Will Vaus

  AUTHOR   The Third Letter of John begins, “The elder to Gaius the beloved, whom I love in truth.”   As with 2 John, the author of this letter identifies himself simply as “the elder”.   There is both internal evidence and external evidence that leads scholars to associate this letter with 1 John and 2 John as well as with the Gospel of John and Revelation. The internal evidence consists of a common language. As we saw in 1 John and 2 John, love and truth were dominant topics. So also, here in 3 John, those topics are introduced from the get-go.    Pastor David Jackman summarizes the external evidence for the authorship of this letter…   From the earliest times the letter has been attributed to John the apostle, but not without debate. The early evidence is sparse, though the Muratorian Canon, a fragmentary list of New Testament books known at Rome about AD 200, certainly includes the first two letters. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons (c. 175—c. 195), quote...

What do you think of when you hear the word  “imitation”? Perhaps what comes to mind is a cheap substitute for the real thing, as in cooking we have imitation vanilla.   We also think of people who imitate others but in a way that renders them inauthentic because they are not being themselves.   Still, there is a good sense in which imitation can take place. When a child imitates the good traits of a good parent because they love them, look up to them, and want to be like them, that is a good kind of imitation.   Well, imitation is what our text for today is all about from 3 John 9-15. Listen for God’s word to you…    I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will not welcome us.  So when I come, I will call attention to what he is doing, spreading malicious nonsense about us. Not satisfied with that, he even refuses to welcome other believers. He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church. Dear fri...

One of my favorite things on the Internet is Google Earth which is now tied into Google Maps. I love being able to zoom in, via satellite from outer space, on a country, then a particular city, and even further, down to a single street, and finally focus on a single house. I have enjoyed looking at satellite images of places where I have lived, and other places I have visited, during my 57+ years on planet earth.   The three letters of John have this same “zooming in” effect. The First Letter of John, which we finished studying in January, could, in many ways, have been addressed to any church in the first century. Perhaps that is why the Church at large has found, out of the three letters of John, the greatest relevance in this first letter, not only in the first century, but down to the twenty-first century.   However, in his second letter, John is clearly writing to a particular church, “the elect lady”. We don’t know for certain where that particular church was, presumably...