Children, let no man lead you astray; he that practises righteousness is righteous, even as *he* is righteous.
John warns his readers against teachers who were spreading a lie about sin. The verse gives a simple test — what a person practises — and then sets the standard as high as it can go with the words "as he is righteous."
The warning is not vague. It answers a specific error circulating among those John wrote to.
"Little children, let no one deceive you." This is what the false teachers and antichrists were doing. They had invented a terrible theory. They said the great blessing of Christ had swept away all need of self-judgment and holiness — that sin was gone in every sense. So a believer might take his ease in the world. If Christ had taken away all sin, why talk about it any more? What need of repentance or confession?
Notice who John is speaking to. The words "little children" are not aimed at beginners only, but at everyone in the family.
This is the only time the Lord Himself uses the word "little children" — a small form of the word that expresses affection. It does not mean a young believer only. It is the address of love to all His own. The disciple whom Jesus loved uses it the same way in his letter, when he addresses the whole family of God.
"Whoever practices righteousness" describes a settled habit, not a scattering of good deeds.
The doing is something habitual and characteristic. It is not that they do righteousness off and on, now and again, but that they practise it as the habit of their lives. They are far from being perfect in it — only One was that. Still, as born of God they necessarily have His nature. He is righteous: we know that right well. So righteousness must mark those born of Him: it could not be otherwise. When we see someone really practising righteousness, we are safe in assuming that such a person is a true child of God.
The word is wider than commercial honesty. Commentators define it as answering rightly to every relationship you stand in.
Notice that this goes much further than just paying your taxes, paying the people you owe, and using honest weights. It is responding to all moral relationships and duties.
Yet decent conduct on its own does not qualify.
The practice of righteousness is not simply the kindness and moral principles that the world can approve. It must show true faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Without that it is not righteousness at all, for God's claims of righteousness come first. We see His righteousness in Christ, and a true believer will, in his own measure, clearly resemble his Master in character.
Christ is the pattern, and the alternative is to invent a lower one from human society.
I must get my ideas of righteousness from the Righteous One. Otherwise I will have no true thought of righteousness. I might take honesty among men to be the righteousness spoken of here. But it is not that. I get the truth about a man when I see him in his relations with God. Cain and Abel probably got on well enough together until it became a question of approach to God. Both may have been just as honest in their dealings with men. But the true nature of each came to light when they set up their altars.
A verse like this can send an anxious reader inward, looking for evidence. That is the wrong direction.
This often alarms anyone immature in faith, because he at once naturally turns to look within. He does not find ground for satisfaction there, and, what is more, he never can. What we have to do is in the first place to rest on Christ made to us righteousness. This is the direction of faith. There is no object of faith in looking at ourselves; it brings experience of our utter weakness. Only when Christ fills the spiritual eye is His strength made perfect in our weakness. Then indeed follows practical righteousness.
God's claims on a Christian are not lowered. What changes is where the power to meet them comes from.
God has moral claims, and He does not lower these claims in the case of a Christian. On the contrary, responsibility on our part must rise in proportion as He makes known His grace and truth. But let us not forget that His grace gives power: a claim never does.
- Warning. The deception John blocks is the idea that because Christ dealt with sin, holiness and self-judgment no longer matter.
- Practice. The test is not what a person says but what he practises day after day — a settled character of righteousness, not perfection.
- Relationship. Righteousness means answering rightly in every moral relationship and duty. It is far more than paying your bills.
- Standard. The measure is Christ Himself. Take your standard from society and you get Cain's decency: correct with men, wrong with God.
- Spring. Look inward for proof and you find only weakness. Rest on Christ as your righteousness, and practical righteousness follows. Grace gives power; a claim never does.
He that practises sin is of the devil; for from [the] beginning the devil sins. To this end the Son of God has been manifested, that he might undo the works of the devil.
John draws a line through the whole human race: what a person practises shows who they belong to. Verse 8 traces sin back to the devil, then names the reason the Son of God appeared.
This verse has terrified people who know they have sinned. One writer traces the fear to a mistranslation, and points to two men who both failed:
This terror of soul comes from two mistakes: not seeing the two natures, and a mistranslation in these verses. It should be, "He that practises sin is of the devil." In each case it is "practises sin." ... Among the twelve disciples we have a striking instance of the difference. Judas practised sin; he sought an opportunity to betray Christ, and he was of the devil. When Peter sinned, sad as it was, did that look of Jesus say, "There, Peter, you have denied Me; you may go; you are of the devil now"? What a contrast!
"Of the devil" is not about ancestry. It describes a shared moral character:
He who practises sin is of the devil, and has morally the same nature as the devil; for he sins from the beginning — it is his original character as the devil. Now Christ was manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil. How then can one who shares the character of this enemy of souls be with Christ?
