1 John 3:15

3:11-15 We should love the Lord Jesus, value his love, and therefore love all our brethren in Christ. This love is the special fruit of our faith, and a certain sign of our being born again. But none who rightly know the heart of man, can wonder at the contempt and enmity of ungodly people against the children of God. We know that we are passed from death to life: we may know it by the evidences of our faith in Christ, of which love to our brethren is one. It is not zeal for a party in the common religion, or affection for those who are of the same name and sentiments with ourselves. The life of grace in the heart of a regenerate person, is the beginning and first principle of a life of glory, whereof they must be destitute who hate their brother in their hearts.

{15} Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. (15) A confirmation: Whoever is a murderer, is in eternal death: he who hates his brother is a murderer, therefore he is in death. Thereupon follows the other side: He that loves his brother has passed to life, for indeed we are born dead.

That life into which the regenerate are begotten, is nothing else than the beginning or first principle of eternal life, John 4:14 , whereof they cannot but be destitute who hate their brethren; a thing so contrary to the Divine life, nature, and image, and which makes the person affected with it, in the temper and habit of his mind, a very murderer.

1 John 3:15 . He, I have just said, who loveth not his brother, abideth in death; is void of the life of God: for whosoever hateth his brother — And there is no medium between loving and hating him; is — In God’s account; a murderer — Every degree of hatred being a degree of the same temper which moved Cain to murder his brother. And no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him — But every loving believer hath. For love is the beginning of eternal life. It is the same in substance with future felicity and glory. The word ανθρωποκτονος , here rendered murderer, is by Macknight translated a manslayer, who, as he observes, differs from a murderer as manslaughter differs from murder: adding, “The hatred of one’s brother may be the occasion, by accident, of putting him to death. For he who indulgeth hatred to his brother, lays himself open to the influence of such passions as may hurry him to slay his brother. So our Lord tells us, in his explication of the precept, Thou shalt not kill, Matthew 6:21 . For he mentions causeless anger and provoking speeches as violations of that command, because they are often productive of murder.”

Murderer (ἀθρωποκτόνος) Manslayer. Only here and John 8:44, of the devil. Hath eternal life, etc. The contrast is suggestive between the sentiment embodied in this statement and that of Pagan antiquity respecting murder, in the Homeric age, for instance. "With regard to the practice of homicide, the ordinary Greek morality was extremely loose.... Among the Greeks, to have killed a man was considered in the light of misfortune, or, at most, a prudential error, when the perpetrator of the act had come among strangers as a fugitive for protection and hospitality. On the spot, therefore, where the crime occurred, it could stand only as in the nature of a private and civil wrong, and the fine payable was regarded, not (which it might have been) as a mode, however defective, of marking any guilt in the culprit, but as, on the whole, an equitable satisfaction to the wounded feelings of the relatives and friends, or as an actual compensation for the lost services of the dead man. The religion of the age takes no notice of the act whatever" (Gladstone "Homer and the Homeric Age," ii., 436).

1 John 3:15 . Ἀνθρωποκτόνος , a murderer ) as Cain. All hatred is an attempt against life: but life [spiritual] does not assail life [physical]. He who hates his brother desires either that his brother or himself should not live. Hence duels .[9]— μένουσαν , abiding ) Eternal life is in very deed in him who believes and loves. [9] Whereas ver. 16 desires us to lay down our life for the brethren, duels require one (awful to say!) to risk his own life rather than not deprive another of his life. This is the part of desperate insanity, far removed from bravery. We may suppose that the devil himself wonders how men, bearing also the Christian name, can have fallen so low. It is to be lamented that the men of chief authority in the world, with all the power that has been entrusted to them by God, either are not able, or not willing, to suppress duels. One single atrocity of this kind has power to involve in the direst guilt before God the whole human race, the whole assembly of Christians, or a whole camp of soldiers.—V. g.

