1 John 3:14

We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

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.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

We know that we have passed from death unto life - From spiritual death (Notes, Ephesians 2:1) to spiritual life; that is, that we are true Christians.

Because we love the brethren - The sentiment here is, that it is an infallible evidence of true piety if we love the followers of Christ as such. See this sentiment illustrated in the notes at John 13:35. But how easy it would seem to be to apply such a test of piety as this! Who cannot judge accurately of his own feelings, and determine whether he loves a Christian because he bears the name and image of the Saviour - loves him the more just in proportion as he bears that image? Who cannot, if he chooses, look beyond the narrow bounds of his own sect, and determine whether he is pleased with the true Christian character wherever it may be found, and whether he would prefer to find his friends among those who bear the name and the image of the Son of God, than among the people of the world? The Saviour meant that his followers should be known by this badge of discipleship all over the world, John 13:34-35. John says, in carrying out the sentiment, that Christians, by this test, may know "among themselves" whether they have any true religion.

He that loveth not his brother abideth in death - He remains dead in sins; that is, he has never been converted. Compare the notes at 1 John 3:6. As love to the Christian brotherhood is essential to true piety, it follows that he who has not that remains unconverted, or is in a state of spiritual death. He is by nature dead in sin, and unless he has evidence that he is brought out of that state, he "remains" or "abides" in it.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

14. We—emphatical; hated though we be by the world, we know what the world knows not.

know—as an assured fact.

passed—changed our state. Col 1:13, "from the power of darkness … translated into the kingdom of His dear Son."

from death unto life—literally, "out of the death (which enthrals the unregenerate) into the life (of the regenerate)." A palpable coincidence of language and thought, the beloved disciple adopting his Lord's words.

because we love the brethren—the ground, not of our passing over out of death into life, but of our knowing that we have so. Love, on our part, is the evidence of our justification and regeneration, not the cause of them. "Let each go to his own heart; if he find there love to the brethren, let him feel assured that he has passed from death unto life. Let him not mind that his glory is only hidden; when the Lord shall come, then shall he appear in glory. For he has vital energy, but it is still wintertime; the root has vigor, but the branches are as it were dry; within there is marrow which is vigorous, within are leaves, within fruits, but they must wait for summer" [Augustine].

He that loveth not—Most of the oldest manuscripts omit "his brother," which makes the statement more general.

abideth—still.

in death—"in the (spiritual) death" (ending in eternal death) which is the state of all by nature. His want of love evidences that no saving change has passed over him.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

The notion of brother must not be understood so narrowly, as only to signify such as we have particular inclination to, as being of our own party and opinion, or kindred, or who have obliged us by special kindness; for to confine our love within such limits, were no argument of our having

passed from death unto life, or more than is to be found with the worst of men, Matthew 5:46,47. Nor must it be understood exclusively, of the regenerateonly; but must be taken, first, more generally, in the natural sense, for all mankind, in the same latitude as neighbour in that summary of the second table: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; originally intended not to Jews, as such, but men; and therefore excludes not our enemies, by our Saviour’s interpretation, Matthew 5:43,44. Secondly, in a more special (viz. the spiritual) sense, for such as are our brethren by regeneration, so the children with us of the same Father; i.e. whereas the blessed God himself is the primum amabile, the first object of love, all others (persons or things) ought to be loved proportionably to what prints or characters of the Divine excellency we find impressed upon them. Human nature hath resemblances in it of his spiritual, intelligent, immortal nature; regeneracy, of his holiness. And so he loves his creatures himself, severing their malignity, (where that is to be found), that is of themselves, from what of real good there is in them, which is from him. When therefore a correspondent frame of love is impressed upon us, and inwrought into our temper, his image, who is love, is renewed in us, which, in this noble part of it, the devil had so eminently defaced in the world, possessing the souls of men with mutual animosities and enmities against one another, but especially such as should be found to have upon them any impress of the most excellent kind of goodness, i.e. of true piety and holiness. And by this renovation of his image in us, whereby we are enabled to love others for his sake, and proportionably to what characters of him are upon them, we appear to be his children, Matthew 5:45, begotten of him into a state of life, out of that death which is upon the rest of the world, Ephesians 2:1, and wherein every one still abides that thus loves not his brother.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

