Robert S. Candlish · 1 John 3:10–12
“In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.”—1 JOHN 3:10–12.
THE antagonism between the righteous Father and the great adversary, and between their respective seeds or offsprings, is here announced in such a way as to run it up to a very precise point. The question to which of the two you belong; which of the two parentages or fatherhoods, God’s or the devil’s, is really yours; is brought to a narrow issue. It is put negatively; and it is all the more searching on that account. The want of righteous doing, the absence of brotherly love, is conclusive against your being of God; “Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.” These two things are here virtually identified; or the one is represented as implying the other. The general is now made particular; what was general and abstract, “doing righteousness” (2:29), is now reduced to a particular practical test, “loving one’s brother.” What sort of love is here meant will appear more clearly as we proceed. It is, at any rate, love whose obligation is not of yesterday; the commandment rendering it obligatory is of old standing, of ancient date: “For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” And the question arises—What message or commandment is here referred to?
The idea is apt to suggest itself, not unnaturally, that it is our Lord’s commandment in the beginning of the gospel: “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another;” “This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you;” “These things I command you, that ye love one another” (John 13:34, and 16:12–17).
But may not “the beginning” be held to date, not from Christ’s teaching, but from the real beginning of the gospel, immediately after the fall? Does not the mention of Cain indicate as much? Is not the law or message of love in question that which was violated in the beginning, when Cain, being of that wicked one, slew his brother?
God’s commandment, heard from the beginning, is that we should love another. Therefore “he that loveth not his brother doeth not righteousness,”—the righteousness required to make good or verify the fact of his being “born of God.” He “committeth or doeth sin;” the sin which is “the transgression of the law.” He is “of the devil;”—like Cain, who “was of that wicked one, and slew his brother.”
We are thus carried back to the earliest manifestation of the distinction between the children of God and the children of the devil in the old familiar history of Cain and Abel.
Of Abel little is recorded in the history. But it is plainly implied, in what is said of him here, that he loved his brother. We read that “Cain talked with Abel his brother.” And we read this in immediate connection with what the Lord said to Cain on the subject of his rejected offering:—“But unto Cain, and to his offering, he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin”—a sin-offering—“lieth at the door”—at thy disposal, and available for thee. After that “Cain talked with Abel his brother.” It is in that connection that we read of his doing so.
It is not needful to suppose that his talk was, at least in the first instance, a deliberate plot to draw his intended victim into his power. It is quite probable, or rather more than probable, that the conversation began in good faith. The walk of the brothers in the field may have been as much without any purpose on the one side, as without any suspicion on the other, of anything like treachery or violence. It is quite natural that Cain should have talked with Abel his brother. And the talk might turn on the recent incident of the two acts of worship; on the disappointment which Cain had experienced, and the explanation of it which the Lord had been pleased to give him. That “Cain was still wroth, and his countenance still fallen,” we may well believe. He has not been able to bring himself to submit to God and his righteousness. He is in no mood for being amiable to one who seems to him to be a favoured rival. But he does not meditate actual wrong. He would startle at the thought of fratricide, when the talk with Abel his brother begins.
As it goes on, we may imagine Abel, warmly and affectionately enforcing the gospel message which Cain has just got from heaven; opening up its gracious meaning; trying to persuade his misjudging brother that there is really no respect of persons with God, no partiality for one above the other; but that for both alike there is acceptance, as well-doers, if they can claim to stand on that footing, and for both alike, if not well-doers, a sin-offering at the door and at command;—as near to thee, brother, as to me, as available for thee as for me, as much at thy service as at mine;—thine, as freely as it is mine, if thou wilt but have it to be thine.
Had I, brother, sought acceptance as a well-doer, needing no atoning blood of the slain lamb, coming merely with a tribute of grateful homage, the Lord would have had as little respect to me and my offering as he had to thee and thine. Nay, less. I must have been more decidedly and justly rejected; for of sinners I am chief. But, in my sin, I looked and saw the sin-offering at my door. And, brother, it lieth at thy door too, if thou wilt but consent, as a sinner, to make use of it. Has not our God been telling thee so? Is not this his gospel to thee as well as to me?
Is it too much to conceive of righteous Abel thus manifesting his being of God; thus doing righteousness and loving his brother? Is it at all conceivable that he should deal otherwise with his brother, or not deal thus with him, while Cain gave him the opportunity, by talking with him in the field? Could anything else be the burden of the talk than his beseeching his brother to be reconciled to God by the sacrifice of the slain lamb?
