Book of 1 John Chapter 3 Vs. 15

 

Love One Another

1 John 3:15 "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him."


is a murderer... John presents the second of three characteristics of the devil’s children with respect to their lack of love. Hatred is spiritually the same as murder in the eyes of God, i.e., the attitude is equal to the act.

Hate is the seed that leads to murder, as seen in the example of the hatred of Cain for Abel that resulted in murder. Hate leads to murder, so if you do not carry the murder out in reality, you have already committed it in your heart.

Murderer... Greek: anthropoktonos, manslayer. Only here and in John 8:44. Does this mean that only sinners who murder do not have eternal life or that Christians can murder and still have eternal life? Are this the kind of government God runs? Does this compare with civil governments in justice?

murderer (ἀθρωποκτόνος)

Manslayer. Only here and John 8:44, of the devil.

hath eternal life... Eternal Life and Jesus Christ the Same:

In some scriptures we find that the term eternal life is synonymous with Jesus Christ (1Jhn. 1:1-2; 2:24-25; 5:11-13, 5:20; John 14:6; 17:2-3). This life, like Christ, is eternal whether anyone ever receives it or not. Even if one receives it and then loses it, the life is still eternal. Individual possession of it either temporarily or otherwise does not make it eternal or not eternal. So the argument that, if one should lose it it would cease to be eternal, is wrong. A diamond or any other eternal thing would not cease to be eternal just because the owner lost it. So it is with eternal life. Conditions must be met to get it and to keep it (see, John 6:27). Christ cannot and will not remain in the life where sin and rebellion dwell (John 15:4-8; Gal. 1:6-8; 2:6-7; Rom. 6:14-23; 8:1-13; 2Cor. 13:5).

hath eternal life, etc.

The contrast is suggestive between the sentiment embodied in this statement and that of Pagan antiquity respecting murder, in the Homeric age, for instance. With regard to the practice of homicide, the ordinary Greek morality was extremely loose.... Among the Greeks, to have killed a man was considered in the light of misfortune, or, at most, a prudential error, when the perpetrator of the act had come among strangers as a fugitive for protection and hospitality. On the spot, therefore, where the crime occurred, it could stand only as in the nature of a private and civil wrong, and the fine payable was regarded, not which it might have been as a mode, however defective, of marking any guilt in the culprit, but as, on the whole, an equitable satisfaction to the wounded feelings of the relatives and friends, or as an actual compensation for the lost services of the dead man. The religion of the age takes no notice of the act whatever. (Gladstone “Homer and the Homeric Age,” ii., 436).

abiding in him... Eternal life and Christ are separate from the individual and always will be. They abide in one’s life like any other separate and outside something which one may permit to come into his life.

This verse is usually taken to mean that a true Christian cannot hate his fellow Christian, since hatred is the moral equivalent of murder. But this view cannot stand up under close scrutiny.

To begin with, John speaks of anyone who hates his brother. If John had believed that only an unsaved person can hate another Christian, the word his unnecessarily personalizes the relationship (cf. see 1Jhn. 2:9). But it is an illusion to believe that a real Christian is incapable of hatred and murder. David was guilty of the murder of pious Uriah the Hittite (2Sam. 12:9) and Peter warned his Christian readers, “If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer” (1Pet. 4:15; more lit., “Let none of you suffer as a murderer”). The view that 1Jhn. 3:15 cannot refer to the saved is totally devoid of all realism. The solemn fact remains that hatred of some other believer is the spiritual equivalent of murder (Mat. 5:21-22), as a lustful eye is the spiritual equivalent of adultery (Mat. 5:28).

John insisted then that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him. The NIV does not translate the Greek participle menousan abiding, which is a crucial word here. John does not say that someone who hates his brother does not possess eternal life, but rather that he does not have it abiding in him. But since for John, Christ Himself is eternal life (John 14:6; 1Jhn. 1:2; 5:20), John’s statement is saying that no murderer has Christ abiding in him. Thus once more the experience of abiding is what John had in view.

Hatred on the part of one Christian toward another is thus an experience of moral murder. As John had indicated in 1Jhn. 3:14, he held that a Christian who fails to love his brother remains menei in death. He is thus experientially living in the same sphere in which the world lives (see 1Jhn. 3:13). Because he is a murderer at heart he can make no real claim to the kind of intimate fellowship with God and Christ which the word abide suggests. Eternal life (i.e., Christ) is not at home in his heart so long as the spirit of murder is there. Such a person is disastrously out of touch with his Lord and he experiences only death. (Cf. Paul’s statement, “For if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die” [Rom. 8:13].) John’s words were surely grim. But no service is rendered to the church by denying their applicability to believers. The experience of the Christian church through the ages shows how urgently they are needed. Hate, unfortunately, is not confined to unsaved people.