Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that eternal life does not reside in a murderer.
15 Is a murderer To stimulate us still more to love, he shews how detestable before God is hatred. There is no one who dreads not a murderer; nay, we all execrate the very name. But the Apostle declares that all who hate their brethren are murderers. He could have said nothing more atrocious; nor is what is said hyperbolical, for we wish him to perish whom we hate.
The beloved apostle can scarcely touch upon the mention of sacred love, but he must enlarge upon the enforcement of it, as here he does by divers arguments and incentives thereto; as, I. That it is a mark of our evangelical justification, of our transition into a state of life: We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren, Jo1 3:14.
Commenting on 1 John 3:14-19
Hereby perceive we the love of God,.... The phrase "of God" is not in the Oriental versions, nor in the Greek copies, but is in the Complutensian edition, and in the Vulgate Latin version, and is favoured by the Syriac version, which reads, "by this we know his love to us"; and so the Ethiopic version, "by this we know his love".