Author: the Apostle John
Date: 90-95 AD
Read 2 John 1:1-3
– What does the term “elder” mean in this context?
“Elect Lady”
John uses the term “elect lady” to refer to a local congregation. We see this further affirmed by a greeting from a sister community in verse 13. What we should take note of is the Greek word for “lady.” It is not the normal word for woman or wife, which is gune (pronounced as goo-nay). Instead, we find kyria, which is the feminine form of kyrios, which we normally translate as “lord.”
In Greek, feminine and masculine forms are not fully interchangeable. For instance, the word for brother (adelphos) and sister (adelphia) are the same word but with different genders. So, if we were to use the Greek form in English, sister would be “brotheress.” Yet, we know that brothers and sisters are not interchangeable.
Yet, we must not ignore that John used the word kyria and not gune. Through kyria, John wants us to see the church, the elect “lady,” kyria, as inseparable from her Lord, Kyrios. This is the only place in the New Testament where kyria is used.
Referring to the Church, the Apostle Paul wrote, “But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother” (Galatians 4:26). The Shepherd of Hermas, a 2nd century Christian document, refers to the Church as kyria (Vision 2.4 and 3.1). And so, when we are given spiritual birth through the water and the Word in the Church, we, too, are to be inseparable from our Lord. For the Church’s Lord is then our Lord. This communion is so real that we, as the Apostle Peter writes, “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4).
This is a truth that we can only take in when we see the Church, not simply in the feminine gender as gune, but intimately connected to her Lord as kyria.
– What implications does this have for “not neglecting to meet together… but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:25)?
– Remembering the Gnostic heresy that John was combating, what is he doing by calling Jesus “the Father’s Son”?
Read 2 John 1:4-6
– If some of the elect lady’s children were waking in the truth, what we others doing?
– What is John asserting when he said, “Not as though I were writing to you a new commandment”?
– How were some breaking the bond of love?
Read 2 John 1:7-8
– Deceivers had replaced the real Jesus with a false one, in their case, a Jesus who did not become incarnate “in the flesh.” Do we still have antichrist’s today?
– In verse 8, John writes, “Watch yourselves, so that you my not love what we have worked for.” Who is “you”? Who is “we”?
– What had the “we,” of whom John spoke, worked for?
Read 2 John 1:9-13
– What happens if one does not remain in the doctrine of Christ?
– How should someone treat a teacher in the church who doesn’t bring “the doctrine of Christ”?
The apostle ends his letter by saying that, because he has far more to say than he can put into a letter, he hopes to soon visit the church to whom he writes (v. 12). He finishes with a greeting from the church–probably in Ephesus–in which he was staying (vs. 13).
