The message, 11"from the beginning," is 11"that we should love one another." The word for message appears in this letter only twice, here and in 1:5. There John gave the first half of the gospel as he heard it, that God is light. Here he gives the second, that we should love one another. Love was the message from the start.
John chooses a story to show its opposite. Cain, 12"of the evil one," who murdered his brother. Genesis 4 is the only Old Testament story John refers to in the whole letter. The root of Cain's crime was envy aimed at another person's goodness, and some of the hatred John's readers faced had come from inside, from the teachers who went out from them. John puts love and hatred in the moral category of life and murder, echoing Jesus, who taught that anger in the heart is judged like a killing. Love is a sign of the new birth. 14"We have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers."
Then a different picture. 16"By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers." This is the second time the word ought has appeared in the letter. The Greek, *opheilo*, speaks of a debt, and each use ties what we owe to what was given. Love is defined at the cross, and the obligation follows.
Immediately John brings the sublime down to a kitchen table. 17"Closes his heart against him." Laying down a life sounds heroic, and sharing a paycheck is ordinary, and John puts them in one sentence. The Greek for closes his heart says he locks up his *splanchna*, the inward parts, the place the ancients located compassion. A person sees the need, feels the pull, and turns the key. John asks how God's love could be living in someone who does that.
John asks for love 18"in deed and in truth." Truth in John's vocabulary is something people do. Love that stays in speech falls short of it, and love that acts is already telling the truth about the one who loved first.
The last section turns toward the conscience. 20"Whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything." Any tender conscience knows the experience of loving in deed and still hearing the accusing voice. John says God outweighs that voice. Peter said something close to this on the shore when Jesus asked if he loved him: "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you" (John 21:17). God knows the love we struggle to show and the sincerity behind our failures.
John gathers it into a single commandment with two halves, 23"believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another." Believing and loving are one command, and the Spirit is the evidence of God's presence.
Ask where love has stayed in your speech this month, and where a need within reach has been left alone.
Prayer
Father, you loved us first, and your Son laid down his life for us. Teach us to love in deed and in truth, and open the hearts we have closed to the needs we see. When our own hearts condemn us, remind us that you are greater than our hearts and know everything. Let your Spirit assure us that you abide in us. In Jesus' name, amen.