I HARDLY EVER write or send an actual letter anymore. I do, however, write a lot of emails. Unfortunately, in this age of nearly instantaneous electronic communication, we’ve let go of some of the social niceties of letters. We fire off quick text messages filled with acronyms like “LMK” (let me know), or “ICYMI” (in case you missed it) — because who wants to take the time to type all that out? But without enough nuance or context, such messages can easily be misconstrued, provoking a conflict that then has to be resolved with longer and clearer communication. And often, our emails aren’t much better.

There’s something in me that rebels against stripping down our communication to what might seem to be the pragmatic bare essentials. Communication isn’t just about giving and getting information; it’s about the relationship between the sender and recipient of the message. Thus, even if I’m just asking someone for information, I almost always begin my emails with something like, “Hi. I hope you’re doing well.”

I did not, of course, invent that letter-writing convention. Something similar goes all the way back to ancient times. We’ve already seen this in 3 John, in the way the apostle greets his friend Gaius:

Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well. (3 John 2, NIV)

John’s opening here is very much like what could be found in other letters of the time, in which the sender of the letter routinely wished for the good health of the recipient. Even the word “pray” is conventional, just as one might even now say, “I pray all is well” without having to do so on one’s knees. In part, it’s what linguists would call a performative utterance: the prayer is happening in the act of greeting itself.

Does it matter? Yes. We need to recognize that John is doing something like the first century equivalent of “Hi, Gaius, I hope everything is going well.” It’s not only that, of course. His words aren’t a mere formality between people who don’t know each other well. John probably does, in fact, pray for Gaius, and his wish for the well-being of Gaius’ soul is an earnest one. Still, if we don’t realize how other letters of the time, that had nothing to do with the church or Christianity, used very similar language, we may be tempted to take the verse out of context and read more into it than John intended.

This is precisely what happened with the late televangelist Oral Roberts, for whom an out-of-context reading of 3 John 2 was foundational. According to his biographer David Harrell, Roberts was a Pentecostal pastor in his late twenties, struggling spiritually and financially. At the time, he was also taking courses at a nearby university and would take a bus to class.

One morning in 1947, he was in such a rush to catch the bus that he forgot to do his daily Bible reading. He ran back into the house, snatched up his Bible and flipped it open to a random passage — which happened to be 3 John 2. He had seen the verse many times before, but this time was different; it sparked an epiphany that would lead him to redefine his understanding of the gospel and launch an entire ministry founded on that understanding. Here is what Roberts read that morning, from the King James Version:

Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth. (3 John 2, KJV)

He had been taught to believe that being a Christian meant a life of sacrifice and poverty. But his happenstance reading of 3 John 2 that morning flipped the script. What God wants for us, he suddenly realized, is our prosperity — and some proponents of this prosperity gospel still use that verse today.

We need to recognize, first, that the verb translated here as “prosper” does not necessarily mean material or financial prosperity. Outside of 3 John, the word is only used two other times in the New Testament. One use could be taken to imply prosperity in the financial sense. In 1 Corinthians 16:2, Paul is writing about the collection he is taking up for the poor in Jerusalem, instructing the Corinthians to “set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income” as the New International Version translates it. Note that Paul is not saying that only the prosperous should give, much less that God promises to make anyone prosperous. In context, he is only making the pragmatic point that people should give in proportion to their income and set that money aside in advance so that no actual collection has to be taken when he arrives.

The other use is in Romans 1:10. Paul longs to visit the believers in Rome. He tells them that he prays for them all the time, and adds that he also prays “that now at last by God’s will the way may be opened for me to come to you.” That’s the New International Version. The New American Standard translates Paul as praying that he might “succeed” in coming to them.

How is that the same as “prosper”? It’s because the Greek word, at root, is a combination of two other words. The first is an adverb used as a prefix to mean “good” or “well.” The second is a noun meaning “road,” “journey,” or “way,” and can be used literally or figuratively. To make John’s words say what proponents of the prosperity gospel need them to say fits neither the context nor occasion for the letter, nor the wider context of how letters were written, nor even the meaning of the word that the King James translates in somewhat antiquated English as “prosper.” Rather, in a way fully in line with other letters of his time, John is praying that his friend would be well in every way, including in his soul.

It’s always risky to flip open the Bible, point at some random verse, have a flash of insight, and interpret this as God’s special revelation to you and you alone. That’s not to say, in theory at least, that it can’t happen that way. But we go further and further astray when we take one verse out of context and let it overturn the rest of what we know from Scripture. That may, in fact, be similar to what the secessionists did with John’s gospel, making John say what they wanted him to say rather than what he meant.

John, I think, would have been horrified to know how his words had been read. But then again, he may not have been surprised.