1 John 3:14

Love means life and hate means death.

We know The pronoun is very emphatic: -the dark world which is full of devilish hate may think and do what it pleases about us; we knowthat we have left the atmosphere of death for one of life." This knowledge is part of our consciousness (οἴδαμεν) as Christians: comp. 1 John 2:20-21; 1 John 3:2; 1 John 3:5. Cain hated and slew his brother: the world hates and would slay us. But for all that, it was Cain who passed from life into death, while his brother passed to eternal life, and through his sacrifice -he being dead yet speaketh" (Hebrews 11:4). The same is the case between the world and Christians. Philo in a similar spirit points out that Cain really slew, not his brother, but himself.

have passed from death unto life Better, have passed over out of death into life, have left an abode inthe one region for an abode inthe other: another reminiscence of the Gospel (John 5:24). The Greek perfect here has the common meaning of permanent result of past action: -we have passed into a new home and abide there." The metaphor is perhaps taken from the passage of the Red Sea (Exodus 15:16), or of the Jordan.

because we love the brethren This depends on -we know," not on -we have passed": our love is the infallible sign that we have made the passage. The natural state of man is selfishness, which involves enmity to others, whose claims clash with those of self: to love others is proof that this natural state has been left. Life and love are two aspects of the same fact in the moral world, as life and growth in the physical: the one marks the state, the other the activity.

He that loveth not his brother Omit -his brother", which, though correct as an interpretation, is no part of the true text. Wiclif and the Rhemish, following the Vulgate, omit the addition.

abideth in death Which implies that death is the original condition of all. The believer passes out of this by becoming a child of God and thereby of necessity loving God's other children. He who does not love them shews that he is still in the old state of death.