2 John: Do Not Let Them In

At a Glance

Who wrote it: A man who calls himself only the elder. Tradition says my apostle John. An early bishop named Papias listed John among my apostles and then, separately, the elder John. Eusebius took these to be two men, and many scholars think the elder who wrote this letter, and 3 John, was someone other than my friend.

When: Probably around 100, close to the time of 1 John.

Written for: A house church, or the woman who hosted it, called the chosen lady and her children. Traveling teachers who denied that I came in the flesh were looking for a welcome, and the elder said not to give it.

What it remembers of me: That I came in the flesh (verse 7), and the commandment that we love one another (verse 5).

How close it stays to me: Close on love for one another. Far on the stranger at the door.

If you only read three chapters: It has one chapter of thirteen verses. It is one of the two shortest books in your Bible. Read it.

Words to Know

The elder — in Greek, presbyteros, an older man with authority. Here it is the writer’s only name for himself.

The chosen lady — the person the letter is addressed to. She may have been a woman who led a congregation in her house, or the phrase may stand for the congregation itself.

Hospitality — taking travelers into your house and feeding them. My early followers who traveled to teach depended on it completely.

The Book in Brief

The elder writes to the chosen lady and her children, whom he loves in truth. He is glad to have found some of her children walking in the truth. He asks her to love one another. This is no new commandment, he says, but the one they have had from the beginning.

Then he warns that many deceivers have gone out into the world, people who do not confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. His readers must watch themselves, so that they do not lose what they have worked for. Anyone who brings a different teaching is not to be received into the house or welcomed.

The elder has much more to write, but he would rather come and speak face to face, so that their joy may be full. The children of her chosen sister send greetings.

It is a very short letter, written on what would have been a single sheet of papyrus. It says two things. Love one another. And do not let certain people into your house.

Love one another

The first half could have come straight from the first letter of John.

Now I beg you, dear lady, not as though I wrote to you a new commandment, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another. This is love, that we should walk according to his commandments (2 John 5–6).

It is the old commandment, the one my followers had heard from the beginning. The elder did not think he had anything new to say. He wanted it remembered.

Go deeperWho was the chosen lady?

The letter is addressed to the chosen lady and her children (2 John 1) and ends with greetings from the children of your chosen sister (2 John 13). Scholars have argued for centuries about who they were. There are two main answers.¹

A woman. The Greek is eklektē kyria, chosen lady. Letters are usually written to people, and women did host and lead house churches in my followers’ world. Lydia begged Paul and his friends to come into my house and stay (Acts 16:15). The believers gathered in Jerusalem at the house of Mary, the mother of John who was called Mark (Acts 12:12). If the lady was a hostess, the order to keep out false teachers speaks to her directly, since she was the one who would be asked for a bed.

A church. In the Greek, the letter keeps slipping between you meaning one person and you meaning many. Verse 5 begs one dear lady, but verses 8 and 10 speak to a group. My people had long pictured Jerusalem as a mother with many children, and Paul writes of the Jerusalem that is above as the mother of us all (Galatians 4:26). The first letter of Peter greets a church as a woman: She who is in Babylon, chosen together with you, greets you (1 Peter 5:13). Read that way, the lady is a congregation, her children are its members, and the sister is another church sending greetings.

The letter does not settle it, and the order to keep out false teachers makes sense either way.

The deceivers

Then the warning, in the same words as the first letter. For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who don’t confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the Antichrist (2 John 7).

These were the same people. Teachers who said I had not really been human. They had left the community, and now they were traveling around to other congregations, teaching what they believed.

Shut the door

And here is the instruction.

If anyone comes to you, and doesn’t bring this teaching, don’t receive him into your house, and don’t welcome him, for he who welcomes him participates in his evil deeds (2 John 10–11).

