The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved: A Bible Study of I, Ii, and Iii John

Copyright © 2013 Dave King.

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All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise noted, are taken from the Holy Bible, New Internaional Version (R). NIV (R). Copyright (C) 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

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ISBN: 978-1-4908-0455-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-0456-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-0454-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013914212

WestBow Press rev. date: 8/28/2013

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

What’s Rotten in the Area of Ephesus?

1 John 1:1-4: Greetings

1 John 1:5-10: Light!

1 John 2:1-6: Light as a Model

1 John 2:7-14: Light Related to Others

1 John 2:15-23: Light and the World’s Influence

1 John 3:1-3: Children of God

1 John 3:4-9: Children of God and How We Relate to Sin

1 John 3:10-18: Children of God and How We Relate to One Another

1 John 3:19-24: Children of God and Our Confidence in Our God

1 John 4:1-6: Test What People Teach

1 John 4:7-21: Children of God and Our Love toward Him and Others

1 John 5:1-12: Believing in the Son of God

1 John 5:13-21: Some Concluding Remarks

1 John: What’s It All About?

2 John: Introduction

2 John 1:1-3: Hello!

2 John 1:4-6: A Reminder

2 John 1:7-11: Danger, Danger, Warning, Warning: False Teachers

2 John 1: 12-13: I Long to See You in Person

2 John: What’s It All About?

3 John: Introduction

3 John: Gaius

3 John: The Brothers

3 John: Demetrius

3 John: Diotrephes

3 John: The Church and the Influence

Conclusion

Preface

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

2 Timothy 3:16-17

SOME YEARS AGO, CHRISTIANITY TODAY asked John Stott about what he thought the biggest concerns and challenges facing today’s church were. His answer was twofold:

• The church needs to be more involved in the social needs of the world. Certainly, this is a need for the church today. Our world’s needs are complex and getting more multifaceted every day with the advent of social media and other methods of communication. The church cannot step away from its responsibility to minister to the needs of people who are often hurting, even if they have difficulty communicating their pain in a real way.

• The church has a great deal of breadth but not much depth in those who attend. John Stott was acknowledging that the church is doing a work to provide various programs and outreaches to their congregations, but the general follower of Christ does not know how to develop depth in his or her knowledge of God and needs to better understand the meaning of having a deep and growing personal relationship with Him. Without this depth, it becomes difficult to encounter all of the philosophies in our world and not have them influence us.¹

Timothy faced some of these same challenges when Paul wrote to him in 2 Timothy. In 2 Timothy 4, Paul talks of a time when people will be more interested in hearing what they want to hear from teachers, not what they need to hear. In response, Paul encourages Timothy not to counter this with his own thoughts. He is to teach the Scriptures in and out of season, all the time. (See 2 Timothy 4:2-5.) Why is it that the Scriptures are to be taught to counter this concern?

2 Timothy 3:16-17 provides some insight to this statement. Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for four things: providing truth through teaching, showing us when we stray from the truth, correcting us back to the truth, and keeping us in the truth. In this way, we can be equipped for good works that will last. Paul is telling Timothy that, in order to affect the world around him toward eternal things, God has supplied the Scriptures as the book to learn and master.

This is an amazing statement. Think about it, one book to learn and master if we want to affect our world for God. Consider this as it relates to becoming a medical doctor. A friend is a doctor, and I’ve had the opportunity to look at his home library as well as at his office. What does it take to become a doctor?

1. A doctor must complete an undergraduate as well as a graduate degree. In doing so, he or she would accumulate several textbooks that he or she must master as well as attend hours of lectures.

2. A doctor must do an internship at a hospital involving twenty-four-hour shifts at times to learn the craft.

3. A doctor must also keep up with various journals and papers to keep current with changing medical techniques.

4. A doctor must also attend conferences and trainings to practice skills for new procedures.

All this, along with the day-to-day practice of medicine, is needed to become a doctor able to provide help to his patients.

Now ask yourself, What does it take to become a follower of Christ able to be used of God to affect people’s lives for eternal purposes? God has provided one book, God-breathed, for the follower of Christ to master. And as this happens, the follower of Christ is fully equipped for every good work, able to help people in social needs and those areas with eternal value. If that is our goal, it doesn’t make any sense to not read or study the Bible daily. Yet if John Stott is correct, that is exactly what we are not doing.

I have found that the study of Scripture has been a major way that God has worked in my life. It has been my habit each year to, after much prayer, select a topic that God has impressed upon me for personal growth. I spend time to study what the Scriptures would teach on the subject, develop personal application about the topic, begin to allow God to work it out in my life, and finally document what I have learned in some way. In this way, I can look back at where God had me at a point in time and remind myself of what He taught me.

