Discovery Class · Clayton Valley Church
Session 5 homework
Interpretation, Part One: Context
Answer all three questions below in your own words. There is no grade and nothing is sent anywhere: everything stays on this page in your browser. After each answer, reveal the response guide and compare it honestly to what you wrote. Due Sunday, August 9.
1Using a study Bible introduction, a Bible handbook, or a New Testament survey, write a short background sketch of 3 John. Cover all five: who wrote it, roughly when, who received it, why it was written, and what its theme is. Four or five sentences is plenty. Where the letter itself gives you the answer, say so.
Response guide
The author identifies himself only as the elder, and the letter is traditionally and rightly attributed to the apostle John, the same voice as 1 and 2 John. The date is late in the first century, most commonly placed in the 90s, likely from Ephesus.
The recipient is Gaius, a believer commended for his care of traveling workers. He is not identifiable with certainty as any other Gaius in the New Testament, which is why the letter has to tell us who he is.
The purpose is threefold: to commend Gaius for receiving and supporting traveling brothers, to confront Diotrephes, who refuses them and puts out of the church those who would receive them, and to commend Demetrius, who is probably carrying the letter. The theme is that walking in the truth shows itself in how we treat those who carry the truth.
2Read 3 John 5 through 8. Find out what you can about travel and hospitality in the first-century Roman world. Then answer in your own words: why did receiving traveling teachers matter so much, and what did John mean by sending them on their journey in a manner worthy of God? Then say what Diotrephes was actually accomplishing in verse 10 by refusing them.
Response guide
Travel was slow, expensive, and dangerous, and public inns were few, costly, and known for immorality, so travelers depended on households. For the church this was not a courtesy, it was infrastructure. Traveling workers had gone out for the sake of the name and took nothing from unbelievers, which meant that if believers did not house and provision them, the work stopped.
Sending them on their journey in a manner worthy of God means more than a warm goodbye. It means supplying what the next leg required: food, money, provisions, and companions, given at a level that reflects the God whose name they carry.
Which is why verse 10 is so serious. By refusing the brothers and putting out those who received them, Diotrephes was putting missionaries in danger, and making himself the only voice in the room. That is what John says he intends to address when he comes.
3Read Deuteronomy 22:8, printed below. Does the New Testament ratify, modify, nullify, or clarify this command? More than one may fit, so give every answer you think applies and one sentence of reasoning for each. Then say what obeying its principle would look like at your house this week.
Deuteronomy 22:8, ESV When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, that you may not bring the guilt of blood upon your house, if anyone should fall from it.
Response guide
Nullified as a binding building code. Ratified at the level of principle. Both fit, and holding them together is the point of the question.
Here is the reasoning. Houses in Israel had flat roofs used as living space, so a low wall around the edge was the difference between a normal evening and a funeral. No American house needs a parapet, and the New Testament never mentions one, so the building code does not bind us.
But the command carries its own reason: so that you do not bring the guilt of blood on your house. That reason is love of neighbor made concrete, and the New Testament restates and carries that forward in Romans 13:9 and 10 and in Galatians 5:14. So the specific form is gone and the obligation remains.
At your house it is the loose stair rail, the pool without a fence, the extension cord across the walkway, the tires you have been meaning to replace before someone else rides in that car.