Skip to main content

3 John 2 - the great prosperity verse?


What does the Bible say?

We prosper physically as our soul prospers! Amen!

Well...
...actually it doesn’t say that.

  1. For starters it's a prayer not a promise. Just a simple observation of grammar and genre. It's good to pray for people's health for many things but the Father, in his wisdom, does not always give us what we pray for. Paul's thorn remained in the flesh. Trophimus remained sick in Miletus. Christians die. Even the Son of Man prayed with the qualification, "If it is possible... Yet not my will." A prayer is not promise.
  2. Another interesting observation is that prayers for health were extremely common in letters in the Roman world. The standard way to start a letter was with the opening address followed by something like, "Before all else I pray for your health and success", a wish which is sometimes expanded to a rather lengthy discussion of health matters (see the extremely helpful recent article by Peter Head in the Tyndale Bulletin available online). This makes the almost complete lack of mention of physical health in the New Testament letters, even the more personal ones, quite shocking. As Peter Head notes, instead of a concern for physical health, the NT letters are consumed with a concern for the spiritual health of the church body and use the vocabulary of 'health' and 'healing' and 'soundness' to refer to teaching and salvation rather than to the physical body. So the fact that this health/prosperity concern is conspicuously absent in the NT letters except possibly here in 3 John makes it very ironic that contemporary preachers should seize on this verse as their great theme and lens for the whole Bible.
  3. I say that the health concern is 'possibly here' in 3 John 2 because it may be that 'even as' (kathos) is linking two things where the second clause "soul prospers" clarifies the first clause "prospering and being in good health". In other words, kathos could be read as epexegetical (to use a fancy word) with the meaning “in the sense that” or “namely”. This would fit with the wider NT understanding of prosperity and health (as noted in the previous point) and it is also how many scholars understand the kathos in verse 3: Gaius is "in the truth" in the sense that he is "walking in the truth." I'm not saying we have to take it that way, it's perfectly possible that John is concerned for Gaius' physical health and well-being but it's worth keeping that possibility in mind.
  4. Most importantly, physical health and prosperity is not the big thing for John. The phrase “above all things” which appears in 3 John 2 in the KJV is dependent on little and very late textual evidence (late 16th c) for the Greek word pro. The vast majority of manuscripts have peri - “concerning all things”. Even without this, as we read on in 3 John it’s very clear that John’s biggest concern is not Gaius’ physical health but his spiritual health: "I have no greater joy than to hear my children are walking in the truth (v4). Yes bodies are important; it's good to pray for one another to be healed, but that’s not what this letter is about.
What is 3 John all about? See:
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

10 things servant leadership is

Having cleared away 10 things servant leadership is not , here are 10 that it is. [Credit to Harrison Mungai for his help in observing many of these features and helping us to think through this really important area.] I used to think that all that was necessary in gospel ministry was faithful Bible handling. Preach the Word carefully and surely everything else should follow? But I was wrong. Sadly it is possible to have high quality expository preaching and ungodly leadership. It shouldn’t be possible but it is. And it’s a very ugly thing. Peter Mead has written  on the danger that can be done to a church or ministry when appointment of leaders values ability over character. So here are ten aspects of biblical servant leadership, specifically in relation to gospel ministry leadership, from 1 Thessalonians, especially chapters 2 and 3: Servant leadership is, wherever possible, Plural . A lot of articles and books on leadership assume that it is a personal project. Search G...
Post a Comment
Read more

Utumishi wa Neno taster

It's finally starting! We had our first taster day for the church-based Utumishi wa Neno preaching course on Saturday. It was great to spend a few hours with 14 or so brothers and sisters and just spend soak in the Word. One of the crazy things we did was to read through the whole of Philippians out loud. How long did it take us? 15 minutes. And all of us enjoyed the experience and heard things we'd never noticed before. More thoughts on the day here . And for those who asked for the notes, they're available to download here . If you're in Kenya and want to get involved in the on-going Utumishi training see more info on the iServe Africa website .
5 comments
Read more

Here's how he will win the nations

The famous hymn by William Young Fullerton says: I cannot tell how he will win the nations, how he will claim his earthly heritage, how satisfy the needs and aspirations of east and west, of sinner and of sage. But surely we have been told quite a bit about how the nations will be won? Psalm 2 - the source of "I will make the nations your inheritance" - is quoted 7 times in the New Testament, twice in the Book of Acts which is basically a manual on how exactly the nations will be won. But even in the Old Testament, the Lord lays out the means by which the nations will be won. Continuing our thoughts from Jeremiah ( Jeremiah for planters and Shepherds after my own heart ) here are two wonderful verses from the beginning of chapter 4: “If you, Israel, will return,     then return to me,” declares the Lord. “If you put your detestable idols out of my sight     and no longer go astray, and if in a truthful, just and righteous way     you swear, ‘As surely...
Post a Comment
Read more