In this the children of God are revealed, and the children of the devil. Whoever doesn’t do righteousness is not of God, neither is he who doesn’t love his brother. For this is the message which you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another; unlike Cain, who was of the evil one, and killed his brother. Why did he kill him? Because his deeds were evil, and his brother’s righteous.
Don’t be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. He who doesn’t love his brother remains in death. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him.
By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But whoever has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, then closes his heart of compassion against him, how does God’s love remain in him? My little children, let’s not love in word only, or with the tongue only, but in deed and truth. And by this we know that we are of the truth, and persuade our hearts before him, because if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things. Beloved, if our hearts don’t condemn us, we have boldness toward God; so whatever we ask, we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do the things that are pleasing in his sight. This is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, even as he commanded.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 10 In this the children of God are manifest.…
10 In this the children of God are manifest. He shortly draws this conclusion, that those in vain claim a place and a name among the children of God, who do not prove themselves to be such by a pious and holy life, since by this evidence they shew that they differ from the children of the devil. But he does not mean that they are thus manifested, so as to be openly recognized by the whole world; but his meaning is only this, that the fruit and adoption always appear in the life.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 The conclusion, by a wicked life they are known…
The conclusion, by a wicked life they are known which are governed by the spirit of the Devil, and by a pure life, which are God’s children.
He beginneth to commend charity towards the brethren, as another mark of the Sons of God.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv10–23 10 In this the children of God are manifest,…
10 In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.
Ver. 10. In this the children of God] As David’s daughters were known by their garments of various colours, 2Sa 13:18; so are God’s children by their piety and charity.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv10–23 Upon what was said, he reduces all men each…
Upon what was said, he reduces all men each to their own family and father, concluding it manifest whither they belonged; i.e. he shows, upon the grounds before expressed, who do not belong to God and his family, leaving it thence to be collected, since two fathers and families divide the world, to which they must be reckoned; i.e. they belong not to God, and consequently to that worst of fathers, who first, in the general, do not righteousness; the devil being the first sinner, they are his descendants; and who next, particularly, love not their brethren, which most expressly demonstrates a diabolical nature.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23 Our apostle in these words give us the distinguishing…
Our apostle in these words give us the distinguishing character of a good and bad man; those who in their dispositions and actions, in the temper of their minds, and in the actions of their lives, do imitate God, are his children; and those who addict themselves to sin and impiety are of another race and descent, they are the children of the devil; they resemble him, and belong unto him. By doing righteousness is meant the practice of universal goodness, and a thorough conformity to the law of God in opposition to sin, which is the transgression of the law.
Learn hence, 1. That every man may come to the certain knowledge of his own condition, whether he be a good or a bad man; By this the children of God are manifested; that is, hereby good and bad men are really distinguished; the Scripture has laid down real marks of difference between them.
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Learn, 2. That the love and practice of universal righteousness, and nothing short of it, will denominate a person a child of God, and evidence to his own conscience, that he is brought into a state of grace and favour with him: In this the children of God are manifest, whosoever doth righteousness is of God.
This discovers a farther difference between the children of God and the children of Satan, namely, Brotherly love; he doth not say, he that hateth his brother is a child of the devil, but he that loveth not his brother; intimating, that not only hatred and malice against, but want of brotherly love towards each other, is the mark and sign not of a child of God, but of the devil. He that doth not unfeignedly love men as men, and all Christians as Christians, is no child of God, no lover of God; for he that loveth not God’s image, loveth not God himself.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On vv11, 14, 20, 23 The apostle, having intimated that one mark of the…
The apostle, having intimated that one mark of the devil's children is hatred of the brethren, takes occasion thence,
I. To recommend fraternal Christian love, and that from the excellence, or antiquity, or primariness of the injunction relating thereto: And this is the message (the errand or charge) which you heard from the beginning (this came among the principal parts of practical Christianity), that we should love one another, Jo1 3:11. We should love the Lord Jesus, and value his love, and consequently love all the objects of it, and thereupon all our brethren in Christ.
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II. To dissuade from what is contrary thereto, all ill-will towards the brethren, and that by the example of Cain. His envy and malignity should deter us from harbouring the like passion, and that upon these accounts: - 1. It showed that he was as the first-born of the serpent's seed; even he, the eldest son of the first man, was of the wicked one. He imitated and resembled the first wicked one, the devil. 2. His ill-will had no restraint; it proceeded so far as to contrive and accomplish murder, and that of a near relation, and that in the beginning of the world, when there were but few to replenish it. He slew his brother, Jo1 3:12. Sin, indulged, knows no bound. And, 3. It proceeded so far, and had in it so much of the devil, that he murdered his brother for religion's sake. He was vexed with the superiority of Abel's service, and envied him the favour and acceptance he had with God. And for these he martyred his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous, Jo1 3:12. Ill-will will teach us to hate and revenge what we should admire and imitate. And then,
III. To infer that it is no wonder that good men are so served now: Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you, Jo1 3:13. The serpentine nature still continues in the world. The great serpent himself reigns as the God of this world. Wonder not then that the serpentine world hates and hisses at you who belong to that seed of the woman that is to bruise the serpent's head.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv10–23 In this the children of God are manifest,.... By…
In this the children of God are manifest,.... By regenerating grace, and not sinning, in the sense before explained, in consequence of it: adoption is an act of God's grace and sovereign will; it is secret in his own heart, and is secured in divine predestination, and in the covenant of grace, and is antecedent to regeneration: regeneration and faith do not make men the children of God, but manifest them to be so; adoption makes them the children of God, and entitles them to the inheritance; regeneration gives them the nature of the children of God, and makes them meet for it, and manifests their right unto it; not to the men of the world, but to themselves and other saints:
and the children of the devil; such as imitate him, do his will and his lusts, and are openly under his power and influence; these are distinguishable from regenerate persons, and the children of God, by their lives and conversations; so the people of the nations of the world are called, "the children of Samael", and the serpent, by the Jews (m), which are with them the names of the devil.
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Whosoever doth not righteousness is not of God: that is, he does; not appear to be born of God, who does not by faith lay hold on the righteousness of Christ for his justification before God, and acceptance with him; and who does not do works of righteousness in faith from a principle of love, and with a view to the glory of God; for where regenerating grace is, there will be such graces and such practices:
neither he that loveth not his brother; for as he that loveth God, and Christ, and the brethren, appears manifestly to be born again, and to have passed from death to life, so he that does not is in darkness, in a state of unregeneracy, and walks and continues therein; for was he born again, he would be taught of God to love the saints; see Jo1 4:7.
(m) Raya Mehimna in Zohar in Lev. fol. 34. 2.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23 Neither he that loveth not his brother - Here…
Neither he that loveth not his brother - Here is the transition from the general proposition to one particular.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv10–23 Verse 10. In this the children of God are…
Verse 10. In this the children of God are manifest] Here is a fearful text. Who is a child of the devil? He that commits sin. Who is a child of God? He that works righteousness. By this text we shall stand or fall before God, whatever our particular creed may say to the contrary.
Neither he that loveth not his brother.] No man is of God who is not ready on all emergencies to do any act of kindness for the comfort, relief, and support of any human being. For, as God made of one blood an the nations of men to dwell upon the face of the whole earth, so all are of one family; and consequently all are brethren, and should love as brethren.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv11, 15, 16, 18, 21, 23 1Jn 3:11-14. For, &c. — As if he had…
1Jn 3:11-14. For, &c. — As if he had said, I have just declared that the want of brotherly love is a proof that a man is not of God, and a little consideration may convince you of the truth of the assertion: for this is the message that ye heard of us — The apostles and ministers of Christ; from the beginning — Of our ministry among you; that we should love one another — A doctrine frequently inculcated by our Lord Jesus in person: not as Cain, (see the margin,) who was of the wicked one — Who showed he was a child of the devil, by killing his brother. And wherefore slew he him? — For any fault? No: but just the reverse; for his goodness. Because his own works were evil — In a very high degree; and his brother’s righteous — And he could not bear that his brother’s sacrifice was accepted of God while his own was rejected; a circumstance that, instead of humbling him and bringing him to repentance, as it ought to have done, only excited his envy and hatred, which at length settled into the most rancorous malice, and produced that horrible effect. Marvel not, &c. — As if he had said, Since there is a great deal of the same malignant temper remaining in the carnal part of mankind, and there are many who are, in that sense, though not by natural descent, of the seed of Cain, marvel not if the world hate you — Remembering they lie in the wicked one, and are under his influence. We know, &c. — That is, we ourselves could not love our brethren, unless we were passed from spiritual death to spiritual life — That is, unless we were born of God. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death — Namely, in spiritual death, and is obnoxious to eternal death. In other words, he is not born of God: and he that is not born of God cannot love his brother. See on chap. 1Jn 4:7. Reader, observe this: all mankind, being born in sin, are in a state of spiritual death, and in the way to eternal death, till they are born again; and none are born again who do not truly love both God and his people.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv10–23 In this the children of God are manifest ...…
In this the children of God are manifest ... - That is, this furnishes a test of their true character. The test is found in doing righteousness, and in the love of the brethren. The former he had illustrated; the latter he now proceeds to illustrate. The general idea is, that if a person is not truly a righteous person, and does not love the brethren, he cannot be a child of God. Perhaps by the phrase in this, using a pronoun in the singular number, he means to intimate that an important part of righteousness consists in brotherly love.
Whosoever doeth not righteousness, is not of God - In 1Jo 3:7, he had said that “he that doeth righteousness is of God.”
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If that is true, then what he here affirms must be true also, that a man who does not righteousness is not of God. The general idea is the same, that no one can be a true Christian who is not in fact a righteous man.
Neither he that loveth not his brother - The illustration of this point continues to 1Jo 3:18. The general sense is, that brotherly love is essential to the Christian character, and that he who does not possess it cannot be a Christian. On the nature and importance of brotherly love as an evidence of piety, see the notes at Joh 13:34-35.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv14, 16, 19 We know that we have passed from death to…
We know that we have passed from death to life; i.e. from the death of sin to the life of grace: we know it by a moral certainty, when we experience in our heart a love of our neighbour. --- He that loveth not God and his neighbour, abideth in death. He that hateth his brother with a mortal hatred, or to a considerable degree, is a murderer. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On vv11, 19 4. Brotherly Love is the Sum-Total of the Divine…
4. Brotherly Love is the Sum-Total of the Divine Law
1Jn_3:10-18 (10b-18)
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10b Whosoever20 doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither21 he that loveth not his 11brother. For22 this is the message23 that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one,24 and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own25 works were evil, and26 his brother’s righteous. 13Marvel not, my brethren,27 if the world hate28 you. We know that we 14have passed from29 death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not 15his brother30 abideth in death. Whosoever31 hateth his brother is a murderer:32 and 16ye know that no murderer13 hath eternal life abiding in him. Hereby perceive33 we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down34 our lives for the brethren. 17But whoso hath this world’s good,35 and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion36 from him,37 how dwelleth the38 18love of God in him? My39 little children, let us not love in word, neither in40 tongue; but in deed and in truth.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
The transition. 1Jn_3:10 b.
1Jn_3:10 b. Every one that doeth not righteousness, is not of God.—Thus the Apostle compresses the one, positive, formally taken and described side of the preceding section and having thus fully, concisely and distinctly recapitulated, he now quickly adds the essential characteristic of that righteousness as the leading theme of what follows, viz.:
And he that loveth not his brother.—Calvin: “Hoc membrum vice expositonis additum est.” It is interesting to compare the progress of thought in this part with that in the first part: this section 1Jn_3:10-18 is related to 1Jn_2:29; 1Jn_3:1-10 like 1Jn_2:6-11 to 1Jn_1:5 and 1Jn_1:6 to 1Jn_2:5; 1Jn_2:6-7; 1Jn_2:11 : ἡ ἐντολὴ, ὁ λόγος, ἡ ἀγγελία brotherly love, and 1Jn_3:11 the ἀγγελία, 1Jn_2:7 : ἣν εἴχετε—1Jn_3:11 : ἣν ἠκούσατε ἀπ̓ ἀρχῆς as in 1Jn_3:11; the ὀφείλειν 1Jn_2:6; 1Jn_3:16; and both times after the example of Christ; respectively disclosing our relation to death and life here (1Jn_3:14-15) and to light and darkness there (1Jn_2:9-11). But this section draws more on life (Cain and Abel 1Jn_3:12, poverty and benevolence 1Jn_3:17-18) and reaches more into life.
Πᾶς ὁ ποιῶν δικαιοσύνην refers back to 1Jn_2:29; 1Jn_3:7, but the omission of the Article renders the idea more general and indicates the leading thought with the self-evident reference to God and Christ. Thus ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ εἶναι denotes here both to be born of God and to be the child of God. Καὶ before ὁ μὴ ἀγαπῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ is epexegetical, and explains δικαιοσύνη as ἀγάπη; hence it is neither=proinde (Episcopius) nor adds a new particular, something different (Rickli, Socinus, who defines ἀγάπη as Christian virtue excelling Jewish legality); nor is ἀγάπη a part or moment of δικαιοσύνη (Bengel, Spener, Neander, Gerlach), but its “substance and nature” (Huther,41 also Düsterdieck). Cf. Rom_13:8-10; Gal_5:14; Col_3:14; 1Ti_1:5; Joh_13:34 sq.; Joh_14:15; Joh_15:12; Joh_15:17. “Brotherly love is the sum-total of all right-doing” (Besser), love is the fulfilling of the law. Ἀλλήλους, in the Johannean passages like ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ here, denotes brotherly love, the love which Christians have for one another; so also in the corresponding sections 1Jn_2:9-11; 1Jn_4:20-21. Ἀδελφὸς is consequently not=πλησίον Luk_10:36 (Ebrard, who sees here a contradiction to Mat_5:44; 1Co_4:12, but without sufficient reason; Rickli and others).
The commandment of Christ, 1Jn_3:11.
1Jn_3:11. Because this is the message which ye have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.—He that loves the brother must be (out) of God, and brotherly love is the deed of righteousness, because the commandment is from Him. Ἀγγελία is here=ἐντολὴ 1Jn_2:7. Bengel’s remark is only half true: “liberalissima appellatio, nunquam legem appellat;” ἐντολὴ occurs often, but νόμος never. But the message implies the commandment as indicated by ἵνα. The reading ἐπαγγελία, promise, cannot be sustained without a forced interpretation: it is the goodness, power and grace of God that we should love one another. The commandment of brotherly love has been given from the beginning, since the Gospel has been preached, since you have been Christians; it is and remains indissolubly united with the Gospel and Christianity; ἠκούσατε ἀπ̓ ἀρχῆς applies to the first and to all Christians. Ἵνα denotes the purpose, the work to be done and not only the substance or contents of the ἀγγελία (Huther), for the reference is not only to the substance of a commandment, but to a commandment specified by means of the message, which lies in the message given as a task, a work to be done.
The opposite in Cain. 1Jn_3:12-13.