The same test applies to the believer. Sin in a Christian is not the new life at work:
When a believer sins, is this the activity of the nature received from God by new birth? Clearly not. It is the outflow of the nature inherited from Adam. But it is also the replication of the characteristics of the devil. For the human race, Adam is the source of sin. But in a practical sense, the devil is the pattern of sin.
The phrase does not stretch back into eternity. One writer sets its limit:
"From the beginning" is always in time, not before it, whatever epoch or period, person or thing it may be applied to. Take the earliest use of it. It is said of the great angel who fell: "the devil sins from the beginning." That was not even the beginning of his existence as an angel, but only of his existence as a fallen one.
The word behind "destroy" appears often in the New Testament, and usually with another sense:
The word here translated from the Greek into English as "destroy" occurs forty-two times in the New Testament. In most places it is commonly and correctly rendered "loose." Matthew 21:2 says "loose" the tied donkey. John 11:44 says "loose" Lazarus from his graveclothes. Luke 13:16 says, "Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound for eighteen years, to be loosed?"
Another writer names exactly what is undone:
The devil was committed to lawlessness from the outset. What he has done, leading men into lawlessness, the Son of God came to undo.
Taking away sins is not the whole of what He came to do:
He was manifested to take away the sins of those who are His. He was no less manifested to destroy the works of the devil. That undoing goes far beyond man's sins. It includes all the malice that dishonours God and injures man. We cannot overlook that here the Son of God stands against the evil one in person.
The decisive blow fell at the cross. The full clearance is still ahead:
His blessed, willing sacrifice of Himself at Calvary is the full destruction of the power of the devil (compare Hebrews 2:14). For there the blessed Son of God fully met sin and atoned for it — and sin is the only weapon in Satan's hand. Can the believer therefore have the slightest sympathy with the works of the devil, which Christ came to destroy?
Every trace of the one who introduced sin among God's creatures is to be removed. By the power of the blood of the cross, all things in heaven and on earth will be brought back into perfect harmony with God. They will be purged completely and permanently from the defilement of sin (Colossians 1:20).
- Pattern. The devil is the pattern of sin. Anyone who makes sin their practice is copying him. The copying, not a single failure, is what the verse exposes.
- Practice. Judas practised sin and was of the devil; Peter sinned and was still met by the look of Jesus. The distinction is between a life and a lapse.
- Beginning. "From the beginning" marks the start of the devil's fallen career, not the start of his existence.
- Loosing. "Destroy" is the word for loosing a donkey, loosing Lazarus, loosing a bound woman. Christ came to untie what the devil tied.
- Reach. The undoing goes beyond our sins to every work of malice against God and man. It was settled at the cross. It ends when no trace of the enemy is left in creation.
Whoever has been begotten of God does not practise sin, because his seed abides in him, and he cannot sin, because he has been begotten of God.
John writes here in absolute terms: the one born of God does not sin, and in fact cannot sin. Yet the same letter says that anyone who claims to have no sin is self-deceived. So what does John mean, and what is this "seed"?
Everything turns on one word. Is John ruling out a single act of sin, or a settled habit of sin?
On the one hand the apostle says, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." On the other hand he says, "I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin" — he supposes this possible, but not normal. The force of these words is not that a believer cannot commit a sin. Scripture and experience alike contradict that. It is that he cannot practise it, or be sinning, as he once was.
Two things clear up the difficulty. The first is how ordinary speech states the character of a thing. The second is John's own definition of sin, given a few verses earlier.
When we speak in the abstract, we leave out every qualifying detail on purpose. That way we set out more clearly the essential nature of the thing we are speaking about. To take the simplest of illustrations: we say, cork floats, alcohol intoxicates, fire burns. By this we state the essential character of these things. We do not commit ourselves to what may look like contradictions in practice. The old lady in the cottage might say, on this cold and windy day, that she only wished her fire did burn. We all know that this fault, which happens at times, does not alter the truth of the abstract statement — fire burns. The second help is to read this passage in the light of verse 4, where the word "sin" is defined for us. The point all through is the practice of righteousness, which shows itself in obedience, in contrast with the practice of lawlessness, which shows itself in disobedience.
Commentators differ here. Some tie the seed to the word of God:
So Scripture speaks of "the implanted word," and the apostle John connects the new nature with the word in the same way. The seed is Peter's "imperishable seed" of "the word of God," but the life the Spirit gives causes it to germinate; and, being everlasting life, His seed remains.
Others identify it as the life of Christ. That is why John says the believer cannot sin, not that he should not:
He says, "he cannot sin" (not, he ought not to sin). He speaks of the new man, not taking account of the old, but as being the true "I." If I sin, it is entirely my fault, for the temptation is never beyond what we are able to bear. "The seed of God" is the life of Christ in us, the new nature.
The last words give the reason: birth. A child carries the nature of the one who gave it life.
