THINK OF THE last time you were at a social event surrounded by people you didn’t know. Perhaps it was a dinner party at which you knew the hosts by name, but not many of the other guests. Maybe it was the first meeting of your small group at church. Perhaps it was a wedding. You were there for the bride and were acquainted with two or three of her relatives, but the groom and his family were complete strangers to you.

What do you do when it comes time to mingle at a party, a wedding reception, a business conference? How do you start a friendly conversation with someone you’ve never met? The opener is usually to exchange names: Hi, I’m Aloysius, but my friends just call me Al. What’s your name? Even if you don’t ask for the other person’s name, if they’re feeling the least bit sociable, they’ll probably tell you. That’s how the game works, and everyone implicitly knows the rules.

But what’s the next question? Usually, you open with something relatively safe that might lead to some interesting conversation: What do you do for a living? or perhaps, What brings you here? You don’t jump in with, What was the most embarrassing moment of your life? And if you’re at church, you don’t ask, How’s your spiritual life? or, How’s your walk with Jesus going? Maybe we should, but we don’t. That kind of question comes later in the relationship, if it comes at all.

So: what do we know about this man named Gaius, the one to whom 3 John is addressed? We have his name, but what else? He’s obviously a good friend of the apostle, as the opening greeting suggests:

The elder, to my dear friend Gaius, whom I love in the truth. (3 John 1, NIV)

Again, the word translated as “dear friend” is more literally “beloved”; it’s the adjective that goes with the verb “love” when John says that he loves Gaius “in the truth.” We’ve seen that phrase before, at the beginning of 2 John. The relationship between Gaius and John is grounded in the truth of the gospel; they are brothers in Jesus. Moreover, although you can’t tell in the English translation, John’s Greek suggests that we should read the words “whom I love in the truth” with the stress on the personal pronoun: “whom I love in the truth.” Why the emphasis? It may be that Gaius needs a reminder that he is loved by John, even if he’s getting the side-eye from Diotrephes.

For many of you, the name “Gaius” itself might ring a bell. Could this be one of the same men as mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament? Indeed, the name crops up six times: twice in Acts, twice in the letters of Paul, and twice here in 3 John.

The first mention of a Gaius appears in Acts 19:29, referring to one of two Macedonian men who traveled with Paul. Both men were seized by an angry mob in Ephesus, but later released. Just a few verses later, in Acts 20:4, Luke mentions another Gaius, this time described as “Gaius from Derbe.” Derbe was located in Galatia, not Macedonia, so this second Gaius is distinct from the first.

But wait: some scholars have suggested that these two Gaiuses may have been the same. There was a Macedonian town whose name sounded like “Derbe”; could that have been what Luke meant? Or maybe we’re not punctuating Luke’s Greek correctly. It’s possible to read the sentence as saying that this second Gaius was from Thessalonica — which was a Macedonian town– and that Timothy was from Derbe (which he was). Could be. Who knows?

The third Gaius is named in 1 Corinthians 1:14 as having been baptized by Paul in Corinth; that’s the only mention of him in the letter. A fourth Gaius also appears near the end of the book of Romans, as part of Paul’s customary final greetings: “Gaius, whose hospitality I and the whole church here enjoy, sends you his greetings” (Rom 16:23, NIV). But again, hang on: if, as many believe, Paul wrote to the Romans from the city of Corinth, then the third and fourth Gaiuses may be the same man.

So how many Gaiuses were there? Your Gaius…er, guess…is as good as mine. The one mentioned by Paul in Romans 16 is commended for his hospitality, so that could be a connection with the one to whom 3 John is written. But hospitality was a common enough virtue in the early church, and there were a lot of guys named Gaius running around. The general consensus among scholars is that the two Gaiuses mentioned by Paul are the same man, but the others are different. That means, unfortunately, that we can learn nothing about John’s friend beyond what we’re given in 3 John.

And John, of course, doesn’t give us any of the information about which we might be curious when we first meet someone. He is, after all, writing to Gaius, not about him. What he does give us, however, is more important. Through John’s words of encouragement, we get a glimpse into Gaius’ character as a Christian:

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. It gave me great joy when some believers came and testified about your faithfulness to the truth, telling how you continue to walk in it. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth. (vss. 2-4)

As an apostle who feels a fatherly sense of pastoral responsibility to his own community and others, there is nothing more important to John than to see believers walk in the truth, to not only believe what the apostles have taught about Jesus, but to live out the truth of that gospel. John rejoices in the good reports that he’s heard about Gaius’ faithfulness. This probably means that Gaius has been reliably hospitable to some of John’s emissaries, who spoke highly of him when they returned.

And just as John uses an emphatic pronoun to say, “I love you, Gaius (even if Diotrephes doesn’t),” so too does he emphasize “you” when saying that Gaius is continuing to walk in the truth. The implication: you are walking in the truth, Gaius, even if Diotrephes isn’t.

Thus, all we can say about Gaius is that he was a faithful and hospitable man — and that’s what matters. But John writes to make sure that he remains faithful, despite the pressure from Diotrephes. He sends a letter of introduction with Demetrius and hopes that Demetrius will bring back another good report. We’ll continue to explore the situation in upcoming posts.

But first, we need to address a famous way that verse 2 has been misunderstood and misused.