3 John, 2 John, 1 John: The Real Messiah

Sources: Marianne Meye Thompson, 1-3 John (IVP, 1992); Bart Ehrman, Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament (Oxford, 2003); I. Howard Marshall et al., Exploring the New Testament: A Guide to the Letters and Revelation (IVP, 2002), chapter 21; Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation, 2d ed. (Fortress, 1999).

I. Cover Letters: 3 John and 2 John
3 John is a cover letter from 'the elder' to Gaius, acknowledging the situation.

The problem (9-10): a rogue church authority by the name of Diotrophes to whom 'the elder' has tried to correspond.
The 'children' in 9-10 seem caught in the conflict between the rival leaders.
Verse 11 summarizes 1 John.

2 John greets the congregation ("the chosen kuria") and gives the TL;DR of 1 John's expanded message.

Verse 4: Some of the ‘children’ are walking in the truth; some must be deceived by the deceivers (v. 7).
Invisible relationship with God has visible marks: formal (association with fellow Christians) and informal (behavior, character, disposition).

Read them in 'reverse' order: 3 John, then 2 John, then 1 John.

II. That's Not What I Meant! Contested Interpretations

Teachings concerning Jesus have been proliferating in Christian (and 'Christian') circles.

Some are accepted in the apostolic churches, whether canonized or not (Didache). Some are popular fanfic. Some are distortions.
These teachings include revisions of accepted writings (e.g., Secret Mark),
Gnostic Gospels (e.g., Secret Book of James, Gospel of Thomas, Book of Thomas, Gospel of Truth, Gospel of Mary, Second Treatise of the Great Seth),
compilations of legends (e.g., Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Acts of Paul and Thecla), and
apocalypses (e.g.,Apocalypse of Peter, Secret Book of John, which is basically a Gnostic systematic theology).

1-3 John share a 'Johannine vocabulary' common with the Fourth Gospel:

life, eternal life, truth, light, Jesus as Son of God, the Father and the Son, Jesus laying down his life, salvation as 'knowing God', remaining in Christ, Jesus' new commandment, and the world (Marshall, 290).

However, competing interpretations are making them 'essentially contested concepts.
Anticipating or reflecting this, 1-3 John address conflict, schism, and secession among followers of Jesus who seem to have very different theologies and self-understandings (1 John 2:18-19, 2:26, 4:1-5).

The gospel's essentially contested concepts need to be corrected and clarified.

Most commentators have concentrated on reconstructing the claims of opponents to identify them historically.

Are some of them just separated? (3 John 9).
Are they Gnostics (1 John 1:8-10, 3:9)? Docetists (1 John 4:2)?
Cerenthians (1 John 5:6, 4:2, 2 John 7), who deny that Jesus and the Christ are one person?
Opponents' claims do not add up to one coherent body of belief, so reconstruction proves impossible.

III. 1 John: The Integrity of the Gospel
These documents (1 John isn't a letter) appeal to Jesus' tradition itself to adjudicate the conflict, especially amplifying and clarifying John 13-17.

This could mean opponents are misinterpreting or misapplying the Fourth Gospel, or at least the elder's teaching.

1 John's structure eludes many readers. It seems almost stream of consciousness.

The BP video follows one common proposal (from Raymond E. Brown) to read it as two parts, "God is light" and "God is love."
It reads more powerfully according to a subtle chiastic structure (so John Christopher Thomas):

1:1-4	A		prologue; eternal life
1:5-2:2		B		making him a liar (walking); lying/deceiving, message, blood, fellowship
2:3-17			C		new commandment; commandment, love perfected, abiding, the world, hate
2:18-27				D		antichrists; anointing, confessing the Son, teaching, exes deny truth/knowledge
2:28-3:10					E		confidence: don't sin; shame at parousia; righteous/pure like God; God's seed
3:11-18						F	love one another! life-sacrifice versus indifference, hate, murder, death
3:19-24					E'		confidence: keep the commands; heart condemns; pleasing God; God's Spirit
4:1-6				D'		antichrists; Spirit, not confessing the Son, those from God listen, world in error
4:7-5:5			C'		God's love and ours; commandment, love perfected, abiding, the world, hate
5:6-12		B'		making him a liar (testimony); lying about God, witness, blood, having the Son
5:13-21	A'		conclusion; eternal life

"This is the message" in 1:5 and 3:11 would signal our way into the chiasm, then out of it.
The simple equations throughout ("p = q", "p implies q") are packed with each other's meaning in a dense web, with chiastic radials in and out of its center.
The elder is driving at the chiasm's central summary: life (Christ) and death (anti-).

So the elder combines affirmations and anathemas (refutations) throughout.

The directive reminds the remainers of the character of true Christian faith (p):

Jesus is the Messiah (1 John 2:22, 4:2),
God is light (1:5, 2:7-11),
God is love (3:10-24, 4:16-5:5).

Theology is ethics: Each of these truths becomes the 'indicative' of an 'indicative-imperative.'
Four ethical signs (q) assure believers of communion with God:

We obey his commandments (to love) (1 John 2:3).
We reflect God's and Christ's character (2:29, 3:2-3, cf. 3:4-10).
We love one another (3:14).
We are given his Spirit (3:23-24, 4:13).

Opponents' teachings and lives lack this integrity (3 John 9-11, 2 John 7, 1 John 1:8-10, 2:4-6, 2:9, 2:22-23, 4:1-3, 4:20).

The whole NT is shot through with this argument.

Christian faithfulness, truthfulness, and love are the literal moral of the gospel story.
Thus integrity ("no darkness at all," 1 John 1:5), not just information, is essential to Christian understanding.

IV. End of our Introduction: Lines of Dependence, Influence, Affinity, and Culture
The NT is a fellowship's fellowship.
There are struggles galore: apostasy, persecution, confusion, complacency, vice, shallowness ...

but shared commitments to the Father's Son, to one another, and to God's mission through those struggles,
and Christ and his Holy Spirit with us through the end of the age (Matt 28:20).
The churches' canonical writings address the struggles out of those firm commitments, and that sets the churches' standard.
The canonical writings' church understood itself as apostolic, one, holy, and catholic.
Commitment to Christ is (for now) always a struggle; and (present) struggles in Christ embody commitment.

Both testaments are a light unto our path (Ps 119:105); keep getting to know them better!