Day 8 - 1 John 3:11-24 - Live Giving

11 For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. 12 Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. 13 Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. 14 We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death. 15 Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.

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You’d think this Cain story would have run its course, but here, who knows how many years later, the brother-killer is back in the news!  The story is retold because it is a story that all of us live out to one degree or another.  Let’s try to break it down:  Cain sees his brother Abel succeed and instead of being happy for him or, at the very least, trying to learn something from the episode he acts out in hatred and kills his rival.  How we respond to our rivals and our enemies perhaps reveals more about the depth of our love than anything else.  Cain failed.  Cain lived the rest of his life in the shadow of resentment and jealousy.  John does not want that for us.  He wants us to have complete joy.

John will then paint a contrast between the brother-killing Cain and his antithesis, the life-giving Christ.  A question each one of us has to answer is whether or not we take life, like Cain, or give life, like Christ.  John contends that true joy comes from a spirit of generosity and compassion, not jealousy and rivalry.  Too many times we see people around us as rivals, as competitors.  When we do, we tend to fall into resentment when the other succeeds or we harbor feelings of jealousy when we are not acknowledged.

We always need to respond to any situation with the desire to give life, not take it.  And when we live like that we will find our hearts free from guilt, our consciences clean, and we will be able to focus on what God has given us rather than what he hasn’t.