letters)
The History:
John ‘retired’ to Ephesus with Mary about the mid eighties AD.
Paul had sent Letters to the Ephesian Church, but the Church was prohibited from meeting as one body by the city bye-laws, so Paul’s letter was circulated among the House-groups who discussed them as outlines for study.290
John had sent one open letter and two personal letters possibly before finally settling in Ephesus, but while the Church was still in its housegroup format291.
The person:
John and Paul have much in common. My suspicion is that Paul spent more time with John than the account gives credit to. After his conversion, during the three-silent-years Paul prepared for ministry, Paul admits he went up to Jerusalem twice. When he felt called to go to the Gentiles, he went once to see Peter and James regarding his call to go to the Gentiles. Peter, although called to the Jews, had an interest in the gentiles292. On a second occasion, he spent time with John as well293. When John settled in Ephesus, the Church had been firmly shaped by Paul’s teaching. Within this setting, early writings claim John had been asked by the Church to write down his memoirs of Jesus on grounds that he might not be around much longer, and they needed some more permanent record of authority. If you compare the book of Ephesians with the book of John, the two books have many parallels and similar arguments. You might imagine John going to a housegroup and listening to Paul’s letter as it is being studied, and saying to himself, ‘That is right. Jesus said that and I told you Paul’. These two books have much in common that the other gospels do not share. The insight and the focus are similar. Several Greek words are unique to both Ephesians and John.294 and the style of teaching of these two men is also similar.
Towards the end of his life John stopped travelling and settled in Ephesus with Mary the Mother of Jesus.295 The culture and the language in Ephesus are very different to Jerusalem. Ephesus Church was the key outpost church of the area, it was the mother church of six others in the area296. It was one of Paul’s strategic churches, and he had spent a lot of energy influencing it.
John is confronting the Gnostics who taught that Jesus never had a physical body because a body is corrupt. So he will say clearly, ‘every spirit that denies God came in the flesh is error’.
The letters
The three letters are written by John the apostle. During the early twentieth- century, these letters, like most others were the subject of doubting scholars, who questioned which John. But the early fathers, (being around then and knowing John the apostle), have no questions. The question if all three were written by the same hand is also superfluous, as the style, language, argument, proximity and subject-matter all portray one person’s hand. During this period of ‘Critical scholarship’, it was also questioned if the ‘elect-lady’ referred to by John, was code for another underground church. But we shall see why this is an unnecessary interpretation in a moment.
One-John declares and examines: God is Life297, God is Light298, God is love299. John is a Jew and thinks like a Jew. So it is remarkable that he is the only person in Scripture to declare ‘God is Love’! Right through scripture. It is declared ‘God Loves’. But as we have already seen, Ahavah-love must take a subject, an object and a uniting bond. If God is singular, He cannot be love, under the Hebrew concept of love. But, by nature God was three-in-one before he even thought of creation, so there is no problem with John’s statement. No other religion can say that.
They, them and us, are words scattered through this letter whenever John speaks of the Greek argument, John wants to bring the Christians back to the unification of spiritual and material. Greeks wanted to divide Jesus in material and spiritual. Even today you can hear people proclaiming Jesus was human, and the spirit only controlled him from his baptism on. On his death it separated again. John opposes this. ‘We saw him, we touched him, we heard him’:
Anybody or any spirit that does not confess Jesus is in God and God in him, is in the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.300
The second and third letters are short, to the point and about hospitality. This was a very relevant issue in the early church as which had a big sense of belonging to the whole. The local church had its local ministries but itinerant ministry was important to hold that unity.301 These two letters address the two extremes.
In the second letter, John writes to a lady who was welcoming any and every itinerant preacher to stay, and then to preach to her housegroup. This was a constant source of introducing the Church to wrong teaching. Paul also warned Timothy against wrong teachers preying on the hospitality of widows who minister in hospitality.
The third letter is to a man who is too dogmatic and too narrow in his doctrine, This man is refusing the right people and even apostles from occupying the pulpit.
Taken together, in these letters, John is talking about motivation. The one loves without reason the other reasons without love. Love without discernment leaves people vulnerable to any unscrupulous scoundrel. Reason without love is inflexible closed and growth stunting. A balance of love and judgement is needed to lead any group of people, all the more in church where the gift of discernment is a leadership requirement.
If these were written to two housegroup leaders during the Housegroup era of Ephesus, it will show the diversity of groups in Ephesus, and be a foretaste of how difficult it is going to be to integrate all the housegroups into one church.
290 see Ephesus History: section.
291 This is circumstantial evidence as 2 letters are addressed to individuals having control over places of meeting
292 Acts 11 :6 ff
293Galatians 2: 9
294 I rely on Greek scholars to tell me that
295John 19: 26-27
296Not necessarily mother by birth but certainly mother by care.
297 I John 1: 1-4 & I John 5: 1-21
298 I John 1: 1-5 to 1 John 3: 10
299 I John 1: 3-11 4: 21
300 Jn 4: 3
301 The Didache has sections on how to behave in Itinerant ministry even to how long you may stay in one place.