Whoever this elect woman was to whom John is writing, John loved her and her children as a father loves his daughter and his grandchildren. And what he loved most about this woman, so it seems, had to do with her grasp of the truth. But John also wrote to make sure that her love for others didn’t result in a compromise of the truth. In other words, John’s concern was that this Christian lady might be susceptible to compromise truth in the name of hospitality—meaning, she might be willing to offer a spare bedroom to, and provide care for, a travelling false teacher. And John—the very man who fled the bathhouse when Cerinthus, a known heretic, entered—would not stand for this lady to behave any differently than him in the face of heresy.