1Jn_3:12. Not, as Cain was of the wicked one and slew his brother.—The sentence is imperfect like Joh_6:58, and is a breviloquentia, of frequent and diversified occurrence in the classics; cf. Winer, p. 646, who cites in a note a parallel sentence from Demosthenes (Mid. p. 415). The comparison is left incomplete, as in animated conversation when there is no room for misunderstanding; there is nothing to be supplied; the reader or hearer knows from the context what is meant. In the present case: Not, as Cain was of the wicked one and slew his brother, (shall it or may it be so with us). [See note 5 in Apparat. Crit.—M.]. Hence it is neither an independent exclamation (Sander); nor need we supply ὦμεν ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ (Grotius, Lücke), nor ὃς (Beza, Socinus), nor sitis or the like.—Ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ refers back to 1Jn_3:8 as contrasted with ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ 1Jn_3:10 b. Hence the reference is to the wicked one. The sentence specifies the reason of that action, even as 1Jn_3:8. ποιεῖν τὴν ἁμαρτίαν and ὁ διάβολος ἁμαρτάνελ are correlates. [The wild notion of the Rabbis concerning the diabolical nature of Cain may be interesting to the student (Zohar in Genes, Gen_4:1): “Rabbi Eeazar dixit: Cum projecisset serpens ille immunditiem suam in Evam, eaque illam suscepisset, remque cum Adam habuisset, peperit duos filios, unum ex latere illo immundo et unum ex latere Adami; fuitque Cain similis imagine superiorum h. e. angelorum et Abel imagine inferiorum h. e. hominum, ac propterea diversæ fue-runt viæ istius ab illius viis. Equidem Cain fuit filius spiritus immundi, qui est serpens malus; Abel vero fuit filius Adami; et propterea quod venit de parte angeli mortis, ideo interfecit fratrem suum.”--M.]. The verb σφάζειν denotes cultro jugulum aperire ut sanguis effluat, then to kill, in sacrifice, as the martyrs were slain by the ungodly. Rev_5:6; Rev_6:4; Rev_6:9; Rev_18:24. Hence the word does not warrant the inference that the knife was the instrument of the murder (Piscator), but rather denotes that the death of Abel was martyrdom inflicted by an ungodly hand, or finely intimates that Cain, in his hatred, offered a sacrifice to his God, the devil. The next clause, at all events gives prominence to the diabolical character of Cain’s deed, the eager question “And wherefore slew he him?” being promptly answered thus: “Because his works were wicked, but his brother’s righteous. Τὰ ἕργα αὐτοῦ πονηρὰ ἧν answers to ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ ἦν, and denotes Cain’s whole manner of life” (Spener), of which the murder of his brother was one form of expression, his whole manner of life as well as this specific exhibition of it being identical as to cause and origin—namely the devil. For if the wicked one had not influenced Cain’s whole manner of life and if that had not been wholly wicked, he would not and could not have committed this specific act of fratricide. The term πονηρὸς, as distinguished from κακός is very significant. πονηρὸς, from πονεῖν or πόνος, denotes toil or hardship (and is opposed to χρηστός, good, honest, useful, friendly, serviceable) and then malignity, malignus; κακός, bad, malus, is the opposite of ἀγαθός, good and valuable. Rev_16:2; Sir_31:4; Mat_7:11; Mat_12:35; Mat_5:11; Luk_12:35; 3Jn_1:10. The inwardly evil nature is κακόν, that which is inimical, hurtful and displeasing to others is πονηρόν. Ὁ πονηρὸς is the most suitable term to describe the nature of Satan, the enemy of God, His kingdom and His people, as well as the works of the devil’s children. The additional clause τὰ δὲ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ δίκαια the context requires us to refer to ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ εἶναι, as pointing out that the piety and the walk of the children of God exactly answering to the law of God are loathsome to the anti-divine world. That devilishness continues still Joh_3:19; Joh_7:7; Joh_17:14. Hence the monition:
1Jn_3:13. Marvel not, brethren, if the world hateth you.—The same idea is already expressed in 1Jn_3:1 (διὰ τοῦτο) Cain is the type of the; κόσμος 1Jn_2:15-17). “Magis esset mirabile, si diligerent eos.” (Didymus). The address ἀδελφοὶ in this connection exerts a beneficial influence: John expresses his love of those whom the world hates and this expression contains a ground of their rejoicing and conveys to them the sweet consolation of the fellowship of love. The particle εἰ is and remains=if; if it had been the Apostle’s object to describe the hatred of the world as actually present, he might have used ὅτι; but he signifies by εἰ that the readers collectively or individuals at the time being, will not in the end have to endure hatred; but the Indicative μισεῖ denotes that the case will doubtless arise. So Mar_15:44 (Vulgate falsely: si jam odisset); Act_26:8; Winer, Grammar p. 307; Kühner, 2:480 sq. Hence Sander, who makes εἰ=ὅτι, S. Schmidt who makes it=etiamsi, and Ebrard who explains=if ever the case occurs, are in the wrong, for the reference is to a necessary condition. [“Εἰ denotes neither a doubt nor only a possibility, for it is not only possible but from the nature of the case necessary, that the world hates the children of God; only the form of the sentence is hypothetical, not the thought it expresses. Cf. Joh_15:18.” Huther.—M.].
Amplification of the Antitheses: Love and Life, Hatred and Death; 1Jn_3:14-15.
1Jn_3:14. We Know.—In ἡμεῖς John includes himself among those he had just called ἀδελφοὶ and expresses their confident assurance, the world and its hatred notwithstanding, which is and ought to be a source of strength and consolation. The object affirmed in the sequel shows that the reference is to the experience of believers, of the children of God, and not to the Apostles only, (Lyra) or that it is only the conclusion drawn on the ground of a good conscience, (Estius).
That we have passed over out of Death into Life.—The Prefect μεταβεβήκαμεν signifies an action of the past or the past of an action still continuing in the present, in the condition that has been effected: we are those who have passed over, Winer, Grammar, p. 288, 299. The Perfect must not be taken per enallagen, for the Future (Schlichting) or the Present (Didymus, Oecumenius), or the verb must not be construed =jus or spem habere ad vitam (Grotius, Carpzov). Cf. Joh_5:24 : ὁ πιστεύων—μετεβέβηκεν ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου εἰς τὴν ζωὴν. Of course ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου εἰς τὴν ζωὴν cannot be taken physically but spiritually, but it must be taken as a real fact; it is=γεγεννῆσθαι ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ, 1Jn_2:29 : for ἡ ζωὴ is the real life, divine, eternal life (1Jn_1:1-2; 1Jn_2:17; 1Jn_2:25),=the φῶς and the ἀλήθεια (1Jn_1:5; 1Jn_2:21-22) of which the children of God are partakers; the θάνατος is the opposite of this life,=the σκοτία and the ψεῦδος, all of which belong to the ἐκ τοῦ διαβόλου. The Apostle, therefore, does not speak of a sentiment (Paulus) or caligo, infelicitas moralis (Semler), but of relations and conditions, of regeneration, of the new life of the reconciled child of God. This implies that those who have, not yet passed over, are still or will be ἐν τῷ θανάτῳ before this transition into life in Christ; hence there is not the faintest colour for the assertion of Hilgenfeld, that the Apostle did share the gnostic view of the original metaphysical difference of men.
Because we love the brethren.—From this conduct we may know that relation, from these acts of brotherly love that state of adoption by God. Hence the former is the first and this the second and it is false to consider brotherly love as the cause of regeneration or even as a part of justification in order to complete it, and as conditio gratiose a Deo requisita, as do the R. Catholics (Estius, Lyra) and the Pelagians (Episcopius). Brotherly love is only the condition of the certainty of the knowledge that we are justified and the children of God, and not the condition of this new life itself. [ζωή and ἀγάπη are really one and the same thing with this difference that ζωή is the state and ἀγάπη the activity of the believer; from this blissful, eternal life groweth love, and love in its turn worketh happiness and eternal life; hence the Apostle adds—(Huther)—M].
He that loveth not, abideth in death.—As usual (1Jn_1:8, sqq., 1Jn_2:22, sqq.), the negative is added in a concise, pregnant form. [See note 11 in Appar. Critic.—M]. The statement is quite general “he that loveth not,” without specifying the object, viz. the brother. The force of the Present μένει should be retained. To be in death is connected, as something permanent, with not loving. They are one in the other, yet not so that the not loving is the cause of the abiding in death, but, as is manifest from the context, so that we may know the abiding in death from the not loving. [The two are identical. Besser, “Where hatred is there is death, where love is there is life; yes, love is life itself.”—M.].
1Jn_3:15. Every one that hateth his brother is a man-killer.—Πᾶς denotes the universal application of this thought. Not loving is described as equal to hating one’s brother. [Not to love=to hate.—M.]; “pure indifference is impossible to the living spirit of man” (Huther). Luther rightly observes: Nova sententia coram mundo, quod non diligere sit occidere.” Bengel: “Omne odium est conatus contra vitam; at vita vitam non insectatur; qui odit fratrem, aut ilium autse ipsum vult occidere.” Lyra (odisse pejus quam non diligere.”), Schlichting (“Qui non amat, nec bene vult nec male; qui vero odit, male vult ”); and others are wrong. Not loving is only the state of quiescence exhibited in acts of hatred. According to our Lord’s exposition of the fifth commandment (Mat_5:21-26) he is an ἀνθρωποκτόνος that hateth his brother. “Nam quem odimus, vellemus periisse” (Calvin); hatred is not only a beginning or cause of murder, but a murder in heart, be it a wish, a thought or a purpose or only the passion which afflicts the brother’s life without thinking of his death. “Latro es, antequam inquines manum” (Seneca). Here is evidently a reference to Cain, 1Jn_5:12; the case of Cain shows plainly how hatred of one’s brother and homicide go together. The word ἀνθρωποκτόνος, only here and Joh_8:44, in this place applies to Cain who slew Abel, his brother, in the Gospel to Satan who destroyed, murdered Adam. Notwithstanding this difference, the two passages are connected with each other, the one shedding light on the other. Cf. Lange on Joh_8:44; Vol. IV. p. 244 sq.—The devil, having seduced Eve, and Adam through her to sin, to the transgression of the divine law of which death was the penalty fixed by God.—Sin causing mortality is itself a kind of dying, the fall or falling into death [German: The fall of sin, i.e. the fall, a fall of death.—M], and sin, born of lust, when it is finished, bringeth forth death (Jam_1:15); the first sin was a falling from the life created (out) of God into death threatened as a punishment. Thus Satan became the murderer of Adam and Eve in the strictest sense of the word (Wis_1:11-13; Wis_2:23-24). With the entrance of sin, moreover, there died in Eve the love of her husband whom she had seduced, and in Adam the love of his wife whom he accused to God and on whom he laid the guilt. There hatred and death are again together. In Cain also there was the hatred of his brother united with the murder of his brother, whereby he showed that he was ἐκ τοῦ διαβόλου. Cf. Stier, Reden Jesu, Vol. I 3:414 sqq.
And ye know that no man-killer hath eternal life abiding in him.—This concludes the thought: μὴ ἀγαπῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν 1Jn_3:10 b led the Apostle to speak of μὴ ἀγαπῶν 1Jn_3:14, then of μισῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν 1Jn_3:15 and in remembrance of Cain of ἀνθρωποκτόνος; he first said οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ 1Jn_3:10 b μένει ἐν θάνατῳ, but here οὐχ ἕχει ζωὴν αἰώνιον ἐν αὐτῷ μένουσαν. Before he said, he is in death, but now, in him is not eternal life, consequently death is in him. The Apostle denies that he “possesses permanently and fully” (Lücke) eternal life and thus denotes the “permanent state of death” (Düsterdieck) of him that hates and kills his brother. The Present ἄξει has respect to this present life; it is not habebit (a Lapide). Hence ζωὴ αἰώνιος not the future glory (a Lapide, Bede and others). Μένουσαν certainly intimates the existence of eternal life, of baptism, etc., out of or in the word of God by means of Christian instruction and the Christian family-discipline; for the Apostle speaks of and to Christians. But even such gifts of God are consumed by hatred abiding; hence he loses entirely the possession of eternal life, so that nothing thereof abideth in him; μένουσαν is therefore not an intensified to be (Huther), nor must the want of the Article be pressed as if the reference were only to powers of the future world (Ebrard). This the Apostle lays down as an undeniable fact of Christian experience and consciousness (οἴδατε); hence they know it not from the fifth commandment (S. Schmidt) or from the Old Testament with its death-penalty in the case of murderers, spiritually interpreted (Grotius, Lücke).
Description of brotherly love, 1Jn_3:16-18.
1Jn_3:16. Hereby have we known love that He laid down His life for us.—S. Schmidt: “Ne quis vel se ipsum decipiat, vel ab aliis decipiatur, exponendum etiam erit, quæe sit vera et Christiana caritas.” First after the example of Christ. On ἐν τούτῳ cf. on 1Jn_2:3; on ἐκεῖνος, 1Jn_3:3; 1Jn_3:7; 1Jn_2:6; ἐγνώκαμεν = cognitum habemus. Τὴν ἀγάπην should be taken in a general sense without any further qualification: love.—Bengel: “Amoris natura.” In Christ may be known love, the being and nature of love. Hence we must not supply τοῦ Χριστοῦ (Carpzov and others), or τοῦ θεοῦ (Grotius, Calov, Spener, al.); the Vulgate (amorem Dei) constrains the Romanists to do so. Ebrard’s explanation is rather forced: “we have known love as consisting in this,” as if we had ἐν τούτῳ οὖσαν, and this were described in the following ὅτι as the predicate and as if ἐγνώκαμεν had only an introductory and secondary sense. Both the form (the position of the words) and the thought (to give His life = love) render that exposition untenable. The point is that whereby love is known: τὴν ψυχὴν τιθέναι (Joh_15:13; cf. Joh_10:11; cf. Joh_10:15; cf. Joh_10:17-18; Joh_13:37-38)=vitam ponere (Cicero ad Fam. 9:24); this is the highest proof of love; for love imparts her very best, her most precious goods, παραδοῦναι the ψυχή or ἑαυτόν (Gal_2:20; Eph_5:2); this makes Christ the object of the Father’s love (Joh_10:17). The context required here ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, for our protection; literally over us, who had fallen, were wounded, in danger, of perishing from our wounds or in the hands of enemies, fighting against the enemies, protecting us, becoming our substitute and assuming the fight for us: hence it is not exactly identical with ἀντὶ, and yet the two prepositions touch each other in thought “in indissoluble correlation” (Düsterdieck) cf. 1Jn_2:2.
And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.—From the act of Christ’s love for us springs a duty towards our brethren, incumbent on us (ὀφείλομεν); the thought is similar to 1Jn_2:3; 1Jn_2:6. The example of Christ must not be without corresponding works on our part (1Jn_3:3; 1Jn_3:7). The essential union of believers to Christ must exhibit itself in the real moulding of their life after the pattern of Christ, in the use of the imparted gifts and the solution of the task assigned to us by the bestowal of that gift. Cf. Joh_13:34; Joh_15:12-13; Joh_21:18-19; Rom_16:3-4.
1Jn_3:17. But whoso has the world’s goods (sustenance of life).
By the adversative δὲ “John denotes the progress from the greater, which is justly insisted upon, to the less, the non-performance of which, therefore, appears as a correspondingly greater violation of the rule just laid down.” (Düsterdieck), Ὅς δ̓ ἂν makes the sentence quite general. The proverb quoted by Grotius: “βίος βίου δεόμενος οὐκ ἔστι βίος” gives the double sense of life, and the necessaries of life, or the means of sustaining life. Cf. Mar_12:44 (Luk_21:4); Luk_8:45; Luk_15:30. Col. 5:12. Beza: “res mundanæ,” “des biens de ce monde.” The Genitive τοῦ κόσμου simply points to the sphere to which the βίος belongs, and, according to 1Jn_2:17, denotes the profane and worthless character of these goods, as contrasted with the eternal love and the eternal life in Christ. Βίος τοῦ κόσμου is the antithesis of ζωὴ αἰώνοις; the Christian shares the latter with Christ, the former with the world. The reference is not to uncommon wealth, but rather to any kind of property (ἕχῃ, emphatically in anteposition), though it be in limited circumstances, a mere mite, or bread and potatoes. He that hath the means to give and
Seeth his brother have need.—θεωρεῖ pictorially describes the attitude and activity of the spectator; it is not a hasty look, but permanent looking on and into it (Mat_27:35; Mar_15:40; Mar_15:47; Mar_12:41; Luk_21:6; Luk_23:35; Joh_2:23; Joh_6:19; Joh_6:62; Joh_7:3; Joh_9:8; Joh_10:12; Joh_14:17; Joh_16:10; Joh_16:16); he has it before him like a picture which he contemplates with calmness and attention, τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ χρείαν ἔχοντα. On the expression and the thought cf. Eph_4:28; Mar_2:25. Act_2:45; Act_4:35; Act_20:34; Act_28:10; Php_4:6. [He beholds the brother’s need with unmoved eye—M.].
And shutteth up his bowels [inwards] from Him.—After the analogy of the Hebrew רַחֲמִים, σπλάγχνα is =καρδία, Pro_12:10 and very often in the New Testament. Bengel: “Cum visceribus clauditur vel aperitur res familiaris. Aspectus miserorum corda spectatorum illico pulsat vel etiam aperit.” The heart ought to open itself in compassion and sympathy and move and open the hand to communicate; but it is under the aggravating circumstances of his having the means and beholding his brother’s need that he shutteth up his heart and turns away from him (ἀπ̓ αὐτοῦ). The same pregnancy of thought occurs at 1Jn_2:28. A similar use of κρύπτειν ἀπὸ may be seen at Luk_19:42; Joh_12:36 b. Hence we need neither supply ἀποστρεφόμενος (Carpzov), nor ἀπὸ̀=coram (Socinus). [This was the case of Dives. He saw Lazarus flung at his gate, Lazarus desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table, but he desired in vain; Dives saw him lie in misery; the dogs had pity and sympathized with the poor man, but Dives, who fared sumptuously every day, looked with unpitying eye on his brother’s distress; he saw in him a beggar, not a brother. See Augustine, Serm. 178, c. 3, and Massillon’s beautiful Lent Sermon on this subject.—M.]—The negative is emphatically expressed with an implied paracletical inference in the interrogative sentence:
How abideth the love of God in him?—A similar construction may be seen 1Jn_4:20; Joh_3:12; Joh_5:47. The substance of the question answers to 1Jn_3:15 : οὐκ ἔχει ζωὴν αἰώνιον ἐν αὐτῷ μένουσαν, where eternal life not abiding and even not being in him is inferred from the non-existence of brotherly love, while here the non-existence of the love of God is inferred from the same premises. Ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ is our love to God and indicates the motion of eternal life to its fountain, as in 1Jn_2:5. This love to God does not abide, where it does not become operative and preserve its vitality in the active exhibition of brotherly love. Hence it is neither God’s love to us (Calov), nor the love prescribed by God (Socinus, Grotius), nor the love which answers to that of God and Christ (S. Schmidt).
Final exhortation, 1Jn_3:18.
