3 John 1:12 Demetrius has good report of all men, and of the truth itself: yes, and we also bear record; and you know that our record is true. An evangelist, possibly a prophet, animated by a most self-sacrificing and disinterested spirit, which sprang from an ardent love for Christ the Saviour of men, Demetrius won for himself a threefold testimony. 1. He won "the witness of all," says St. John, i.e., the witness of all good men, of all who were capable of appreciating goodness. Even those who rejected his message had nothing to allege against the man, save the sublime folly of a perilous and unprofitable enthusiasm; while those who accepted it from him, or had already accepted it from other lips, could not but admire the fineness of his spirit and the fire of his zeal. 2. More, and better still, he won "the testimony of the truth itself." For he who daily sets his life upon the die that he may be true to his convictions, he who, moved by the grace and love of Christ, seeks not his own things, but the things of others; he who devotes himself with burning zeal and all-enduring courage to the service of truth and the salvation of men — to him the truth itself, which has made him what he is, bears witness. Men do not despise ease and a sure provision for their daily wants; they do not daily affront every form of danger and loss, for truths, or beliefs, which have no real, no vital, hold upon them. "They who do such things as these declare plainly"; they "make it manifest" that they are the servants of a truth, which they love more than they love them selves. It is the truth itself which speaks through them, and bears witness to them. 3. Last of all, St. John adds his own testimony to that of the previous witnesses: "We also bear witness." And any man who has devoted himself to the service and spread of a truth which has not met with wide or general recognition will understand the special charm which this testimony would exert on Demetrius. A very noble character, on which, simply by describing it, St. John has pronounced a very noble eulogium. Let me also remind you that great as Demetrius looks to us — great in his disinterestedness, his devotion, his zeal — he was not a man of any great mark in the primitive Church. It is not some hero of distinction, some honoured and beloved man of spiritual genius, whom I have tried to place before you; but a man of whom we should never have heard but for the prating insubordination of Diotrephes. (S. Cox, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Demetrius hath good report of all men, and of the truth itself: yea, and we also bear record; and ye know that our record is true. |
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