1 John 3:11–4:6 | Keep God's Commandments and Overcome
I don't like a lot of commercials, but one of my favorites right now is Progressive's, You’re Becoming Like Your Parents.
Maybe you’ve seen it, but the ad is funny and relatable because it's true. That saying, "You're becoming your parents," is something everyone recognizes from real life. My wife Megan tells me that I, as does every man in my family, say “awww” the same way—apparently, we do that. I grew pretty much the exact same beard as my dad. I also notice my mom saying things that her mom, my grandma says, although Mom isn’t always a big fan of this when I mention it.
None of us decided to become them. We didn't practice it, we didn't sit down and choose it. Their life was in us the whole time, and eventually it just started coming out. And that's an accurate picture of what John's about to reveal this morning.
John writes to believers wondering who truly belongs to God. His answer? The proof isn't merely what someone claims to believe, but whether a life is producing God's love.
And John can be a little confusing in his writing process. He isn’t as clear or linear as Paul, or some other authors, so this isn’t going to be a typical three-point sermon. Instead, John lays out the process as a chain of events. That is how we are going to approach it today.
He starts with loving one another: that's the command, straight from Jesus Himself (I John 3:11). How? Not by avoiding hatred, by laying your life down. Not one big, heroic moment, but the daily, unglamorous act, like opening your hand, your schedule, your bank account for the person right in front of you (I John 3:12–18).
What does that get you? Reassurance. A real, settled confidence before God, not a feeling you talk yourself into (I John 3:19–22). And how is this even possible? Because it's not you producing it. It's the Spirit of God, alive in you (I John 3:24). But, we wonder, which spirit? Because not everything that feels spiritual is from God. John says test it, does it point to the real Jesus, fully God and fully man (I John 4:1–4)?
Proof of loving others isn't having it all figured out right now. It's a life that slowly, over time and sanctification, looks more and more like the Father.
The Command to Love
John starts by saying:
For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.
1 John 3:11
Now, this isn't breaking news. John already said this back in chapter 2, this command goes all the way back to the very start of their Christian instruction. And it goes back even further than that, all the way to Jesus Himself, when He sat in the upper room and told his disciples:
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.
John 13:34
In other words, John doesn’t hand them something fresh. He reminds them of something old. Something foundational. Something they should've known since day one. That matters for us, because some of us treat our faith like it's just "me and Jesus." Just Him and me, my quiet time, my Bible app, my personal walk. And look, that's real, that matters.
But John will not let us stop there. He won't let faith stay private. Because how you treat the people around you isn't some side issue, some elective you can skip if you're not feeling up to it. John says it is the message. It is evidence of our faith.
Think about that for a second. You can say, "I have a personal relationship with Jesus," and that may be true. But where does that relationship show up? Not just in what you believe in your head or feel in your heart, it shows up in a very public, very unglamorous place: how you treat your spouse when you're both exhausted. How you talk about your coworker when they're not in the room. How you respond to the person who cut you off, or the family member who's hard to love, or the person at church who rubs you the wrong way.
John says, loving others the way Jesus commands is essential to our faith.
How Do We Love One Another? Don't Hate; Lay Your Life Down
We know the command now, love one another. But John doesn't just leave it hanging there. He tells us exactly what that looks like, and he does it two ways—first, he tells us what love is not, and then he tells us what love is.
Negative: Don't Hate. Don't Murder
John starts with a warning:
We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother's righteous.
I John 3:12
Why does John reach all the way back to Genesis for this? Because Cain is the original case study of what happens when love isn't there. And if you slow down and read Cain's story, it doesn't start with murder. Murder is where it ends.
It starts with jealousy. Cain's offering falls short of Abel's, and instead of doing the hard thing, repenting, adjusting, humbling himself, he does the easy thing. He resents. Genesis tells us his hatred was rooted in pride, and it made him miserable before it ever made him violent:
…but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his face fell.
Genesis 4:5
Hebrews later tells us the real issue underneath it all was faith, Cain didn't lack information, he lacked belief:
By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain, through which he was commended as righteous, God commending him by accepting his gifts. And through his faith, though he died, he still speaks.