You need to understand what that meant then. There were no inns that a poor teacher could afford, and the churches met in homes. A traveling teacher lived on hospitality. If you took him in, you were not only feeding him. You were giving him a place to teach your congregation, and sending him on to the next town with your blessing. A guide for churches written around the same time, called the Didache, has its own rules for testing travelers who claimed to be apostles or prophets. An apostle could stay a day or two. One who asked for money was a fraud.²

So the elder was protecting a small community from teachers he believed were destroying it. I can understand that.

But read it beside my scriptures and my life. Abraham ran from his tent to meet three strangers, bowed to the ground, and begged them to stay and eat (Genesis 18:2–5). The Law of Moses told my people again and again to love the stranger. I ate with people the religious leaders said I should not touch, and they complained, This man welcomes sinners, and eats with them (Luke 15:2). At the judgment, I said, the king will say, I was a stranger, and you took me in (Matthew 25:35). Another letter in your New Testament says, Don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers, for in doing so, some have entertained angels without knowing it (Hebrews 13:2).

When I sent my friends out, I told them that if a town would not receive them, they should shake the dust off your feet and move on (Matthew 10:14). I told my followers what to do when the door was shut on them. I did not tell them to shut it on anyone.

This little verse had a long future. Churches have used it to justify shunning, to cut off family members, and to refuse a meal to anyone whose beliefs had changed. It was written to stop false teachers from using a congregation’s homes as a base. It was never meant as a rule for how to treat a hungry person, or your own child.

Face to face

The letter ends with a line I like very much.

Having many things to write to you, I don’t want to do so with paper and ink, but I hope to come to you, and to speak face to face, that our joy may be made full (2 John 12).

The elder knew the limits of a letter. Some things should be said in person, where you can see the other person’s face. That is good advice for anyone writing angry words about someone who disagrees with them.

Two Johns?

Who was the elder?

Around the year 120, Papias wrote that he had made a point of asking what the elders said, and he listed what Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John and Matthew had said, and then, separately, what Aristion and the elder John were saying. Two hundred years later, the historian Eusebius read that passage and concluded that there had been two different men named John: my apostle, and a later teacher known as John the Elder. He even reported that there were two tombs in Ephesus, each said to be John’s.³

Not everyone agrees with Eusebius’s reading of Papias. But it is possible that the man who simply called himself the elder was that second John. If so, he was not one of my twelve. He was a respected old teacher at the center of a network of house churches, trying to hold them together.

Go deeperHow a one-page letter made it into the Bible

For its first few centuries, 2 John was not a safe bet. It was short and private, and the writer gave a title, not a name.

Origen, writing in Alexandria in the 200s, said that John had left a letter of very few lines, and perhaps a second and a third, but that not everyone thought they were genuine. He added that the two together were not a hundred lines long. About 325, Eusebius listed them among the disputed books, the ones known to many but not accepted by all, and wrote that they might belong to the evangelist or to another man of the same name. In 392, Jerome reported that the two short letters were said to be the work of John the elder, whose tomb was shown at Ephesus.⁴

The old Syriac Bible, the Peshitta, did not include them. Of the general letters it had only James, 1 Peter and 1 John.

Yet some readers knew 2 John very early. Around 180, Irenaeus quoted its warning about deceivers as the words of John, the Lord’s disciple.⁴ By 367, Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, named all three letters of John in the list of books he accepted, and in the Greek and Latin churches the question was mostly closed.

A letter this small could easily have been lost. It lived because it was close to 1 John, which almost nobody doubted, and because churches kept copying what their neighbors read.

Check It Yourself

Look up: 2 John 10–11, then Hebrews 13:2.

You will find: two books of the New Testament, one telling you not to let certain people into your house and the other telling you to welcome strangers.

Then read Matthew 25:35 and ask which one I would have written.

The Short Version

• 2 John is a one-page letter from the elder to the chosen lady, probably a congregation.
• It repeats the old commandment: love one another.
• It warns against teachers who denied I came in the flesh, and says do not receive them into your house.
• That made sense for a small church protecting itself, but it stands against my welcome to strangers and has been used to justify shunning.
• The elder may have been a later teacher, John the Elder, not my apostle.