3 John 1:15

Greek (Tischendorf 8th ed.)

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φίλοι

phílos

G5384

“friend”

Adjective, Nominative, Plural, Masculine

Appears 29× in the Greek New Testament
First appears at Matthew 11:19

Full Thayer's Definition

Origin: a primitive word

TDNT: 11:26,1

1. friend, to be friendly to one, wish him well a. a friend b. an associate c. he who associates familiarly with one, a companion d. one of the bridegroom's friends who on his behalf asked the hand of the bride and rendered him various services in closing the marriage and celebrating the nuptials

About this verse

These counts appear in no published source. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged text and Lemma’s own curated glosses. What Lemma adds →

11: words
7: distinct lemmas
General Epistles: section

Shared distinctive vocabulary

φίλοι friend G5384 occurs in 27 verses of the Greek New Testament. Also found in:

Repetition

Words recur within this verse:

ἀσπάζονταί to draw G782 ×2
φίλοι friend G5384 ×2
σοι you G4771 ×2
οἱ the G3588 ×2

Cross-references

Topical passages linked to 3 John 1:15 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge — connected by theme and wording, ordered by reader-vote popularity; previews shown in the World English Bible.

John 10:3 The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep listen to his voice. He calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out.

Cross-references courtesy of OpenBible.info (CC BY 4.0).

Commentary

Notes on 3 John 1:15 from classic Christian and Jewish commentators (each source and its license shown beneath its notes). The classic Christian expositions comment on the surrounding passage and are grouped to its opening verse, so a note may address several verses; the Jewish commentaries on the Tanakh (Rashi and others) are per-verse, so they appear only where the commentator wrote on this verse.

Lemma curates 59 commentaries, every one of them public domain or Creative Commons licensed, each selected and text-cleaned for this edition rather than reprinted as found. About our sources →

Tyndale Open Study Notes

Tyndale Open Resources

1:15 John closes his letter with his farewell and with greetings to others. • Peace be with you: This was a traditional greeting among the Jews (Matt 10:12; Luke 10:5-6), which had taken on heightened significance for Christians because Jesus used it after his resurrection (John 20:19-21, 26). • give my personal greetings (literally greet by name): Gaius was to greet the friends—that is, those who accept the apostolic gospel and live according to the truth (cp. 3 Jn 1:3-4).

International Critical Commentary

15. ἀσπάζου τοὺς φίλους κατʼ ὄνομα] These forms of greeting are part of the common stock of epistolary correspondence, and should not be pressed as evidence about the state of parties in the Church of Gaius. It is especially misleading to interpret κατʼ ὄνομα as a proof of the scanty following left to the Elder in it. Compare the greetings in the letter of Amon the soldier to his father (Berlin Museum: Deissmann, Licht von Osten, p. 118), ἄσπασαι Καπίτωνα πολλὰ καὶ τοὺς ἀδελφούς μου καὶ Σερήνιλλαν καὶ τοὺς φίλους μου: and Oxyrh. Pap. ii. 123, ἀσπάζομαι τὴν γλυκυτάτην μου θυγατέρα Μακκαρίαν, καὶ τὴν δεσποίνην μου μητέραν ὑμῶν καὶ ὅλους τοὺς ἡμῶν κατʼ ὄνομα: or Tebtunis Pap. ii. 299 (p. 422), ἀσπάζομαι τὴν γυναῖκάν μου καὶ τὰ παιδία μου καὶΣεραπάμμωνα καὶ Ἀματίαν καὶ τοὺς ἐνοίκους πάντας κατʼ ὄνομα.

ειρηνησοι] om. Ia 170 (303) | σοι] uobis arm-codd. | οι φιλοι א B C K L P al. pler. d vg. sah. cop. syrbodl syrp txt arm. Thphyl. Oec.] οι αδελφοι A 3. 13. 31. 33. 65. 67 dscr syrp mg aethutr | ασπαζου] ασπασαι א 40 | τους φιλους] τους αδελφους33. 81. 160 boh-cod. syrp:+ σουH δ6. 162 (Ψ): + nostros arm. | κατ ονομα]+αμηνL 15. 26 vg. mss. arm.

A δ4. Codex Alexandrinus. London. Brit. Mus. Royal Libr. I. D. v.-viii. (v.).

B δ1. Codex Vaticanus. Rome. Vat. Gr. 1209 (iv.).

C δ3. Codex Ephraimi. Paris. Bibl. Nat. 9 (v.); 1Jn 1:1 τους—(2) εωρα[κομεν]. 4:2 εστιν—(3Jn 1:2) ψυχη.

L α5. Rome. Angel. 39 (ol. A. 2. 15) (ix.).

P P. α3. Petersburg. Bibl. Roy. 225 (ix.). Palimpsest. 1Jn 3:2-1 του.

אԠא. δ2. Codex Sinaiticus. Petersburg (iv.).

13 13 ( = 33gosp.). δ48. Paris. Bibl. Nat. Gr. 14 (ix.-x.).

Ψ̠δ6. Athos. Lawra 172 (β52) (viii.-ix.).

h. h. Fleury Palimpsest, ed. S. Berger, paris, 1889, and Buchanan, Old Latin Biblical Texts, Oxford (v.). 1Jn 1:8-20.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Westcott on Hebrews & the Epistles of John

Brooke Foss Westcott

15. Εἰρήνη σοι] Peace be to thee: I Pet. v.14. As aformuls of greeting’: Luke x. 5; xxiv. 36; John xx. 19, 21, 26. And so (in combination with other words) in epistolary salutations: 2 John 3 note.

οἱ φίλοι) our friends. The word does not occur again in the Epistles in this connexion. Comp. Acts xxvii. 3. It gives a faint glimpse of personal relationships. Comp. John xv. 13 ff.

κατ᾽ ὄνομα) per nomen V. Comp. John x. 3 (xx. 16). Polye. Phil. 13

3 , 2 > # dond{opuat...mavras κατ᾽ ὄνομα.

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825–1901), The Epistle to the Hebrews (1889) and The Epistles of St John (1883) — public domain (pre-1929). Text recovered from Internet Archive / Google Books OCR scans. Westcott’s Gospel of John commentary is not included (its OCR lost the chapter running-heads required for reliable verse-keying). Some Greek quoted in the Hebrews volume is imperfectly rendered by the OCR.

Lesson kit

Teaching starters — assembled from the data on this page, not authored interpretation. Every prompt links to the verse data it draws on. Edit before teaching.

3 John, in the General Epistles, opens this verse with 11 words (7 distinct Greek lemmas). Its most distinctive word is phílos (“friend”). A historical commentator’s framing appears above. Read the whole chapter for the surrounding context.

Discussion questions

The word phílos carries the sense “friend.” How does it shape the verse?
How does Matthew 11:19, which shares the word «friend», read alongside this verse?
What does the repetition of “to draw” (2× in this one verse) do in this verse?
The translations on this page render this verse differently — a whole-verse word diff, not a word-by-word alignment. What might account for the different wordings?
Compare how Tyndale Open Study Notes and International Critical Commentary read this verse. Where do they agree or differ?

Things to notice

These translations choose different wording for 5 words in this verse.
“to draw” occurs 2× in this single verse.
7 distinct Greek lemmas span 11 words in this verse.