And is it not just by his manner of requiting such brotherly dealing with him on the part of Abel that Cain manifests his being of that wicked one? Is not that the explanation of his slaying him? For “wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.”
That was the real reason; though of course he did not avow it to himself. Probably he was not conscious of it. He had some plausible plea of self-justification or of self-excuse. His younger brother took too much upon him; affecting to be on a better footing with God than he was, and to be entitled to dictate and prescribe to him. It was bad enough that God should have rejected his plea of well-doing, or of righteousness; and bid him come, not with “God I thank thee” on his proud lips, but with “God be merciful to me a sinner” in his broken heart. That one who is his junior in age, and in strength so completely at his mercy, should press the same humiliating lesson, is more than he can stand. He cannot reach God; else his anger would find vent against him. But the meek and unresisting child of God is in his hands. And therefore he slays him; “because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.”
Well did our Lord say of the Jews who sought to kill him: “Ye are of your father the devil; and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning.” And he was so, “because he abode not in the truth, for there is no truth in him.” To lie and hate the truth, is his nature; “when he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own;” it is his native speech, his vernacular; for “he is a liar, and the father of it” (John 8:44). And you are of him; for it is “because I tell you the truth that ye believe me not” (ver. 45); and it is that which provokes you to “seek to kill me” (ver. 40).
Here then are two instances of the children of God being manifested, and the children of the devil: Abel, and his brother Cain who slew him; Jesus, and the Jews who sought to kill him. It is the first that John cites; but the second throws light upon it. For Abel is to Cain instead of Jesus; and Cain is to Abel what he would have been to Jesus. The antagonism is clearly and sharply defined. On the one side there is love, brotherly love; love to one who slays his lover, and love to him as still a brother; which is indeed “doing righteousness as God is righteous,” and therefore betokens a divine birth. On the other side there is hatred, deadly hatred; hatred of the righteous for his righteousness; which is “a work of the devil,” and savours accordingly of a devilish parentage.
For what brings out the antagonism in both cases is truth or righteousness; truth, as the Lord puts it (John 8); righteousness, as John puts it here; the truth of God; the righteousness of God. Whosoever doeth righteousness is of God; born of God. And such an one will, like Abel, love his brother; not sinning, or transgressing the law which commands love to men as brethren. “Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God.” And such an one “loveth not his brother,” but “doeth the work of the devil;” being like Cain, who “was of that wicked one, and slew his brother, because his own works were evil and his brother’s righteous.”
Mark how these opposite dispositions towards truth and righteousness, the truth and righteousness of God, operate in producing the opposite dispositions of love and hatred.
1. Consider that old message or commandment, heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. On what is it based? It cannot, since the fall, be based on our joint participation in the ills to which the fall has made us heirs. Companions in guilt, shut up as criminals in the condemned cell, together awaiting execution, can scarcely be expected, need scarcely be exhorted, to love one another. There is not much mutual love lost in a band of outlaws or a community of rebels. “Hateful and hating one another” is apt to be the characteristic of the tribe. They may call one another brothers, sworn brothers; in the riot of a common feast, in the presence of a common foe. But there is little real confidence or cordiality in their fellowship. It is not, it cannot be, to guilty and sinful men, in their natural condition of guilt and sinfulness, estranged from God and at enmity with God, that “the message” or commandment “heard from the beginning,” to love one another, is now addressed. At least it is not to such that it can be addressed with any hope of its being complied with and obeyed. It is a message or commandment that plainly, from its very nature, proceeds upon the fact of their being a method of extrication, actual or possible, out of that wretched state. It is redemption, and redemption alone, with the regeneration which is involved in it, that makes mutual brotherly love among men, in its true and deep sense, a practicable duty, an attainable grace. It is only one who, “being born of God, doeth righteousness as knowing God to be righteous,” that is capable of really loving his fellow-man as a brother. Only righteous Abel can so love even murderous Cain.
If you are the children of the righteous Father, you can so love even those who “despitefully use you and persecute you.” For as his children you are one in sympathy with the righteous Father; you are of one mind with him; you are on his side in the great cause of righteousness, and of a righteous salvation, which lies so near his heart. Submitting yourselves to his righteous and sovereign grace; receiving pardon and peace, a new nature and a new life, on the footing of your oneness with his righteous servant and beloved Son; you are now, as his children, being born of him, altogether for his righteousness and against the world’s sin.
