Sermon Tone Analysis
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/10 //By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.
11 //For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.
12 //We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother.
And why did he murder him?
Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.
13 //Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.
14 //We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers.
Whoever does not love abides in death.
15 //Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
16 //By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
17 //But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?
18 //Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth./
}}}
The book of 1 John gives us several “tests” or “proofs” that we have become children of God through the new birth.
The Apostle John wanted his readers to have some assurance that they were different from the apostates who, by leaving the church, indicated that in reality they were not born again.
John essentially gives three types of tests of true regeneration: doctrine, righteousness, and love.
Last week we read more about the second test, but at the end of verse 10 John transitions into the third test.
He writes, “By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, /nor is the one who does not love his brother/.”
John defends his use of love as a test of genuine salvation in verse 11.
The reason why our love for others is a proof of our faith is because the command to love “is the message that you have heard from the beginning.”
As John said in 1 John 2:7, it is an “old commandment.”
John’s opponents evidently ignored the commandment, but John reminds us that we have no right to believe we are a child of God if we are not lovers of God’s people.
We cannot ignore the command to love others.
But John has also told us that the command to love is in another sense a “new commandment.”
Because of Christ’s example, those who belong to God through faith in Christ have learned a new way of love that is radical and unknown to the world.
Only those who exemplify this kind of love are truly born of God.
So John has already set the stage for what he is about to say, namely, that /the kind of love that demonstrates authentic faith will be misunderstood by the world and will even cause the world to hate us/.
Those who live with this kind of love will stand out clearly in a world full of hate.
Here is how John lays out his thoughts in this passage.
First, he shows us what the world is like without the love of God by using an Old Testament character, Cain, as his example.
Then, he shows that the new birth is what makes it possible for people to love.
Finally, he urges all believers to demonstrate a life of love, using Christ as the perfect example of how it should be done.
!
THE WORLD DOES NOT LOVE
John wants us to love one another.
But before he expounds upon what this kind of love looks like, he wants us to see a negative example.
Cain, is an example, albeit an extreme one, of a life lived without the love that comes from the new birth.
!! Cain is the prototype for the world
The story of Cain and his brother, Abel, is recorded in Genesis 4:1-16.
John’s commentary on this story is limited to one thing: the motive behind Cain’s murder of his brother.
This is something that is not altogether clear in the Genesis account.
We are not told why God accepted Abel’s offering but not Cain’s.
Nevertheless it seems from Genesis 4:7 that it was Cain’s own fault that his offering was rejected.
Evidently God had given instruction about how to worship him, but Cain had disregarded God’s instruction and made an offering his own way.
In response, God rejected not only Cain’s offering, but Cain himself (Gen 4:5).
On the other hand, Cain’s brother, Abel, followed God’s instructions and was accepted.
But because of this, Cain despised his brother, and killed him.
That the murder was premeditated is made clear by John.
There was a motive: “his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.”
In other words, Cain’s motive was jealousy, but not in the normal sense of the word.
Cain was jealous of Abel because Abel had done what was right and had thereby received God’s favor.
Cain saw that Abel’s righteousness had won God’s favor, and Cain hated his brother because of it.
He hated him so badly that he brutally killed Abel.
The word /murder/ in 1 John 3:12 means the violent killing of another, and is used to describe Jesus as the Lamb of God who was slain (Rev.
5:6, 12).
!! The world will hate us
Now the reason John mentions Cain and his murder of Abel is not so much to give us a negative example of love, but rather to show how the world will respond to the love of God within us.
So in verse 13 he says, in light of what Cain did to Abel, “do not be surprised that the world hates you.”
As Abel was to Cain, so Christians are to the world.
The world will hate Christians as wickedness hates righteousness.
Notice how illogical this hatred is.
Abel did nothing wrong, certainly nothing injurious to Cain.
But he was hated by Cain nonetheless.
Christians will be hated not because of anything wrong done to the world.
We are, in fact, to show love to the world and so give them no legitimate reason to despise us (Titus 2:7-8).
We are to love our neighbor and do good to them.
It is a good thing to be at peace with your neighbor.
But our right standing with God will be a constant reminder to the world that they have been rejected by God.
So it will come as no surprise when we do have to bear the hostility of the world simply because of our association with Christ.
If he was hated, so his followers will be.
This is what Jesus predicted in John 15:18-19.
{{{"
/If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
/
}}}
The world will hate us “because [we] are not of the world.”
John says in 1 John 3:14 that the Christian has “passed out of death into life.”
The world will hate us, then, because we have left their ranks.
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LOVE COMES FROM LIFE
John describes the world as haters and murderers and as those who abide in death.
The believer in Christ, in comparison, abides in life.
Consequently, one can know that he has left the ranks of the world by the fact that he now loves other Christians.
This is the miracle of the new birth.
It is not subjective change, but real objective transformation.
Once we were haters; now we are lovers.
And this love is played out in our relationships with others.
John mentions our love for the brothers, that is, for our fellow believers in the church, because a lack of love displayed here is a clear indication that we have not been changed by the new birth.
But John would surely not limit the command to love only to the believing community.
Jesus said we should love even our enemies (Matt 5:44).
But if love cannot be successfully lived out in the community, then it will never be lived out in the world.
So a major characteristic of a true believer in Christ is that he loves other Christians.
John says that the absence of love is hatred.
And if we hate it makes us a murderer like Cain and so proves that eternal life does not abide in us.
At first glance it seems like quite a leap to equate hatred with murder.
But Jesus said something similar (Matt 5:21-22).
And when we hate someone our attitude is the same as a murderer—we wish that the other person were not here.[1]
It is this pairing of hatred (or the absence of love) with murder that should make us pause and take note.
How we feel about others is extremely important.
Our attitude toward others—and toward other Christians in particular—is a good indicator of where our relationship with God lies.
It will not do for us to excuse ourselves on the grounds that we are not “people persons.”
Jesus said that “whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.
He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24).
Everyone who experiences the new birth changes in their affections toward other people.
That is why love is a solid indicator of whether or not we have been born again.
Love comes only from the life that God gives.
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