Hospitality; Missions
We don’t know much about
Gaius but some things we can infer from this epistle are that he is not a
pastor, not the head of a local church, but he seems to be a mature believer in
this local church. He is a mature believer who is facing certain problems in
the local church as a result of a personality problem with an individual named Diotrephes. That personality problem is grounded in Ditrephes’ sin nature. The negative
facets of our personality, whether we want to admit it or not, is the trend of
our sin nature—our areas of weakness, the trends and the arrogance. That
is true for every single one of us. This was a problem in the church there and Diotrephes loved the pre-eminence among them. As a result
he was using his own personality and his own personal desire for attention and
prominence to divide the church. So Gaius has a struggle.
First we will look at John’s
praise for Gaius. He begins in verses 2-4 by giving him praise because of his
devotion to the truth. That is where it starts: our devotion to the truth,
whether or not we are willing to make Bible doctrine a priority in our life.
This does not mean just studying the Word. It is not simply learning the Word
and going on an intellectually exciting trip through Bible doctrine, but
applying it. That is the point of John’s praise.
3 John 1:3 NASB
“For I was very glad when brethren came and testified to your truth…” That is
the doctrine that is in you, what you know.
“…{that is,} how you are walking in truth.”
That’s application; that is the Christian way of life. He is walking by means
of the doctrine that he has learned.
3 John 1:4 NASB “I
have no greater joy than this, to hear of my children walking in the truth.”
That is, they are taking what they have learned and then are applying it
consistently in every area of their life. That is exactly what has happened in
the life of Gaius. He is a mature believer; he has understood all the dynamics
of the Christian life and he has been putting this into practice so that he has
reached spiritual maturity. It is clear from what we are going to see in the
next few verses that he is grace oriented. Grace orientation is the foundation
to the mature Christian life. The mature Christian life is really based on the
love triplex—personal love for God the Father, impersonal love for all mankind,
and occupation with Christ. Gaius has mastered all of that as evidenced by what
he does in and through this local church in whatever town he was in. We can’t
have impersonal love for others unless we understand grace. Grace means that
everything that we have is undeserved. Grace means that at salvation God gave
us everything, that He paid the price. The penalty was paid by Jesus Christ on
the cross. We don’t do anything to gain salvation or to impress God with who
and what we are. He loves us because of who he is and what Christ did on the
cross. He loved us impersonally before we were ever saved, so that the issue
for God is never what we’ve done or what we haven’t done; God’s love is based
exclusively on who He is. Grace is then the foundation for us being able to
personally love God, which becomes the motivation for impersonal love for other
believers.
3 John 1:5 NASB “Beloved,
you are acting faithfully in whatever you accomplish for the brethren, and
especially {when they are} strangers.” John is addressing Gaius. [6] and they have testified to your love before the church. You
will do well to send them on their way in a manner worthy of God. [7] For they went out for the sake of the Name, accepting nothing
from the Gentiles.” In the original these three verses are one sentence.
That sentence represents one thought, and that one primary thought that comes
across in a sentence may have a lot of stuff stacked up against it. That is not
to say they are not important but they are not the main thought. The main
thought is always going to be expressed through the grammatical subject and
verbs. The author is expressing one idea here, not two or three ideas, and the
main concept is expressed in the first part of verse 5 which is translated “you
are acting [or, you do] faithfully.” Everything else he says in the next two
verses modifies that basic idea.
“You do” is a translation of
the Greek verb poieis [poieij] which is a second person singular of poieo [poiew] which means to do, to make, to manufacture or to
produce. So we are talking about the production in the spiritual life of Gaius.
It has to do with the production of the believer under the filling of God the
Holy Spirit. This is not talking about works, it is
talking about spiritual production: what happens as a result of spiritual
growth, spiritual maturity and the filling of the Holy Spirit. Then John
modifies the verb with what is actually an accusative direct object in the
Greek, the word “faithfully,” the Greek pistos
[pistoj]. This word is usually translated in terms of its
root etymological meaning and that is “faithful” or “faithfully.” Actually we
have an ellipsis here; it is “you do things faithfully.” That is, you are
faithful in what you do. To make it a little easier in the English we translate
that as an adverb: “you do what you do faithfully.” But pistos loses some of its sense when we talk about
“faithfully” because as soon as we take this word faith and put it in some sort
of religious context immediately people lose a sense of what we are talking
about. The idea that we have in pistos
is the idea of character. It is reliability, dependability; it is the fact that
as we grow as believers we can be counted on in terms of the way we live our
lives. It is rooted and grounded in a personal integrity that is the result of
grace orientation and doctrinal orientation. Only as the believer grows is he
going to be able to produce integrity under the filling of the Holy Spirit and
a spiritual virtue of dependability and reliability. This is the kind of person
that can be counted on in a crunch, in a crisis, to do what needs to be done.