1Jn_3:18. Little children, let us not love [German: that we do not love] in word, nor with the tongue, but in deed and in truth.—The affecting address, τέκνια, denotes at once the geniality and zeal of John; his earnestness is brought out in the rapid, hortatory, all-embracing expression: μὴ ἀγαπῶμεν. The four substantives occur in pairs and as correlates. First: λόγῳ and τῇ γλώσσῃ to describe false love; then: ἐν τῷ ἔργῳ and (ἐν) ἀληθείᾳ. It is important to note that the first pair in the Dative indicates only the means by which love is or becomes operative, while the preposition ἐν which by the copula καὶ belongs also to ἀληθείᾳ denotes the element wherein it moves (Joh_4:24). The first pair simply denotes the outwardness of a love which only makes use of words and the tongue, while the contrast indicates that it is destitute of deed and truth, that it is of real activity and inward heartiness which are the characteristics of true love. The Apostle accordingly annexes to λόγος, the word, which possibly might announce or accompany the deed, the emphatic μηδὲ τῇ γλώσσῃ, the Article serving the purpose “of rendering the expression more conspicuous” (Lücke); the tongue, “as the member appointed to utter the word” (Huther); so that love is not simply the word which might flow from the heart and be the instrument of its application, but stops with the tongue, the means and sole instrument of the word which does not proceed from the heart. Therefore λόγῳ is contrasted with ἐν ἔργῳ and τῇ γλώσσῃ with ἐν ἀληθείᾳ—Ἔργον and λόγος frequently connected together, as in Luk_24:19; Act_7:22; sometimes λόγος and δύναμις (1Co_4:19-20), or λόγος and δύναμις καὶ πνεῦμα ἅγιον καὶ πληροφορία (1Th_1:5) are placed in opposition. Bengel: “Sermone otioso, lingua simulante.” Lyra says excellently: “Verbo, facto nihil; lingua fallaci; hic amor non solum, fictitius et nanus, sed etidm proditorius.” Τῇ γλώσσῃ denotes “the hollow nothingness,” “the purely outward babble which without inward truth produces only a hypocritical show” (Düsterdieck). Hence we need not supply μόνον to λόγῳ (Bede, Socinus, Sander and others); and Grotius is also wrong who chiastically [i e. crosswise—M.] opposes: λόγῳ and ἀληθεία, γλώσσῃ ἔργῳ, thus: “Verbo amat qui prædicat a se diligi proximum, non autem vere diligit; lingua diligit qui egenti dat bona verba.” Nor is Huther right, who takes τῇ γλώσσῃ and ἀληθείᾳ as epexegetical additions without introducing a difference to λόγῳ and ἕργῳ respectively, as if the two words of each member expressed only one idea [He says, to express the idea mathematically, that λόγῳ: γλώσσῃ=ἐν ἕργῳ: (ἐν) ἀληθείᾳ.—M. Compare ἀγαπᾷν ἐν ἀληθείᾳ 2Jn_1:1; 3Jn_1:1, and Jam_2:15-16.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. All the doings (ποιεῖν τὴν δικαιοσύνην 1Jn_3:10 b, ἔργα δίκαια and ἔργα πονηρὰ 1Jn_3:12) and all the dispositions (ἀγαπῶν 1Jn_3:10 b and 1Jn_3:14, ὁ μισῶν 1Jn_3:15) of men points to a deeper ground, a fellowship with God or with Satan which is not discernible per se, neither to others nor to the respective persons themselves, but discernible by their disposition and doing.
2. The grossest transgression, e.g. the fratricide of Cain, is never alone, but exhibits itself as one of many, as one of a greater complex of manifold transgressions and plainly indicates, that matters must be bad in other respects, because otherwise this would not have happened (1Jn_3:12).
3. Like attracts like, unlike repels unlike: love and antipathy are reciprocal. The Christian need not be surprised that the world from which he has separated himself, has turned away and remains alienated from him, dislikes and hates him; it is just so with himself, with this difference, that the world hates to persecute and destroy, whereas the Christian strives to improve and to overcome.
4. Before it can be said: μεταβεβήκαμεν ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου (1Jn_3:14), we are ἐν τῷ θανάτῳ, ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ. Consequently:
1. Before such a stepping forth has taken place and without it, no one is a child of God.
2. Such stepping forth is indispensable in the case of any and every one who desires to become a child of God.
3. It is possible to all who are called to become the children of God.
4. The children of God and the children of the world are perfectly alike in kind and nature before the difference connected with such transition sets in.
5. Consider that those who are not yet brethren, may and shall become brethren as well as thou.—Indeed, it is not said here how it comes to pass, but it is plainly stated and may be seen at Joh_5:24, a passage to which the Apostle unmistakably refers here, and from which may be inferred what is said here and well expressed by Scholiast II.: τὸν λόγον αὐτοῦ δεξάμενοι, of course ἐν πίστει. But we must not by any means say with the Roman Catholics that although faith produces the beginning of our justification before God, yet the love to God and to our neighbour increases the same. This love is simply the sign and mark of recognition that our justification has taken place, that we are justified. Augustine accordingly says very correctly: “Redeat unus quisque ad cor suum; si ibi invenerit caritatem fraternam, securus sit—jam in dextera est.”
5. The principle affirmed at 1Jn_3:16 as a duty (ὁφείλομεν) with reference to the example of Christ that we also should lay down our lives, is a general one. We must not regard it with the Roman Catholics as a counsel (consilium), but view and observe it with Evangelical Christians as a precept (præceptum). It applies not only to priests or saints, but to all Christians: “Ministri verbi non debent fugere in periculo pestis” (Luther); neither physicians in case of a pestilence, nor parents and brothers and sisters, nor the government in seasons of insurrection, nor soldiers in war, in the fight, before a battle, nor a mother when she has to nurse her child, nor a man when duty calls. This saying, moreover, must not be treated casuistically after the manner of Socinus, who thinks a Christian ought to die for a non-Christian if thereby his soul may be saved, or if the preservation of a brother is more necessary to the common weal than his own; or after that of Ammon (Sittenlehre 3, 24 sq.) be set aside, who thinks it right that in common danger of shipwreck, fire or self-defence, men are justified to kill others if they cannot save their own life in any other way. Düsterdieck rightly observes: “Concrete directions respecting the practical application of the principle can only be given in the connection of a complete system of Ethics in which especially the duties of Christian self-preservation and the virtues of Christian prudence and simplicity as well as those of Christian self-denial and Christian courage must be exhibited not as limitations, but as sacred ordinances of the fully valid evangelical principle as described by St. John.” As St. Paul says 1Co_3:22 : πάντα ὑμῶν ἐστιν—εἴτε ζωὴ εἴτε θάνατος and at Php_1:21 calls: τὸ ἀποθανεῖν κέρδος, so the giving up of one’s own life in the calling and for the love of Christ is an άποθανεῖν τῷ κυρίῳ (Rom_14:8). Cf. Mat_10:39; Mat_16:25.—
6. The duty of beneficence is universal; it relates as much to the rich as to the poor; it is immaterial whether a man has much or little of the βίος τοῦ κόσμου. The having much or little determines the giving with or without self-denial, with or without deprivation, consequently the giving with ease or with difficulty. But nothing is said here on that head or on the situation of the necessitous, his greater or lesser need, which may be very extraordinary; nor is any thing said of the worthiness or unworthiness of the necessitous. But the remark of Luther has a very important bearing on the care of our parochial poor; he says: “Vult nos de nostro largiri; non de alieno aut communi, sicut stulti Anabaptistæ faciunt, qui tollunt proprietatem rerum, sine qua non possunt respublicæ consistere.” Private charity, even personal charity, is here distinctly referred to. In this connection it must be supposed as ranged under the fifth commandment.—Its opposite is Stoicism which includes also compassion among the passions to be left off: σοὶ μὴ ὀργὴν εἶναι, μὴ μῆνιν, μὴ φθόνον, μὴ ἔλεον.
7. We must not think lightly of the word and its instrument, the tongue. But as the mouth-work of hypocrisy is hateful to the Lord (Mat_6:5), so the mouth-work of brotherly love is equally hateful to John, since neither the word nor the tongue is in the service of the love of the heart and speaks or is spoken separate from the heart and contrary to the life in the heart. The friendly utterance of the mouth must and ought to be in the case of Christians the friendly utterance of the heart. Otherwise it is only a μόρφωσις τῆς εὐσεβείας without the δύναμις (2Ti_3:5). For the contrary see, Mat_12:34-35; Rom_10:8-10.
8. These concrete particulars of the laying down of our lives, of communicating the sustenance of life and of the love to our brother in deed and in truth plainly and pathetically indicate that regeneration and adoption by God, (1Jn_2:29) if it is a reality, penetrates, as the central life-power the whole periphery of life, so that we read not only of a εὐσέβεια but of εὐσέβειαι, 2Pe_3:11 and even of the θεοσέβεια δἰ ἔργων ἀγαθῶν (1Ti_2:10). For the diversity of good works induced by the faith of the heart makes it evident to others that the Christian sonship is not a show, but power and truth; his conduct towards the brethren reveals his relation to God the Father and this relation produces such conduct.
[The Apostle’s declaration that every one that hateth his brother is a murderer or man-killer embodies the well known ethical principle that the moral quality of an action does not belong to the outward act, nor to the conception of it, nor to the resolution to carry it into effect, but to the intention. Hatred in St. John’s view, is murder committed in intention, and he that cherishes hatred towards his brother stands convicted of murder before God and at the bar of his own conscience.—M.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
The twofold piety of a child of God; 1. Obedience to the Father; 2. Love of the brethren.—Like the elder brother thou mightest stay with the Father and work in His field, be envious of and take offence at the friendly reception accorded to the younger son by the Father in the parable of the prodigal (Luke 16). Cain was the elder brother. This applies primarily to the servants of the Church but it applies also to many others. Cain did not hate Abel because of his herds, for he had his fair fields; or because of his parent’s love, for he was his mother’s pride; or because of personal beauty or any outward, temporal good; but he hated him because of his piety, on account of the favour he found before God.—Cain [קיִן a lance a spear, a weapon.—M.], called by Eve in feminine rashness her weapon, and in maternal vanity favoured and spoiled by her, made his offering of anything he found without any particular discrimination as to its quality, while Abel, disregarded and neglected, carefully selected the best of the best and presented it as an offering to his God.—Thou art able to take the life of thy brother’s body but in doing so thou forfeitest thy own immortal life; thou becomest a man-killer in respect of thy brother’s body, but in respect of thyself, a suicide, even a suicide of thy soul; depriving thy brother of his bodily, earthly life, thou deprivest thyself of thy spiritual, eternal life.—Three difficult questions: 1. Canst thou hate those whom God loves? 2. Darest thou shorten or waste the term of grace which God accords? 3. Wilt thou cast from thee the gift of God in thee, eternal life?—Threefold exhibition of brotherly love: 1. Laying down one’s life for the brethren at duty’s call. 2. Communication of one’s possessions to the needy brethren. 3. Friendly and sincere readiness to oblige and aid the brethren.—Three things thou hast for the benefit of others: Body and life, goods and property, hand and heart.
Epistle to Diognetus [cap. 6]:—As the soul is in the body, so are Christians in the world. The soul dwells in the body but is not of the body; so Christians also dwell in the world, but are not of the world. The invisible soul is, as it were, keeping guard in the visible body; this is the mark of Christians as long as they remain in the world: their piety is invisible. The flesh hates and wars against the soul, which (the soul) is, however, by no means wronged [ἀδικομμένη=affecta injuria.—M.] by it because it (the soul) forbids the indulgence of the lusts of the flesh; so the world hates the Christians, although they by no means wrong it but only resist the lusts of the world. The soul loves the flesh and the members which hate it; so also Christians love their enemies. [Cf. Mat_5:44.—M.]
Basilius:—Because the devil’s hatred cannot reach God, he seeks to hurt and destroy man, the image of God.
Augustine:—The Christian lives, but, as it were, in winter; the root is alive but the boughs look dry; the living pith and marrow is within, and within are hidden the leaves and the fruits—but they wait for summer.
Ambrose:—“Nemo dicat proprium, quod commune est; esurientium panis est, quem tu detines; nudorum indumentum est, quod tu recludis.”
Luther:—The world is a den of murderers, subject to the devil. Would we live on earth we ought to be satisfied with being guests therein and putting up at an inn whose host is a roguish host, whose house bears the sign and title over the door: “Murder and lie.” For Christ Himself did affix such a sign and title to his house right over the door by saying that He is a murderer and a liar. A murderer to destroy the body; a liar to seduce the soul.
Starke:—Because God is Love and loves those who are born of Him, therefore love of the brethren is also the mark of the regenerate.—Art thou tempted with the thought that thou art without the grace of God, without the adoption, without salvation: be of good courage! If thou really and heartily lovest the godly, yea even the wicked and thy foes, thou mayest be quite sure that all these blessings are thy own.—Good Christian, whenever thou readest and hearest some portion of Divine truth, consider well the purpose of God in announcing it and shape thy course accordingly.—Contrary dispositions are not uncommon among actual brothers; the one may be good, the other bad, the one may be saved, the other damned.—The power of Satan over those children is so great that he changes even natural love into hatred.—Mad features of the ungodly! they cannot bear that the works of others are good—why? What is it that envy will not do? They also do not like it because it puts them to shame and sometimes becomes the means of their punishment.—Happy state of believers as contrasted with that of unbelievers! The former truly live, the latter are dead though their body is alive. We mourn for the dead—how much more ought we to mourn for the ungodly, for they are spiritually dead, before they die, and if they die, they fall into eternal death.—God has not only connected the hand but also the mouth and the heart with the fifth commandment.—Hatred is not a trifling sin of infirmity compatible with a man’s continuing in a state of grace, but so great a sin as to entail the loss of eternal life, which is irrecoverably lost while hatred lasts. He that hates is a double murderer, he wants to hurt others and deprives himself of eternal life.—To have had life does not render us blessed; but he is blessed with whom eternal life abides.—It is one thing to have this world’s goods and another to covet them: the one is the blessing of God, the other covetousness.—Poverty is no disgrace: a man may be poor and yet be the child of God, the brother of Christ and of good Christians.—Doing good to the poor is not only incumbent upon the rich, possessed of great abundance, but to every one who has this world’s goods and is able to communicate; even as every one has to work, also for this purpose, that he may have something to give to the poor.—Love is blind in not having respect to the person of the poor, whether it be known or unknown, strange or native; but it is not blind in taking cognizance of the need it is to relieve.—Do not always wait for a poor brother’s application, begging, supplication and appeal to thy love; many are ashamed to disclose their need; but if thou knowest thy brother’s case, show pity unasked and joyfully.—If unable to do anything else, thou canst love with the tongue by words of good counsel and consolation; but see that thy heart be with thy tongue.—The greatness of a benefaction does not determine its worth before God, nor does its smallness lessen it; a great benefaction without sincere love is small, even nothing before God; but a small benefaction prompted by sincere and hearty love is great in God’s sight.
Neander: As Cain hated and slew Abel in consequence of the contrast between a godly and an ungodly disposition, so the world hates and slays the children of God in consequence of the same contrariety of disposition. Hence the world and the children of God are ever at war like love and selfishness. Hence Christians need not be surprised, if the world hates them. This is to them the stamp of the divine life, the possession of which renders them the opposite of the world.
Heubner. Being without love makes men like Cain, whose kind is not extinct. The mind of Cain is to destroy the hated children of God;
literary murder also belongs to this head. As to its secret, inmost tendency, all hatred aims at murder.—The duplicity of mankind was prefigured in the case of Cain and Abel; this dichotomy runs through the whole Bible. Cain is the prototype of the evil and unloving, Abel the prototype of Christ.—A Christian Nil admirari, Psalms 37. Hatred and enmity is that which disquiets, vexes, excites and disconcerts the natural man most. But the Christian is bidden not even to be surprised at it! He knows the world, is aware of what he has to expect of it, he is at peace with God, lives a life of introversion, is so well rooted and grounded in God, so abundantly satisfied with the grace of God, that the world’s hatred does not disturb him. God is his fortress: but he must not leave that fortress.—Where the hatred of the world has not yet fully developed, there is most surely a want of decided Christianity.—Love displays its most glorious beauty under the world’s hatred. The Christian loves while the world has no idea of the existence of his love.—Formerly this world was extra-Christian, but now there is a world on the soil of the Christian Church. Is it offensive, hostile, presumptuous to speak of this difference? then it is the fault of the Bible, of Jesus Christ. We ought to hold up a mirror to all: you are either this or that. But it would be presumption to refer individuals to the class to which they belong, for this is the prerogative of God.—Death is the state of insensibility and impotence with respect to whatever is good and godly, the conscience is blunted and without receptivity, the heart is dead without any emotion, or interest in religion. Life is activity, emotion, a sense for, an impulse to and ability for the holy, a work after the will of God, a state of holiness, of a walk well-pleasing to God. Brotherly love is mentioned as a criterion, as a test of life.—Think of hatred as the root and beginning of murder. Often a bitter grief is to others more deadly and vitally injurious than a gross bodily injury.—Distinguish between that which passes with men and that which passes with God.—Never make room for secret anger: or life, the Holy Ghost will depart from thee.—The unloving thinks more highly of lifeless, worthless metal than of the living man created in the image of God.—What can you accomplish with the metal? Refresh the weary, comfort their hearts and dry their tears! Then you transmute stones into bread, earthly treasures into heavenly.—The word is only the shadow of the deed and by no means an equivalent of love or gratitude. (Themistius).
