3 John 1:9

9. I wrote Perhaps in a letter sent by these missionaries on their first tour.

The church Of the city where Gaius resided. The letter doubtless commended the missionaries to the entire Church, but met with rejection from Diotrephes. We suppose that in a full sense the word church included the entire body of Christians in the city. Yet it consisted of separate congregations, each perhaps under its own elder or pastor, and each would be called a church. The period of great church buildings had not commenced. One congregation would worship in a private house, (Romans 16:5,) another in a hired hall, (Acts 19:9,) a third in a synagogue, (James 2:2.) But Diotrephes, an elder over one of these congregations, rejected the apostle’s letter and authority.

Loveth to have the pre-eminence Literally, making himself first. He would be master and supreme in his own congregation. He would obey none of these mandates from Ephesus, even though from an apostle. He was an independent, a high congregationalist. Bede says, that he was “a heresiarch of that time, proud and insolent, preferring, by maintaining novelties, to usurp the primacy of knowledge to himself than to listen humbly to the ancient doctrines of John.” Alford denies the possibility of his heresy, and maintains that he was simply “an ambitious man, who wished that not the apostle, but himself, should rule the Church.” But certainly he would not reject the apostle but upon some doctrinal ground. And that he was tinctured with the antinomianism arising from finding all sin in matter, will appear from 3 John 1:11.

Receiveth us not By us is meant primarily the apostle himself, through his letters and messengers; yet inclusively, the whole party of apostolic Christians and Christianity.