God has continuously impressed upon me the need to further consider how seeing Christ in my life would affect how I help others to know Him and grow in Him. I observe a world that is very definitely moving away from anything to do with Christ and a culture that increasingly believes that Christ is irrelevant to the way they should live. Two things intrigued me as I considered the topic:

• Anyone who has encountered Christ and chosen to believe in Him should relate what he has seen and discovered to the world.

• The Christian will encounter ways of thinking and philosophies that teach things counter to the truth of the Scriptures and should protect himself or herself from those viewpoints influencing him or her.

While much has been written on both subjects, I wanted to discover for myself what thoughts and truths would help me to grow in this area. The apostle John and his view of Christ have always encouraged me. He called himself the disciple whom Jesus loved, a thought that would run counter to some of the philosophies I had encountered. Many would say that we should not take our sense of value from what others think of us, yet John would, by choice, identify with Christ in a powerful way.

As I further considered some of what he wrote, I saw in 1, 2, and 3 John that what John saw and believed in Christ had very clearly changed and driven him… almost sixty years later. I also saw what John was facing in the churches. Some dangerous philosophies from outside and, most tragically, within the church were influencing and hindering their relationship to Christ and their impact for Him in the world in which they lived. From my study and application of the principles of these three books, related to the gospels that record John’s own experiences with Christ, I formed this book.

I do not intend The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved to be an exhaustive or exegetical study of 1, 2, and 3 John. I intend to:

• Connect John’s own experience with Christ, including His words those sixty years earlier, and the way it formed what John told these churches

• Discuss and reveal how John, through the truths he learned at the feet of Christ, encountered head-on the philosophies of the day that were counter to Christ and revealed/warned the church to hold to the truth and be vigilant in their own lives

I hope this book will communicate truths that will help the Christian to live in Christ in a manner that will influence the world to Him, not live in a way that allows the world to influence the Christian. Only by falling in love with Christ and looking at Him is this possible, and I hope this book will encourage people to do the same.

What a privilege it is to be able to spend our lives knowing God through the Scriptures. I hope to encourage you to give your life to affecting your world for eternity and spend regular daily time in the Bible. It has been provided to equip us for every good work. I pray that we will allow God to use the Bible in our lives for the purpose for which it was intended.

Acknowledgments

I HAVE HAD THE PRIVILEGE to have four men in my life who encouraged me to spend regular time in the Scriptures over the years. God has used their lives, persistence, and prayer to bring me to where I am now and what I will become in the future. The discoveries on this study are due much to their influence in my life.

I met Christ through Jon Mullender, and we spent all that time learning what knowing Christ means. Loren Dutch Karickhoff, the leader of the first Bible study I ever attended, used the Bible to answer life questions, and his grasp of the Scriptures challenged me. Ted Hamilton is an old friend whose love of Christ spurred me on. Dave Johnson is a staff person with the Navigators through whom God has and continues to work to set a pace in my life in growing in Christ. Their commitment to me has been a great gift.

Most importantly, I want to thank my wife Deb and our sons, Caleb, Zane, and Quinn, for their love and encouragement in this process as they have given me the time to write and complete this book.

Introduction

IN THE EARLY 1980S, MANY schools participated in creating a time capsule to chronicle life in their neighborhoods. Kids and their parents would donate mementos, cards, toys, and the like to be placed into some form of metal box. These were then buried in some known location on the grounds of the school or neighborhood in the hope that someone many years after they had all died would dig them up and discover something of that area or neighborhood at the time of the burial of the time capsule. For the kids, it was an exciting thing to participate in this event. They may have thought this was a way to be remembered by what they left or wrote to a future generation. They may not have been sure what they did, but in time, their parents would explain it to them. For whatever reason, it was an exciting thing to do.

Some of you may have participated in such an activity. Others may have considered a question that you might want to answer for a future generation, for example, If I could use one phrase to describe who I am to someone else, what would that phrase be? This goes to the very depth of who I am, who I think I am, or how I would want someone else think of me. How might you answer this question?

The apostle John used a phrase to describe himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved in the book of John when he wrote this through the inspiration of God some sixty years after Christ’s death. And as a statement like this says a great deal about how a person views himself or herself, what might we learn about what John thought about himself from this phrase?

Disciple

The word disciple is an interesting one in that many people had followers called disciples at that time. They would spend life with the one they were following and receive teaching and encouragement in some area. In today’s world, we think of a disciple more specifically as one who follows Christ. We may be disciples in more ways than we think. For instance, we may follow a particular person’s example in terms of how to handle finances, marriage, workplace issues, exercise and diet, or a vast myriad of other items. In a very real sense, we become a follower (which is what the word disciple means) of that person’s philosophy.

In John’s case, he also thought of himself as a disciple, a follower. When he wrote the book, he thought of himself as one who followed authority, not a person in authority. Clearly implied from the statement is the reality that he was a disciple of Jesus Christ, and in Him, his identity was formed.

