Chapter Three

Children of God and children of the devil (1–10). Brotherly love toward others and hatred (11–18). Assurance of the heart in God (19–22). Faith and love (23–24).

1 John 3:1. See what love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God and be children of God. The world does not know us because it did not know Him. Having established (in 1 John 2:29) an organic and vital connection between righteousness and the gracious rebirth of Christians from God, the Apostle now further unfolds the concept of gracious sonship to God, in order to better highlight the mentioned connection not only as necessary by the very nature of being born from the Righteous One, but also as morally obligatory for those who have received such benefits. The Apostle, always keeping the great work of redemption of humanity in Christ before his eyes, enthusiastically invites (verse 1) his readers to reverently immerse themselves in spiritual contemplation of that unfathomable love of the Heavenly Father toward people (compare John 3:16), through which He in the mystery of redemption in Christ granted all people to be and to be called children of God. The greatness of this divine gift, which obligates Christians who possess it to constant improvement, the Apostle demonstrates by way of opposition—by the fact that the world that is hostile to God and therefore does not know God does not know this high privilege of Christians—their sonship to God: so completely has God’s love and grace transformed them, establishing their life on completely new foundations, that they have become alien and incomprehensible to the world. “You know that he (Christ) gave you the right to be and to be considered children of God. If, then, those who belong to the world do not know this—that is, that you are children of God—do not be surprised at this; for they do not know the one who adopted you as sons” (Theophylact).

1 John 3:2. Beloved! we are now children of God; but it has not yet been revealed what we will be. We know only that when it is revealed, we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is. Even more exalted and incomprehensible to the very children of God is the future blessedness of believers: in depicting the blessedness of the righteous in the future world, Scripture presents it only in general terms (compare 1 Pet 1:4; 2 Tim 4:8 and others), not touching upon its very essence. It is known only that the condition for future blessedness is our becoming like God (compare Matt 5:48) in righteousness, mercy, holiness and other perfections, and that the source of ineffable blessedness for the righteous will be the vision of God, when they will see God not dimly and uncertainly, but face to face (1 Cor 13:12)—“the pure will see the Pure One, the righteous will see the Righteous One, for the like will draw near to the Like” (Theophylact).

1 John 3:3. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. 1 John 3:4. Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. From the concept of the rebirth of believers from God (1 John 2:29), their high gracious sonship in the present (1 John 3:1) and their ineffable blessedness in the future (verse 2), it is a necessary duty for everyone who has Christian hope for blessed eternity to constantly purify himself from all sinful inclinations after the pattern of the pure and sinless Christ, since only those pure in heart can see God (Matt 5:8). This moral-practical conclusion from the teaching about the spiritual rebirth of Christians and their high dignity as children of God the Apostle next (verse 4) strengthens by denying the opposite thesis, probably put forward by heretical antinomians, that sin is permissible in Christians: the Apostle demonstrates with full decisiveness the complete incompatibility of sin with the dignity of reborn Christians. The Apostle speaks as if saying: “you who have been adopted, do righteous deeds and do not show yourselves idle in it. For as with respect to sin, the one who is a sinner or lawbreaker is not the one who commits or will commit a sin, but the one who holds to evil and does evil, so also the righteous person is not the one who does not act, but the one who does righteous deeds. Sin is entirely out of place in you, for Christ appeared to destroy sin, and just as he himself was not touched by sin, so also for you, united with him and established by faith in him, there no longer remains any place to sin... It should also be understood that sin is called a falling away from good, while lawlessness is the violation of a positive law” (Theophylact). The violator of God’s law is a transgressor against him, and is no longer a child of God, but a fellow and son of the devil.

1 John 3:5. And you know that He appeared so that He might take away our sins, and that in Him there is no sin. 1 John 3:6. Everyone who abides in Him does not sin; everyone who sins has not seen Him and does not know Him. The Apostle now, referring to his own inner experience and the Christian understanding of his readers, further unfolds the incompatibility of sin with the state of one reborn in Christ, pointing out that the very purpose of Christ’s appearance was to bring an atoning sacrifice for the sins of all and to destroy the responsibility of eternal condemnation for them before God (compare 1 John 2:2; see 1 Pet 2:21), and the very communion of Christians with the Sinless Christ the Savior obligates them not to sin; only sins of weakness and infirmity of human nature are permissible. “Everyone who sins has not seen him and does not know him”—“by seeing him is meant not the seeing with a simple glance of the eye or a light recalling in one’s imagination of something known, but an unwillingness to deliberate upon and investigate the matter at all and to unite oneself with him” (Theophylact).

