NOTES for 1 Ин 3:11-24
The thought that the apostle John wants to convey to us is extremely simple: believe in Jesus and love one another. But how many times does the apostle repeat it in this short text and in an epistle that is not very long? He approaches it from different sides and uses examples from Holy Scripture and from life in order to communicate what is most important and self-evident to him. This clarity is the clarity of the spirit; beyond it, everyone encounters the powerlessness of words, which are unable to convey spiritual experience, the experience of touching the truth. It is impossible to keep revelation within oneself: streams of living water flow from the person who has come to know God who is Love; and every time the apostle says, “love one another,” it is obvious to him that there truly is nothing more important. But these words will remain an empty sound until the person reading them touches the living God, until they simply love. Only then does a person become able to understand that nothing is more important than love, and that this is precisely why evil attacks so fiercely any sign that somewhere—even only a little, and not yet in the way John writes about it—people choose not hatred but love.