Whom Jesus Loved

While people will tell you that forming your own identity based on someone else is not always a good thing, John is not ashamed to identify himself as one whose identity is formed by Christ. This statement implies a great deal of understanding that John’s worth came from his relationship with Jesus. John clearly had experienced God’s love in a powerful way by sharing his life with Christ and committing his life to Him. John’s knowledge of that love influenced how he loved others throughout his life and what he had to say about the subject to others.

So the next question might be, If John described himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved, how did this affect how he lived his life and taught others about this love and how those who heard him would respond? That is the purpose of this book. We plan to consider the three letters that John wrote to the church around Ephesus some sixty to sixty-five years after his time with Jesus.

• How did his time with Christ, as the gospels outline, affect what he says to those churches?

• What did he learn through that time and since that framed his teaching and exhortation to the church?

• Why did he approach certain subjects as he did with the church?

I intend to provide some thoughts about these questions and encourage you to consider how you should respond based on what you discover as you read this book.

The study of I, II, and 3 John will not be in any way, shape, or form a thorough exposition of these New Testament books. We will look some at the history of the day as it relates to the area around Ephesus to obtain some understanding of the subjects John addresses. I will do this to increase our awareness of the times that John wrote about in Scripture, not complete exposition. We will attempt to derive principles of life from the book that will change us in the twenty-first century and encourage application of these ideologies in our lives today. These principles will show us about John, his identity in Christ, the way his relationship to Christ affected how he wrote and lived, and the manner he wanted the church to live in their world. Certainly, those topics remain important in today’s world.

As we approach the book, there will be many statements made on passages of each book that may raise questions in your mind. I pray that, as you read this book, you will not accept anything I say without personal consideration of the passages yourself. Be bound in your mind and heart by the words of Luke in Acts 17:11-12 about the church in Berea. Now the Bereans were more noble minded than the Thessalonians, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. Many of the Jews believed, as did a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.

So be noble minded by receiving the message with eagerness and examining the Scriptures daily to see for yourself the truth and then believe it. Remember that conviction is best learned through your own study and application of the truth of the Scriptures. Do not learn vicariously. I will not be standing beside you when you face the experiences of life. The Spirit of God will be in you and guide you into all truth of the Scriptures as you examine it.

I pray that this book will encourage you in Christ, help you to focus on Him, and provide principles that are practical to your life, wherever you are in Christ. This is my prayer for you and will remain my entreaty for you in the coming years.

What’s Rotten in the Area of Ephesus?

WHEN JOHN WROTE 1, 2, and 3 John to the Christians living near the city of Ephesus, their beliefs and philosophies differed greatly from what they were earlier. It had been almost thirty years since Paul’s letter to the church and the establishment of the church on Paul’s second missionary journey. Acts 19 tells us that God was at work through Paul, as these portions of the chapter illustrate.

• Twelve disciples were baptized in Jesus’ name and filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 19:1-7). These disciples had heard about the messages of John the Baptist and elements of the gospel, but the act of their baptism into Christ represented the placing of these disciples under His authority.

• Paul spent two years and three months teaching those in the area about the kingdom of God (Acts 19:8-11). The first three months were spent in the synagogues dealing with the Jews, but many became obstinate and would not believe. After that, Paul moved to the lecture hall of Tyrannus, and he held discussions with the disciples daily for two years. The result of the time in the lecture hall was the opportunity not only for all the Jews but also for all the Greeks in the province of Asia to hear the Word of God.

• Some Jews who attempted to take advantage of the teaching through Paul to gain reputations for themselves went around driving out evil spirits. But one spirit questioned their authority, and the man in whom the spirit dwelt attacked these Jews and left them naked and bleeding (Acts 19:13-16).

• When the events with the Jews became known, the Jews and Greeks in Ephesus became frightened. Those who practiced sorcery brought their scrolls and burned them in order to confess their sin before God and to show their belief in Christ. The monetary value of the scrolls was significant, worth the equivalent of many millions of dollars (Acts 19:17-20). This caused the Word of the Lord to spread greatly and to grow in power.

God was clearly at work in Paul’s time in the city of Ephesus. Many believing in Christ and the power of God being shown through these people showed the truth of the Gospels. Paul provided the teaching and doctrine that helped these new disciples to grow in Christ.

Yet during Paul’s time, something rotten was going on in Ephesus as well. Acts 19:21-30 reveals to us that a riot broke out in Ephesus as the craftsmen, who made their livelihood by selling small models of the statue of Artemis for the people to worship, saw Paul’s call to forsake these idols and to serve the true God affect their profits. The city clerk stepped in and quieted the crowd by reminding them that the disciples had not done anything wrong and the crowd was actually risking charges of rioting if they persisted.

By the time John wrote to the church at Ephesus those thirty years later, the rottenness visible in