“For this is the message that ye heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.”
King James Version (KJV)
3:9 Whosoever is born of God - By living faith, whereby God is continually breathing spiritual life into his soul, and his soul is continually breathing out love and prayer to God, doth not commit sin. For the divine seed of loving faith abideth in him; and, so long as it doth, he cannot sin, because he is born of God - Is inwardly and universally changed.
3:10 Neither he that loveth not his brother - Here is the transition from the general proposition to one particular.
3:12 Who was of the wicked one - Who showed he was a child of the devil by killing his brother. And wherefore slew he him - For any fault? No, but just the reverse; for his goodness.
3:13 Marvel not if the world hate you - For the same cause.
1Jo 3:11 This is the message . . . that we should love one another. God's charge has always been that we should love each other. See Joh 13:34 15:12,17 Ro 13:8 1Th 4:9 1Pe 1:22 1Jo 3:23 4:7,11,12 2Jo 1:5.