He who is born of God does not practise sin. The reason is obvious: he is made a partaker of the nature of God; he derives his life from Him. This principle of divine life is in him. He cannot sin, because he is born of God. This new nature did not have in it the principle of sin, so as to commit it. How could it be that the divine nature should sin?
The verse describes a nature, not an achievement:
We are not sinless. We do not believe in sinless perfection, but we have a nature that is sinless.
Yet this is no cover for sin.
The believer therefore cannot practise sin. If he does at any time sin, this is an act foreign to his proper nature. It is the product of the flesh, which remains in him, though he is "not in the flesh." There is a remedy for this, as we have seen in this letter, but no excuse whatever. The least sin is contrary to our proper nature as born of God.
The abstract statement is not a fiction, because God intends to make it visible.
John views us here in the abstract, according to the essential character of the new nature which is ours. He is entitled to do so. When God has completed His work concerning us, we shall be this not merely in the abstract but absolutely. The last trace of the Adam nature will be gone when our very bodies are glorified.
- Birth. Everything hangs on one cause: birth from God. The life comes from Him, so it carries His character.
- Seed. The gift is a seed that remains — permanent and imperishable. Some call it the word that gave the life; others, the life of Christ itself.
- Practice. John rules out the habit, not the single failure. A believer may sin; he cannot make sin his trade, as he once did.
- Abstract. John states it the way we say fire burns. The flesh is still there: this is a nature that cannot sin, not a person who never does.
- Glory. What is now true of the new nature alone will one day be true of us entirely, when the last trace of the old is gone.
In this are manifest the children of God and the children of the devil. Whoever does not practise righteousness is not of God, and he who does not love his brother.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
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.
Do not wonder, brethren, if the world hate you.
John has just pointed back to Cain and his murder of Abel. Now he tells his readers not to be shocked when the world hates them. Why is that hatred no surprise for people who belong to God? And what should a believer do with it?
The surprise John forbids is one we still feel. And who is this "world" that hates?
So there is nothing surprising if the believer meets the hatred of this world. The "world" here is not the world-system — a system cannot hate. It is the people that the world-system controls. The child of God does not hate them. How could he, when it is his very nature to love? The world hates him, for the same reason as he who does evil hates the light, for the same reason as Cain hated Abel. Sadly, we must admit that we often do marvel when we are hated. That is very foolish of us. It is what we should expect, given the nature of things.
The cause goes back to the first family. Cain suffered no injury from his brother. What stirred him was his brother's righteousness.
Cain's works were wicked, and because of this he hated his brother, and killed him. He belonged to the evil one, and the devil's moral features marked him. Sin, hatred, and murder marked his life. What provoked him, and set his whole evil nature in motion, was what was of God in Abel: "Why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous." So the saints are not to marvel if the world hates them. It is only natural to it to do so. It did not know Christ, and it does not know the children of God. It hated Him, and it hates them. 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).
But who exactly did John have in mind? One writer's answer is uncomfortable.
Who made up the world? And who were these haters the apostle had in mind? Mainly, at least, those who had once been part of the church's fellowship and had left it. These are always the worst. People who turn back from the truth have a special hatred for the truth itself, and for those who hold on to it. They cannot bear either, and why? For the same reason as Cain could not. It is self-condemnation.
If our own failings caused this hostility, it would shame us. They don't.
The world hates those who belong to Christ and so are no longer of the world. But the Lord wants us to know this: it hated Him before us, just as surely as it hates us. It hates us because of Him, not Him because of us. So our faults are not the true cause. The cause is His grace and moral excellence, His divine nature and glory.
The same truth works in reverse, as a test.
If we love the world and the things of the world, the world will love us. A testimony to its evil, from someone who remains separate from it, will call down its hatred. And it is Christ that the world hates. The more the believer shows Christ, the more hatred he draws.
The name John gives his readers here is chosen, not casual.
He is about to speak about love among brothers, so he calls them "brothers." We should never pass over a word of Scripture without asking why God uses that word and not another.
The next verse is not a change of subject; it is the answer to the hatred.
It is no strange thing that the world hates the child of God. The world has rejected Christ openly and completely. Any confession of Him, or any reflection of His character, offends the world. The believer therefore should calmly accept this, and show love in return. The strong assurance of verse 14 brings comfort beyond words. The world does not know, but the believer knows for certain that he has already passed from death into life. No need to fear the world's hatred then, or even death at their hands. Nothing can touch the life he has from God.
- Expect — hatred from the world is not strange; marvelling at it is the foolish part.
- Cain — his reason is still the reason: the righteousness he saw in his brother condemned him.
- Christ — the world hates us because of Him, not Him because of us; our faults are not the true cause.
- Test — love what the world loves and it will love you back; show Christ and its hatred comes out.
- Comfort — take it calmly, return love, and hold verse 14: nothing the world does can touch the life God has given.
*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.