Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 John · About this commentary
Passed from Death to Life
1 John 3:13-15
13 Don’t be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. · WEB
Love for other believers is offered as evidence of a transfer that has already happened, and the alternative is stated as murder.
Verse 13 tells the readers not to be surprised by the world's hatred, which follows directly from the previous verse: if a brother's righteousness was reason enough for Cain 1 John 3:12, then hostility needs no further explanation. Surprise would mean expecting the world to make an exception.
Verse 14 gives the second of the letter's three tests, and the tense carries it. We have passed out of death into life — a completed crossing, not a process — and the evidence offered is because we love the brothers. The love is not what accomplishes the crossing; it is how the crossing is known, which is what the formula by this we know means everywhere in this letter 1 John 2:3 1 John 4:13.
The negative half is stated without cushioning: he who does not love remains in death. The verb is the letter's word for staying put, used here of the condition someone never left.
Verse 15 then presses it as far as it will go. Whoever hates his brother is a murderer. The letter is not saying hatred leads to murder or resembles it; it is applying the category directly, which the Cain example has just prepared. And the closing clause returns to the letter's subject, assurance: no murderer has eternal life remaining in him — the same verb again, so what is denied is not a reward withheld but a life that was never allowed to stay.
settled What this mark means