The elder said to Gaius, "Beloved one [agapete], do not imitate the bad." Any exclusion of members of the Body from fellowshipping with the whole Body of Christ is bad. It is not perceiving God.
3 John: Hierarchy’s Harm
Over the centuries, beginning with Ignatius’ letters in the second century, this crucial aspect of the church gave way to the surrounding culture, so that one of Christianity’s distinctives was eroded to mere words, tucked away here and there among the gospels and epistles.
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3 John: Lord It Over
Much harm has come to the church because of this hard stop put upon the organic growth of the Body of Christ, which had been meant to be nonhierarchical in its life.
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3 John: Gaius the Beloved
John was particularly thankful for Gaius, for there was a serious matter John would need someone like Gaius to handle—a matter that was threatening to tear the church apart, and had little to do with Gnosticism.
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The Letters of John
I approached my tiny Greek Bible, the fall semester of Advanced Greek, with the Greek text in one hand, Culy’s commentary in the other, and about a half dozen open screens and books on my desk and monitors. I could hear the music of the spheres as my brain traveled through time and space, to the sea-swept shores of Patmos, where John is said to have been exiled.
