3 John 1:1 Commentary and Bible Study

We note from the opening verses of this epistle, how seriously the apostle John takes personal spiritual progress. Sadly it is not always so in our day. I remember many years ago, when I was a young Christian, being for a time in a church, and it was a very large church where there was very deep and tremendous ministry, but there was a problem, and that was that personal spiritual progress and advance did not seem to be given much attention. If people stopped attending or were very haphazard or drifted aside, there did not seem to be anybody noticing, anybody who went after them, any way organised whereby they could be worried about and helped and some personal ministry extended to them. The ministry was powerful, but the personal attention almost absent. Now of course all churches can drift into this, but the first thing that makes an impact upon you in this Third Epistle of John is the tremendous focus on the individual’s progress. We have to focus on our own progress and help one another.We do not know anything else about Gaius other than what we read in this letter and as you go through it, you see there is sufficient evidence to believe that Gaius must have given hospitality to the apostle John on some previous occasion or perhaps many previous occasions. And certainly he had received preachers who John and the church at Ephesus sent out, who were commended by them, who preached through the countryside and sought to begin churches. But it does not seem that Gaius is at the moment in fellowship or in membership at that church with which he had been associated, because as we shall go on to see there is one name Diotrephes, who has cast out people like Gaius, who entertained preachers that this man evidently did not want, did not approve of.