What brotherhood then can there be between you and the men who sin; and who harden themselves, or justify themselves, in their sin? Is there not a great gulf between you and them? Are they not cut off from you? Are you not precluded from holding them to be your brethren?
Nay; it is only now, now for the first time, that you are in a position, that you have the heart, to feel anything like a brother’s love towards them. And it is the very sharpness of the line that severs you from them that makes your brotherly love towards them burn bright and keen and warm. You love them as brethren now, in a sense and manner in which you never could love them before; however closely you and they might be knit together, as issuing from the same womb, or dwelling in the same house, or associated in the same calling, or walking in the same way.
Yes; though you have “known that man after the flesh;” known him intimately, known him affectionately, known him so as to love him as a very brother when you sat together at the godless festive board, or drained together the cup of sinful pleasure; yet now henceforth you “know him no more.” It is after another fashion than that of the flesh that you know him now; and after another fashion that you love him; with an intensity of brotherly longing for his good, unfelt, unimagined before. What sacrifice would you have made for him then? You would “lay down your life” to save his soul now. He was your playmate, your plaything then; you used him; you sported with him; you enjoyed him. And you had a kindly enough feeling towards him. He was profitable to you; or you found him always very pleasant to you. But he is far more to you now. He is precious, oh! how precious, in your eyes; precious, not as the congenial companion of a passing hour, but as one whom you would fain grasp as a brother for eternity.
2. No such brotherly love is possible for him who, not doing righteousness, is not of God. His frame of mind must be that of Cain; a frame of mind that but too unequivocally identifies him as one of the devil’s children, and not God’s. For there is no room for any intermediate position here. Either you are of God; or you are like Cain, who “was of that wicked one, and slew his brother.” It was the contrast between his brother and himself that moved Cain to this act; and before he was moved to it, that contrast must have become very irksome and intolerable. It was not because he was void of natural affection, or because his disposition was one of wanton cruelty and bloodthirstiness; it was not in the heat of sudden passion, or in a quarrel about any earthly good, that Cain slew his brother; but “because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.”
It is this which chiefly marks the instigation of the devil; and his fatherhood of Cain, and such as Cain.
No doubt he has a hand in every sin or crime that his children commit. He fans the flame of lust, and fires the hot blood of furious passion. He sharpens the wits of wily craft, and helps the plotter in many a stratagem. He infuses fresh bitterness into the malign temper of envious hate, whoever or whatever its object may be. But he has a special grudge and spite against “the seed of the woman who is to bruise his serpent-head.” More than anything else on earth;—infinitely more than any remains or remnants of good that the fall has left in human nature and human society;—for these he can turn to his own account and make his own use of;—does that wicked one detest the faintest trace of the footsteps, the slightest breathing of the spirit, of him “whose goings forth have been from of old;” who has been ever in the world, the wisdom and the word of God, the light and the life of men. Wherever his power appears, setting up God’s righteousness and its claim to vindication against man’s sin and its boast of impunity, there Satan’s malice is stirred. And he makes his children fierce even to slaying; as he made Cain.
He does so commonly by fretting and irritating the conscience, while at the same time he fortifies the stronghold of stout-heartedness and pride. For these two in combination, an uneasy conscience and an unbroken heart, are in his hands capable of being wrought mightily to his purpose. Let the truth and righteousness of God be brought so near to a man, by the divine word and Spirit, as to stir and trouble thoroughly his inward moral sense, while his desire and determination to stand his ground and not give in remains unabated, or rather is inflamed and aggravated; let the process go on; and let all attempts towards an accommodation, between the conscience’s increasing soreness and the heart’s increasing self-righteousness and self-will, be one after another frustrated and foiled;—you have then the making of a Cain, a very child of the devil, who, if need be and opportunity serve, will not scruple to cut short the terrible debate and end the intolerable strife by slaying his brother Abel; by “crucifying the Lord of glory!” O my fellow-sinner, let us beware! Let us not be “as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother.”
I may think that there is no risk of my being as Cain; it will be long before I slay my brother Abel! But let me give good heed to what John records as the natural history, as it were, of Cain’s sin. He “slew his brother; and wherefore slew he him? because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.”
Let me ask myself a plain but pointed question. Is there no child of God, no godly man or woman of my acquaintance, the thought of whom, or the sight of whom, or his or her talk in the field, troubles me and makes me feel uncomfortable? Many professing Christians I know and like. Many who pass for serious and evangelical I can meet and converse with, easily and satisfactorily enough. There were four hundred prophets of the Lord that Ahab had no sort of objection to have near him and to listen to. But there was one Micaiah that he did not care to send for. “I hate him,” said the king, “for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil.” Is there any Micaiah who is thus a sort of eyesore to me? any Abel who provokes in me a kind of Cainish spirit?
