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Our apostle comes now to enforce his exhortation unto brotherly love, by many weighty arguments:
1.He assures them, that this precept concerning brotherly love was given them by Christ and his apostles, from the beginning of the preaching of the gospel: This is the message ye heard of him from the beginning.
Note here, 1. That the word of God is a message sent from God unto us, a message for our information and instruction, a message for our guide and direction.
2. That the duty of brotherly love is an ancient message that God has sent and has continued to send us, from the beginning; God help us to learn this lesson, so anciently taught us, and so long pressed upon us by God himself! This is the message which ye heard from the beginning.
A second argument to exite brotherly love is drawn from the evil of hating our brother, which appears in the person and practice of Cain, whom our apostle describes.
1. By his pedigree, He was of that wicked one; that is, the devil, of his diabolical dispostion, of his envious and malicious inclination, and, as such, was not so much Adam's son as the devil's son.
2. By his practice, he slew his brother: He first hated him, and then slew him. His hatred was causeless and unjust, implacable and deadly, and ended in his brother's death and his own destruction.
3. The reason is assigned why he slew him, Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous; not for any harm he had done, or for any evil he had deserved, but because Cain was bad himself, and his works bad; to hate godliness, and to persecute the godly, is the very nature and disposition of a wicked man.
Observe, lastly, The inference drawn by the apostle from this example of Cain's hating his holy and innocent brother; Marvel not, my brethren, says he, if the world hate you; intimating, that the world always did, and ever will hate God's children; and that the children of God are not to marvel or wonder at it, but to prepare for it; it is no new thing, but what has been from the beginning: Though Cain be dead, the spirit of Cain is alive; the prosecutor goes about with Cain's club in his hand, redded with blood; marvel not then if the world hate you.