Ever slam the door in someone’s face? I did once. It’s one of those things you look back now and laugh, but no one was laughing back then. It was the summer between 7th grade and 8th grade. During that summer, my sister’s friend, who lived right down the street, would come up the street, knock on the door, and ask if my sister could come out to play. Usually, my sister would answer the door and go out to play, but for this one week, things were different. My sister had gone up to Spruce Lake for a week-long summer retreat. Now everyone in my family told my sister’s friend that my sister wasn’t going to be here all week, but that didn’t stop my sister’s friend. She would still come up every day and ask if my sister could come out to play. And every time, someone in the family would have to remind her that my sister was gone for the week. Not that it changed anything; she kept ccoming back every day. Well after a few days of this, I couldn’t take it. The next she came knocking on the door, I answered mid-knock, opened the door, yelled, “SHE’S NOT HERE!” (before the girl could say anything), and slammed the door! Well, my dad overheard and was not happy with me for doing that. Especially since his mother, my grandmother, was staying with us for the week and overheard it as well (I guess he was embarrassed). Needless to say, next time I saw her, I had to apologize or face being grounded.
My dad was displeased beecause slamming the door is considered rude. And for the most part, it’s true. But honestly, how many times have you wanted to slam the door in someone’s face, no matter how rude it is? If we were to play a game of Family Feud, and I were to ask the question, “Name a person you would want to slam the door on,” possibly answers would be Jehovah’s Witnesses, door-to-door salesmen or court officers delievering subpoenas. Would you believe John would give us, Christians, permission to slam the door in someone’s face? Slamming the door doesn’t seem Christian, but John would want us to slam the door for good reasons. Who would John want us to slam the door on? False prophets and false teachers. Why would John want us to slam the door in their faces? In order not to be deceived by their false doctrine and false practices. How do we know that John would want us to slam the door? Read 2 John.
Alright, let’s start as I always like to start with introducing the historical and cultural context of the Biblical setting. Let’s ask ourselves the who, whom, where, when, what and how. Some of this information is the same as 1 John and/or the Gospel of John. If that’s the case, please take a look at the introductions for those books. Other information will be brand new to 2 John. That I will briefly mention here.
AUTHOR (WHO): John
AUDIENCE (WHOM): The Chosen Lady and Her Children
DATE (WHEN): 92 AD
LOCATION (WHERE): Asia Minor (probably Ephesus)
HISTORICAL OCCASION (WHAT): Concern that the family and the church would welcome false prophets and false teachers into the house and into the church
PURPOSE (WHY): John wrote the epistle of 2 John to motivate the chosen lady and her children to continue to reject false teachers and their teachings.
PLAN (HOW): A “postcard” epistle.
The author who wrote the epistle of 2 John is still John, the Apostle, disciple and first cousin to Jesus Christ, despite the epistle signed “The elder.” This has been thoroughly discussed in both the introductions to the epistle of 1 John and the Gospel, so go back to those introductions if you want the full discourse on those. The date when the epistle was written was 92 AD. It was written after 1 John, and 1 John was written about 91 AD, so naturally, we’ll say 2 John is during 92 AD. Where we last left John in 1 John, John was in Ephesus. We know John’s letter is circulating in Asia Minor. John himself is also circulating through Asia Minor. So the epistle of 2 John is most likely written in Asia Minor and is circulating in Asia Minor. If we had to be more specific, 2 John was probably written and started in Ephesus, just like 1 John.
The plan/structure is an epistle. It has the typical Greco-Roman epistle: first line is the sender, second line is the recepient, and the third line is the greeting. It has the closing greetings. It even has the body opening on a positive note. I call it a “postcard” epistle because this letter is extremely short, like a postcard. It’s so short, it doesn’t even have chapter numbers (or it’s just one chapter, depending on how you view it). The epistle consists of 13 verses and 245 words, making it the shortest book of the New Testament. As your Bible might show you, it can easily fit on one standard piece of paper. Heck, it probably could all fit on a postcard if you wrote small enough! This is probably because many themes are repeated from the last epistle, 1 John. The length can be explained by the author, date and location, but it also helps with the audience.