Besser:—Where hatred is, there is death: where love is, there is life; yea, love itself is the life.—Thus Luther showed that he was willing to lay down his life for the brethren when in the year 1527 he stayed at Wittenberg with those who were stricken with the plague. So the ancient historian Eusebius narrates how a pestilence at Alexandria brought out the difference between the Christians and the pagans. So Hans Egede laid down his life when for the sake of the poor Greenlanders he exchanged his comfortable parish for hunger and cold, for unspeakable toil and sufferings; and the coast of Africa, also, lined with grave-hills with the seed of the negroes proclaims the love which is stronger than death. Would that it might be said of the Christians of our time what Tacitus said of the Christians, viz.: that they are as inflexible concerning their faith, as they are ready in the exhibition of mercy.—How can he live on God’s compassionating love in whom no compassionating love does live?
On the Epistle for the second Sunday after Trinity, 1Jn_3:15-18.
Heubner, during the siege of Wittenberg, in 1813, preached on the hatred of the world to which Christians are exposed, and said, notwithstanding the presence of the French garrison, when he came to speak of deserved hatred: the hatred is deserved, which visits the tyrant who sacrifices thousands and the welfare of thousands to his lust of rule.
The Christian under the hatred of the world.
1. How dignified is his demeanour in bearing it a. with calmness, composure and patience (1Jn_3:13); b. with the consciousness of his innocence, his love, as known to God (1Jn_3:14); c. with the hope of being one day justified (1Jn_3:2); 2. how holily he uses it: a. as a warning against all the motions of hatred (1Jn_3:15); b. as a challenge to become more like Christ in love (1Jn_3:16); c. as an instrument to reconcile the world to himself by love (1Jn_3:17-18).
Motives of comfort for Christians under the world’s hatred. 1. (1Jn_3:13). They are unknown and misunderstood; 2. (1Jn_3:14); they become conscious of their life; 3. (1Jn_3:15); they are encouraged to fight against all unlovingness; 4. (1Jn_3:16); they resemble Christ; 5. (1Jn_3:17); become more and more assured of the love of God; 6. (1Jn_3:18); they hope to gain their enemies over.
The mind of the Christian and of the world opposed to each other in love and hatred. 1. To hate is natural to the world, to love to the Christian (1Jn_3:13-14); 2. Hatred destroys, love sacrifices the life (1Jn_3:15-16); 3. The world shuts up, the Christian opens the heart (1Jn_3:18).
Whither do we come if the spirit of love leaves us? 1. Answer: we come from the fellowship of the saints to the fellowship of the world (1Jn_3:13), from the life of God to spiritual death (1Jn_3:14), to vice and shame (1Jn_3:15), to forfeiting our salvation and the fruits of the death of Christ (1Jn_3:16).—2. Application: learn the worth of true love (1Jn_3:16), fight against every motion of unlovingness (1Jn_3:17), practise love in deed and in truth (1Jn_3:18).
The strong warnings given to Christians against an unloving mind.—Love appears most beautiful under the world’s hatred.—Love, a sign of life.—It is only by love that a Christian can know whether he is a child of God or regenerate. 1. The truth. 2. The laying to heart being reminded of this truth.
F. A. Wolf:—The Apostolical refutation of the principal errors prevailing on the subject of Christian love: 1. The fate of love, 2. The reign of love, 3. The value of love, 4. The origin of love.
Caspari:—Of the nature of true love: 1. Its consolation, 2. Its powers, 3. Its purity.
Kapff:—How necessary true brotherly love Isaiah , 1. As a test of our spiritual life; 2. As a condition (?) of eternal life.—The Law and the Testimony: Of Brotherly Love. I. Motives. 1. The contrast of Cain; 2. Marks of discipleship and regeneration; 3. The passing away and perdition of the hater. II. Marks. 1. Laying down one’s life; 2. Communication of one’s goods; 3. Love in deed.
The true life in love and certain death in hatred: 1. The ground, fruit and nature of the true life; 2. Certain death in hatred of the brethren, as to ground and nature.
Brotherly love. 1. Who are our brethren? 2. How do we love the brethren? 3. What moves us to such love?
How operative is the love which flows from the living knowledge of the sacrificing love of Christ! 1. It takes us from death to life; beloved of God in Christ, we love. 2. It alone is able to bear the hatred of the world without ceasing to love (Mat_5:39-42). 3. It is not only love in words and with the tongue, but in deed and in truth.
We know that we are born of God, for, 1. The world hates us; 2. We love the brethren; 3. We hate hatred, but not the hater; 4. We lay down our life for the brethren.
A heart-test of what spirit we are (Luk_9:55-56; Jer_8:6). 1. For the satisfaction of the righteous who in their love grieve over the world’s hatred; 2. For the terror of the ungodly who hate their neighbour without fear or anxiety; 3. for the awakening of the hypocrites who love their neighbour only in appearance.—Questions of Confession.
[Ignatius:—(ad Smyrm, 6.): “Observe those who are heterodox with regard to the grace of Christ, how contrary they are to the mind of God. They have no regard for love,—περὶ ἀγάπης οὐ μέλει αὐτοῖς—they do not care for the widow, or the orphan, or the hungry or the thirsty.”—M.].
[Wordsworth: (on 1Jn_3:16).—“And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren;” a remarkable saying on the duty of Christian martyrdom. It was probably suggested by the seductive tenets of the false teachers (αἱ πλανῶντες mentioned 1Jn_2:26; 1Jn_3:7), who courted popularity in times of persecution; by alleging that provided a man had knowledge of the doctrines of Christianity as delivered by them, and adopted their theories, it was not necessary for him to expose himself to any danger in the maintenance of the faith, much less to endure martyrdom and to lay down his life for the brethren: but that he might freely associate with the heathen in their worship, and eat things offered to idols. This was particularly the doctrine of the Simonians (Origen c. Cels. VI. p. 282; Euseb. II. 13), and of the Nicolaitans (Rev_2:15. Irenæus I. 23) and of the Cerinthians (Philastr. hær. c. 36).—Tertullian wrote his book called Scorpiace against these notions and he refers to this passage in proof of the duty of martyrdom, c. 12.—M.].
[Macknight: (1Jn_3:14-15):—According to the Apostle in this place, the surest mark, by which we can know our actual state, is to consider whether we possess that characteristic disposition towards our brethren, which the Christian religion enjoins. The high encomiums, passed in this and the following verse on love to mankind, are not to be so understood, as if no virtue but benevolence were necessary to complete the Christian character. The virtues have all such a connection with each other, that they cannot subsist separately. And therefore, if one really loves his brethren, he will not only be charitable to the poor, but he will be just in his dealings, true to his promises, faithful in all the trusts committed unto him. In short, he will carefully abstain from injuring his neighbour in any respect, and will perform every duty he owes to him, from a sincere principle of piety towards God, whereby his whole conduct will be rendered uniformly virtuous.—M.].
[Secker:—If we do a person no harm, yet if we wish him harm, St. John has here determined the case, “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.” For indeed, hatred not only leads to murder, and too often, when indulged, produces it unexpectedly; but it is always, though perhaps for the most part in a lower degree, the very spirit of murder in the heart; and it is by our hearts that God will judge us.—M.].
[Clarke: (on 1Jn_3:15).—This text has been quoted to prove, that no murderer can be saved. This is not said in the text; and there have been many instances of persons who have been guilty of murder, having had deep and genuine repentance; and who, doubtless, found mercy from His hands who prayed for His murderers, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” It is, however, an awful text for the consideration of those who shed human blood on frivolous pretences; or in those wars which have their origin in the worst passions of the human heart.
(On 1Jn_3:17).—Here is a test of this love: if we do not divide our bread with the hungry, we certainly would not lay down our life for him. Whatever love we may pretend to mankind, if we are not charitable and benevolent, we give the lie to our profession. If we have not bowels of compassion, we have not the love of God in us: if we shut up our bowels against the poor, we shut Christ out of our hearts and ourselves out of heaven.
(On 1Jn_3:18). There is a good saying in Yalcut Rubeni, p. 145, 4. on this point: “If love consisted in word only, then love ceaseth as soon as the word is pronounced. Such was the love between Balak and Balaam. But, if love consists not in word, it cannot be dissolved; such was the love of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the jest of the patriarchs which were before them.”—M.].
[Trower: (on 1Jn_3:17).—“What a picture is here brought before us, of a Christian possessed of this world’s good, and seeing his brother have need; yet turning away his eyes, and hardening his heart against the claims of charity, shutting up his bowels of compassion from him! How unlike Him who, though He was rich, yet for our sake became poor, that we through His poverty might be rich. May we learn more and more that whatever share we enjoy of “this world’s good,” is intrusted to us as stewards for God; and that all pretence of possessing Christian love is vain, unless we minister freely to the necessities of our brethren what we have so freely received. Hereby alone can we know that we are of the truth, and can assure our hearts before Him.”—M.].
[Stanhope:—The good we would do, but cannot, shall be rewarded; and the evil, which we are disposed to do, though not actually done, shall be punished. Hence, if a man keep malice, though but in his heart, if he wish or rejoice at the misery or harm of his brother, this man is, in the eye of God, and of the Gospel dispensation, a murderer.—If some sudden change befalls my neighbour’s fortunes, the diminution of his honour or estate, the blemishing his credit and reputation, and I feel a secret pleasure in such calamities, can it be charity that ties up my tongue from bitterness or slander, or my hands from invasion and cruelty? No, certainly.—He that triumphs in mischief and doth not act it himself; he that is fond of and cherisheth a scandal, but forbears to raise or spread it; it is not religion, but some other consideration, by which even this man is restrained. But alas! how few are there, in comparison, who think themselves bound to stop here! How few who, while they hold their hands from action, make no scruple to give their tongues a liberty of speaking “all words that may do hurt,” and so contribute to the disgrace and grief of their injured and afflicted brother! and if they, with these sharp razors, wound and mangle a bleeding reputation, would not the same malice unsheath their sword and thrust it into his bowels, if their own safety, the fear of human laws, or some other prudential consideration, did not bind their hands, which leaves their tongues and thoughts at liberty? For, were religion, were the fear and love of God, their check, they would prevent the very beginnings of malice. This tells us that we must be compassionate and kind; that we must do to every man whatsover we would that he should do unto us; that but to meditate or delight in evil is a sin, and that no instance of goodness should be wanting which the circumstances of any brother render seasonable for him to receive, and ours have put in our power to give; that a design of making him uneasy is not one whit less murderous and guilty, because not prosecuted in tenderness to one’s self, and not to be effected with impunity. Thus God interprets it, and by this rule He will proceed with us; for He declares Himself a trier of the heart, and that in our last great reckoning, “every secret thing shall be brought into judgment.”—M.].
Footnotes:
[20][1Jn_3:10 b. πᾶς ὁ=“ Every one that.” So German.—M.]
[21][καὶ=“And.” So German, and most foreign versions.—M.]
[22][1Jn_3:11. ὅτι=“Because.” So German.—M.]
[23] ἀγγελία A. B. G. K.; ἐπαγγελία C. Sin. and a few, unimportant Codd.—The context admits the sense “promise” only on the artificial interpretation that it is a gift and a happiness to love.
[24][1Jn_3:12. οὐ καθὼς Κάϊν ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ ἦν. German: “Not as Cain was of the wicked one.”—Lücke: “Some supply after οὐ: ἀγαπῶμεν, others ποιῶμεν and the like. But in the first case there arises an irony unsuitable in this connection; and in both cases a second supplement becomes necessary, to wit, of ὅς after Κάϊν, which, as. the omission of the relative pronoun is in classic as well as in N. T. Greek without example, could hardly be justified. Much simpler is it with Grotius to complete the sentence thus: οὐκ ὦμεν ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ, καθὼς Κάϊν ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ ἦν.” Winer: “Properly, there is nothing to be supplied (ὦμεν or ποιῶμεν would not suit οὐ), but, the comparison being negligently expressed, the reader easily adjusts the clauses for himself: that we love one another, not as Cain was of the wicked one, etc., shall it or may it be so with us.” For further authorities see Lillie.—M.]
[25][German: “Because his works were wicked, but his brother’s righteous.” It is difficult to determine the right reading, whether it is αὐτοῦ, αὑτοῦ or ἑαυτοῦ (B.) Most probably αὑτοῦ.—The correspondence between Κάϊν ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ ἦν and τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ πονηρὰ ἦν should by all means be brought out.—M.]
[26][δὲ=“but,” not “and,” as E. V.—M.]
[27][1Jn_3:13. German: “Marvel not, brethren,” agreeing with Sin. G. K. Rec. al. in omitting μου.—M.]
[28][μισεῖ. German, Wiclif. al. retain the Indicative mood.—M.]
[29][1Jn_3:14. German: “We have passed out of death into life.”—M.]
[30]Ἀγαπῶν without τὸν ἀδελφὸν, A. B. Sin.; with it C. G, K., although less authentic, and rather inserted than omitted. [German: omits the words, and renders: “He that loveth not abideth in death.”—M.
[31][1Jn_3:15. πᾶς ὁ=Every one.—M.]
[32][ἀνθρωποκτόνος; German: “man-murderer,” but better to render, “man-killer” (Lillie following Rhemish vers. at Joh_8:44), which is free from the extenuating force suggested by the technical use of such words as “homicide” or “man-slaughter.”—M.]
[33][1Jn_3:16. German: “Hereby have we known.”—M.]
[34]θεῖναι A. B. C. Sin. al., decidedly preferable to τιθέναι G. K. al.
[35][1Jn_3:17. German: “Life-sustenance.” Goods might be used in that sense.—M.]
[36][German: “His inwards;” but “bowels” without the supplement “compassion” should by all means be retained.—M.]
[37]ἀπ̓ αὐτοῦ A. B. C. Sin.; the words are omitted only by several unimportant Codd.
[38][German: “Abideth.”—M.]
[39]μου after τεκνία occurs in Rec. after G. K., but is wanting in the best Codd.—M.
[40]The Article τῇ before γλώσση is wanting in Rec. Sin., but found in A. B. C. G. K. and most of the Codd. verss. and editions. [German: “with the tongue.”—M.]; ἐν, omitted by K., is found in almost all the authoritative Codd., including Sin.
[41]Huther in a note [2d ed. p. 163] replies to the objection of Ebrard and Myrberg that this could only apply to our love of God and not to our love of the brethren, that in John’s opinion Christian love of the brethren is identical with the love of God, because the Christian loves his brother as one born of God. He suggests also that ἀγάπη might be better denned as the “essential exhibition” of δικαιοσύνη—M.].
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv10–23 children of the devil--(See on Jo1 3:8; Act 13:10).…
children of the devil--(See on Jo1 3:8; Act 13:10). There is no middle class between the children of God and the children of the devil.
doeth not righteousness--Contrast Jo1 2:29.
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he that loveth not his brother-- (Jo1 4:8); a particular instance of that love which is the sum and fulfilment of all righteousness, and the token (not loud professions, or even seemingly good works) that distinguishes God's children from the devil's.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv10–23 10. This… manifest—The open, manifest difference between the two…
10. This… manifest—The open, manifest difference between the two is their moral conduct.
Loveth not—Guarding against the idea that it is the action of the body alone that constitutes the test, and including the act of the soul as living.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv10–23 10. In this] These words, like ‘for this cause’…
10. In this] These words, like ‘for this cause’ (1Jn_3:1) refer to what precedes rather than to what follows: but here what follows is similar to what precedes, so that in any case ‘in this’ means ‘by doing or not doing righteousness’.
are manifest] A man’s principles are invisible, but their results are visible: ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’ (Mat_7:16-20).
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the children of the devil] The expression occurs nowhere else in N. T., but we have ‘son of the devil,’ Act_13:10 : comp. ‘children of wrath’ (Eph_2:3), and ‘ye are of your father the devil’ (Joh_8:44). All mankind are God’s children by creation: as regards this a creature can have no choice. But a creature endowed with free will can choose his own parent in the moral world. The Father offers him the ‘right to become a child of God’ (Joh_1:12); but he can refuse this and become a child of the devil instead. There is no third alternative.
It was for pressing the doctrine that a tree is known by its fruits to an extreme, and maintaining that a world in which evil exists cannot be the work of a good God, that the heretic Marcion was rebuked by S. John’s disciple Polycarp, in words which read like an adaptation of this text, “I know thee for the firstborn of Satan” (Iren. Haer. III. iii. 4). And in his Epistle (VII. 1) Polycarp writes, “Whosoever does not confess the witness of the cross is of the devil”.
neither he that loveth not his brother] Here again note the way in which S. John’s divisions shade off into one another (see on 1Jn_2:28-29). Doing righteousness, the mark of God’s children, suggests the thought of brotherly love, for love is righteousness in relation to others; ‘For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ (Gal_5:14). Love suggests its opposite, hate; and these two form the subject of the next paragraph. Some editors would make the new section begin here in the middle of 1Jn_3:10. It is perhaps better to draw the line between 1Jn_3:12-13, considering 1Jn_3:11-12 as transitional.
