1 John 3:11-18

Cain vs Jesus

1 John 3:11–18 NA28

11 Ὅτι αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ ἀγγελία ἣν ἠκούσατε ἀπʼ ἀρχῆς, ἵνα ἀγαπῶμεν ἀλλήλους, 12 οὐ καθὼς Κάϊν ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ ἦν καὶ ἔσφαξεν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ· καὶ χάριν τίνος ἔσφαξεν αὐτόν; ὅτι τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ πονηρὰ ἦν, τὰ δὲ τοῦ ἀδελφοῦ αὐτοῦ δίκαια. 13 καὶ μὴ θαυμάζετε, ἀδελφοί, εἰ μισεῖ ὑμᾶς ὁ κόσμος. 14 ἡμεῖς οἴδαμεν ὅτι μεταβεβήκαμεν ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου εἰς τὴν ζωήν, ὅτι ἀγαπῶμεν τοὺς ἀδελφούς· ὁ μὴ ἀγαπῶν μένει ἐν τῷ θανάτῳ. 15 πᾶς ὁ μισῶν τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ ἀνθρωποκτόνος ἐστίν, καὶ οἴδατε ὅτι πᾶς ἀνθρωποκτόνος οὐκ ἔχει ζωὴν αἰώνιον ἐν αὐτῷ μένουσαν. 16 ἐν τούτῳ ἐγνώκαμεν τὴν ἀγάπην, ὅτι ἐκεῖνος ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ἔθηκεν, καὶ ἡμεῖς ὀφείλομεν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἀδελφῶν τὰς ψυχὰς θεῖναι. 17 ὃς δʼ ἂν ἔχῃ τὸν βίον τοῦ κόσμου καὶ θεωρῇ τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὐτοῦ χρείαν ἔχοντα καὶ κλείσῃ τὰ σπλάγχνα αὐτοῦ ἀπʼ αὐτοῦ, πῶς ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ μένει ἐν αὐτῷ; 18 Τεκνία, μὴ ἀγαπῶμεν λόγῳ μηδὲ τῇ γλώσσῃ, ἀλλʼ ἐν ἔργῳ καὶ ἀληθείᾳ,

NASB

11 For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we are to love one another; 12 not as Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And for what reason did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil, but his brother’s were righteous.

13 Do not be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers and sisters. The one who does not love remains in death. 15 Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him. 16 We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters. 17 But whoever has worldly goods and sees his brother or sister in need, and closes his [a]heart [b]against him, how does the love of God remain in him? 18 Little children, let’s not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.

OPENING REMARKS

Last time out I kept you all here for an hour. I’m going to do my best to let you leave just after 4pm today! No promises though!

Today we’re looking at verses 11 through 18 of the third chapter of 1st John. This letter is an apostolic checklist for Christians to test whether they’re truly in Christ or not.

As we saw last week there’s the test of acknowledging sin, the test of right belief, the test of righteousness and now John is revisiting the test of love.

As Buky mentioned; sometimes the apostle John seems to cover old ground and you’re thinking; has he lost the plot here? He’s already said that! But we see that each time he returns a subject he does so from a slightly different angle, so as to give us a fully-orbed understanding of what he’s saying. This style of reasoning is known as amplification, a common form of argumentation in ancient writing.

THIS IS THE MESSAGE YOU HAVE HEARD FROM THE BEGINNING

This passage starts the same way that John starts the letter. It’s one of his favourite figures of speech! But it also tells us something; it tells us that the Christian message is not forever changing, it remains the same. Over and over again the apostle John calls their attention back to what they heard at first; the gospel, the essential facts of the Christian faith.

This is in contradistinction to the Greek world of pagan religions and sophistry. Luke tells us in Acts a bit about the Greek world back then’ ‘Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.’ Acts 17:21

And it was into this pagan and worldly philosophy that the false teachers mentioned in this letter had departed. Yet instead of trying to engage them on their platform by offering something new, John calls these Christians back to something old; what they’d heard at the beginning.

Christianity is built on facts, not theories. The gospel stands or falls based on the facts of Jesus’s death and resurrection

1 corinthians 15:14-18 - And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

When we engage with the world we don’t do as they do; by proferring new ideas or revelations but by preaching the very same gospel which was preached first by the apostles.

This is also how we’re strengthened in our faith; not by reaching for some kind of new revelation but by returning daily to the gospel, living in it.

We need to hear the Gospel every day, because we forget it every day. - Luther

What’s the specific message that John is referring to here; that we should love one another. It’s the same commandment he mentions in 1 John 2:7-11 Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

CAIN vs JESUS

This time around as John revisits this subject he wants to put flesh on the bones of what he’s saying; what does it mean to love, and specifically what does it look like to love one’s brother or sister. We know that he’s talking about love particularly between Christians here because of what is said at the end of verse 10. 1 John 3:10 - By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

The way John does this is by first presenting this in the negative in verses 11 to 15 and then in the positive from 16-18.

This sort of argumentation is common in the new testament; Jesus and the apostles would often put their case in the negative and then in the positive.

We then get to understand what they’re saying in a deeper, more nuanced way. The Holy Spirit used all sorts of men to write the Holy Scriptures; from fishermen to kings, from scholars to warriors. But the Holy Spirit inspired their writing in such a powerful way that it would convey His truth to shine into the hearts and minds of all types of people millenia into the future.

John chooses Cain as his negative example and Jesus as the positive example.

