Quite possible two of the shortest books in the Bible are 2 and 3 John. I can’t but help to ask myself sometimes why they are even included in scripture and here is my reasoning. Both letters are sent only to individuals, it doesn’t seem as though he is proclaiming anything new that we haven’t seen in any other of the epistles, but just telling them to keep faith in hardships or when people may go astray. The letters also just seem kind of odd, almost as though John wants to say more but as he says I believe in both letters at the end “I have much more to tell you but I shall say it in person and not on ink and paper”. This almost leads me to wonder, what is it he had to say? Is there something so “important” that he felt he couldn’t place it in the letter, or did he just not feel like writing anymore? I don’t know, don’t get me wrong, I think they are two nice letters, but something has always seemed off about them, not really in the sense that it is strange what is said, but more of what the purpose for including them in the New Testament was. Does anyone else feel this way at all?
I read ‘The Gospel and Letters of Saint John’ as all part of his work. Saint John was[is] a pretty darn good preacher and evangelist. 1 John, particularly, is one of my favourite books of the bible.
Putting on a biblical expert scholar hat. (I opened my Jerusalem Bible to the very concise Introduction to Letters of Saint John) [bolding added]
" The letters
The three letters we have, and which by tradition bear John’s name, are so like the gospel in style and doctrine that it is difficult not to accept the same John as their author. For a time the Johannine authorship of the second and third letters was in doubt, and traces of this uncertainty are to be found in Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea and Jerome, while the church of Antioch and the Syrian churches in general refused for a long time to accept them; however, these brief, incidental letters are of no doctrinal import, and it is hard to see how they could have forced their way into the canon had they not in fact come from John.
The third letter was probably written first: it is an attempt to settle the dispute on jurisdiction which had arisen in one of the churches acknowledging John’s authority; the second letter was written to another church in answer to those who publicly denied the reality of the incarnation. The first letter however is by far the most important: its form is that of an encyclical letter to the Christian communities of Asia, threatened with disintegration under the impact of the early heresies.
In this letter John summarises the entire content of his religious experience. He successively develops the parallel themes of light, 1:5f, righteousness, 2:29f, love, 4:7-8f, and truth, 5:6f, and then taking these as a basis he goes on to show how we as children of God must necessarily live the life of integrity which, for John, is the only thing which fulfils the twin commandments: faith in Jesus Christ, the son of God, and love of the brethren (cf. notes to 1:3,7). Of John’s three letters this is the closest to his gospel both in style and doctrine; it must have been written about the same time, but whether before or after is something that cannot now be determined. "
for having read them, pondering them. One day they might mean more to you, say something to you, or you might recollect them in times of problem. Not all Scripture speaks to us all, all the time.