‘He that loveth not his brother is not of God’, for a child of God will love all whom God loves. This prepares us for the statements in 1Jn_4:7; 1Jn_4:20-21.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On v11 (4) BROTHERLY LOVE THE NECESSARY FLOWER OF THE DIVINE…
(4) BROTHERLY LOVE THE NECESSARY FLOWER OF THE DIVINE LOVE IN THE DIVINE BIRTH (1Jn_3:11-18).—In 1Jn_2:10 St. John showed the necessary connection between righteousness and love; there is no contradiction between the two: the one is necessary to the other. Justice will become sternness without love; love will be weakness without justice. The two thoughts are introduced and connected in both halves of the Epistles. (See 1Jn_2:3-11.) Here the duty of love is still more strongly insisted on, as the general subject is the love of God, as in the first half of the Epistle it was the light of God. We have (a) the command or message of Christ; then (b) the contrast of Cain; then (c) the similar conduct of the world (a thought which had occurred before, in 1Jn_2:1); then (d) the comfort of the connection between love and life, as contrasted with hatred and death; then (e) the identification of the hater with the murderer, and the impossibility of associating the idea of eternal life with the destroyer of temporal life; then (f) the example of God’s love in the death of the Son, urging us even to the same extremity of self-sacrifice; then, (g) as a minor premise, the thought thrust home, for a practical conclusion, that the smaller self-sacrifice of daily assistance to others is an, essential to the Christian life.
(4 a.) (11) For states the reason why brotherly love was added to righteousness at the end of the last paragraph: because it was the earliest and most prominent feature of Christianity presented to them.
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Love one another.—The injunction is perfectly general, without the restrictions of society; wherever Christian love is due, there it must immediately be paid. (Comp. 1Pe_1:22.)
(4 b.) (12) Not as Cain, who was of that . . .—Rather, Not as Cain was of that . . .; an abrupt conversational form. (Comp. Joh_6:58.) Cain is introduced as the prototype of envy, jealousy, and the inward hatred which the evil feel at the good.
(4 c.) (13) The conduct of the world to Christians is of a piece with this invariable characteristic of those who are in darkness, exemplified in Cain. (Comp. Joh_15:18-19; Joh_17:14; 2Ti_3:12.)
Marvel not is equivalent to “Be not dismayed; be of good courage.”
(4 d.) (14) This is a characteristic instance of St. John’s logic. From the terseness and pregnancy of his style, he does not give all the steps of an argument, but frequently turns it upside down, in order more speedily to bring out a forcible spiritual truth. But for this he would have written, “We love the brethren, because we have passed from death unto life; but he that abideth in death loveth not.” But wishing to put these ideas in the form of a direct encouragement, in face of a hating world, he puts the reason as the conclusion, and the conclusion as the reason. This unexpected turn rivets the attention far more than a rigid deduction. Another ground of assurance has been stated in 1Jn_2:2 : keeping the behests of Christ, of which (as we have seen) love is the most prominent. “The brothers” means all the members of the human family: the love of Christ which, in 1Jn_2:16, we are bidden to imitate, was for the whole world of sinners. (Comp. Mat_5:44; 1Co_4:12.)
Passed from death unto life.—This dates from the beginning of the new birth, the dawn of eternal life in the converted heart. And just as the perfect Christian love embraces all other Christian virtues, so not only does actual hatred, but the absence of love, indicate absolute spiritual deadness.
(4 e.) (15) Regarding the absence of love as of one class with the presence of hatred, St. John here puts more prominently forward the active member of the class than the quiescent. The statement is intended as an illustration of the fact that where no love is there can neither be eternal life. The full argument would be “Where love is not, there is hatred; where hatred is, there is murder; where murder is, there can be no eternal life.” (Comp. Mat_5:21-26.)
(4 f.) (16) Hereby perceive we the love of God.—Rather, Hereby know we the true love; meaning, of course, that perfection of love which is God Himself. Christ, the Word made flesh, is regarded as identical with this love, so only the pronoun is used. The highest proof of love is the sacrifice of that which is most precious: nothing could be more precious than the life of the Word made flesh. (Comp. Joh_10:11; Joh_10:15; Joh_10:17-18; Joh_13:37-38; Joh_15:13; Gal_2:20; Eph_5:2; Eph_5:25.)
For us.—Rather, on our behalf. (See Rom_5:8.)
And we ought.—The reason of this consequence is that we are to be like Christ in everything; as our being is orbed in His, so whatever was His spirit will be ours: even His unparallelled act of self-sacrifice must be reproduced in us, at however great a distance. For the good of our fellows we must be even ready to die. (Comp. Joh_13:34; Joh_15:12-13; Rom_9:3; Rom_16:3-4.)
(4 g.) But implies a progress from the greater duty to the less; if the less is neglected, far more completely is the command disobeyed.
Good.—Rather, sustenance, or “necessaries of life.”
World is not here used in a bad sense, but merely of such elements of existence as are not spiritual.
The word “see” is strong, and implies calm and attentive contemplation.
The word translated “bowels of compassion” is used in the LXX. (Pro_12:10) for “tender mercies.” It is used in the New Testament as we use “heart,” and has nothing to do with bowels. It should be translated “compassion.”
How abideth.—In 1Jn_2:15 it was eternal life; here St. John thinks of our love to God as one of the two chief signs and products of eternal life: eternal life bringing into activity its relation to its source.
(18) The words “My little children,” are, as usual, a mark of a sudden access of warmth, tenderness, and earnestness. “Word,” of course, is antithetical to “deed,” “tongue” to “truth.” The construction of the first pair (which is different from that of the second) implies merely the instruments of the love; that of the second implies its whole condition. St. John hints that there is some danger of this conventionality amongst his friends, and earnestly exhorts them to genuineness. He forbids all the traitorous babble of heartless insincerity, and urges that just, active, straightforward, all-embracing affection which was complete in Christ alone. (Comp. Rom_12:9; Eph_4:15; Jas_2:15-17; 1Pe_1:22; 2Jn_1:1; 3Jn_1:1.)
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv10–23 The question whether "in this" ejn toutw refers to…
The question whether "in this" ejn toutw refers to what precedes or to what follows is here unimportant, for both are similar in meaning; and "in this" may refer to both. "By their fruits ye shall know them." The children of God do righteousness, and not sin; the children of the devil do sin, and not righteousness. Of course, moral parentage is meant in both cases. Nothing here lends any countenance to the view that the writer is a dualist and inculcates two principles of existence God and the devil. All, whether good or bad, are God"s creatures; (Joh_1:3) but while all are his children by creation, some become his children spiritually also, while others become the children of Satan. St. John"s "teaching about the devil is not at all agreeable to those who dwell exclusively on the sunny aspects of the world and of life, and would shut their eyes to what is dark and terrible. They like to hear of a Being who is all-gracious and loving; the vision of one who is the enemy of all that is gracious and loving shocks them they wish to suppose that it belongs to the world"s infancy, and that it disappears as we know more" (Maurice). The expression, "the children of the devil," must not be confounded with the Hebraistic expressions, "children of perdition, children of darkness," "children of light, son of death," "son of perdition," etc. As so often, St. John not only restates the case in a new form, but adds a new thought to it he that loveth not his brother. This forms the link with the next section (verses 1324), on brotherly love. Of all failures in doing righteousness this is the most conspicuous failing to love one"s brother. And who is my brother? The answer is the same as to the question, "And who is my neighbour?" Mankind at large. The meaning cannot be limited to the children of God. Even touv (verses 14, 16) does not exclude unbelievers, still less does ton ajdelfon aujtou. This is confirmed:
(1) By the fact that the opposite case (verse 13) is the children of the world hating Christians; the true opposite of Christians loving Christians would be the children of the world hating one another.
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(2) By the cited example of Christ (verse 16), who died for us when we were aliens from God. Of course, if the Christian must love all men, a fortiori he must love Christians.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 22 In this the children of God are manifest, and…
1Jn_3:10
In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother
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Two classes of men
I.
Men are divided into two classes, the children of God and the children of the devil. This assumption is very contrary to the prevailing views and practices of men. Many make no inquiry to what class they belong. Some who have thought upon it consider it is not possible to obtain satisfaction, and they dismiss it from their minds. They are satisfied to live in entire uncertainty. Or if they do classify men, themselves included, it is a very different summary from that of the apostle. Their reckoning makes many classes. They are as numerous as the phases of human society. Think, then, of this Divine distinction. Some are the children of God. They have been born of Him. This is the one class. But how different is the other? They are the children of the devil. Like him they have fallen from their original righteousness. They have been under his influence ever since they came into the world. These are the only two classes known to God. The Scriptures never recognise any other here. Neither shall any but these be found at the last judgment.
II. This distinction may be manifested. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. This statement may be understood with reference to ourselves or others. Contemplate it in both relations.
1. If we are the children of God this ought to be manifest to ourselves.
2. It is, however, its manifestation to others that appears to be specially spoken of in the text. The proofs are such as are cognizable by others. To a large extent the evidence of conversion to ourselves and to others is the same. In our own case, however, there is consciousness, which cannot be had in the case of others. The two states in question are the most contrary to one another that can possibly be conceived. The change from the one to the other is the most marked and decided of which the human mind can be the subject. Might not such a change be expected to be manifest? Its necessary and habitual operation is a constant testimony to its existence. It is like the ointment that betrays itself. The flowing stream is proof of a living fountain. And if the life be holy there must be a cause that lies deeper than any human purpose.
III. The evidences by which they are made manifest. Two are mentioned--He that doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. It is observable that these evidences are put in the negative form, and an important lesson is suggested by it. The absence of well-doing is sufficient for condemnation. It is not enough that we cease to do evil, we must learn to do well.
1. He that doeth not righteousness is not of God. A man who is not exhibiting righteousness in his deportment gives no proof that he is born of God.
2. With this general deportment a special grace is associated--Neither he that loveth not his brother. (J. Morgan, D. D.)
The distinguishing character of a good and a bad man
I. The character and mark of difference between a good and bad man. Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God; which implies, on the contrary, that whosoever doeth righteousness is of God.
1. Who they are that in the apostles sense may be said not to do righteousness.
(1) They that live in the general course of a wicked life, in the practice of great and known sins.
(2) They who live in the habitual practice of any one known sin, or in the neglect of any considerable part of their known duty.
(3) They who are guilty of the single act of a very notorious crime; as a deliberate act of blasphemy, of murder, perjury, fraud, or oppression, or of any other crime of the like enormity.
2. Who they are that in the apostles sense may be said to do righteousness. In short, they who in the general course of their lives do keep the commandments of God. I choose rather to describe a righteous man by the actual conformity of the general course of his actions to the law of God, than by a sincere desire or resolution of obedience. For a desire may be sincere for the time it lasts, and yet vanish before it comes to any real effect. No man believes hunger to be meat, or thirst to be drink; and yet there is no doubt of the truth and sincerity of these natural desires. No man thinks that a greedy desire to be rich is an estate, or that ambition, or an insatiable desire of honour is really advancement; just so, and no otherwise, a desire to be good is righteousness.
II. By this mark every man may, with due care and diligence, arrive at the certain knowledge of his spiritual state and condition.
1. By this character, as I have explained it, he that is a bad man may certainly know himself to be so, if he will but consider his condition and do not wilfully delude himself. For the customary practice of any known sin is utterly inconsistent with sincere resolutions and endeavours against it.
2. By this character, likewise, they that are sincerely good may generally be well assured of their good condition, and that they are the children of God. And there are but two things necessary to evidence this to them--that the general course of their actions be agreeable to the laws of God; and that they be sincere and upright in those actions.
III. Whence it comes to pass, that notwithstanding this, so many persons are at so great uncertainty about their spiritual condition.
1. We will consider the grounds of the false hopes of men really bad concerning their good condition.
(1) Some rely upon the profession of the Christian faith, and their being baptized into it. But this, so far from being any exemption from a good life, is the most solemn obligation to it.
(2) Others trust to their external devotion; they frequent the church and serve God constantly, they pray to Him and hear His Word, and receive the blessed sacrament. But this so far from making amends for the impiety of our lives, spoils all the acceptance of our devotions.
(3) Others, who are sensible they are very bad, depend very much upon their repentance, especially if they set solemn times apart for it. And there is no doubt but that a sincere repentance will put a man into a good condition; but then no repentance is sincere but that which produceth a real reformation in our lives.
(4) Others satisfy themselves with the exercise of some particular graces and virtues, justice, and liberality, and charity. And is it not a thousand pities that thy life is not all of a piece, and that all the other parts of it are not answerable to these?
(5) Some who are very careful of their outward conversation, but yet are conscious to themselves of great secret vices, when they can find no comfort from the testimony of their own consciences, are apt to comfort themselves in the good opinion which perhaps others have of them. But if we know ourselves to be bad, it is not the good opinion of others which can either alter or better our condition. Trust nobody, concerning thyself rather than thyself, because nobody can know thee so well as thou mayest know thyself.
2. The causeless doubts and jealousies of men really good concerning their bad condition.
(1) Some are afraid that they are reprobated from all eternity, and therefore cannot be the children of God. But no man hath reason to think himself rejected of God, either from eternity or in time, that does not find the marks of reprobation in himself--I mean an evil heart and life.
(2) Good men are conscious to themselves of many frailties and imperfections; and, therefore, they are afraid of their condition. But God considers the infirmities of our present state, and expects no other obedience from us, in order to our acceptance with Him, but what this state of imperfection is capable of.
(3) They are afraid their obedience is not sincere, because it proceeds many times from fear, and not always out of pure love to God. For answer to this: it is plain from Scripture that God propounds to men several motives to obedience--some proper to work upon their fear, some upon their hope, others upon their love; from whence it is evident He intended they should all work upon us.
(4) Another case of doubting in good men is, from a sense of their imperfect performance of the duties of religion and of the abatement of their affections towards God at some times. But our comfort is, that God doth not measure mens sincerity by the tides of their affections, but by the constant bent of their resolutions and the general tenor of their actions.
(5) Another cause of these doubts is, that men expect more than ordinary and reasonable assurance of their good condition--some particular revelation from God, an extraordinary impression upon their minds. God may give this when and to whom He pleases, but I do not find He hath anywhere promised it.
(6) As for the case of melancholy, it is not a reasonable case, and therefore doth not fall under any certain rules and directions.
3. There are likewise others, who upon good grounds are doubtful of their condition, and have reason to be afraid of it; those, I mean, who have some beginnings of goodness, which yet are very imperfect. The proper direction to be given them in order to their peace is, by all means to encourage them to go on and fortify their resolutions; to be more vigilant and watchful over themselves, to strive against sin, and to resist it with all their might.
Conclusion:
1. From hence we learn the great danger of sins of omission as well as commission.
2. It is evident from what hath been said, that nothing can be vainer than for men to live in any course of sin and yet to pretend to be the children of God and to hope for eternal life.
3. You see what is the great mark of a mans good or bad condition: whosoever doeth righteousness is of God, and whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God. (J. Tillotson, D. D.)
The manifestation of character
I. The persons opposed are the children of God and the children of the devil, i.e., good and bad men. It is common in the Scripture to call persons, distinguished by any quality or acquisition, the children of those from whom it was originally derived, or by whom it was preeminently possessed.
1. This division is the most general and universal.
2. It is also a division the most serious and eventful. It overlooks everything adventitious, and considers only character. It passes by the distinctions of speech, complexion, rank; and regards the soul and eternity.
3. Let us consider, farther, what results from these relations. According as you are the children of God, or the children of the devil, you are crowned with honour or covered with disgrace.
4. Upon these connections innumerable privileges or evils depend. Are you the children of God? Heaven is your home. And here you shall want no good thing. But I leave you to fill up the remaining article, and to think of the children of the wicked one. I leave you to reflect upon the miseries they endure, from their perplexities, their fears, their passions, and their pursuits in life. I leave you to look forward to the horrors which will devour mere in a dying hour.
II. The possibility of ascertaining in which of these classes you rank. The children of God and the children of the devil are manifest. Observe, it is not spoken of as a future, but as a present discovery--they are manifest.
1. They are manifest to God. It is impossible to impose upon Him; He is not mocked.
2. They are manifest to others. The tree is known by its fruit.
3. They are manifest to themselves. It will readily be acknowledged that it is not possible for a man to be wicked without knowing it.
(1) Is it not necessary for him to be able to know his character? If promises are made to a religions state, how can he claim these promises unless he can determine that he is in this state?
(2) What is religion? An unintelligible mystery? a charm? an operation which passes upon us and leaves no trace behind? Is it not the most serious concern in which we were ever engaged? Is it not a general and continued course of action? The business of life, to which we endeavour to render everything else subordinate? Our prevailing aim? And is this incapable of being known?
III. The marks of distinction between these characters. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil. In what? Not in temporal success. This is given or withheld too indiscriminately to allow of our knowing love or hatred. In what? Not in religious profession. Judas and Demas were both visible members of the Church of God. In what? Not in talking--not in controversy--not in a sound creed--not in the pronunciation of the Shibboleths of a particular party. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil; he that doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.
1. The manner in which the subject is expressed. It is held forth negatively--nor is this without design. It reminds us that omissions decide the character, even where there is no positive vice.
2. The union of these excellences is worthy of our notice. We commonly see them combined in the Scripture. It is said of a good man, He is gracious, and full of compassion, and righteous.
3. From these arises a criterion by which we are to judge of the reality and genuineness of religion--not that these are the only marks which we are to employ; but all the rest will be delusive, if unaccompanied with this righteousness and love. (W. Jay.)