It is not, strictly speaking, envy, or mere jealousy of another’s superior excellence. It is the tacit rebuke administered to my shortcoming and sin; the awakening of a lurking consciousness of something wrong in my state of heart or way of life, the unsettling of my security, the begetting in me of—I scarcely know what to call it—dissatisfaction, apprehension, an uneasy and unpleasant feeling of my not being altogether, in some particulars, what I ought to be, or might be;—it is that which disturbs me, in the presence of some child of God, or in the thought of such an one, as an unquestionable type of godliness.
Ah! it is a dangerous symptom; you brother, as well as I, may give good heed to it. It is the very germ of Cain’s murderous mood. It may not lead you to slay your Abel; him or her who is thus obnoxious to you; whose eminent nearness to God causes you to be too sensible of your distance. You have other ways of getting rid of the troubler of your peace without raising the cry, Crucify him; away with him. You can evade his company, keep out of hearing of his voice, and elude the glance of his eye. You can shut him out of your mind, and bid him be to you as if he was not. Or you may try another plan. You may open your ears to whispers against him; you may sharpen your sight to discover faults and follies in him; you may “sit and speak against your brother, slandering your own mother’s son,” if by any means you can make him out to be not so very immaculate or so very heavenly, after all, but that you may stand your ground and pass muster beside him in the end. What is all that but slaying your brother; slaying him virtually if not literally; slaying him very cruelly? And wherefore? “Because your own works are evil and your brother’s righteous.” Be not deceived. Be very sure that “in this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil: whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.”
I draw an important practical inference from the views now submitted. They may teach us something of the nature, and what may be called the genesis, or natural history, of brotherly love.
We are accustomed, when we speak of the particular affection of brotherly love, as distinguished from the general affection of love or charity, to rest the distinction chiefly on the opposite characters of those who are the objects of the two affections respectively. Charity or love—I speak of it in its earthward, not its heavenward direction—has for its objects men, all men, indiscriminately; men, as such. Brotherly love has for its objects the children of God; the members of the family or brotherhood of Christ’s people; who have one Father, one Lord and elder Brother, one Spirit, one hope, one home. We love all men with a love of benevolence; we love the brethren with a love of congeniality and delight. So far as it goes, this is of course a true account.
But does not John’s statement here suggest a somewhat different, or at least an additional, explanation? May not the root of the distinction lie in the subject of the affection rather than in its objects; in the person loving, rather than in the persons loved? Is not the character of the affection determined by the character of him in whom it dwells, even more than by the character of him to whom it goes forth?
At all events, when my character is changed, the character of all my love,—let who may be its objects, and let it have ever so many objects, differing ever so widely,—is changed in a corresponding manner. There is not one of those I loved before whom I love now as I used to do. My love to every one of them is a quite new love. The wife of my bosom, the child of my house, the servant and stranger within my gates, the beggar at my door, the queen reigning over me, the companion of my leisure, the partner of my business, the holy man of God, the wretched prodigal, the child of misery and vice—there is not one of them whom I love now as I did before. It is a new affection that I feel to every one of them.
And what is it that is new about it? Is it not that it is all now brotherly love? Is it not that one and all of the varieties of natural affection,—not stifled, not lost or merged, but subsisting still, as distinct as ever and stronger than ever,—have infused into them this one common element of brotherhood in the Lord? In me, in my heart, there is brotherly love to every one; equal brotherly love to all.
It does not call forth the same response from all; it has not the same free course with respect to all. In some, alas! it is deeply wounded, meeting with what sorely tries and grieves it, as when the sad cry breaks forth, “Who hath believed our report?”—“All day long have I stretched forth my hands to a perverse and gainsaying generation.” In others, again, it finds a blessed, present recompense; and the fellowship of saints on earth becomes the foretaste of heaven’s joy. But is it not the same affection, real, true, deep brotherly love, that is so sorely vexed in the one instance, and so richly gratified in the other? Was it not the same affection in the heart of Jesus that caused him to “rejoice in spirit,” as he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes; even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight”?—was it not, I ask, the very same affection that caused him to exclaim, as he drew near to the city, and wept over it, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings; and ye would not”?
