1 John 3 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.
Time Period
~AD 85-95, in the decades after the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70
Location
Ephesus and the network of house churches in the Roman province of Asia, in modern western Turkey
Audience
Christians in those house congregations, shaken by a recent split and unsure how to tell genuine faith from counterfeit
Situation
John calls his readers children of God, tells them that what they will finally become is not yet visible, and argues that anyone genuinely born of God will show it by refusing a settled life of sin and by loving fellow believers in practical ways. He uses Cain, the first murderer in Genesis, as the negative example.
Key Background
In the Greek and Roman world, sonship was a legal and social status that determined inheritance and standing, so calling ordinary tradespeople and slaves children of God was a striking claim about their worth. The teachers who had left the church seem to have treated moral conduct as irrelevant to spiritual maturity, since in their view the body did not matter, and John answers by making behavior the visible test of belonging. His appeal to Cain draws on a Jewish teaching tradition in which Cain became the standard illustration of hatred inside a family.
Look at how incredible the Father's for us is — that we'd actually be called God's And that's exactly what we are! The reason the doesn't recognize us is that it never recognized him either.
right now we are God's children, and what we'll ultimately become hasn't been fully revealed yet. But we do know this: when he we'll be like him, because we'll see him exactly as he is.
And everyone who has this fixed on him just as he is
Everyone who keeps is also — because failure at its core is rebellion against God's
And you know that he to our failures, and there is no failure in him at all.
No one who to him keeps on failing. No one who keeps on failing has actually seen him or known him.
Little ones, don't let anyone mislead you. The person who does what's is with God, just as he is
The person who keeps on failing belongs to the because the has been failing from the very beginning. This is exactly why the of appeared — to everything the has done.
No one who has been from keeps on failing, because God's own remains in them. They can't keep on failing because they've been from
This is how you can tell God's children apart from the devil's children: anyone who doesn't do what's right isn't from God, and neither is anyone who doesn't their brother or sister.
Because this is the you've heard from the very beginning: that we should love each other.
Don't be like who belonged to the and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were corrupt, and his brother's were right.
So don't be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the hates you.
We know we've from to because we love our brothers and sisters. Anyone who doesn't love is still stuck in
Anyone who hates their brother or sister is a and you know that no has living inside them.
This is how we know what actually is: he down his life for us. So we should lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters too.
If someone has the to and sees a brother or sister in need but shuts off their toward them — how can God's love possibly be living inside that person?
Little ones, let's not love with just words or talk — let's love with actions and in
This is how we'll know we belong to the and it's how we'll put our at ease in his presence —
even when our own hearts us. Because God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
Friends, if our hearts don't condemn us, we have before God,
and we receive whatever we ask from because we keep his and do what
And this is what he's instructed: that we in the of his Son, Jesus the and that we love each other — just like he told us to.
The person who keeps his instructions to God, and God to them. And this is how we know he lives in us — through the he's given us.