1 John 3:7. Children! do not let anyone deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous. 1 John 3:8. Whoever practices sin is from the devil, because the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this reason the Son of God appeared, to destroy the works of the devil. 1 John 3:9. Everyone who is born from God does not practice sin, because His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born from God. In view of possible or actual distortions of the Gospel message and Christian moral teaching that had already occurred, the Apostle insistently clarifies—against all antinomian false teaching—the complete incompatibility of sin and sinfulness with the entire teaching, whether dogmatic or ethical, of Christianity (verse 7), with the very nature of Christ’s redemptive work (verse 8), and with the fundamental nature of the relationship of sonship to the Triune God (verse 9). Just as human righteousness is a sign and consequence of a Christian’s birth from God (verses 7, see 1 John 2:29), so deliberate, persistent sinfulness is an indicator of kinship with the devil—the primary source of all evil and sin (verse 8, see John 8:44). According to the explanation of John Chrysostom, “every time we sin, we are born of the devil, and every time we perform virtue, we are born of God, because ‘his seed remains in us’ (verse 9). ‘He calls the seed the Spirit, whom we receive through baptism, and who, dwelling in us, makes our mind not prone to sin. If, however, someone is not born of God, then he does not receive the Holy Spirit’. Thus, the Spirit of God dwelling in the Christian, of course, with the participation of the Christian’s good will, gradually, more and more, removes him from sins.

1 John 3:10. The children of God and the children of the devil are recognized as follows: everyone who does not practice righteousness is not from God, nor is the one who does not love his brother. 1 John 3:11. For this is the message which you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, 1 John 3:12. not like Cain, who was from the evil one and killed his brother. And why did he kill him? Because his own deeds were evil, and his brother’s deeds were righteous. Intensifying the thought of verse 8, the Apostle states that the one who is alien to God and is a partner and son of the devil is not only the one who deliberately sins, but also the one who a) does not practice righteousness, b) does not love his brother—and with this the Apostle concludes his given characterization of the children of God and children of the devil (verse 10). In grounding the proposition that the one who does not love his brother is not from God, the Apostle reminds Christians that the commandment about the mutual love of Christians has been known to them from the very beginning of their Christian state (verse 11), namely from the teaching of the Lord himself (John 13:34-35), proclaimed to people by the apostles. And to further emphasize the moral obligation of mutual love in Christian society, the Apostle demonstrates on the historical example of Cain (verse 12) what terrible consequences follow from the violation of the commandment about love. “The Apostle confirms by example how great a deed it is to hate one’s brother. Look, he says, Cain hated his brother and murdered him, even though he was his own brother. Cain had the evil deeds of his father the devil, while Abel, by doing righteousness, was a son in relation to God. Here the devil is set against God, and evil deeds are set against good. Therefore Cain, being opposite to his brother, murdered him (Theophylact). The expression ‘slew,’ which often means sacrificial slaying (Rev 5:6 and others), emphasizes the innocent and martyred death of Abel.

1 John 3:13. Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. 1 John 3:14. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brothers; the one who does not love a brother remains in death. 1 John 3:15. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. From the moment of the brother-murder of Cain, the antagonism between the children of God and the children of the devil, between God and the world, has never ceased. The same hatred of evil against good exists even now: Cain now embodies the world hostile to God, while Abel—true Christians, children of God, hated by the world (verse 13, see John 15:20). According to the Apostle, hatred is a sign, even a synonym of death, while Christians through their love for others have undergone every kind of spiritual resurrection or revival (compare John 5:24); hatred toward one’s brother means not only the state of spiritual death of the one hating (verse 14b), but also that such a person spiritually, if not literally, commits a murder like Cain’s, becomes a “murderer” (verse 15), which term Christ applied to the devil (John 8:44); according to the Apostle’s thought, hatred is equal to murder, just as Christ the Savior condemns the one who is angry at his neighbor as a murderer (Matt 5:21).

1 John 3:16. We have come to know love in this, that He laid down His soul for us: and we ought to lay down our souls for the brothers. 1 John 3:17. But whoever has goods in this world and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, — how does the love of God abide in him? 1 John 3:18. My children! let us love not in word or with our tongue, but in deed and in truth. Just as hatred toward others distances a person most from God and makes him most a partner and son of the devil, so it is precisely through love for others that the Christian draws closest to Christ God, taking on the disposition pleasing to God. Indeed, Christ the Savior in his God-man work manifested the highest love, laying down his life for us (compare John 10:11 and others); because of the moral solidarity with Christ that is obligatory for all Christians (compare Phil 2:5), because Christians have attained true life only through Christ (above, 1 John 3:14), all Christians are bound by the self-denying love toward others that follows the example of the Lord, ready to lay down life for the brothers and sisters (verse 16, see John 15:13). But to this principled greatness of the feat of self-denying Christian love the Apostle now sets in opposition (verse 17) an entirely different attitude toward others, taken from everyday life: a) callous insensitivity to the most ordinary necessities of others, when a person artificially deadens the sensitivity of his heart, making it unresponsive to pity and compassion (verse 17), and b) hypocritical love that goes no further than empty words of pretended concern (verse 18). Wishing to show the complete incompatibility of such false love, such an attitude toward others with the ideal of true self-denying love, the Apostle asks: “how does the love of God remain in someone with such a disposition?” (verse 17). “Love inclined the Lord to lay down his life for us; according to his example we too should lay down our life for the brothers and sisters. But as this is rare, the Apostle, as if shaming the faithful, begins with something small and urges them to love the brothers and sisters. He speaks as if saying: why speak of laying down one’s life for one’s brother when we see that those who do not lack means do not even satisfy their brothers’ and sisters’ basic needs—I am not speaking of the poor—but those possessing the wealth of the whole world? Therefore, let them be ashamed! For if they shut their hearts in this small matter and proved themselves unworthy of the love of God: what would they show when something greater were required—to die for one’s brother? Then he continues even further to denounce those who limit love to mere words and display it only on the tongue. Let us love, he says, not with words or language, but with deeds and truth” (Theophylact). Only sincere active love bears blessing in itself, which the Apostle speaks of next.

