2 John 1:10

If any one cometh unto you, and bringeth not this teaching, receive him not into your house, and give him no greeting:

It is sometimes alleged from this verse that "your house" here seems to suggest an individual's home; but your is not in the Greek, and the passage would be better rendered as "receive him not into house."

Is such an admonition as this verse contains uncharitable? Some have so alleged. Plummer thought that Christians should take a great deal of care before "venturing to act upon the injunction given here." Also, C. H. Dodd, "declined to heed it."[19] Such reluctance, however, is due to a gross failure to understand, either the destructive and murderous result of false teaching, or the evil nature of false teachers. The people in view by the apostle here were immoral, self-seeking hypocrites, true children of the devil, deserving fully the treatment prescribed for them by the apostle John. Today, no less than when John wrote, there are false religious teachers who should be treated exactly as John recommended. The apostle's injunction here may not be written off as merely some kind of an emergency requirement, after the manner of Dodd, who commented that "emergency regulations make bad law."[20] It seems very sad that a Christian should take such an attitude toward a fellow human being; but it should be remembered that these people were denying the Lord Jesus Christ. There are false teachers now whose denials are just as destructive of faith and virtue.

Give him no greeting ... "This signifies church approval, or commendation."[21] For a congregation of the Lord's people to extend to false teachers housing, approval and recommendation would be for the church to preside at its own execution.

[19] R. W. Orr, A New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1969), p. 624.

[20] C. H. Dodd, as quoted by William Barclay, The Letters of John and Jude (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1976), p. 145.

[21] R. W. Orr, op. cit., p. 624.