We know that we have passed from death to life,.... From a death in sin, a moral or spiritual death; which lies in a separation from God, Father, Son, and Spirit; in an alienation from the life of God; in a loss of the image of God, of righteousness, holiness, and knowledge, in which man was created; in a privation of all true sense of sin, and in a servitude to it, which is unto death, and is no other than death: and from a legal death, or death in a legal sense, under the sentence of which all men are, as considered in Adam; and which God's elect are sensible of, when convinced by the Spirit of God, and are in their own apprehension as dead men. Now in regeneration, which is a quickening of sinners dead in sin, a resurrection of them from the dead, the people of God pass from this death of sin, and the law, to a life of sanctification, having principles of grace and life implanted in them; and to a life of justification, and of faith on Christ, as the Lord their righteousness; and to a life of communion with Christ; and to such a life as is to the glory of Christ; and to a right to eternal life. And this passing from the one to the other is not of themselves, it is not their own act; no man can quicken himself, or raise himself from the dead; in this men are passive: and so the words are rendered in the Vulgate Latin, Syriac, and Arabic versions, "we know that we are translated"; that is, by God the Father, who delivers from the power of darkness, and death, and translates into the kingdom of his dear Son, which is a state of light and life; or by Christ, who is the resurrection and the life, who is the author of the resurrection from the death of sin to a life of grace; or by the Spirit of life from Christ, by whom souls are quickened, and of whom they are born again: and this passage from death to life, or regeneration, is a thing that may be, and is known by the regenerate man; who, as he knows surely, that whereas he was blind he now sees, so that whereas he was dead in sin, he is now alive; and among other things it may be known by this,

because we love the brethren: this is not the cause of passing from death to life, but the effect of it, and so an evidence of it, or that by which it is known; brotherly love being what the saints are taught of God in regeneration, and is a fruit of the Spirit of God, and is what true faith works by, and is what shows itself as soon as anything in a regenerate man; nor can anyone love the saints, as such, as brethren in Christ, unless he is born again; a man may indeed love a saint, as a natural relative, as a good neighbour, and because he has done him some good offices, and because of some excellent qualities in him, as a man of learning, sense, candour, civility, &c. though he has not the grace of God; but to love him as a child of God, a member of Christ, and because he has his image stamped on him, no man can do this, unless he has received the grace of God; so that this is a certain evidence of it:

he that loveth not his brother, abideth in death; in the death of sin, in a state of nature and unregeneracy; under the sentence of condemnation and death; and he is liable to eternal death, which is the wages of sin, under the power of which such a manifestly is. This is said to deter from hatred, as also what follows.

Geneva Study Bible

{14} We {o} know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.

(14) The second reason: Because charity is a testimony that we are translated from death to life: and therefore hatred towards the brethren is a testimony of death, and whoever nourishes it fosters death in his bosom.

(o) Love is a token that we are translated from death to life, for by the effects the cause is known.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

1 John 3:14. The contrast of love and hatred is at the same time one of life and death.

ἡμεῖς οἴδαμεν] ἡμεῖς forms the antithesis of ὁ κόσμος. Though the world hate us and persecute us to death, as Cain killed his brother, we know, etc.

ὅτι μεταβεβήκαμεν ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου εἰς τὴν ζωήν] comp. Gospel of John 5:24; the perfect shows that the subject is a present and not merely a future state; moreover, the apostle does not say that the Christian has received the title to eternal life (Grotius: juri ad rem saepe datur nomen rei ipsius), but that the believer has already passed from death into life, and therefore no longer is in a state of death, but in life. By ζωή is to be understood not merely the knowledge of God (Weiss), but holy life in truth and righteousness; by θάνατος, not merely the want of the knowledge of God (Weiss), but unholy life in lying and sin. The natural man is fallen in lies and unrighteousness, and hence wretched ἐν θανάτῳ: by the salvation of Christ he enters from this state into the other, the essence of which is happiness in truth and righteousness.[224] That the Christian, as such, is in a state of ΖΩΉ, he knows from the fact that he loves the brethren; brotherly love is the sign of the ΖΩΉ; therefore the apostle continues: ὍΤΙ ἈΓΑΠῶΜΕΝ ΤΟῪς ἈΔΕΛΦΟΎς.

