Free Bible Commentary
“Second John 1:12-13”
Categories: Second John“Though I have many things to write to you, I do not want to do so with paper and ink; but I hope to come to you and speak face to face, so that your joy may be made full. The children of your chosen sister greet you.”
---End of Scripture verses---
And so concludes this very brief letter to what seems most likely to be a local congregation of Christians in Asia Minor. One manuscript from the eleventh century, codex 465, identifies the sister as the church at Ephesus, but this cannot be verified. The third letter will conclude in much the same way with much of the exact same verbiage.
So let’s review...
Verses 1-3 – The elder John writes a short, rushed letter to a local assembly of Christians in Asia Minor. He commends them to the truth in love and pronounces the typical blessing in New Testament letters of grace, mercy, and peace. We mentioned that the heavy saturation of truth and love together was to combat false teachings, namely Gnosticism, that falsely believed many of the deceptions believed today. Several examples would include: that our actions aren’t what really matters as long as we intellectually assent to the right things, that truth is only available to certain elect people, and that Jesus was never required to fully inhabit fleshly form in order to reveal truth and demonstrate love.
Verses 4-6 – The relationship between truth, love, and action is taken a step further in these verses. John commends some of the brethren at this group for clearly demonstrating their love by means of obedience to the truth. He, like Jesus, calls this type of love a “new” commandment. It was of course not new in the sense of novelty, but in the standard of love.
Verses 7-8 – These few verses defeated the faulty notion of Jesus never truly inhabiting flesh, a false doctrine clung to desperately by the Gnostic teachers. The denial of Jesus having come into the flesh is likened unto being an antichrist, someone utterly and totally opposed to Christ. The strong language of condemnation parallels the gravity of the influence of such a false perversion on God’s people. The brethren were warned to be vigilant over themselves that they not miss out on the reward awaiting the faithful.
Verses 9-11 – The brethren are specifically warned to watch out for traveling false preachers hocking their wares and secretly invading homes through the generous hospitality of God’s people. They are exhorted neither to open their homes to anyone teaching falsehood nor even to greet such a one.
Verses 12-13 – John desired to see these brethren and was full of hopes to. Thus, he concludes his letter with the confident expectation that more communication could be done in person, “face-to-face”, or more literally “mouth to mouth” (compare John 16:12). John may have wanted to ensure that anything else he would say would be more perfectly understood in person or perhaps there was fear of anything longer being intercepted or it may have simply been practicality in the sense that he only had one piece of papyrus to send. He ends verse 12 with the same phrasing that he recorded Jesus using on the night He was betrayed (John 15:11; compare 1 John 1:4). He concludes with verse 13, a statement of salutation from another assembly of Christians, no doubt the assembly John is with or was immediately with prior to writing the letter.
Tomorrow we will continue our daily Bible readings with an introduction to 3rd John.
-Eric Parker