Self-manifestation
As there is a God, and a devil, a heaven, and a hell, a kingdom of glory, and a kingdom of darkness, so there are several sorts appertaining to both; and at the day of judgment there shall be a final separation made betwixt both. Now the one of these two sorts are in the very text called the children of God; the other, the children of the devil. Now to speak of the difference which is betwixt the children of God and the children of the devil. This difference is twofold, either general or particular. The general is the doing or not doing of righteousness; the negative is here only named, but in it as in all negative rules the affirmative is included. By righteousness is understood that holy and righteous course which God requireth of us, whether in general as we be Christians, or in particular according to our places and callings allotted unto us by God. The rule of righteousness is the Scripture; in it the Lord hath showed what is good, that only deserves to be entertained as our Spiritual Counsellor, that alone is able to make a man wise unto salvation. The doing of righteousness is twofold.
1. Legal, and
2. Evangelical.
The legal doing is the perfection of all duties, both in manner and form, both for the number and measure of them; which kind of doing was never found in any mere man since the fall of Adam. The Evangelical doing is mingled with much weakness, and is good only in acceptation with God by Jesus Christ. Of this doing the Spirit of God speaketh here, and it consists upon the concurrence of these following particulars.
1. A caring and studying to prove what is the good will of God, how He will be served, and wherewith He will be pleased.
2. An inflamed love and affection to that righteousness which is pleasing unto God.
3. A desire, that if it were possible, the whole course of the life and conversation might be suitable thereunto.
4. A firmness of resolution, to frame and set the whole and continual endeavour to the performance of it.
5. A speedy applying of oneself therein.
6. A careful catching of all opportunities to help forward this good purpose.
7. A diligent survey of ones own courses.
8. A bitter bewailing of slips and infirmities, together with a kind of holy indignation at ones own self, that he should so grossly and ordinarily sin against the Lord.
9. An increase of care (after a soil received) and of watchfulness, together with a fear of running afresh into the same or like offence. And as these things cannot be in an unregenerate person, so they cannot but be in those whom the Lord hath chosen to be His. (S. Hieron.)
Connexion of doing righteousness with brotherly love as proving a Divine birth
1. Consider that old message or commandment, heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. On what is it based? It cannot, since the Fall, be based on our joint participation in the ills to which the Fall has made us heirs. It is redemption, and redemption alone, with the regeneration which is involved in it, that makes mutual brotherly love among men, in its true and deep sense, a practicable duty, an attainable grace. It is only one who, being born of God, doeth righteousness as knowing God to be righteous, that is capable of really loving his fellow man as a brother.
2. No such brotherly love is possible for him who, not doing righteousness, is not of God. His frame of mind must be that of Cain; a frame of mind that but too unequivocally identifies him as one of the devils children, and not of Gods. It was not because he was void of natural affection, or because his disposition was one of wanton cruelty and bloodthirstiness; it was not in the heat of sudden passion, or in a quarrel about any earthly good, that Cain slew his brother; but because his own works were evil, and his brothers righteous. It is this which chiefly marks the instigation of the devil; and his fatherhood of Cain, and such as Cain. More than anything else on earth; infinitely more than any remains of remnants of good that the Fall has left in human nature and human society--for these he can turn to his own account and make his own use of--does that wicked one detest the faintest trace of the footsteps, the slightest breathing of the spirit of Him whose goings forth have been from of old; who has been ever in the world, the Wisdom and the Word of God, the light and the life of men. Let the truth and righteousness of God be brought so near to a man, by the Divine Word and Spirit, as to stir and trouble thoroughly his inward moral sense, while his desire and determination to stand his ground and not give in remains unabated, or rather is inflamed and aggravated; let the process go on; and let all attempts towards an accommodation, between the consciences increasing soreness and the hearts increasing self-righteousness and self-will, be one after another frustrated and foiled; you have then the making of a Cain, a very child of the devil, who, if need be and opportunity serve, will not scruple to cut short the terrible debate and end the intolerable strife by slaying his brother Abel; by crucifying the Lord of glory! O my fellow sinner, let us beware! (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v16 Chapter 13
Chapter 13
LOFTY IDEALS PERILOUS UNLESS APPLIED
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1Jn_3:16-18
Even the world sees that the Incarnation of Jesus Christ has very practical results. Even the Christmas which the world keeps is fruitful in two of these results- forgiving and giving. How many of the multitudinous letters at that season contain one or other of these things-either the kindly gift, or the tender of reconciliation; the confession "I was wrong," or the gentle advance "we were both wrong."
Love, charity (as we rather prefer to say), in its effects upon all our relations to others, is the beautiful subject of this section of our Epistle. It begins with the message of love itself-yet another asterisk referring to the Gospel, to the very substance of the teaching which the believers of Ephesus had first received from St. Paul, and which had been emphasised by St. John. This message is announced not merely as a sounding sentiment, but for the purpose of being carried out into action. As in moral subjects virtues and vices are best illustrated by their contraries; so, beside the bright picture of the Son of God, the Apostle points to the sinister likeness of Cain. After some brief and parenthetic words of pathetic consolation, he states as the mark of the great transition from death to life, the existence of love as a pervading spirit effectual in operation. The dark opposite of this is then delineated in consonance with the mode of representation just above. But two such pictures of darkness must not shadow the sunlit gallery of love. There is another-the fairest and brightest. Our love can only be estimated by likeness to it; it is imperfect unless it is conformed to the print of the wounds, unless it can be measured by the standard of the great Self-sacrifice. But if this may be claimed as the one real proof of conformity to Christ, much more is the limited partial sacrifice of "this worlds good" required. This spirit, and the conduct which it requires in the long run, will be found to be the test of all solid spiritual comfort, of all true self-condemnation or self-acquittal.
We may say of the verses prefixed to this discourse, that they bring before us charity in its idea, in its example, in its characteristics-in theory, in action, in life.
I We have here love in its idea, "hereby know we love." Rather "hereby know we The Love."
Here the idea of charity in us runs parallel with that in Christ. It is a subtle but true remark, that there is here no logical inferential particle. "Because He laid down His life for us," is not followed by its natural correlative "therefore we," but by a simple connective "and we." The reason is this, that our duty herein is not a mere cold logical deduction. It is all of one piece with The Love. "We know The Love because He laid down His life for us; and we are in duty bound for the brethren to lay down our lives."
Here, then, is the idea of love, as capable of realisation in us. It is continuous unselfishness, to be crowned by voluntary death, if death is necessary. The beautiful old Church tradition shows that this language was the language of St. Johns life. Who has forgotten how the Apostle in his old age is said to have gone on a journey to find the young man who had fled from Ephesus and joined a band of robbers; and to have appealed to the fugitive in words which are the pathetic echo of these-"if needs be I would die for thee as He for us"?
II The idea of charity is then practically illustrated by an incident of its opposite. "But whoso hath this worlds good, and gazes upon his brother in need, and shuts up his heart against him, how doth the love of God abide in him?" The reason for this descent in thought is wise and sound. High abstract ideas, expressed in lofty and transcendent language, are at once necessary and dangerous for creatures like us. They are necessary, because without these grand conceptions our moral language and our moral life would be wanting in dignity, in amplitude, in the inspiration and impulse which are often necessary for duty and always for restoration. But they are dangerous in proportion to their grandeur. Men are apt to mistake the emotion awakened by the very sound of these magnificent expressions of duty for the discharge of the duty itself. Hypocrisy delights in sublime speculations, because it has no intention of their costing anything. Some of the most abject creatures embodied by the masters of romance never fail to parade their sonorous generalisations. One of such characters, as the world will long remember, proclaims that sympathy is one of the holiest principles of our common nature, while he shakes his fist at a beggar.
Every large speculative ideal then is liable to this danger; and he who contemplates it requires to be brought down from his transcendental region to the test of some commonplace duty. This is the latent link of connection in this passage. The ideal of love to which St. John points is the loftiest of all the moral and spiritual emotions which belong to the sentiments of man. Its archetype is in the bosom of God, in the eternal relations of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. "God is love." Its home in humanity is Christs heart of fire and flesh; its example is the Incarnation ending in the Cross.
Now of course the question for all but one in thousands is not the attainment of this lofty ideal-laying down his life for the brethren. Now and then, indeed, the physician pays with his own death for the heroic rashness of drawing out from his patient the fatal matter. Sometimes the pastor is cut off by fever contracted in ministering to the sick, or by voluntarily living and working in an unwholesome atmosphere. Once or twice in a decade some heart is as finely touched by the spirit of love as Father Damien, facing the certainty of death from a long slow putrefaction, that a congregation of lepers may enjoy the consolations of faith. St. John here reminds us that the ordinary test of charity is much more commonplace. It is helpful compassion to a brother who is known to be in need, manifested by giving to him something of this worlds "good"-of the "living" of this world which he possesses.
III We have next the characteristics of love in action. "My sons, let us not love in word nor with the tongue; but in work and truth." There is love in its energy and reality; in its effort and sincerity-active and honest, without indolence and without pretence. We may well be reminded here of another familiar story of St. John at Ephesus. When too old to walk himself to the assembly of the Church, he was carried there. The Apostle who had lain upon the breast of Jesus; who had derived from direct communication with Him those words and thoughts which are the life of the elect, was expected to address the faithful. The light of the Ephesian summer fell upon his white hair; perhaps glittered upon the mitre which tradition has assigned to him. But when he had risen to speak, he only repeated-"little children, love one another." Modern hearers are sometimes tempted to envy the primitive Christians of the Ephesian Church, if for nothing else, yet for the privilege of listening to the shortest sermon upon record in the annals of Christianity. When Christian preachers have behind them the same long series of virgin years, within them the same love of Christ and knowledge of His mysteries; when their very presence evinces the same sad, tender, smiling, weeping, all-embracing sympathy with the wants and sorrows of humanity; they may perhaps venture upon the perilous experiment of contracting their sermons within the same span as St. Johns. And when some who, like the hearers. at Ephesus, are not prepared for the repetition of an utterance so brief, begin to ask-"why are you always saying this?"-the answer may well be in the spirit of the reply which the aged Apostle is said to have made-"because it is the commandment of the Lord, and sufficient, if it only be fulfilled indeed."
IV This passage supplies an argument (capable, as we have seen in the Introduction, of much larger expansion from the Epistle as a whole) against mutilated views, fragmentary versions of the Christian life.
There are four such views which are widely prevalent at the present time.
(1) The first of these is emotionalism; which makes the entire Christian life consist in a series or bundle of emotions. Its origin is the desire of having the feelings touched, partly from sheer love of excitement; partly from an idea that if and when we have worked up certain emotions to a fixed point we are saved and safe. This reliance upon feelings is in the last analysis reliance upon self. It is a form of salvation by works; for feelings are inward actions. It is an unhappy anachronism which inverts the order of Scripture; which substitutes peace and grace (the compendious dogma of the heresy of the emotions) for grace and peace, the only order known to St. Paul and St. John. The only spiritual emotions spoken of in this Epistle are "joy, confidence, assuring our hearts before Him": the first as the result of receiving the history of Jesus in the Gospel, the Incarnation, and the blessed communion with God and the Church which it involves; the second as tried by tests of a most practical kind.
(2) The next of these mutilated views of the Christian life is doctrinalism-which makes it consist of a series or bundle of doctrines apprehended and expressed correctly, at least according to certain formulas, generally of a narrow and unauthorised character. According to this view the question to be answered is-has one quite correctly understood, can one verbally formulate certain almost scholastic distinctions in the doctrine of justification? The well known standard-"the Bible only"-must be reduced by the excision of all within the Bible except the writings of St. Paul; and even in this selected portion faith must be entirely guided by certain portions more selected still, so that the question finally may be reduced to this shape -"am I a great deal sounder than St. John and St. James, a little sounder than an unexpurgated St. Paul, as sound as a carefully expurgated edition of the Pauline Epistles?"
(3) The third mutilated view of the Christian life is humanitarianism-which makes it a series or bundle of philanthropic actions.
There are some who work for hospitals, or try to bring more light and sweetness into crowded dwelling houses. Their lives are pure and noble. But the one article of their creed is humanity. Altruism is their highest duty. Their object, so far as they have any object apart from the supreme rule of doing right, is to lay hold on subjective immortality by living on in the recollection of those whom they have helped, whose existence has been soothed and sweetened by their sympathy. With others the case is different. Certain forms of this busy helpfulness-especially in the laudable provision of recreations for the poor-are an innocent interlude in fashionable life; sometimes, alas! a kind of work of supererogation, to atone for the want of devotion or of purity-possibly an untheological survival of a belief in justification by works.
(4) A fourth fragmentary view of the Christian life is observationism, which makes it to consist in a bundle or series of observances. Frequent services and communions, perhaps with exquisite forms and in beautifully decorated churches, have their dangers as well as their blessings. However closely linked these observances may be, there must still in every life be interstices between them. How are these filled up? What spirit within connects together, vivifies and unifies, this series of external acts of devotion? They are means to an end. What if the means come to interpose between us and the end-just as a great political thinker has observed that with legal minds the forms of business frequently overshadow the substance of business, which is their end, and for which they were called into existence. And what is the end of our Christian calling? A life pardoned; in process of purification; growing in faith, in love of God and man, in quiet joyful service. Certainly a "rage for ceremonials and statistics," a long list of observances, does not infallibly secure such a life, though it may often be not alone the delighted and continuous expression, but the constant food and support of such a life. But assuredly if men trust in any of these things-in their emotions, in their favourite formulas, in their philanthropic, works, in their religious observances-in anything but Christ, they greatly need to go back to the simple text, "His name shall be called Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins."
Now, as we have said above, in distinction from all these fragmentary views, St. Johns Epistle is a survey of the completed Christian life, founded upon his Gospel. It is a consummate fruit ripened in the long summers of his experience. It is not a treatise upon the Christian affections, nor a system of doctrine, nor an essay upon works of charity, nor a companion to services.
Yet this wonderful Epistle presupposes at least much that is most precious of all these elements.
(1) It is far from being a burst of emotionalism. Yet almost at the outset it speaks of an emotion as being the natural result of rightly received objective truth. St. John recognises feeling, whether of supernatural or natural origin; but he recognises it with a certain majestic reserve. Once only does he seem to be carried away. In a passage to which reference has just been made, after stating the dogma of the Incarnation, he suffuses it with a wealth of emotional colour. It is Christmas in his soul; the bells ring out good tidings of great joy. "These things write we unto you, that your joy may be full."
(2) This Epistle is no dogmatic summary. Yet combining its procemium with the other of the fourth Gospel, we have the most perfect statement of the dogma of the Incarnation. As we read thoughtfully on, dogma after dogma stands out in relief. The divinity of the Word, the reality of His manhood, the effect of His atonement, His intercession, His continual presence, the personality of the Holy Spirit, His gifts to us, the relation of the Spirit to Christ, the Holy Trinity-all these find their place in these few pages. If St. John is no mere doctrinalist he is yet the greatest theologian the Church has ever seen.
(3) Once more; if the Apostles Christianity is no mere humanitarian sentiment to encourage the cultivation of miscellaneous acts of good nature, yet it is deeply pervaded by a sense of the integral connection of practical love of man with the love of God. So much is this the case, that a large gathering of the most emotional of modern sects is said to have gone on with a Bible reading in St. Johns Epistle until they came to the words -" we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren." The reader immediately closed the book, pronouncing with general assent the verse was likely to disturb the peace of the children of God. Still St. John puts humanitarianism in its right place as a result of something higher. "This commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also." As if he would say-"do not sever the law of social life from the law of supernatural life; do not separate the human fraternity from a Divine Fatherhood."
(4) No one can suppose that for St. John religion was a mere string of observances. Indeed, to some his Epistle has given the notion of a man living in an atmosphere where external ordinances and ministries either did not exist at all, or only in almost impalpable forms. Yet in that wonderful manual, "The Imitation of Christ," there is scarcely the faintest trace of any of these external things; while no one could possibly argue that the author was ignorant of, or lightly esteemed, the ordinances and sacraments amongst which his life must have been spent. Certainly the fourth Gospel is deeply sacramental. This Epistle, with its calm, unhesitating conviction of the sonship of all to whom it is addressed; with its view of the Christian life as in idea a continuous growth from a birth the secret of whose origin is given in the Gospel; with its expressive hints of sources of grace and power and of a continual presence of Christ; with its deep mystical realisation of the double flow from the pierced side upon the cross, and its thrice-repeated exchange of the sacramental order "water and blood," for the historical order "blood and water"; unquestionably has the sacramental sense diffused throughout it. The Sacraments are not in obtrusive prominence; yet for those who have eyes to see they lie in deep and tender distances. Such is the view of the Christian life in this letter-a life in which Christs truth is blended with Christs love; assimilated by thought, exhaling in worship, softening into sympathy with mans suffering and sorrow. It calls for the believing soul, the devout heart, the helping hand. It is the perfect balance in a saintly soul, of feeling, creed, communion, and work.