ὍΤΙ refers, as most commentators rightly interpret, to ΟἼΔΑΜΕΝ and not to ΜΕΤΑΒΕΒΉΚΑΜΕΝ (Baumgarten-Crusius, Köstlin); the relation between ΖΩΉ and ἈΓΆΠΗ is, namely, not this, that the latter is the originating cause of the former (Lyra: opera ex caritate facta sunt meritoria), but both are one in their cause, and are only distinguished in this way, that ΖΩΉ is the state, ἀγάπη the action of the believer: out of the happy life, love grows, and love again produces happiness; therefore John says: ὁ μὴ ἀγαπῶν (sc. τὸν ἀδελφόν, see the critical notes) ΜΈΝΕΙ ἘΝ Τῷ ΘΑΝΆΤῼ, by which the identity of not loving and of abiding in death is directly brought out.[225]

It is not without a purpose that the apostle contents himself here, where he has only to do with the simple antithesis to the preceding, with the negative idea: ΜῊ ἈΓΑΠᾷΝ, with which the ἘΝ Τῷ ΘΑΝΆΤῼ ΜΈΝΕΙ also corresponds; it is only in the following verse that the negation reaches the form of a positive antithesis.

ΜΈΝΕΙ expresses here also the firm, sure being (so also Myrberg); it is therefore used neither merely in reference to the past, nor merely in reference to the future.

[224] By this expression: μεταβεβήκαμεν κ.τ.λ., the apostle describes Christians as having been, previously to their believing, ἐν τῷ θανάτῳ, hence also not yet τέκνα τοῦ Θεοῦ; contrary to the assertion of Hilgenfeld, that the author of the Epistle shared the Gnostic view of the original metaphysical difference in men.

[225] Besser: “Where hatred is, there is death; where love is, there is life; nay, love itself is life.” Weiss erroneously maintains that here, “instead of the strict converse in the form of a progressive parallelism, just that is mentioned which is the result of the non-transition from death to life, namely, the abiding in death,” for John did not need to say actually that he who has not passed from death to life is in death.

Expositor's Greek Testament

1 John 3:14. ἡμεῖς emphatic: “Whatever the world may say, we know”. The test is not its hatred but our love. μεταβεβήκαμεν, “have migrated”. The word is used of transition from one place to another (John 7:3; John 13:1), of passing from one form of government to another (Plat. Rep. 550 D), of the transmigration of souls (Luc. Gall. 4).

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

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 know that 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 in the one region for an abode in the 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.

Bengel's Gnomen

1 John 3:14. Μεταβεβήκαμεν, we have passed) We had therefore been in death.—ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου, from death) spiritual.—εἰς τὴν ζωὴν, into life) spiritual, and also eternal: in the following verse. The language again is reciprocal: we are in life, and life is in us; 1 John 3:15.—ὅτι, because) A judgment [a criterion drawn] from the effect.—μένει, abides) is as yet.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 14. - We know that we have passed over out of death into life (John 5:24), because, etc. "We" is emphatic; whatever the world may feel about us, we have certain knowledge (not γινώσκομεν, but ἡμεῖς οἴδαμεν). The love of the brethren is the cause, not of the passing over, but of our knowing it. It proves that we have passed. And this test every one can apply to himself; "Do I, or do I not, find the love of the brethren within me?" A Christian can no more live without love than a plant can live without growth. He that loveth not abideth in death: he has not made the passage over. There is no accusative after "loveth," τὸν ἀδελφόν being a gloss. The statement is quite general; absence of love implies an atmosphere of death. 1 John 3:14

Vincent's Word Studies

We know

Emphatic; we as distinguished from the world.

Have passed (μεατβεβήκαμεν)

Lit., have passed over.

From death (ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου)

Lit., out of the death. The article marks it as one of the two spheres in which men must be; death or life. The death, the life, present one of those sharp oppositions which are characteristic of the Epistle; as love, hatred; darkness, light; truth, a lie. Ὁ θάνατος the death, occurs in John's Epistles only here and in the next clause. In the Gospel, only John 5:24. Personified in Revelation 1:18; Revelation 6:8; Revelation 9:6; Revelation 20:13.

Unto life (εἰς τὴν ζωήν)

Rev., better, into. Compare enter into the life, Matthew 28:8; Matthew 19:17.

Because

The sign of having passed into life; not the ground.

We love the brethren (ἀγαπῶμεν του,ς ἀδελφούς)

The only occurrence of the phrase. Elsewhere, love one another, or love his brother. See on 1 John 2:9.

His brother

Omit.