1 John 3:13-24

Love and Hate: Life and Death

Marvel not, my brethren Comp. John 5:28; John 3:7. The antagonism between the light and the darkness, between God and the evil one, between righteousness and unrighteousness, has never ceased from the time of the first sin (1 John 3:8) and of the first murder (1 John 3:12). The moral descendants of Cain and of Abel are still in the world, and the wicked still hate the righteous. Therefore Christians need not be perplexed, if the world (as it does) hates them.

Both in Jewish (Philo, De sacr. Abelis et Caini) and in early Christian (Clem. Hom.III. xxv., xxvi) literature Abel is taken as the prototype of the good and Cain as the prototype of the wicked. For the wild sect of the Cainites, who took exactly the opposite view, see Appendix C. It is possible that some germs of this monstrous heresy are aimed at in 1 John 3:12.

brethren This form of address, which occurs nowhere else in the Epistle (not genuine in 1 John 2:7), is in harmony with the subject of brotherlylove.

if the world hate you Better, as R. V., if the world hateth you:in the Greek we have the indicative, not the subjunctive or optative. The fact is stated gently, but not doubtfully. The verse is another echo of Christ's last discourses as recorded in the Gospel: - Ifthe world hatethyou (same construction as here), ye know that it hath hated Me before it hated you" (John 15:18). Comp. Mark 15:44.