Verse 15. - As in 1 John 4:20 , St. John passes at once from not loving to hating, treating the two as equivalent. He takes no account of the neutral ground of indifference. He that is not for his brother is against him. Indifference is hate quiescent, there being nothing to excite it. Love is the only security against hate. And as every one who does not love is potentially a hater, so every hater is potentially a murderer. A murderer is a hater who expresses his hatred in the most emphatic way. A hater who does not murder abstains for various reasons from this extreme way of expressing his hate. But the temper of the two men is the same; and it is obvious ( οἴδατε "ye know what needs no evidence") that every murderer is incapable of possessing eternal life. It is the murderous temper, not the act of homicide, that excludes from eternal life. St. John, of course, does not mean that murder is an unpardonable sin; but he shows that hate and death go together, as love and life, and that the two pairs are mutually exclusive. How can life and the desire to extinguish life be compatible? It is very forced to interpret ἀνθρωποκτόνος as either "destroyer of his own soul," or "destroyer of the hated man's soul ," by provoking him to return hate for hate. 1 John 3:15

15. hateth—equivalent to "loveth not" (1Jo 3:14); there is no medium between the two. "Love and hatred, like light and darkness, life and death, necessarily replace, as well as necessarily exclude, one another" [Alford]. is a murderer—because indulging in that passion, which, if followed out to its natural consequences, would make him one. "Whereas, 1Jo 3:16 desires us to lay down our lives for the brethren; duels require one (awful to say!) to risk his own life, rather than not deprive another of life" [Bengel]. God regards the inward disposition as tantamount to the outward act which would flow from it. Whomsoever one hates, one wishes to be dead. hath—Such a one still "abideth in death." It is not his future state, but his present, which is referred to. He who hates (that is, loveth not) his brother (1Jo 3:14), cannot in this his present state have eternal life abiding in him.

Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer ... - That is, he has the spirit of a murderer; he has that which, if it were acted out, would lead him to commit murder, as it did Cain. The private malice, the secret grudge, the envy which is cherished in the heart, is murderous in its tendency, and were it not for the outward restraints of human laws, and the dread of punishment, it would often lead to the act of murder. The apostle does not say that he who hates his brother, though he does not in fact commit murder, is guilty to the same degree as if he had actually done it; but he evidently means to say that the spirit which would lead to murder is there, and that God will hold him responsible for it. Nothing is missing but the removal of outward restraints to lead to the commission of the open deed, and God judges people as he sees them to be "in their hearts." What a fearful declaration, then, is this! How many real murderers there are on the earth besides those who are detected and punished, and besides those open violators of the laws of God and man who go at large! And who is them that should not feel humbled and penitent in view of his own heart, and grateful for that sovereign mercy which has restrained him from open acts of guilt - for who is there who has not at some period of his life, and perhaps often, indulged in feelings of hatred, and envy, and malice toward others, which, if acted out, would have led to the commission of the awful crime of taking human life?

Any man may well shudder at the remembrance of the secret sins of his own heart, and at the thought of what he would have been but for the restraining grace of God. And how wonderful is that grace which, in the case of the true Christian, not only restrains and checks, but which effectually subdues all these feelings, and implants in their place the principles of love!

15 . Whosoever hateth his brother ] Or, Every one that hateth his brother : see on 1 John 3:4 . Quite as a matter of course S. John passes from not loving to hating. The crisis caused in the world by the coming of the light leaves no neutral ground: all is either light or darkness, of God or of the evil one, of the Church or of the world, in love or in hate. A Christian cannot be neither loving nor hating, any more than a plant can be neither growing nor dying. is a murderer ] Or, as most of the earlier Versions, is a manslayer . The word ( ἀνθρωποκτόνος ) occurs only here and John 8:44 . The mention of Cain just before renders it certain that ‘murderer’ is not to be understood figuratively as ‘ soul -destroyer’. Human law considers overt acts; God considers motives. The motives of the hater and of the murderer are the same: the fact that one is, and the other is not, deterred by laziness or fear from carrying out his hatred into homicidal action, makes no difference in the moral character of the men, though it makes all the difference in the eyes of the law. This is only applying to the sixth commandment the principle which the Lord Himself applies to the seventh ( Matthew 5:28 ). ye know that no murderer ] Once more ( 1 John 3:14 ) the Apostle appeals to their consciousness as Christians ( οἴδατε ): it is not a matter of experience gradually acquired ( γινώσκετε ), but of knowledge once for all possessed.