The one I do want to spend time on is the audience whom John wrote the epistle to. The text of 2 John says in verse 1b, “To the chosen lady and her children.” The question that arises is whether to take it literally or metaphorically. If taken literally, it is a family of a mother and her children. If it is to be taken metaphorically, it is the church. The chosen lady is the church itself, and the children are the church members. After all, the church many times in the New Testament is referred to as the bride and the wife of Jesus Christ. In the Greek, the epistle is adressed to “Ekleta Kyria,” which literally translates to “Chosen Lady.” Some has suggested that, if taken literally, the woman’s name might be Ekleta or Kyria, but that might be taken it too literally. Intersting enough, Kyria, which is translated “lady,” is more than just a synonymn for “woman” or “girl.” It is the term for an upper class woman of high status. It is the female eqivilent of “lord.” This seems like further proof for the metaphorical argument. The epistle does use both singular pronouns and plural pronouns, but that could favor both sides. Verse 10 mentions a house, and a literal house, so literalist would say that it’s a woman and her children and her house. Yet the metaphorical view could easily bounce back, stating churches met in houses all the way up to the 300s, for it wasn’t until the 300s that churches met it separate buildings. I’m going to stick the literal approach. My proof lies within the other background information. The date reminds us that 2 John comes after 1 John. While this seems obvious, it carries an important fact. 2 John comes after 1 John, and yet it is shorter and it repeats most information found in 1 John. Why repeat a letter with less information? The small body of text represents a small audience. It is truly a postcard epistle. The truths in 1 John are quickly applied to the family unit in 2 John. 2 John motivates the family to keep up with the good and persuade them to get rid of the bad. The epistle gets very personal, so personal a person can only get that personal with a few individuals. Besides, good hermeneutics say to keep everything as literal as possible unless you have good reason to believe it’s figurative. I believe the evidence for the literal interpretation outweighs the metaphorical interpretation. the audience is a lady and her children, and chosen lady, or elect lady, means she is saved and a born-again Christian. And we get the vibe her household is saved and born-again as well.
The historical occasion isn’t far from the historical occasion from 1 John, so we’ll keep this short. False prophets and false teachers were, for the most part, still circulating around Asia Minor. The text hints that, for the most part, the churches in Asia Minor had resisted these false teachers. But perhaps they weren’t resisting them enough. The false prophets and false teachers were still floating around Asia Minor. John, and maybe other elders and apostles, might have been concerned that if any church members would be as so kind as to let the false teacher stay at their houses or share a meal with them, they would start listening to the false tachers, which would then lead to falling away from the truth faith and taking up a false religion. To illustrate using the terms of a familiar story, John didn’t want the hole in the dike to flood the whole town.
That naturally leads us to the purpose, or why John wrote the epistle. The big change from 1 John to 2 John would be the key verb. I changed it from “persuade” to “motivate.” What’s the difference? Persuade means, “You’re doing the wrong thing! Try doing the right thing, which may just be the opposite thing!” Motivate means “You’re doing the right thing! Keep it up!” Motivate could be a simple encouragment to keep doing the same thing, or it could mean to take it up to the next level. You’re going to notice that even before we reach the halfway point of 2 John, John has already praised the chosen lady and her children for walking truth AKA following 1 John. This is why I take the audience as literal. 2 John repeats 1 John in a paraphrased way, but makes it more personal, in order to give personal examples. Since they seem to be mastering 1 John, John invites the chosen lady and her children to take it up to the next step, as found in 2 John. At the basics, it’s the same as 1 John: reject false teachers and their teachings (such as Gnosticism and Docetism), love one another and obey God’s commandments.
Alright, let’s dive into the text. We can skip the first 3 verses because we already mentioned it all in the introductory material. And those first 3 verses are the typical start of the typical Greco-Roman epistle, so we’re on the right track. Let’s stay on that track.
Even though this epistle not a Pauline epistle, but rather a general epistle (“general” here pretty much means “non-Pauline epistle”), someone could easily mistaken this epistle as a Pauline epistle. Why? Mostly all of Paul’s epistles (Galatians is the exception) start with some positive word of reaffirming, congratulating the audience of something they are doing right. John does this in verse 4. In 2 John, John praises the chosen lady and her children for following God’s commandments, just like John commanded in 1 John. This further supports the the purpose. The family isn’t doing anything wrong, so they don’t need to be persuaded turn from the wrong thing to the right thing. They need to be motivated to continue doing the right thing.
John moves the chosen lady and her children to take the next step up by focusing on another aspect of John’s previous epistle. Which aspsect is that? John wants the family to focus on loving thy neighbor. John has no worry about the household having problems to carry this out. In verse 6, John ponts out that if people want to truly love their neighbors, the best way to do so is to follow God’s commands. Since the family is already following God’s commmands, it shouldn’t take much of a transition to go from keeping God’s commandments to loving thy neighbor.
May I pause to make a quick aside? The Theological Interpretation of Scripture (T.I.S., for short) states that a good interpretation of a Scripture passage looks at its contributions and correlation to the overall Bible and the Christian’s overall theology, as found in creeds. So according to T.I.S., this aside is neccessary. Go to Matthew 22:37-40. When Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus answered that the first great commandment was to love God, but in a close second, the second greatest commandment is to love thy neighbor. Jesus even says that all the other commandments in the Law and the Prophets all circulate around these 2 commandments: loving God and loving your neighbor. This is why John is so sure that the chosen lady and her children in 2 John can love their neighbors. Since they are already following God’s commandments, they have the ability and have the power to love their neighbors.
