NOTES for Jo1 3:15-16
Jesus calls His words "love one another as I have loved you" a "new commandment." But what is new in it, if the call to love God with all one's heart, all one's soul, and all one's strength, and one's neighbor as oneself, sounded at least six or seven centuries before Christ's coming? John connects love with the Kingdom, just as his Teacher did.
First of all John draws attention to the fact that hatred is characteristic of the fallen world, while love, at least the love of which Jesus speaks, is not. That is precisely why the world accepts neither Christ Himself nor His followers. The problem, however, turns out to be broader: the hatred of the fallen world has long opposed every manifestation of love in this world; already Cain's conflict with Abel was an example of such opposition. Love can be present in the world, but as something of a different nature from it. But the Kingdom too is of a different nature from the fallen world; according to the Savior's word, it is "not of this world."
Yet the connection between the Kingdom and love is manifested not only in this; it is much deeper. Love could be called the nature of the Kingdom, to the extent that one can speak of nature at all with respect to the Kingdom. Of course, the world being transfigured and becoming part of the Kingdom enters there whole, with all its nature. Only evil remains outside, the evil that distorts the nature of the world, not nature itself. But the relationship of transfigured nature to God changes. God, of course, is present even now in every particle of His creation.
His presence more often turns out to be impersonal and remains unconscious. God, as it were, hides from the world while being present in it, not revealing Himself. The Kingdom is different: there He no longer hides. And there His presence reveals itself precisely as love, which becomes as integral a part of the life of the Kingdom as natural energy is here. God's breath permeating the Kingdom becomes for its inhabitants the energy of love. The love without which life in the Kingdom is impossible.