Sermon Tone Analysis

The Road to death

Cain as the Prototype:

3:12 In this verse the author urges his readers not to allow themselves to fall into that category of persons who do not love fellow believers by using a negative example: Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother.

The author has in mind Genesis 4:1–25, in which the account of Cain and Abel, the sons of Adam and Eve, is found.

Cain was angry because his offering was not accepted by the Lord, whereas the offering of his brother Abel was accepted.

In his anger Cain planned and carried out the murder of his brother Abel.

It may be inferred from Gen 4:6–7 that Cain’s offering was not accepted because he was an evildoer.

In this text, the Lord, following his rejection of Cain’s offering, and before Cain murdered his brother, says to Cain: ‘Why are you angry?

Why is your face downcast?

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?

But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.’

The author’s reference to Cain is the only direct reference to the OT found in this letter.

His description of Cain as one ‘who belonged to the evil one’ has no parallel in the Genesis account, but in some Jewish texts (e.g., the second-century-b.c.

T. Benjamin 7:1–5 and the first- or second-century-a.d.

Apocalypse of Abraham 24:3–5) the murder of Abel by his brother Cain is regarded as an act inspired by the devil/Beliar.

The evil character of Cain is universally assumed in both biblical and extrabiblical sources (see Appendix, pp.

235–42).

The author, too, works on this assumption when he adds: And why did he murder him?

Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous.

The text of Genesis, while implying that it was because Cain’s actions were evil that his offering was not accepted by the Lord, and that it was because of Abel’s righteous actions that the Lord accepted his offering, does not specify the nature of their respective actions.

However, the writer to the Hebrews, reflecting on the text of Genesis 4, notes that: ‘By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did.

By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings’ (Heb 11:4).

As far as that writer was concerned, what differentiated Abel from Cain was the former’s faith and, presumably, the latter’s lack of it.

3:13 Having spoken of Cain’s murder of his brother, the author reminds his readers that they, too, will be the objects of hatred: Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you.

The expression ‘do not be surprised’ (mē thaumazete) is also used in John 5:28 (cf.

3:7) to introduce significant statements, and here it is used before a serious warning to believers of the world’s hatred.

This warning comes as something of a surprise, following as it does the author’s stress in the previous verses on the mutual love that should exist between believers.

On first reading it also appears to be out of kilter with what is taken up in the following verses: mutual love among believers as the sign of their having passed from death to life.

This association of the command to love with a warning about the world’s hatred may perhaps be explained by the author’s dependence on the Fourth Gospel at this point in his letter.

In the Last Supper discourses, Jesus’ teaching concerning the need to love one another (John 15:9–17) is followed immediately by teaching that his disciples would experience hatred from ‘the world’ (John 15:18–25).

In the context of John 15 these two ideas function as part of Jesus’ preparation of his disciples for the time following his imminent departure to the Father.

They will need to adhere to one another in mutual love and be prepared to face hostility from some unbelieving Jews.

But the overall context of 1 John is different from that of the Fourth Gospel.

In 1 John the conflict the readers face is from those who were once part of the Christian community, the secessionists.

Why, then, remind the readers that they will be the objects of the world’s hatred?

And in the context of 1 John who or what is ‘the world’ (kosmos)?

The word kosmos occurs 23 times in 1 John, and its meaning varies according to the context (see the commentary on 2:2).

But here, and in several other places, it denotes the unbelieving world, that is, people who are opposed to God and believers, and who are under the power of the evil one (3:1; 4:5 [3×]; 5:19).

However, stress on the hatred of the unbelieving world towards the readers seems out of kilter with the main thrust of the letter.

The way through this dilemma is to recognise that the author now associates the secessionists with the world.

They are the ‘antichrists’ who ‘went out from us’ because none of them ‘belonged to us’ (2:18–19).

These are the ‘false prophets’ who ‘have gone out into the world’, and they manifest ‘the spirit of the antichrist’ which ‘even now is already in the world’ (4:1–3).

The secessionists ‘are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them’ (4:5).

But, the author assures his readers, ‘you are from God and have overcome them, because greater is the one who is in you [the Spirit of truth] than the one who is in the world [the spirit of antichrist/the spirit of falsehood]’ (4:4–6).

The author’s warning concerning the hatred of the world, then, is probably best interpreted in terms of the opposition of the secessionists towards those from whom they separated themselves, that is, the author’s readers.

3:14 Following the brief digression in 3:13 with its warning that the readers will be the objects of the world’s hatred, in 3:14 the author returns to the main theme of 3:11–24, that is, mutual love as a mark of true children of God.

But now this theme is expressed in a different way: We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers.

The ‘mark’ is the same, the love of fellow believers, but the status of those who love is described differently: they are now described as those who ‘have passed from death to life’.

The expression ‘we have passed from death to life’ (metabebēkamen ek tou thanatou eis tēn zōēn) has a close parallel in the Fourth Gospel (John 5:24: ‘he has passed from death to life’, metabebēken ek tou thanatou eis tēn zōēn), where the idea of passing from death to life is synonymous with escaping condemnation and obtaining eternal life.