Let’s go back to 2 John and pick up in verse 7. Here, in verse 7, it’s more helpful to have a literal translation, like the ESV, NASB or KJV, because the dynamic eqivilencies, like the NIV will leave out the transition words (although the 2011 edition of the NIV does give a transiton). In the Greek, the transition word that starts off verse 7 is hoti. Literal translations of the Greek word hoti translate it as “for,” but a better translation would be “because.” Either way, the point is that there’s a link between verse 6 and verse 7. Verse 7 talks about false prophets and false teachers who refuse to recognize Jesus was human. These false teachers will eventuall become known as Docetists. So what’s the connection? As John was showing in 1 John, John is making the correction between doctrinal theology, social theology and moral theology. If one theology goes bad, it will spoil the whole bunch. The Docetists might just seem to have bad doctrinal theology, but John warns his readers to think about the consequences. Remember 1 John revealed to the reader that the false teachers who denied Jesus was God or human also believed Christian fellowship was not needed, and they also believed that God doesn’t care about sin so much they a person could sin with no effect. John personally warns the family in 2 John of this. Don’t fall for their false teachings, for they might take you away from loving your neighbor and keeping God’s commands. So instead, John encourages and motivates the household to simply keeping hold on to what they are doing, and to make sure they don’t follow the false teachers. If they do, they will keep the reward they have now. If they don’t, they will lose it.
In verse 9, John uses an interesting phrase: “Anyone who runs ahead.” Some of the Doecetists and Gnostics were suggesting that they had spiritually advanced, so much that some were claiming that they had even surpassed Jesus himself! John points that that anyone claims that have “run ahead” of Jesus is no longer following Jesus, but doing their own thing. And their own thing is false. If they are not following Jesus, then why should any Christian follow them? John answers by repeating an idea he constantly repeats in 1 John: Anyone who does not know the real Jesus, the true Christ, does not know God. John also provides a flip-side. Those who do not listen to the false teachers and continue with the true teaching will have both God the Father and God the Son with them.
So what’s John’s advice? Do not welcome any false teacher into the house. Now we have to make clarifications here. John is not advising his audience to be mean, rude or cruel to people. If he were, he would be condicting himself in his epistle, for he commanded to love thy neighbor (and, as Jesus illustrated in the Good Samaritan parable, even enemies can be neighbors). A better understanding of this passage comes from understanding the historical and cultural context. Back then, religious leaders and philosophical teachers would travel from town to town, preaching their religion and teaching their philosophies. In a way, they were nomads, and they were dependent on people to take care of their basic needs. As we’ll discuss more with the next epistle, 3 John, people who aproved of the philosopher’s teaching would show their approvaly by showing hospitality and charity via giving them a house to sleep in and food to eat. Actually it shows approval on 2 levels. First, the act of hospitality itself was a cultural sign of approval. Second,the support allowed the preachers and teachers to continue their preaching and teaching. So John suggests that the family should not take in any of the false teachers in order to show disapproval to their teaching and to not support the false ministry any further. But I believe there’s even more reasons to that. Possibly when the preacher or teacher stayed with a family, he would talk about what he is preaching or teaching. Anyone welcoming this man in would be influenced by his teachings, one way or another. In the case of false teachers, it would lead the family astray. Especially keep in mind that churches in the first century meet in the church members’ homes, for churches don’t meet in seperate buildings until the 300s. If any church member would allow a false teacher to reside in the same building the church meets, the false teacher could lead an entire church astray! John does not want any Christian to be deceived or fall away, so John strongly recommends that the false teachers be avoided at all costs, especially in the household. Here is an individual case where it’s OK to not to show Christian hospitality, for the consequence could be dire. Well what if someone wanted to show hospitality? John is so strongly against this motion, he reaffirms what I said above. Anyone who does welcome the false teacher in, no matter how Christian that person claims to, is showing his or her approval and support of the false teacher and his teaching. This could seriously bring the Christian’s faith into question, for a Christian would not want to accept any kind of evil.