Gaius as a result of his
spiritual maturity is demonstrating personal spiritual integrity based on his
spiritual growth from following the Christian way of life. That indicates that
he has a biblical scale of values in his soul. He knows where his priorities
are. So the sentence begins with a word of praise because he is reliable and
dependable, not only generally but in a particular area of life, an area of
life we should pay attention to. He is reliable and dependable in hospitality.
What we have here is a series of relative clauses to define the arena of his
reliability and his dependability. He is dependable, first of all, in what he
does for the brethren and for strangers. Then that is further modified by
another masculine plural relative clause in the first part of verse 6. They are
defined as those who have born witness. They have presented a testimony; they
have spread the word about his love. So what we are talking about is that he is
faithful in the arena of application of love—impersonal love
for all mankind because it is directed to two categories of people,
those who are classified as brethren, and in this context it is not a contrast
between brethren being believers and strangers being unbelievers. He is talking
about itinerate pastors who are coming through the area and what we would call
today missionaries. It talks about his generosity and hospitality towards
missionaries, and to others who are travelling and teaching the Word. So he
talks about the fact that he is faithful in whatever he does for these
travelling missionaries classified as brethren and strangers, two plural
nouns—“who have born witness of your love.” So the brethren and strangers have
com e to John’s church in
Then the next clause starts
of with another masculine plural relative pronoun and it should be translated
“whom you sent forward on their journey in a manner worthy of God, you will do
well.” This is talking about the fact that when he sends them forward on their
journey in a manner worthy of God he has done a good thing. Then there would be
a semi-colon and a final causal statement, “For they went out for the sake of
the Name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles.” So the point in verse 7
emphasises the grace orientation operation of the travelling missionaries. They
were not going to take money or depend upon the Gentiles for their financial
support, and so they were dependent upon other believers, local churches, to
support them financially in their endeavour. What we see in the structure of
vv. 5-7 is that John is praising Gaius because he has made his home available
as a place for travelling missionaries. He treats them in a manner worthy of
God. That means he is so gracious that his grace reflects the grace of God. He
is just an ordinary believer in a local congregation and there is a lot to
learn from Gaius in relationship to the way he applies doctrine. His doctrine
comes out of the framework of his love. This is an illustration from Scripture
of the doctrine of hospitality.
The doctrine of hospitality
Hebrews 13:1 NASB
“Let love of the brethren continue.” There we have the
word agape [a)gaph]. The
word “continue” is the present active imperative of meno [menw], here used
with the concept of ongoing action. So there is a mandate here to continue to
apply the concept of love for one another. [2] “Do not neglect to show
hospitality to strangers [filocenoj], for by this some
have entertained angels without knowing it.” The word “neglect” is the Greek word epilanthanomai [e)pilanqanomai] which means to neglect or to be inattentive to
something, to overlook something, to disregard something, to care nothing about
something. So what the writer of Hebrews is saying is don’t care less about
hospitality. In other words, hospitality needs to be a characteristic of the
believer’s life.
In Genesis 18 there is the
episode where three men come to visit Abraham and we see his hospitality. 18:1 NASB
“Now the LORD [pre-incarnate Jesus Christ in a human form, but
Abraham doesn’t know that] appeared to him by the oaks of Mamre,
while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. [2] When he
lifted up his eyes and looked, behold, three men were standing opposite him;
and when he saw {them,} he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed
himself to the earth,
1 Peter 4:8 NASB
“Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a
multitude of sins.
Romans
1 Tim 3:2 NASB “An
overseer, then, must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate,
prudent, respectable, hospitable…” Also Titus 1:8; 1
Timothy 5:10.