For of work for our fellow man it is that the question is asked half despairingly -"whoso hath this worlds good, and seeth" (gazes at) "his brother have need, and shutteth up his heart against him, how doth the love of God dwell in him." Some can quietly look at the poor brother; they see him in need. They may belong to "the sluggard Pitys vision-weaving tribe," who expend a sigh of sentiment upon such spectacles, and nothing more. Or they may be hardened professors of the "dismal science," who have learned to consider a sigh as the luxury of ignorance or of feebleness. But for all practical purposes both these classes interpose a too effectual barrier between their heart and their brothers need. But true Christians are made partakers in Christ of the mystery of human suffering. Even when they are not actually in sight of brethren in want, their ears are ever hearing the ceaseless moaning of the sea of human sorrow, with a sympathy which involves its own measure of pain, though a pain which brings with it abundant compensation. Their inner life has not merely won for itself the partly selfish satisfaction of personal escape from punishment, great as that blessing may be. They have caught something of the meaning of the secret of all love-"we love because He first loved us." {1Jn_4:19} In those words is the romance (if we may dare to call it so) of the divine love tale. Under its influence the face once hard and narrow often becomes radiant and softened; it smiles, or is tearful, in the light of the love of His face who first loved. It is this principle of St. John which is ever at work in Christian lands. In hospitals it tells us that Christ is ever passing down the wards: that He will have no stinted service; that He must have more for His sick, more devotion, a gentler touch, a finer sympathy; that where His hand has broken and blessed, every particle is a sacred thing, and must be treated reverently.
Are there any who are tempted to think that our text has become antiquated; that it no longer holds true in the light of organised charity, of economic science? Let them listen to one who speaks with the weight of years of active benevolence, and with consummate knowledge of its method and duties. "There are men who, in their detestation of roguery, forget that by a wholesale condemnation of charity, they run the risk of driving the honest to despair and of turning them into the very rogues of whom they desire so ardently to be quit. These men are unconsciously playing into the hands of the Socialists and the Anarchists, the only sections of society whose distinct interest it is that misery and starvation should increase. No doubt indiscriminate almsgiving is hurtful to the State as well as to the individual who receives the dole, but not less dangerous would it be to society if the principles of these stern political economists were to be literally accepted by any large number of the rich, and if charity ceased to be practised within the land. We cannot yet afford to shut ourselves up in the castle of philosophic indifference, regardless of the fate of those who have the misfortune to find themselves outside its walls."
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23 10. In this, etc. Thus is the distinction clear…
10. In this, etc. Thus is the distinction clear between God's children and those of the devil. God's children are full of love and live holy lives. Those of the devil are the opposite.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On vv13, 18 1Jn_3:13. World hate yon.—The “world” includes all who are…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
1Jn_3:13. World hate yon.—The “world” includes all who are not actuated by the supreme motive, love to God. For “hate” read “hateth” (Joh_15:18).
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1Jn_3:14. From death unto life.—Death is spiritual death in selfishness. Life is spiritual life in love for others, which finds expression in serving others.
1Jn_3:15. Is a murderer.—With distinct allusion to the case of Cain. “The first and the worst effect of hatred gives it its true character.”
1Jn_3:16.—Read, “Hereby know we love.” Lay down our lives.—The figure of self-surrender, reaching to the limits of self-sacrifice.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—1Jn_3:13-17
A Sure Sign of the Regenerate Life.—It is such a love of the brethren as leads us to self-denial and service for the sake of securing their highest well-being. That man must be “born again,” he must be a new man, other than the unnatural being which sin and self have made him, who really cares for his brother in such a way as enables him to give up his own things for his sake. The principal word in this paragraph is “hate,” “hateth”; and it is evidentally intended to stand in absolute contrast with “love.” But the word has undergone such change in meaning since it was used by the Bible translators, and even in their time it so imperfectly represented the Scriptural term, that the precise meaning and thought of St. John readily escapes the reader of his epistle. “Hate” is often the equivalent of our word “despise,” or pass aside, show yourself indifferent to, count as a thing of little value. Sometimes it means scarcely more than, “put down into quite a secondary place of interest.” In something of this sense it is said of God, that He “loved Jacob, and hated Esau.” What we have in modern times imported into the word is bitter, personal feeling, and that complicates our treatment of such expressions as are found in this paragraph. “To hate” is not always to be understood rigorously. It frequently signifies no more than a lesser degree of love (Deu_21:15). If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, that means less beloved. So our Saviour says that he who would follow Him must hate father and mother—that is, he should love them less than Christ, less than his own salvation. Solomon says, “He that spareth the rod hateth his son” (Pro_13:24). Fathers often spare their children out of an excessive love to them; but this is not a proper instance of affection, to forbear correcting them; their fond affection is as pernicious to their children as other men’s hatred could be. There is also a malicious hatred of men referred to in Scripture—as in Ahab, who hated the Lord’s prophet, Micaiah (1Ki_22:8). Wicked men do, in this sense, hate the righteous (Psa_34:21). It may also be added, that there is a hatred of the sins of men (Jud_1:23), and of our own sins (Rom_7:15). Taking the milder connotation of the term “hate,” let us see if we can understand, and get the precise teaching of, this paragraph.
I. The sphere of hate that may reasonably be expected.—1Jn_3:13 : “Marvel not, brethren, if the world hateth you,” is indifferent to you, takes no interest in you, and even scorns you as enthusiasts. It is quite true that the world shows positive enmity to God’s people, and is, and ever has been, ready on occasions to persecute them; but we miss a point of much direct application to us, when we dwell too much on the active persecution to which Christ’s Church has at times been subjected. The indifference of the world, the scorn of the world, is constantly felt, and constantly wearing our hearts. Everywhere earnest piety is spoken against. It is the hate of the world in that sense—the society indifference which we are told should be expected, and should occasion no surprise. Our Lord impressed on His disciples that being, like Himself, “not of the world,” the world would be sure to hate them. Then this should be no occasion of anxiety to us. In entering on the regenerate life we should take account of it, and then it will not come on us as a surprise, or be in any sense a painful and trying experience. We may so satisfy ourselves with God’s approval, that we can be easily indifferent to the World’s. God’s world is kin with us; man’s world never can be.
II. The sphere of hate that is wholly unexpected, and cannot be approved.—1Jn_3:15 : “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer.” This is true when applied generally to the brotherly relations of man with man—true in the same sense as the saying that “sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” Push hatred out to its utmost, and it appears as murder, as is illustrated in the case of Cain. But St. John here is distinctly addressing those who have the new life in Christ, and are thus set in new and gracious relations one with another. What he says is that hate, even in its milder form as indifference, is inconceivable among the members of the Christian brotherhood. In them the great human law, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,” ought to be ennobled into this, “For Christ’s sake thou shalt love thy Christian brother better than thyself, and be always going out beyond thyself in loving ministries and service to him.” Then St. John’s point may be sharply presented in this contrast, “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you; but marvel much, my brethren, if you are found hating one another, even if it be only in the mild sense of being indifferent to one another, and loving yourselves better than your brethren.”
III. The mastery of unloving thoughts concerning our brethren is gained through the service of love.—1Jn_3:16-17 : “We ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this World’s goods, and beholdeth his brother in need, and shutteth up his compassion from him, how doth the love of God abide in him?” The point is this—Do nothing for your brother, and you will find you very readily become heedless of him, indifferent to his interests, you may even come to dislike and hate him; but do something for him, tend him, spend yourself for him, give up something of your own to secure his well-being, imperil your life for him, and you will be surprised how love to him grows in your heart, how easy then it is to “love the brethren.” Activity of ministry keeps up the love, and delivers from all evil feelings. You never can hate people whom you are actively serving for Christ’s sake.
The love of the brethren is—
1. A peculiar and most appropriate kind of love:
(1) there is a general love, which we owe to every man;
(2) there is a particular love, which Christians owe to their fellow-believers.
2. Free from all dissimulation.
3. Fixed and fervent, invariable in its operations, and disinterested and fearless on all occasions. This sort of love was shown by John towards Christ, by the early Galatian converts towards Paul, and by Onesiphorus to the same apostle.—F. Gilpin.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1Jn_3:10. Love seen in Self-sacrifice.—“And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Laying down life is the extreme expression of self-sacrifice. We may give up our time, our personal interests, our possessions, our health, in the service of others, and these are beautiful and persuasive expressions of the Christly love. But that love does not reach its perfection, its full flowering, until, in the spirit of the Lord Jesus, we are prepared to imperil, and even lay down, our lives for the saving of others. Love in self-sacrifice is seen in the home and family life. It may be that we expect it in father and mother; but where there is a fulness of family love we find it in the brothers and sisters. They will spend themselves for each other’s well-being. They will imperil life for each other’s sakes. And it should be thus in the family of God, among the regenerate sons, who have become, in the very highest sense, brothers. It is not often that the extreme demand is made. But seldom now does the service of Christ call for the laying down of life. Yet the persuasion of St. John will come home to us if we see that laying down life is the extreme limit, and that love can be shown in everything that has the spirit of sacrifice and service, which comes short of the limit. Therefore Christ set before us the extreme opposite limit, telling us that love could go into the little act of sacrifice, the little trouble and inconvenience in giving a cup of water to a disciple. The essence of a love-gift is the self-denial that is in it. And there is nothing so sweetens, so beautifies, so dignifies our various human associations as the love which can deny self, in order to serve others. That is artistically, ideally, presented to us in Mary’s bringing the alabaster box of precious ointment to pour upon the Saviour’s feet. It was a love-gift with a woman’s uttermost self-sacrifice at the heart of it. That is sublimely, divinely, presented to us, in the uttermost self-sacrifice of the Lord Jesus, as the persuasion of the “so great love” He had for us.
“For love of us He bled; for love of us He died.”
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 3
1Jn_3:16. Laying down Life for the sake of Another.—Two men were working together in a mine, and having prepared to blast the rock, and laid the train, the latter became by accident ignited. In a few moments a tremendous explosion they knew was inevitable, and the rock must be rent in a thousand pieces. On perceiving their danger, they both leaped into the bucket, and called to the man on the surface to draw them up. He endeavoured to do so, but his arm was found too feeble to raise the bucket while both the men were in it. What was to be done? The burning fuse, which could not be extinguished, was now within a few feet of the powder; a moment or two, and the explosion must take place. At this awful crisis, one of the men, addressing the other, said, “You shall live, and I will die; for you are an impenitent sinner, and if you now die your soul will be lost; but if I die, I know that, by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, I shall be taken to Himself.” And so saying, without waiting for a reply, he leaped out of the bucket, and prayerfully awaited the result. On the other reaching the surface, he bent over the shaft to ascertain the fate of his companion. At this moment a terrific explosion was heard; a portion of the rock was thrown up, and smote him on the forehead, leaving an indelible mark to remind him of his danger and deliverance. But the man of God, when they came to search for him, was found arched over by the fragments of broken rock in the mine, uninjured and rejoicing in the Lord. This magnanimous miner exhibited in this act an amount of disinterested love and charity which has seldom been equalled, and which is never found but in connection with the love of Christ.—R. Young.
Self-sacrifice: the Pilot of the “Rothesay.”—This vessel was wrecked in a cyclone in the Indian Ocean. The pilot, Paul Elson, collected a few volunteers, and rigged a raft. Thirteen only of the crew got on her; the rest were frantic with terror—some praying, others drunk, others raving, others lashed inextricably to the sinking vessel. Elson was the last to leave the ship; leaping overboard, he swam to the raft, cut the hawser that held her, and constituted himself by inherent right her sole officer. Within an hour the doomed vessel heeled, lurched heavily, and went down head first. All that day and all that night the raft drifted, heavy seas breaking over her. “We were up to our necks in water,” says the man who tells the tale, “for she floated low.” All that night, nevertheless, Elson, who was a powerful swimmer, swam round and round the raft, lashing her together and strengthening her as best he could. Ever and anon the furious breakers washed a man off. And then would the brave pilot who had not only the heart but the strength of a gaint, strike out towards him and carry the drowning wretch back. But at last it became apparent that the raft must be broken up, and that a second and smaller raft must be constructed to relieve the other. This, too, the pilot effected almost single-handed. The large raft floated away into the night; Elson and three other men took to the smaller; while on the other drifted away a native boy, Paul Elson’s servant, of whom hitherto, in the midst of all his terrible toil, the brave pilot had never once lost sight. “He kept near him; he tended him as a mother would tend her child; he gave him our last supply of drinkable water.” The vessel had sunk on the 29th of July; it was now the 2nd of August. The raft was drifting under a raging tropical sun; for three days there had been no food or water; worse than this, the frail support itself began to break up, and swimming about in a heavy surf, Paul Elson became much exhausted. The end of course could not now be far off. First one of the men was washed away, and then another, until Elson himself and the Scotchman who tells the story were the sole survivors. “ ‘Pilot,’ said I”—so the narrative runs—“ ‘we must fight it through!’ ‘Oh, Fraser!’ answered he, ‘I can’t hold out any longer.’ … Then a heavy sea broke upon us, and knocked him off. I found it impossible to hang on, and was forced to let him go.” And so the story ends. The body of Pilot Elson, worn out by his incessant labours, floats away into the great deep, there to lie till the sea shall give up its dead.—Daily Telegraph.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v19 Heart is the word here used, the generic for…
ARGUMENT 8
A PURE CONSCIENCE THE CONDITION OF PREVAILING PRAYER
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Heart is the word here used, the generic for the specific, the heart, spirit or soul consisting of the conscience, which is the voice of God in the soul; the will, which is the king of humanity, and the affections, the quintessence of all loves and hates.
19... “And we will reconcile our hearts in His presence,” i.e., our conscience, which is God’s own voice in the soul, will seal us with its perfect approval.
20. “Because, if our heart [conscience] condemn us, God is greater than our heart [conscience] and knows all things.” The tribunal of our own conscience, when enlightened by the Word and Spirit, is an infallible miniature of the great white throne before which we soon must stand.
21. “Beloved, if our heart [conscience] condemn us not we have holiness with God.”
22. “And we receive whatever we ask of Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things pleasing in His sight.” This Scripture brings to light a momentous reality, i.e., that a pure conscience, perfectly responsive to God’s Word and Spirit, is the grand secret of prevailing prayer. God wants to make us miracles of His grace and flood us with the wonders of His love. If you do not prevail with God in prayer, receiving into your own heart the unutterable transformations of His Spirit and enduements of His grace, it is simply because your heart is not perfectly responsive to the divine will. Of course, these wonderful promises receive their primary fulfillment in our own heart and life. We must remember that in case of others, their will must co-operate. You want your prodigal son saved. Take hold of God for his conviction. If your heart is pure and perfectly responsive to the divine will, in answer to your prayer God will send the Holy Ghost to convict him. He can yield to this conviction or resist it, grieving away the Holy Spirit. Never pray for his conversion, but constantly for his conviction, till you have reason to believe that he is convicted. Then lay hold on God for his conversion. In answer to your prayers, the Holy Spirit will convert his soul if he does not resist. We must learn “rightly to divide the Word of truth,” lest we waste much time and opportunity in haphazard prayer and labor.
23. The two hemispheres in salvation, the human and the divine, are represented by faith and love. We exercise the faith in God’s promises, and He gives us the love. These two graces absorb all others, constituting the complete globe of human salvation.
24. This mutual abiding, we in God and He in us, evolving the glorious reality of experimental salvation, is attended by the Holy Spirit. Hence no one need be in doubt.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv10, 13 (See Scofield "1Jn 3:7").
righteousness
(See Scofield "1Jn 3:7").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Arno C. Gaebelein 1922 · Public Domain On v19 1. Hereby we know that we are of the…
V. HEREBY WE KNOW
CHAPTERS 3:19-5:13
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1. Hereby we know that we are of the truth (1Jn 3:19-24)
2. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God (1Jn 4:1-4)
3. Hereby know we the Spirit of truth and of error (1Jn 4:5-6)
4. The Love manifested toward us (1Jn 4:7-19)
5. The final tests as to the possession of eternal life (1Jn 4:20-21; 1Jn 5:1-13)
1Jn 3:19-24.
If the love of God dwells in the heart of the child of God it must be manifested in a practical way. Love must be expressed in deed and in truth, which is the fruit of true faith. If the believer does this he knows that he is of the truth. If it is lacking he is but an empty professing believer. But if we know that we are of the truth, by bearing such fruit of faith, we can assure our hearts before Him, and we can draw nigh with confidence. As our hearts do not condemn us, knowing that we are of the truth, we have confidence toward God and whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. Where there is not a good conscience and the Holy Spirit is grieved real nearness to God and the effectual prayer which availeth much are impossible. It is the same blessed truth our Lord spoke in connection with the parable of the vine. “If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you (Joh 15:7).
But what is His commandment? Strange that some expositors have read into it the Ten Commandments. The context answers the question: “And this is His commandment, that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as He gave us commandment. And He that keepeth His commandment dwelleth in Him, and He in him. And hereby we know that He abideth in us, by the Spirit He hath given to us.”
1Jn 4:1-4.
The last sentence of the preceding chapter gives the assurance that the believer has the Holy Spirit. There is no such thing as a true child of God without the Holy Spirit. The indwelling Spirit is the proof that He Himself dwells in us. But how do we know that it is the Spirit of God? How can a test be made? The sphere of the Spirit is the territory in which the spirit of error and darkness operates and where the liar from the beginning counterfeits. Many false prophets inspired by the spirit of darkness had gone out into the world and the apostle gives a warning not to believe every spirit but to try the spirits. The true test is the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.
But this means more than a mere confession with the lips, it means to own the person and lordship of Jesus Christ our Saviour. The demons know how to confess Him and yet they are demons (Mat 8:29). The spirit of antichrist denies Him, does not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This spirit which is not the Spirit of God manifests itself in the most subtle forms. It is called “true Christian charity” in our days to make common cause in what is called “social service” with those who do not confess Christ, who do not own Him as Saviour and Lord. These many antichrists speak of Him as man, they go so far as to call Christ a manifestation of God in human form, but they deny that He is very God come in the flesh.