John closes his epistle by saying that he has much more to write and he’s planning to visit soon. Perhaps that’s why this epistle is so short. He sends a letter with the main points because the issue is urgent and needs to be addressed immediately. But in his letter, he tells audience, “I’ll tell you more when I get there” becase he finds it to be a more meaningful experience to talk face-to-face. I don’t want to discuss too much further because I don’t want to distract from the main theology of the book. But maybe John does have a point. Maybe face-to-face is more meaningful when it comes to communicating truth, both socially and spiritually. It does make you think about the difference between having a 1-on-1 conversation over lunch together instead of over Facebook. But I digress. John’s last words are “The children of their younger sister send their greetings.” As mentioned in the introductory material, what this means all depends if you take the audience of “the chosen lady and her children” to be literal or figurative. If it is literal, then it is the chosen lady’s literal sister and and literal children, perhaps another familyJohn is close friends with. If you take it figuratively, then it is another church.
Alright, let’s draw back to the overall theme and grab some application out of it. But first, let’s make a connection to the modern day with a modern-day scenario to show why John insisted so strongly to resist the someone with different beliefs. Imagine, if you a will, a hindu man wants to stay in your house. You decide to let him because, after all, it’s showing Christian hospitality, right? But it’s not as eas as you think. He’s started putting up his hindu god idols around your house. When you say grace for meals, he prays out loud to his gods as well. When you have small group at your house, he also brings in his hindu friends for prayers and worship to their gods. When he runs into your neighbors, he tries to convert them to your faith. All those months and years you’ve spent building up a positive Christian in your community has gone down the drain! Now remember I said that it’s possible this lady’s home served might have served as the meeting place for the church. So now apply the same scenario to your church. Your church allows a Hindu man to reside in your church. But during his stay, he’s set up a Vishnu statue right in front of the cross. He prays in the sanctuary to his gods. He holds worship downstairs while your church worships upstairs. Weak-minded Christians could fall away! Non-Christians could be confused and deceived! See why John is so concerned?
While that example might be an extreme example, an example that drives closer to home would be the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who come door to door, wanting to talk to you. How do you deal with them? The scholarly and intellectual Christians will try to counter-convert the Jehovah’s Witness with an apologetic of their own faith and also disproving the Jehovah’s Witness theology. The hospitable Christians will invite them into their house, serve them, and politely listen, but in their minds, they are disagreeing, and as the Witnesses leave, they throw out their literature. Other Christians might do something else. For example, they might simply appeal with a heart-felt, emotional story. What would you do?
Here’s some suggestions I would make, for encountering any false teachers, and I base them all off of 2 John. It all comes down to showing love to thy neighbor, but also not showing approval of what they are teaching. First of all, don’t be mean or rude. That’s not showing love to your neighbor. It also could be a big turn-off for them future coming to the faith. Loving your neighbor can simply be treating them like human beings. So how do you not show approval and do it nicely? Try asking a question that stumps them. Find a question they cannot answer but you can. Use that oppurtunity to talk about your faith. Be aware if they are around young and/or immature Christians, and don’t let them speak in front of them. You can invite them to church or small group, but do not allow them to talk, even if it is a discussion-oriented small group or church. As harsh as that sounds, it would be the crack that would allow deception in the church. If you find yourself uncomfortable making such a request, then do not invite them. The church needs to be preserved. If they find it unfair that you can talk about your faith and they can’t talk about theirs, then level the ground by not talking about your faith. But that doesn’t mean you have to stop living it out. By living out your Christian life, especially including Christian love and Christian hospitality, you can be just as powerful a witness to Christ. Live out that Christian faith especially where their faith fails. John (kind of) suggested this. He knew the false teachers weren’t loving their neighbor and resisting sin, so he called the true Christains to love neighbors and resist sins. Find out where the faith fails and show how the true Christian life is better. Altogether, remember you’re not simply trying to prove them wrong and yourself right. You’re trying to win over another soul to Christ. And as John reminds, make sure we perserve the church as we do so! After all, it’s not worth it to lose many followers in order to gain a few. If none of this works, and you can’t think up any better ideas, then maybe the last thing to do is kindly say “no thank you” and shut the door. Once again, it goes back to perserving the true believers, including yourself.
I leave you by concluding our study of 2 John with a summary of the whole book. You’re doing good keeping God’s commandments and seeking holiness instead of sin. Live it out by loving your neighbor. Do not do anything the false teachers do, such as deny the humanity or deity of Jesus, not love thy neighbor, or sin willingly. In fact, if you encounter any false teachers, shut them out and avoid them altogether, in order that you may be perserved and not deceived. I greet you with warm welcomes. If you have any questions, comments, concerns or criticisms, feel free to post them in the comments, or contact me directly. May we continue to preach and teach the true Christ.
P.S. I shall give credit where credit is due. The idea of “Shut the Door” for the theme of 2 John comes from Walkthru the Bible’s Keyword Learning System. They, however, use the phrase “Bolt the Door” instead of “Shut the Door.” But I thought “shut” went better with my introduction and application, so I went with that instead.
The Contextual Literalist 