1 John 3:13-15

1 John 3:13-15. Cain becomes ‘the world,' and Abel ‘you;' the emphasis resting on these two words.

1 John 3:14. There is no exhortation in this. Faithful to the thought of the great message, the apostle says: We know that we have passed out of death into life. Here the transition is regarded as perfect; and the evidence to ourselves is, because we love the brethren. Not, ‘We are now in the life because we love;' but, ‘Because we love we know.' Love is not the cause, but the fruit and evidence of regeneration.

He that loveth not abideth in death: the love is here general. But in the next verse it is made specific in two ways: first, it is whosoever hateth his brother not to love is to hate; and, secondly, he who hateth is a murderer with allusion to Cain, and to one behind Cain who ‘was a murderer from the beginning.' The remainder of the verse must be regarded as an appeal to the Christian or human instinct: Ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. The abiding is simply an echo of the former: it says nothing about his having had it and lost it, or as to his not retaining it hereafter; but is quite general, as when our Lord said, ‘Ye have not My word abiding in you.' The argument is an apostrophe: ‘No man who would destroy life can have life in himself.' Mark, finally, that the last words declare ‘eternal life' to be the true Divine life of regeneration or fellowship with God, not life as mere continuance in being. There would be no meaning in ‘hath not abiding life abiding in him.'