Why Cain? We read in Genesis 4:1-11 the story of Cain and Abel:

Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, saying, “I have gotten a man with the help of the LORD.” And again, she bore his brother Abel. Now Abel was a keeper of sheep, and Cain a worker of the ground. In the course of time Cain brought to the LORD an offering of the fruit of the ground, and Abel also brought of the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions. And the LORD had regard for Abel and his offering, but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell. The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.” Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Then the LORD said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And the LORD said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.

Cain is the first murderer, the first to take anothers life in all human history. So in a sense he is the father of murder, in that all who murder are following after Cain and ultimately following after the evil one; just as verse 12 tells us Cain was.

What drove Cain to murder his brother Abel? Hatred. In fact John says that anyone who lives in hatred towards a brother or sister in Christ is a murderer.

Strong stuff indeed. Does he mean that those who hate will go on to commit murder? Not necessarily, no. But in the mind of the apostle these two things are inextricably linked. In the same way that Jesus said “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Matt 5:28

The point being that sin is never random; it doesn’t ‘just happen’ it flows from the heart. As Jesus said in Matt 15:19 - “For out of the heart come evil thoughts--murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander.”

Just as God said to Cain in Genesis - “sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.”

So we are to acknowledge the sinfulness and weakness of our flesh and with our renewed minds begin to guard our hearts (prov 4:23)

The ability to rule over sin we have received passively from Jesus, but in practice we cannot be passive. We have to actively fight sin in our lives; ‘let not sin reign in your mortal bodies.’ - Rom 6:12

Cain murdered his brother because he hated him. Why did he hate him? Because his own deeds were evil and Abels were righteous. Perhaps this is why God accepted Abel’s offering but not Cains? Hebrews tells us that it was BY FAITH that Abel offered a better offering than Cain. Abel’s was offered in faith, Cain’s was not.

God will only accept that which is of faith. Cain brought an offering, of his own free will to God. He did what he was ‘supposed to do’, for all we know it was a great offering, perhaps equal to or greater than Abel’s in terms of cost. But the key fact was that there was no faith in Cain, and his life was a life of darkness.

There is a type of dead religion that does things for God, thinking that God must accept them because of all they do for Him. God is not pleased by anything other than faith.

I think there will sadly be many who on the day of judgement will stand before Jesus and say; but look at all I did for you! Look at all the offerings I gave, all the sacrifices I made but He will say away from me I never knew you.

In all our giving, in all our study, in all our ways do we love Jesus? Do we trust in Him and Him alone for our salvation?

Cain’s trust was in His works, and when they were rejected his hatred of Abel and indeed of God was exposed - 1 John 4:20 - If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

The spirit of the antichrist is the spirit of Cain. It hates righteousness, it hates the true Church of Jesus Christ, it wants to see it brought to ruin. It wants to see Christian turn against Christian.

The spirit of Cain is at large in the world today. How is it at work? It is any spirit which hates righteousness. This spirit cannot stand Christians and has to belittle them, mock them, do all it can to crush them. Sometimes this spirit is covert, like in that person who is usually so calm and calculated but as soon as you mention Jesus they lose it. Sometimes it is overt, like in North Korea or China where Christians are persecuted by law.

This is why John says ‘Don’t be suprised if the world hates you’. The spirit of the world IS the spirit of Cain.

"The devil always sends errors into the world in pairs--pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one.” -C.S Lewis

There are even some who claim to be Christians who are really of the antichrist. How do we tell them apart from true Christians? They will hate true Christians. They’ll mock them, belittle them, patronise them, hate them.

In a more covert way, they won’t care for their brother or sister in Christ when they could. There is a form of hatred which is called neglect.

Yet we know thaty God in His great love even offered Cain a second chance; The LORD said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted?” There is grace even for the Cains of this world.

JESUS

Jesus came to reveal the sort of older brother who Cain should have been to Abel. He loved with a self-sacrificial love. He literally laid down His own life for His brothers and sisters rather than taking their lives. Their lives were the rightful property of death because of sin Romans 6:23 - For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Death had no claim on Him who had never sinned. But he became sin, he took all our sin on himself so as to die the death that we should have died.

The eternal wrath of God was our inheritance because of our rebellion against Him. Yet Jesus our older brother willingly endured the wrath of His father on the cross which should have been ours so that we could inherit His glory.

So are we supposed to go about looking to get martyred for someone then? No, just as the example of following Cain doesn’t always literally look like murder so the example of following Jesus doesn’t always look like literally dying for our brothers and sisters in Christ but it does look like dying to self.

What is it to ‘lay-down’ our lives. Well in a sense I think it is like this; as Jesus laid His glory by and humbled Himself to come and save us, lets lay our conveniences, our privileges by in order to serve one another. Philippians 2:1-11

Philippians 2:1–11 ESV

1 So if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, 2 complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. 3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

“However wrong you may think others have been, maintain with great diligence and watchfulness a Christian meekness and gentleness of spirit; and labour, in this respect, to excel those who are of a contrary spirit. And this will be the best victory, for ‘he that rules his spirit, is better than he that takes a city.’ Let nothing be done through strife or conceit. Indulge no revengeful spirit in any case; but watch and pray against it...And never think you behave yourselves as becomes Christians, except when you sincerely, sensibly, and fervently love all men, of whatever party or opinion, and whether friendly or unkind, just or injurious, to you or your friends, or to the cause and kingdom of Christ.”

- JONATHAN EDWARDS, ‘Farewell Sermon’

Prayer to finish