1 John 3:19. And by this we know that we are from the truth, and we will assure our hearts before Him; 1 John 3:20. for if our heart condemns us, all the more so God, because God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Concluding his discourse on the necessity for Christians of active love toward others (1 John 3:17-18), the Apostle in this love points to the true sign that Christians stand on the path of truth (just as Christ the Savior himself in love pointed to the distinguishing mark of his true disciples, John 13:35). “By what,” that is, how do we know? By the fact that we love our brother not with words, but with deeds and truth. What do we know? That we are of the truth. How do we know? Thus: the one who speaks one thing and does another, the one who does not accord his deeds with his words, is a liar and not truthful” (Theophylact). But besides the obvious correspondence of words about love with deeds of love, the Apostle points to another internal witness of the moral conscience or the very conscience of Christians: “we assure our hearts before him” (verse 19b). “This means: through truthfulness (and we will be truthful when our deeds correspond to our words) we will set our conscience at rest. For by the word ‘heart’ he means conscience. How, then, do we set it at rest? By putting ourselves in such a position that we speak words before God as a witness; for this is what the words ‘before him’ mean (Theophylact). But if our moral behavior is not without fault, in our view, according to the judgment of our conscience, then all the greater shortcomings will be found in us by the all-righteous judgment of God: ‘if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things’ (verse 20). Theophylact conveyed the meaning of this difficult-to-understand verse thus: ‘and if we cannot hide from our conscience during sin, which is limited, like a human being—a limited creature—then much more can we not hide from God, who is boundless and omnipresent’.

1 John 3:21. Beloved! if our heart does not condemn us, we have boldness before God, 1 John 3:22. and whatever we ask, we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do what is pleasing before Him. The statement of verse 21, in its form reminiscent of the opposite expression 1 John 3:20, in its meaning presents an unfolding of 1 John 3:19: with a calm conscience the Christian receives not only peace of spirit, but also a certain “confidence before God,” that is, childlike trust, confidence in God’s gracious closeness, in his love for humanity, and in the fact that every legitimate and worthy petition to God will be heard (1 John 3:24). “With confidence, we will certainly receive all that we ask from him. Why? Because we keep his commandments. For those to whom a request is made are very much inclined to listen to those who make respectful petitions, only let them ask without doubting. And since we keep his commandments and do what is pleasing to him, we can hope that our prayers will not be in vain”.

1 John 3:23. And this is His commandment, that we should believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He commanded us. 1 John 3:24. And whoever keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. And that He abides in us we know by the Spirit which He gave us. The Apostle has so far been especially insisting on the fulfillment of the commandment about brotherly love. But alongside love for others and even before it is required faith in God and in the Lord Jesus Christ as the foundation of Christian life. This is a summation of the entire law and Gospel, and the Apostle unites both fundamental requirements of Christianity in one “commandment” (verse 23): the first half of this commandment is about faith in Christ, the second is about love for one another; faith is the foundation of love, love is the fruit or action of faith; with true living faith, love is given, as light and heat come with the sun. This is the “faith working through love” of which the Apostle Paul also taught (Gal 5:6). This completely excludes—both the denial of the unconditional necessity of faith in moral action (anti-dogmatism) and the diminishment or suppression of moral action in faith (amoralism). The believer in Christ and the lover of others dwells in God and himself becomes a dwelling place of the entire Holy Trinity (verse 24), according to the promise of the Savior himself (John 14:16). The pledge, sign, or witness of God’s dwelling in us is the Holy Spirit, sent to the whole Church and being sent to individual members of it, along with his gracious gifts (compare 1 John 2:20; 2 Cor 1:22; Eph 1:13; 1 Cor 12:4 and others). “The whole thought is this: you should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another truthfully, as he commanded. For the one who keeps the commandment remains in him, and he in him. And that he remains in us, we know by the Spirit or by the gift which he gave us” (Theophylact). From here the Apostle proceeds to the discernment of spiritual gifts—true ones from false and pretended ones.