Bible Study on 1John 3, verses 11 to 13, Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you

 

1John 3:11 ¶  For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. 12  Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous. 13  Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.

John reinforces what he reported in his gospel about what Jesus said regarding this.

John 13:34  A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. 35  By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.

John 15:12  This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.13  Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends… 17  These things I command you, that ye love one another.

This is in sharp contrast to Cain’s lack of love for his own flesh and blood brother. Cain was doing the work of Satan as the first-century Judean Jews who persecuted these early Jewish Christians did.

John 16:2  They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.

Why did they do that? Because their own works were evil and because...

John 8:44  Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it.

The disciples of Christ should not be amazed that the world hates them.

John 15:18 ¶  If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. 19  If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. 20  Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. 21  But all these things will they do unto you for my name’s sake, because they know not him that sent me. 22  If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin. 23  He that hateth me hateth my Father also.

Think of this. The Jews had interpreted the Bible knowing that God was manifest in the Father, in the Word of God, and in the Skekinah, His glory, which some commentators interpret as the Holy Ghost in the Old Testament. So, there is the Trinity, a word coined by the early church father, Tertullian, who lived from 165AD to 220AD, to describe the threefold nature of the Godhead. The living Word of God had been right in front of them; teaching in depth and wisdom and authority, raising the dead, controlling natural events, casting out demons, and then defying all understood reality of life by rising from the dead Himself after letting them execute Him at the hands of the Romans. You might say, well why didn’t He do something like part the Red Sea? Remember, though, that didn’t make the Israelites obey God or even love Him. And these things Jesus did were personal, individual miracles that would impact their lives right then. And still the religious leadership valued their political positions more than the truth, more than salvation, so they killed Him.

John 1:11  He came unto his own, and his own received him not.