1 John3chapter 3

1 John 3:1

what manner of love: Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us stops the letter mid-argument to marvel, potapen, a love foreign in kind, that we should be called the sons of God, not merely treated as such but actually named and made into the family. Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not draws the family resemblance out as a cost, the children sharing the world's ignorance of the Father along with the Son who bore it first.

1 John 3:2-3

Beloved, now are we the sons of God insists on the present tense against any reading of sonship as future reward only, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be names a genuine unfinished glory still ahead. We know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is grounds the transformation in the seeing itself, unveiled sight of Christ the means of the believer's final conformity to him. Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure turns the hope immediately practical, the coming glory a present discipline rather than a distant comfort only.

1 John 3:4-5

Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law defines sin against the standard of divine law rather than mere social harm, anomia, lawlessness at its root a rejection of God's rule. Ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin sets Christ's sinless coming as both the remedy for sin and its only adequate contrast, the two facts, his sinlessness and his mission against sin, named together as the ground for the ethical demand that follows.

1 John 3:6

Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not states the ideal of the new life in its purest form, the present tense naming settled practice rather than a single lapse, read alongside 1:8's plain acknowledgment that every believer still confesses sin. Whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him is aimed at the secession's claim to spiritual knowledge without corresponding holiness, the same charge levelled at 2:4 against anyone who claims to know Christ while living in unbroken disobedience.

1 John 3:7-8

Little children, let no man deceive you names the danger plainly, the secession's teachers apparently arguing that right belief could stand apart from righteous living. He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous ties conduct and standing together against that claim, while he that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning traces habitual sin to its spiritual parentage. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil states Christ's mission in its cosmic dimension, the seed-war of Genesis 3:15 given its clearest New Testament restatement.

1 John 3:9-10

Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God is read by most teachers on the strength of its present tense, habitual and settled practice of sin ruled foreign to the new birth, against 1:9's plain provision for sins confessed as isolated acts; Wesley's teaching on Christian perfection presses the verse toward a fuller present victory over sin, and the readings are named here without a verdict, per the site's own Wesleyan heritage unflattened. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil closes the paragraph with the two-family line the whole chapter has been drawing, whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother naming both tests, righteousness and love, in one sentence.

1 John 3:11-12

For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another returns the letter to its oldest command, now given its first named counter-example. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother sets the seed-war thread's Johannine beat, Cain read as belonging spiritually to the wicked one rather than merely acting wickedly, the two families of verse 10 given a face from Genesis. His own works were evil, and his brother's righteous locates the murder's cause not in provocation but in the moral contrast Cain could not bear to have exposed beside him.

1 John 3:13-15

Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you prepares the readers for Cain's pattern to repeat against them, the world's hostility toward the righteous no surprise given its first instance. We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren offers love for fellow believers as evidence of the crossing already made, he that loveth not his brother abideth in death the same fact stated negatively. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer traces hatred to Cain's own root, the Lord's teaching on anger and murder in the Sermon on the Mount standing behind the equation, and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him names the settled incompatibility.

1 John 3:16

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us functions as the letter's own John 3:16, love defined at the cross rather than in the abstract, ginosko naming perception that comes only by looking at the actual event. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren draws the imitation out to its full cost, the cross not merely admired but reproduced in the shape a believer's love toward fellow Christians is required to take.

1 John 3:17-18

But whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him brings the cross-shaped standard of verse 16 down to the ordinary case of material need shut out by a closed heart. My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth names the letter's own test for every profession of love, words weighed against the practical help they either produce or fail to produce.

1 John 3:19-20

And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him grounds assurance in the deed-and-truth love just described, evidence a troubled conscience can rest on. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things answers the accusing conscience with a still greater fact, God's complete knowledge reaching past every failure the heart can name to the settled reality of grace, a comfort read by most teachers as reassurance for the sincere believer's self-doubt rather than license for the unrepentant.

1 John 3:21-22

Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God turns from the troubled conscience of the previous verses to the settled one, parresia the same free boldness named again at 5:14. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight ties answered prayer to obedient living, the same condition, according to his will, that 5:14 states more fully, obedience the atmosphere in which confident asking lives rather than a payment that earns it.

1 John 3:23-24

And this is his commandment, That we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another folds the letter's truth test and love test into a single command, faith and love named together as one obedience rather than two separate demands. He that keepeth his commandments dwelleth in him, and he in him closes the chapter on mutual abiding, and hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us names the Spirit himself as the ground of that assurance, the pneumatology the fourth test the next chapter opens with directly.