For this is the message which ye have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another
John has just marked out two families by two visible signs: doing righteousness, and loving one's brother. Here he takes up love, and raises the questions this verse turns on — which "beginning" he means, and how this call differs from the old command to love your neighbour.
John used the word "message" once before, in the first chapter. One writer sets the two side by side and weighs the small word "from":
He begins, "For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning." You will remember that in verse 5 of the first chapter we had the same phrase: "This then is the message which we have heard from Him." Here it is still more precise. It was not before the beginning, but "from the beginning." Both make it decisive. What men added is of no account. This stands: the unchangeable truth of practical Christianity. It matters all the more because it runs flat against the common ideas of men.
So which beginning does John mean? The verse itself gives the answer:
We again see in the first of these verses the proof of what "the beginning" is here. The great thing we have to look to, as regards life, and what that life is, is Christ manifested in this world. "This is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another." There Christ stands out clearly as the One who alone could give us the true measure and character of everything else: He is the truth. Divine light like this did not exist until Christ came.
Why is this call such a change for us? One writer starts with what fallen man is like, then says what the message is not:
If there is any one thing that stamps a fallen man, it is that he is always the centre of his own thoughts and feelings. We are what we seek and value. Self is certainly not love… But you heard this message "from the beginning" — clearly from the time Christ was here. And it was not a mere call to love one's neighbour as one's self. That was the law.
John does not leave this as advice. Later in the same chapter he gives it a stronger name:
Loving one another as brothers and sisters is not only the message "that you have heard from the beginning" (1 John 3:11). It is also "His [God's] commandment … as He [His Son Jesus Christ] gave us commandment" (1 John 3:23). It is the commandment of the Lord Jesus, ratified and endorsed by God. A commandment therefore of the utmost solemnity.
Right after this verse, John names Cain. That is no accident:
Having shown this, he now brings in the other test: not simply righteousness but love… Man now is not only a sinner. His character shows above all in this: he shows no love. By love he means what is of God, and this exclusively. He does not of course deny natural affection, but insists on love as divine. Cain had no love, and proved it by slaying his own brother… He here traces the link that binds righteousness with love. We have had righteousness on its own, and love on its own. Now he shows that the two are woven together, and that you find them only in the same people.
If love could be manufactured by effort, the test would prove nothing about birth. Writers point out how John frames it:
"God is love." This is His essential nature. That other word, "God is light," expresses His holiness. So if we have this nature through being born of Him, love must mark us, and it will reach out to all that the heart of God reaches out to. Notice again: seen this way, love is not pointed out as a responsibility. Effort cannot produce love. No — love is a necessity of the divine nature, and therefore a necessity for the child of God.
- Message. John calls this "the message" — something his readers heard from the start, not an idea men added later.
- Beginning. "From the beginning" means from the time Christ was here, so no later idea can improve on it.
- Measure. Christ Himself sets the standard; this is more than the law's "love your neighbour as yourself."
- Weight. What John calls a message he also calls a commandment given by the Son and endorsed by God.
- Evidence. Effort cannot produce love. It flows from the nature God gives — and Cain, who had none, shows the other family.
not as Cain was of the wicked one, and slew his brother; and on account of what slew he him? because his works were wicked, and those of his brother righteous.
John has just said that the message from the beginning is that we should love one another. To show the opposite, he points back to the first family on earth. The example is a murder. The verse asks and answers its own question: not how Cain killed, but why.
John does not simply call Cain wicked. He traces him to a source. One writer shows how far John pushes that contrast:
He draws a sharp contrast between the children of God and the children of the devil, tracing both to the root of the matter. Not content with calling them evil, children of wrath like others, he says here "children of the devil."... Cain is not to be our pattern but to be shunned. And why? He "murdered his brother." That is where his wickedness carried him. Certainly this was not love but hatred; and that is what John wants to show. He will not allow any middle ground between love and hatred.
Most people condemn Cain for the killing. The verse points further back, to something God calls evil before a hand was ever raised:
From our earliest years he has been set before our minds as a figure of shame; indeed, as one of the wickedest men in earth's earliest ages. Ask many people why Cain is looked at with such horror, and they would likely answer, "Because he killed his brother." But Scripture puts the case differently... So there was something behind his murder of Abel, and God calls it "evil." A closer look shows that his sin against man came after a sin against God. Sadly, people usually treat that sin against God very lightly.
Cain was religious. He came to God with an offering, and God calls that offering evil:
Do you know why he killed him? Four thousand years after this terrible murder, God gives the reason for it... God tells us here that the way of Cain was evil — his "works," supposed to be suited to God, were evil. If you are unsaved, even though you are religious, your works are evil. It is no good to deny it... His works were evil, and so his anger appeared, and he killed his brother. Only think — he was guilty of murder because he was angry that his brother was accepted, and he himself was not.
Behind the rejected offering lay a denial:
Cain founded a religion that denied God's righteous claims, even though man had fallen away from God. He also overlooked the fact of the curse that had come in through that fall... Cain worked the ground. Though it was cursed, it gave him its fruit. He brought that fruit from the cursed ground as if there were no curse at all, and offered it to God... The moment the fall is a fact, we can bring nothing to God that He will accept except through the death of Christ... What marked the religion Cain invented was bringing God an offering in a way that denied the great principle, "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins."
The trigger was not injury done to Cain. It was the sight of what was right in someone else:
Cain's works were wicked, and because of this he hated his brother, and killed him... Sin, hatred, and murder marked him. What provoked him and set his whole evil nature in motion was what was of God in Abel... The word of God in the heart is the secret of righteousness in the saints. It is also the secret of the world's hatred of them: "I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world" (John 17:14).
Cain shows one family. Those born of God show the other:
Cain, the offspring of the devil, was a lawless man, and as a result he hated and killed his brother. As begotten of God we have love as our proper nature, and are left here to practise righteousness also. When we love our brother and practise righteousness, we show clearly that we are children of God.
The verse also tests anyone who claims to belong to God:
When someone who claims to be a Christian hates his brother, that hatred proves he is in the state of death. It shows he is linked with the murderer from the beginning.
- Source. John does not just call Cain evil. He calls him "of that wicked one." He traces both families to their root and leaves no middle ground between love and hatred.
- Sequence. The murder was the second sin, not the first. Earlier came an offering from cursed ground, brought without blood, as if the fall had never happened.
- Spark. Nothing Abel did to Cain provoked him. Righteousness in another was enough. The word of God kept in the heart still draws the world's hatred.
- Sign. Two families, two sets of marks: love and righteousness on one side, hatred and lawlessness on the other.
- Self-test. Hatred of a brother is not a small failing. It is evidence of death, and a tie to the murderer from the beginning.