As stated before the most prominent form of it is today the denial of His virgin birth. Anything which denies the full glory of the Lord Jesus Christ which in any way detracts from His glory, is the spirit of antichrist. About a hundred years ago a movement was in existence which claimed to be another Pentecost, just as there are movements today which claim the same unscriptural thing. The leader of that movement, Edward Irving, put great stress upon the incarnation, that Jesus came in the flesh. But after a while the demons which stood behind the movement brought forth the horrible doctrine of the peccability of Christ, that He had a corrupt nature like any other man. Such is the subtlety of Satan, the old serpent. He always strikes at Christ and His glory.
“The false prophets are certainly no fewer in number at the present time than when the apostle spoke; yet, in general, we may say they assume less divine authority. We have sunk down so far into the wisdom of the world that man is credited with a place which God has lost. Inspiration is the inspiration of genius, rather than of God. We are more and more getting to lose the reality of the last, just as we are coming more and more to believe in the former. We believe in brilliancy, in eloquence, in intellect, in whatever you please in this way, but the assumption of speaking in any direct way by the Spirit of God no more exists, for the mass, except as one may say that the Spirit of God is as liberal as men are, and speaks in very diverse fashion--in poets, philosophers, and all the acknowledged leaders among men” (Numerical Bible).
1Jn 4:5-6.
The fifth verse has a good description of these antichrists and their following. These men, with their boasted learning and scholarship, their great swelling words, called eloquence, their natural amiability and cultured, courteous manners are of the world. They were never born again. If they had ever seen themselves lost and undone, and found in Christ their peace with God, they would yield complete obedience to Him and not deny His glory. When they speak they speak of the world. They speak of world conditions, and how they may be improved, of a better human society. Quite true they are even religious, but what they speak is not that which is of the Spirit, but what concerns the world system. The crowds want to hear that for it pleases the flesh, and thus the devil brings his audience to hear them. Such antichrists in cap and gown have multiplied by the thousands; they are found in the leading pulpits of all denominations.
The test as to the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error is stated in these words: “We are of God; He that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth us not. Hereby know we the Spirit of truth and of error.” The test is the apostle’s doctrine. The Epistles are the full revelation of the doctrine of Christ, they contain the “many things” which the Lord spoke of when on earth, and which should be revealed when the Holy Spirit came. He has come and has made known the blessed things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him, but which are now revealed by His Spirit, the Spirit of truth (1Co 2:9-10). The spirit of error denies these doctrines. In our day the enemy has invested a most subtle slogan, “Back to Christ.” It sounds well but behind it stands the father of lies. These men who speak of going back to Christ charge our beloved brother Paul with having a theological system of his own, which they claim Christ, on earth, never taught. They reject the great redemption truths made known by the Lord through the apostle to the Gentiles. Their cry “Back to Christ” is the spirit of antichrist.
1Jn 4:7-19.
These blessed words are addressed to the beloved, true believers. The great center of this passage is “God is Love.” Love is of God. But how do we know that God is Love? Such an antichristian system as “Christian Science” babbles about the love of God, but that which alone expresses the love of God, and by which it is known that God is love, they reject completely. The question, how do we know that God is love is answered in 1Jn 4:9-10. “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Apart from this there is no knowledge of the love of God. He who is born again knows that love, for in believing it (Joh 3:16) he receives eternal life, and that love was perfect in Him when we had no love for Him--not that we loved God, but that He loved us. In His great love He has met every need.
This love, the nature of God, is in those who are born again, Every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God. “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us.” Love therefore is the very essence of the new nature and must be manifested towards all who are the objects of the love of God and are in the family of God by having believed that love.
“His presence, Himself, dwelling in us rises in the excellency of His nature above all the barriers of circumstances, and attaches us to those who are His. It is God in the power of His nature which is the source of thought and feeling and diffuses itself among them in whom it is. One can understand this. How is it that I love strangers from another land, persons of different habits, whom I have never known, more intimately than members of my own family after the flesh? How is it that I have thoughts in common, objects infinitely loved in common, affections powerfully engaged, a stronger bond with persons whom I have never seen, than with the otherwise dear companions of my childhood? It is because there is in them and in me a source of thoughts and affections which is not human. God is in it. God dwells in us, What happiness! What a bond! Does He not communicate Himself to the soul? Does He not render it conscious of His presence in love? Assuredly, yes. And if He is thus in us, the blessed source of our thoughts, can there be fear, or distance, or uncertainty, with regarding to what He is? None at all. His love is perfect in us” (John N. Darby).
His love is perfected in us by loving one another. Once more he uses the phrase “Hereby we know.” “Hereby we know that we dwell in Him, and He in us, because He hath given us of His Spirit.” “The Love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the indwelling Spirit.” He proceeds: “We have seen and testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.” Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the son of God, God dwelleth in Him and he in God.” What wonderful words these are! Can there be anything greater and more wonderful than dwelling in God and God dwelling in us! And this is true of every believer. If we confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, if we rest in His finished work as well, knowing the Father sent Him to be the Saviour, and our Saviour therefore, then the Holy Spirit dwells in us and as a result God dwelleth in us and we in God. There can be no question about it for God says so.
The enjoyment of it is a different matter. If it is not real to us and if we do not enjoy it there is something which hinders it in ourselves. If a great king should pay us a visit in our home and dwell there and we do not recognize the fact of the honor and privilege bestowed upon us, and if we do not trouble about it and show our appreciation of it, we would have no enjoyment in such a visit. To have the reality of it and enjoy the wonderful truth that God dwells in us and we in Him we must practise what our Lord said in Joh 14:23, “If a man love Me he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode in Him.” We must dwell in love, the very nature of God, and that love is manifested towards Him and towards the brethren. 1Jn 4:12 and 1Jn 4:16 make this clear. “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him.”
Another important fact is stated in the verses which follow: “Herein hath love been perfected with us, that we have boldness in the day of judgment, because as He is, even so are we in this world. There is no fear in love but perfect love casteth out fear, because fear has torment; and he that feareth is not perfected in love.” It has nothing to do with our love, as some take it nor with seeking an experience of being “perfect in love.” It is His love which casteth out fear, believing that love and dwelling in it. If we believe and know what God has made us in His infinite grace what Christ is, that as He is so are we, how can we fear anything! The coming day of judgment we await not only without any fear, but with boldness, for the day will only bring the full display of what Christ is and what we are in Him and with Him. The knowledge of His perfect love, the love which has reached down to us and lifted us so high, casteth out all fear.
(“It is a blessed love that Christ came into the world for such sinners as we are. But then there is the day of judgment. When I think of the love, I am all happy; but when I think of the day of judgment, my conscience is not quite easy. Though the heart may have tasted the love, the conscience not being quite clear, when I think of judgment I am not quite happy. This is what is provided for here. ‘As He is so are we in this world.’ The love was shown in visiting us when we were sinners; it is enjoyed in communion: but it is completed in this, that I am in Christ, and that Christ must condemn Himself in the day of judgment, if He condemns me, because He is, so am I in the world, I am glorified before I get there. He changes this vile body and makes it like to His glorious body. When I am before the judgment seat, I am in this changed and glorified body; I am like my judge” Synopsis of the Bible.)
1Jn 4:20-21; 1Jn 5:1-13.
Once more brotherly love is applied as the test. “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar.” God is in the believer, he is the object of God’s love, if therefore the brother is not loved, but hated, it is an evidence that God does not dwell in such a heart and again the beloved disciple brands such an one as a liar.
“Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God and every one that loveth Him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of Him.” This is very logical. Then he gives a counter test to show that it is genuine. “By this we know, that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments.” If we love God and keep His commandments, we can rest assured that we love the children of God also. If the soul goes out to Him in love, and it is shown by unreserved fidelity to His will, then love for those begotten of Him, the other members of the family of God, will be the result. “For this is the love of God that we keep His commandments, and His commandments are not grievous.” It is a different thing from the law which is called elsewhere a yoke which no one was able to bear (Act 15:10). Keeping His commandments means to be obedient to His Word, being subject unto Him in all things, for love to God is the spirit of obedience. But the children of God are in the world, though no longer of it. There are hindrances all about in the world which knew Him not and which know not the children of God. All in this world is opposition to God and hinders true obedience. But that which is born of God overcometh the world. Our faith is the victory which overcometh the world. What faith is it? It is the faith which is occupied with the Son of God, which yields obedience to Him, does His will. Such a faith is the victory that overcomes the world and its attractions. This is stated in 1Jn 5:5.
“And He, the Son of God, even Jesus Christ, came by water and blood-not by water only, but by water and blood.” “And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth” (1Jn 5:6). How beautiful is this passage and what divine perfection it reveals! Only John in his Gospel gives the account of the opened side of our adorable Saviour and that water and blood came forth out of the pierced side. “And he that saw it (John) bare record and his record is true and he knoweth that he saith true that ye might believe” (Joh 19:35). What the sinner needs is cleansing, a cleansing morally and a cleansing from guilt. The water is for cleansing, the blood telling of expiation cleanses from guilt. To make here of the water, baptism, and of the blood, the Lord’s Supper, is as false as it is ridiculous. It is purification and propitiation as accomplished and provided for in the death of Christ for the believer. As a result the Holy Spirit is here on earth. Note the Apostle John does not put forward his own testimony here as given in the above passage, but the Holy Spirit Himself beareth witness to it. He is on earth for this purpose to bear witness to Christ and the work of Christ. How awful the rejection of that witness appears in the light of these words--that rejection which is so widespread and pronounced in antichristian modernism!
The seventh verse (1Jn 5:17)has no business in our Bibles. It must be stricken out. It is an interpolation and all the historical evidences are against it. The oldest manuscripts do not contain these words which we read in 1Jn 5:7. Leaving out this inserted verse we notice the connection which exists between 1Jn 5:6 and 1Jn 5:8. “And there are three that bear witness on earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three are one.” The Spirit is the abiding witness of accomplished redemption, and He dwells in the believer.
1Jn 5:9-13 need no further detailed annotations. They are so plain and simple that only one wilfully blind can misunderstand them. God’s witness is concerning His Son. The believer who believes on the Son of God hath the witness in himself, that is, by the indwelling Spirit, and by the salvation he possesses, the new nature, the eternal life. Any man who does not believe God’s witness concerning His Son hath made Him a liar. Think of it, dear reader, the creature of the dust makes God, who cannot lie, a liar! This is the heinous sin of the great religious world. The record we have is, that God hath given to us eternal life, that this life is in His Son, that if we have the Son we have life, if we have not the Son we have not life. 1Jn 5:13 concludes the argument and teaching of the Epistle concerning eternal life.
Arno C. Gaebelein, The Annotated Bible (1913–1922) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv13, 19 True brotherly love:
True brotherly love:
v. 13. Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.
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v. 14. We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.
v. 15. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer; and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.
v. 16. Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.
v. 17. But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?
v. 18. My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.
The apostle, first of all, makes a general application of the thought which was included in the last sentence: And do not wonder, brethren, if the world hates you. What the righteous Abel experienced in the first days of the world’s history is the lot of all the righteous since his time. So it must not be a matter of surprise to us if we incur the hatred and must bear the enmity of the children of the world. Joh 15:18-19; Joh 17:14; Mat 10:16. Although the Christians are offering to the unbelievers the most wonderful blessings which were ever brought to this earth, although their one aim is to do good to all men, yet the unregenerate persistently resent the refusal of the Christians to join them in their transgressions. But this is not to be marveled at, because we are dealing with the world, with the children of unbelief, with such as willingly become identified with the trespass of Cain. Because the unbelievers prefer their life of sin and unbelief, which will finally land them in everlasting destruction, they cannot but hate the Christians.
The contrast, therefore, will remain: On our part, we know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren; he that does not love his brother remains in death. The distinction between unbelievers and believers, between world and Church, is clear and will remain till the end of time. So far as we are concerned, we have the knowledge, we are sure, that we have left our former state of spiritual death and have passed over to the true life in and with God. Our hearts that were formerly dead in sins are now turned to God in faith and love. We know that we have forgiveness of sins, and thus we have the willingness and the power to do that which pleases God. It was not a case of our choosing to embrace the truth, but of God’s choosing us and drawing us to Himself in the fullness of His mercy and grace. Of this we have evidence in the fact that we love the brethren. If we had not been converted through the power of God, it would be impossible for us to love the brethren. Noun-regenerated person is able to feel and to give evidence of real, genuine love. But the absence of this love is a sure sign that such a person is still lying in the death of sins. Moreover, he will remain in this spiritual death as long as he continues in his uncharitable attitude. In a case of this kind all external worship, all pretense at prayer, all churchgoing, all conversing of God and things divine, will avail nothing whatever: he that has no true love and gives no evidence of true love will remain in death until the Spirit of God works spiritual life in him.
The apostle repeats the same truth from the positive side: Every one that hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. In the phraseology of St. John, "not to love" and "to hate" are evidently synonyms; there is no neutral ground. That is the condition of natural man after the Fall: he has no true love for his neighbor in his heart, but only hatred, since being indifferent in the sight of God is identical with hating. Natural man is selfish and loves only himself. And therefore he is, in the judgment of God, a murderer, a homicide; for God judges the disposition of the heart. This is one of the strongest passages in Scriptures to throw the responsibility, also for sins of desire, of the heart, on the sinner. And all such men, all that are guilty of hatred, of the lack of proper love for their brother, have not the eternal life, that spiritual life which is begun in conversion and lasts beyond the grave, abiding in them. They belong in the kingdom of the devil, the murderer from the beginning. That is the terrible, the fearful lot of those that do not love their brethren. What an earnest warning to Christians not to let the love for their brethren leave their hearts, since the new spiritual life cannot remain in their hearts under such circumstances!
The apostle now gives a description and example of genuine brotherly love: In this have we known love, that He has laid down His life for us; and we should lay down our lives for the brethren. This is the one perfect example and type of love for all times. We Christians have realized and know what love is and means, wherein true love consists, how it expresses itself, in the example of Christ. For He, out of free love and merciful favor, laid down His life for us; He suffered the death which we had earned by our sins. His own holy life He laid down as the ransom, as the price, thus giving up the greatest, the most precious of earth’s gifts in order to deliver us. As one that was cursed of God, as a criminal in the sight of men He gave up His life. This example of love, than which there can be none more perfect, we Christians have before our eyes always. It teaches us the great lesson and obligation to love our brethren to such a degree as also to be willing to lay down our lives for them, if it will be for their benefit, to their advantage. Naturally this greatest sacrifice includes all the smaller services which we are called upon to perform for the brethren, the Christians ever forgetting, denying themselves in order to help and be of service to others.
Diametrically opposed to such unselfishness is the conduct which the apostle describes: But whoever has a living in this world and sees his brother have need and shuts up his mercies from him, how does the love of God remain in him? If we are under obligations to give up the highest and most precious gift of life for the sake of our brother, the smaller sacrifices, the minor evidences of love, will certainly offer no difficulties. If a person has a comfortable living in this world, if he possesses enough of this world’s goods for his own support and that of his family, those dependent upon him, he should really have incentive enough to share willingly with those in need. If such a one, however, sees his brother, his neighbor, in want, lacking the actual necessities of life, if he becomes a witness of his sorry plight, and yet closes up his heart before him, turns from him in the hardness of his heart, surely the conclusion is justified that he has lost the love and the faith which he might have possessed at one time. In such a case the Lord will also turn from him, will withdraw His love from the heartless wretch, since the love which the Lord demanded of him is no longer in evidence in his conduct and life. He has fallen back into spiritual death.
St. John, therefore, admonishes: Little children, let us not love with word or with the tongue, but in deed and in truth. Talk is cheap, as St. James shows, chap. 2:15-16, but it does not provide warm clothing or nourishing food. The mere expression of good will, unless backed up by real deeds, by acts which will provide the assistance for which the need is shown to exist, is worthless, a hollow sound. In some cases, indeed, it may be forgetfulness on the part of the Christians when they fail to provide for needs which are shown to exist, but in others there is danger of damnable hypocrisy, that covetousness and love of money hinder the professed Christian from showing concrete proof of the brotherly love of which he should give evidence. This admonition is certainly timely in these latter days of the dying out of true love, Mat 24:12.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv11, 13, 16, 19, 23 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Here John teaches believers how they can recognize each other by the way they live; he teaches his readers to love each other.
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General Information:
Cain and Abel were the first sons of Adam and Eve, the first man and woman.
We should not be like Cain
"We should not do as Cain did"
brother
This refers to Cain's younger brother Abel.
Why did he kill him? Because
John uses a question to teach his audience. This can be translated as a statement. AT: "He killed him because" (See: Rhetorical Question)
his works were evil and his brother's righteous
The words "works were" are also understood in the second phrase. AT: "Cain's works were evil and his brother's works were righteous" or "Cain did evil things and his brother did what was right" (See: Ellipsis)
translationWords
love
Cain
evil
works
righteous
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv11, 12, 14, 16, 19, 23 3:11-22 John now focuses on the believers’ need to…
3:11-22 John now focuses on the believers’ need to love one another (see John 13:34).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.