*We* know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love [his] brother abides in death.
This verse follows a warning: do not be surprised when the world hates you. Against that hatred it sets a quiet certainty. It offers a test anyone can apply: love for fellow believers is how you know a change has already taken place in you.
John's words here echo something Jesus Himself said.
These words deserve extra weight, because they link at once to words of the greatest weight in the Gospel. In John 5:24 the Lord Himself used the same words in the last clause. There He was speaking to the individual believer, and He did not use the emphatic "we": "Truly, truly, I say to you, 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."
William Kelly (Kelly used an older translation, in which both verses end with the same words.)
The change has two sides:
Death was his lost condition through sin; but he now lives of His life. This change has taken place already for the soul, though not yet for the body.
It would be easy to read the verse backwards, as though loving other Christians were what earns the new life. The order runs the other way.
Of all people on earth, only believers, only brothers in the Lord, only "we" can say that we have passed out of death into life because we love our brothers. This love is the testimony to it and the practical evidence of it; but faith alone through Christ's grace brought us into the blessing. We neither received life eternal, nor passed out of death into life, because we loved our brothers. Back then we hated them, because we were dead in sins. But when we believed God, we passed out of death into eternal life. Only then did we come to know them, and we have loved them ever since.
The love in view is not personal preference or shared background. It shows itself with people you have no natural reason to be drawn to.
Love is the practical proof of divine life. We meet a child of God who has been a complete stranger to us until now. He may be far above us in social standing, or, on the contrary, in a much humbler position. He may come from another land and speak a different language. Yet at once our love goes out to one another, and we are on closer terms than with our own relatives. The reason is simple: we have the same life — eternal life — with the same Object, Christ.
The verse sits inside a larger argument that has already sorted people into two families, and love is the second thing that tells them apart.
The apostle has now named the two families, the family of God and that of the devil. He adds the second mark. Where that mark is missing, it proves that the person is not of God. He had already spoken of righteousness; he adds love for fellow believers... If this love is an essential proof of being renewed, it is quite natural that it should not be found in the men of the world.
The second half of the verse is worded with unusual care — not "he is dead," but something more settled.
Notice how pointed his language is. He does not just say that the man is dead. He says that he abides in death. Whatever he claimed to be, he was always dead spiritually, and he abides in death. The proof is that he never loved the one he was called to love as of God's family. He had no love; but he would have love if he had the life of Christ in his soul.
Religious credentials do not survive this test:
There may be a high religious profession, and a zeal for so-called Christianity, but to have no love for fellow believers is to have no divine life.
Having this life and feeling sure of it are two different things.
Not all who have life have peace. They have eternal life, but do not know it... they look to Christ, and cannot give Him up; they little think that the self-humbling experience they have is the effect of their having life.
- Life first. We passed out of death into life by believing God, through Christ's grace. It is already done for the soul, though not yet for the body.
- Love follows. Love for other believers is the evidence of that life, never the payment for it. Before it, we hated them.
- Life explains love. Believers who are strangers become closer than family. They share the same life and the same Object, Christ.
- Love sorts. Love is the second mark, after righteousness, that tells the two families apart. Its absence in the world is no surprise.
- Love, or death remains. The verse does not say "dead" but "abides in death." No religious record or zeal can replace the love that divine life always produces.
Every one that hates his brother is a murderer, and ye know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
John has just made love for fellow believers the evidence of having passed from death to life. Now he turns to the dark side of that test. He gives hatred a name no one would choose for himself, and then ties a verdict about eternal life to that name.
The verse does not describe an act. It describes what is working inside a person before any act happens. That inward working is the real measure of the man.
"Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer." Here he comes down with greater severity. It is not merely one who does not love, but the positive activity of hating. His words are more open and his conduct more outrageous. He shows his hatred, and so he is called a "murderer." The apostle here goes down to the root of things. When hatred is found to mark a man's spirit under trial, he is a murderer in principle. The Lord speaks the same way about lust: a man who indulges lust he ought to judge, rather than allow, is an adulterer in principle. God deals with the heart and not with the externals only in Christianity. The inward working, as well as what comes out, is what marks the man who claims to be a Christian. A court of law could never accept such evidence.
Most people assume a middle position: they neither love a person nor hate him. John removes that option, and he does it the way Jesus did with anger.
Verse 15 puts the case even more strongly. The truth is that we cannot be neutral here. If we do not love our brother we hate him; and he who hates is potentially a murderer. Cain was an actual murderer. But in Matthew 5:21-22 the Lord Jesus puts the emphasis not on the act but on the anger and hatred behind it. Our verse here does the same... As we abide in Him, eternal life abides in us, and the very nature of that life is love.
The word John uses for "murderer" is wider than a legal conviction. It is also the word used of the devil.
The Greek word anthropoktonos comes from anthropos, "man," and kteino, "to slay." It is closer to our word "man-slayer," and it is used even when no murder has taken place. "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." 1 John 3:15. The devil "was a murderer from the beginning." John 8:44. This word sets the killing of man against eternal life for man through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Hatred can hide behind friendly words for years before it shows what it always was. That is why John names the nature and not the deed.
Hatred is the very spirit of murder. The apostle of course speaks of the man's nature here, not of his acts. Still, Cain's hateful nature led to his actual murder of Abel... The hatred of Judas did not show itself for three and a half years, but then he was proven a murderer also. What a dreadful description of all who use a form of godliness as a cloak of deception!
The negative statement carries a positive one inside it. If "abiding in him" is what the murderer lacks, then that is what the Christian has.
So it is eternal life or no life... And again in his first epistle John says, "Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him" (1 John 3:15). Those words would have no force unless the Christian has eternal life abiding in him.
Many have read the second half of the verse as shutting the door of salvation on anyone who has killed. Commentators answer that the verse describes a nature. Grace gives a new nature, and God then looks at the person through it.
"You know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him" has often been misunderstood. It has been taken to mean that no murderer can be saved... Is it not plain that the apostle points to the nature that marks one who, like Cain, is of the wicked one? A man does not need to take the life of a fellow man to be a murderer; he is one already, because he has that nature... But when the grace of God lays hold of one who is like this in His eyes, he is born anew — "born from above." He has a new nature, and that is what now marks him in God's eyes.
- Nature, not verdict. The verse names what a person is, not what a court could prove; hatred is murder in seed form.
- Nature shows. Cain acted at once, Judas waited three and a half years — hidden hatred is still the same nature, only slower.
- Nature has a father. The word used for "murderer" is the word used of the devil in John 8:44; hatred is a family resemblance.
- Nature has an opposite. No middle ground exists: if we do not love our brother, we hate him.
- Nature can be changed. The verse is not a locked door for the guilty. It describes the old nature. God views the one born again by the new life that abides in him.