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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - 1 John 3:10 - 3:10
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10. ἐν τούτῳ. This phrase, like διὰ τοῦτο (1Jn 3:1) commonly looks back at what has just been stated. In doing or not doing sin lies the test. A man’s principles are invisible, but their results are visible: ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’ (Mat 7:16-20).
τὰ τέκνα τ. διαβόλου. The expression occurs nowhere else in N.T. Act 13:10 we have υἱὲ διαβόλου, and Mat 13:38 οἱ υἱοὶ τοῦ πονηροῦ. Comp. ὑμεῖς ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ διαβόλου ἐστέ (Joh 8:44). All mankind are God’s children by creation: as regards this a creature can have no choice. But a creature endowed with free will can choose his own parent in the moral world. The Father offers him the ‘right to become a child of God’ (Joh 1:12); but he can refuse this and become a child of the devil instead. There is no third alternative.
It was for pressing the doctrine that a tree is known by its fruits to an extreme, and maintaining that a world in which evil exists cannot be the work of a good God, that the heretic Marcion was rebuked by S. John’s disciple Polycarp, in words which read like an adaptation of this passage, Ἐπιγιγνώσκω τὸν πρωτότοκον τοῦ Σατανᾶ (Iren. Haer. III. iii. 4). And Polycarp in his Epistle (vii. 1) writes, ὂς ἂν μὴ ὁμολογῇ τὸ μαρτύριον τοῦ σταυροῦ, ἐκ τοῦ διαβόλου ἐστίν.
καὶ ὁ μὴ ἀγαπῶν. The καί is almost epexegetic: ‘not to love’ is only a special form of ‘not to do righteousness.’ As in 1Jn 2:4 (ὁ λέγων καὶ μὴ τηρῶν), S. John does not say that there is any such person (ὁ οὐκ ἀγαπῶν); but if there be such, this is his condition. Comp. 1Jn 4:8; 1Jn 4:20; 1Jn 5:12; 2Jn 1:7; 2Jn 1:9. Here also we may again note the manner in which S. John’s divisions shade off into one another (see on 1Jn 2:28-29). Doing righteousness, the mark of God’s children, suggests the thought of brotherly love, for love is righteousness in relation to others; ‘For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’ (Gal 5:14). Love suggests its opposite, hate; and these two form the subject of the next paragraph. Some editors would make the new section begin here in the middle of 1Jn 3:10. It is perhaps better to draw the line between 1Jn 3:12-13, considering 1Jn 3:11-12 as transitional.
‘He that loveth not his brother is not of God,’ for a child of God will love all whom God loves. This prepares us for the statements in 1Jn 4:7; 1Jn 4:20-21.