In the Fourth Gospel, eternal life is defined as knowing God (John 17:3), who is both the source of life and the giver of life to those who come to him through Jesus Christ.

The closeness of the expressions and the relationship between 1 John and the Fourth Gospel justify interpreting the statement in 1 John 3:14 in terms of its parallel in John 5:24, that is, love for fellow believers is the mark of those who have escaped condemnation because they have come to know God through Jesus Christ.

The expression ‘because we love our brothers’ uses a present tense form of the verb ‘to love’, indicating that the author is stressing that ongoing love for fellow believers is the mark of those who have passed from death to life.

Interpreted against the background of the Fourth Gospel and understood in relation to the secessionists’ claims, the author of 1 John is saying that it is by their love for fellow believers that his readers may be assured that they know God and experience eternal life.

It is those who have remained in the parent community, and not the secessionists, who truly know God and experience eternal life.

When he adds: Anyone who does not love remains in death, the author has the secessionists in mind.

As far as he is concerned, the secessionists, by their ongoing lack of love for the members of the parent community, show that they have never really passed from death to life.

They remain in death, they do not know God, and they do not experience the eternal life which knowledge of God entails.

What does the author of 1 John understand by ‘eternal life’?

He identifies it with, or says it is found in, Jesus Christ: Eternal life is promised to those who believe in him (2:25); it is found in Christ, the Son (5:11), who is the true God and eternal life (5:20); this life was with the Father from the beginning and appeared in the person of Jesus Christ to eyewitnesses (1:2); those who believe in Christ may know that they have eternal life (5:13) because they have the Son, and those who have the Son have eternal life (5:12).

As far as the author is concerned, eternal life is not an unending extension of life as we know it; rather, it is ‘having’ the Son, Jesus Christ, for eternal life is all tied up in him.

3:15 Continuing the idea with which verse 14 ends (‘Anyone who does not love remains in death’), the author adds: Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer.

There may be an allusion to Cain’s murder of his brother Abel here (something to which the author has already pointed as a negative example in 3:11).

Alternatively, the author may be alluding to the teaching of Jesus that those who are angry with their fellows will be subject to judgement in the same way as those who commit murder (cf.

Matt 5:21 par.).

The author then continues, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

The purpose of this whole verse appears to be to heighten the force of what was said in verse 14, that is, that anyone who does not love abides in death; such a person is like a murderer, and those consumed with murderous intents clearly do not have eternal life abiding in them.

In both verses 14 and 15, when describing those who do not love and those who hate, the author uses present tense forms of the verbs, indicating that it is ongoing failure to love or ongoing hatred which he believes to be the mark of those who remain in death and therefore do not have eternal life in them.

The outworking of Love [16-23]

The Road to Life

Jesus as the Prototype

Love in deed and Truth [18-24]

3:16 The author has spoken of love as the mark of those who have passed from death to life in verse 14.

Now he explains what the nature of that love is, and then stresses the obligation resting on believers to practise it.

He begins: This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

The readers are people who know what love is because they know that Jesus Christ laid down his life for them.

The sort of love exemplified in Christ’s death is love which expends itself in the interests of others.

When the author speaks of Christ laying down his life for us, he is almost certainly picking up the teaching of Jesus as it is presented in the Fourth Gospel.

There Jesus speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep (John 10:11, 15).

He lays it down of his own accord; no one takes it from him (John 10:17, 18).

The corollary to Christ laying his life down for us is that we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.

This same connection is made in the Last Supper discourses of the Fourth Gospel, where Jesus says to his disciples: ‘My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

You are my friends …’ (John 15:12–14).

As Christ loved us and laid down his life for us, so we must do for one another.

The author applies this in a very down-to-earth fashion in the following verses.

3:17–18 Applying the exhortation to the lives of his readers, the author does not speak of the extreme sort of self-giving involved in actually laying down their lives for fellow believers, but of something far more down to earth.

He asks: If anyone has material possessions [lit.

‘worldly goods’, ton bion tou kosmou] and sees his brother in need, but has no pity [lit.

‘closes his heart or affections’] on him, how can the love of God be in him?

In the light of Christ’s self-giving love for them, the author says, they should not close their hearts toward fellow believers in material need.

In fact, they cannot close their hearts to them and still rightly claim that the love of God remains in them.

It is difficult to know how to construe ‘the love of God’ in this verse.

It could mean’ love for God’.

If so, it would be in line with what the author says later: ‘If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar.

For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen’ (4:20).

There it is emphasised that love for God and love for fellow believers go hand in hand.

Alternatively it could mean the ‘love that comes from God’, and the verse would then say that love coming from God is not found in a person who shows no pity to those in need.

While it is difficult to say which shade of meaning the author intended here, both represent genuine aspects of the author’s understanding of the love of God.

In Johannine terms the love which comes from God both creates believers’ love for fellow believers (1 john 4:19) and expresses itself in love for them (1 john 4:20).

Deuteronomy 15:7–9 may provide the background to the idea of closing one’s heart towards others in need.

The passage reads: