Welcome to Day 2724 of Wisdom-Trek. Thank you for joining me.

This is Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to Wisdom

Day 2729– A Discerning Life – Not Like Cain, but Like Christ! – 1 John 3:11-24

Putnam Church Message – 10/05/2025

Sermon Series: 1, 2, & 3 John

“A Discerning Life – Not Like Cain, But Like Christ! "

 

Last week, we continued through the letter of 1 John and explored how to have A Discerning Life: Discerning the Works of the Devil."

This week, we continue through the letter of 1 John, and we will explore how to have A Discerning Life: Not Like Cain, But Like Christ!" from 1 John 3:11-24 from the NIV, which is found on page 1901 of your Pew Bibles.

Love One Another

¹¹ For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. ¹² Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. ¹³ Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters,^[a] if the world hates you. ¹⁴ We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. ¹⁵ Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

¹⁶ This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. ¹⁷ If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? ¹⁸ Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

¹⁹ This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: ²⁰ If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. ²¹ Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God ²² and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. ²³ And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. ²⁴ The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

Opening Prayer

Repeatedly, John urges his readers to love God and to love one another. He warns them against loving the world (2:15 –16). And he underscores the danger of embracing a sinful lifestyle (3:10 ). All these subjects begin to wear on the consciences of Christians who desire to be like Christ but constantly fall short. If we allow the full impact of these words to weigh on us, it’ll make us squirm because all of us fall short of the perfect standard of love given to us in Jesus Christ.

Considering these convicting truths, some believers might even begin to think, “Am I even saved? Have I loved the world too much? Have I not loved my brother or sister in Christ enough? Are there people in my life whom I hate?” Because these questions naturally begin pestering the consciences of believers who take God’s commands seriously, John applies a soothing balm to calm the disquieted conscience: the balm of grace.

3:11

John begins this section with a very familiar message. It’s a message that serves as a hinge on which much of the book of 1 John turns: “Love one another.” When Jesus spoke that simple command decades earlier at the Last Supper (John 13:34-35), John got the message. He never forgot it. That command filled John’s mind and heart, taking hold of his actions.

It’s not the first time John’s readers had heard the command. John had already mentioned a variation of it to them in 1 John 2:10 . And no doubt the “love one another” theme was a frequent refrain in John’s teaching and preaching over the years. The recipients of 1 John, in fact, had heard this message “from the beginning” of their life as believers in Christ.

It’s clear, then, that loving one another is the heart of the Christian life. Along with loving God, it sums up what it means to observe the commandments (Matt. 22:36-40). It is a theme that emerges throughout the New Testament (e.g., Rom. 13:8; 1 Thes. 4:9; 1 Pet. 1:22 ). (Bulletin) And it’s a distinguishing mark of the authenticity of the disciples of Jesus (John 13:35 ). “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” As in our hymn this morning.

But what does 'love one another' look like? 3:12 –18 If you haven’t noticed already, the apostle John loves using contrasts to drive home his points:

• truth vs. lies


• love vs. hate


• righteousness vs. wickedness


• obedience vs. disobedience


• light vs. darkness


• children of God vs. children of the devil

Not surprisingly, in these verses, John provides two contrasting examples to put flesh on the bones of the command to “love one another.” The first example illustrates the extreme opposite of loving our brother or sister in Christ (1 Jn. 3:12-15). The second example demonstrates the extreme ideal of love (3:16 –18). By placing believers in the middle of these two examples, John tries to urge them away from the one /and toward the other.

In giving an example of brotherly hatred rather than brotherly love, John takes us all the way back to the original saga of sibling rivalry: the account of Cain’s murder of his brother Abel (3:12 ). Cain, John says, who belonged to the evil one.” This phrase parallels the phrase “belongs to the devil” in 3:8:

1 John 3:8 “When people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil.”

1 John 3:12 “Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother”

 

John sets Cain up as the original example of one who “belonged to the devil,” providing a smooth transition in his argument from 3:10 . So now we can tell who are children of God and who are children of the devil. Anyone who does not live righteously and does not love other believers^[a] does not belong to God. Cain is a perfect illustration of this category of person. Not only did he disobey God’s commands and fail to heed God’s warnings, but he also harbored hatred in his heart and took it to its extreme conclusion: the murder of his own brother Abel.

John uses a graphic term to describe Cain’s actions: sphazō [4969], which means “to butcher or slaughter.” It implies brutality, savagery, and hatred on the part of Cain toward his brother. This was no tragic, accidental death in which a fistfight of wrangling brothers went too far. Cain’s attack on Abel was a violent, premeditated murder.

But why? John asks this question: “For what reason did he slay him?” What stirred up so much hatred, anger, rage, and violence in Cain? Had Abel made Cain’s life miserable by constantly bullying his brother until he finally snapped? Did Cain have some sort of deep-seated derangement that made him delusional, believing he was doing what was right? The answer John gives should shock us: Cain killed Abel because he had been doing what was evil, and his brother had been doing what was righteous. (3:12 ).

To understand what John means by this, we need to look back at the original account of the slaying in Genesis 4. The narrative reveals that Cain, the firstborn, “cultivated the ground” while Abel, his younger brother, “became a shepherd” (Gen. 4:2). In other words, Cain was a farmer of produce, Abel a shepherd. But something happened that provoked Cain to envy, jealousy, and rage. Cain brought an offering to God—“presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord” (Gen. 4:3). Abel, meanwhile, brought the best portions of the firstborn lambs from his flock (Gen. 4:4). On Abel’s offering of blood, The Lord accepted Abel and his gift, ⁵ but he did not accept Cain and his gift. (Gen. 4:4–5).

But why? Didn’t each brother bring an offering from the toil of his own hands? Why would God accept Abel’s animal sacrifice but reject Cain’s produce from the earth? The passage doesn’t clearly give a reason, but we can make a few obs