NOTES for Jo1 3:15-16
How often we are frightened by the words that "whoever hates his brother is a murderer," and that by murder he deprives himself of eternal life, drives out God who lives within him, and drives love out of his heart. Yes, these words are frightening. But we do not often think about what hatred really is. On the one hand, it is good if every time we begin to be angry, irritated, and spiteful, we remember these words, are frightened, and they stop us. Yet fear of sin can also lead away from God if one looks only at the fear itself.
Hatred is not even just a feeling. It is stronger. When you hate, you want the person not to exist. At all. Therefore it is equivalent to murder, when one person makes another cease to be. When you hate, you annihilate in thought.
This is terrible, yes, but then it turns out that a remedy, an antidote to hatred, is easy to find. At first it is enough to agree that the person whom we hate should exist. It is not necessary to want to be friends with him and communicate with him. What is needed is to give him the right to life inside one's own heart, even if at first we would want ourselves to live at the North Pole and him at the South. If we can agree that this person lives somewhere, walks on the same earth as we do, is created and preserved by the same loving God, then we no longer hate. And this means that the Lord can plant in our heart the seed of forgiveness and love for this person; where there is no hatred, there remains, even if often very tiny, a little place for love.