Passing from death to life

In 1 John 3:14, John tells us “We know we’ve passed from death to life, because we love our brothers.” 

From the very beginning that point was made clear too, when Cain murdered his brother (12). If Cain had loved his brother, Abel would not have died the way he did. Nor would billions of other people since then, who’ve also been killed and murdered by their fellow humans. 

Loving one another, therefore, seems such an obvious way of putting an end to hate and murder, so this entire planet can “pass from death to life.” Something really disturbing must’ve happened to Cain, then, for him to dismiss the obvious and justify murdering his brother. 

John’s explanation is that “Cain belonged to the evil one” (12), and that’s what led to “his own actions being evil” – unlike Abel who did what he did because it was the right thing to do (12). Which set a pattern from that time on, so “we’d know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are” (10), because “everyone who does what is right has been born of God” (2:29), whereas “anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; neither is anyone who does not love his brother” (3:10). And Cain was guilty of both. 

It’s also those two things – love for our fellow humans and doing what is right – that noticeably work together on our everyday human level too, because those who act on the basis that “it’s the right thing to do,” are also most likely to be the ones you can depend on to do a good job. I remember one plumber who did an excellent job for us, and then, days later, I noticed he’d done several other jobs that needed doing too, without charging us.

That’s love, compared to the person who skimps on a job, or scams, cheats and lies – actions that are evil and hateful like Cain’s. And that really concerns John, because “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and no murderer has eternal life in him” (15).

So “Don’t be like Cain,” John writes in verse 12, because being stuck in an evil, hateful, dead end life is not what the Father sent Jesus to us for. Jesus came to move us from hate to a life of love instead, the key to which, according to John, is believing “Jesus is the Son of God”….(next blog)