Hebrews 11:4
Cain knew exactly what he should do but chose not to do it.
We see how it unfolds, step by step, starting with his unbelief, then pride, then hatred, then a refused warning from God Himself, then action, then a cover-up when God comes looking for answers:
The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your facefallen? 7 If you do well, will you not beaccepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, and you must rule over it.”
8 Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. 9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?” 10 And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.
Genesis 4:6–10
That's a slow burn, and sin rarely shows up all at once, fully formed. It creeps. It grows in stages. And John wants us to see the whole staircase, not just the bottom step.
That pattern didn't die with Cain:
Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.
I John 3:13
If the world hated Abel's righteousness, it's going to hate ours too. That shouldn't shock you. What should stop you in your tracks is when that same hatred, Cain's hatred, shows up inside God’s people. Don't be surprised the world hates you. Be alarmed if the church does.
And then John gives us the flip side:
We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.
I John 3:14
Love for God's people is one of the most basic proofs that something has happened in you. And here's something we can ask ourselves: do you actually want to be near God's people? Even believers who've been genuinely hurt by other Christians, most of them still feel this pull back toward fellowship, back toward the body. Real love for other Christians doesn't fully die, even when it gets wounded.
John continues and says something that might make us all a little uncomfortable:
Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.
I John 3:15
That's the same thing Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, when He said, in the heart, there's no difference between hatred and murder:
You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
Matthew 5:21–22
Murder is just hatred that finally got its way. Spurgeon put it like this:
Every man who hates another has the venom of murder in his veins. He may never actually take the deadly weapons into his hand and destroy life; but if he wishes that his brother were out of the way, if he would be glad if no such person existed, that feeling amounts to murder in the judgment of God. ~ Charles H. Spurgeon
Most of us aren't walking around wanting to literally murder someone. But hatred wears a lot of different outfits:
Bitterness, replaying the same wrong on a loop in your head.
Resentment, quiet hostility toward the person who succeeded where you didn't. Cain's exact sin.
Envy, wanting what someone else has, and being a little glad when they lose it.
Refusing to forgive.
Indifference, not wishing anyone harm, just not caring whether they sink or swim.
I'll be honest with you, I've worn a couple of these myself. In high school, I played golf. My sophomore year, I wasn't very good. We had fifteen guys on the team and only ten spots for each match, so every week was this quiet competition for one of those spots. My good buddy Sam and I were usually going head-to-head for the same one. And I remember standing out there at practice, watching him tee off, and part of me, not all of me, but a real part of me, was hoping he'd shank it. Hoping he'd have a bad day. Not because I wanted to be better. Because I wanted him to be worse.
That's not bitterness or refusing to forgive. That's resentment. That's envy. That's rooting against the guy sitting next to me, because his success felt like my loss. I never would've called that hatred at the time. I would've called it competitive. I would've called it normal. But John's not letting me off that easy, and he's not letting you off easy either.
It's not enough to say, "Well, I'm not a murderer, I'm not out here hating people, I'm not some awful person." John says the real thing is measured by something positive: a life where love has replaced hatred.
Positive: Love Is Not the Absence of Hate, It's Laying Your Own Life Down
If love isn't just "not hating people," what is it? John tells us in verse 16:
By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
I John 3:16
Real love isn't ultimately a feeling. It's an act…
Christ's death for us.
Think about the weight in that one sentence, how great our sin must have been, and how great His love must have been, that He would go to a cross for us.
Paul says the same thing:
But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
Romans 5:8
And this word "laid down" means laying something aside. It's the same word used in John 13 when Jesus takes off His outer garment to wash His disciples' feet. Love strips something from itself for someone else. And we are sent the same way Jesus was sent:
As the Father sent Me, I also send you.
John 20:21
Laying our lives down isn't a suggestion for the extra-committed Christians. It's the pattern of how we've been sent into the world.
Now, most of us are never going to be asked to physically die for someone. So how does laying your life down appear on a regular day? John continues in verse 17:
But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?
I John 3:17
If you have what someone needs and you just...close your heart, how can you claim God's love lives in you at all?
I think we picture ourselves ready for the one big heroic moment, the dramatic rescue, the huge sacrifice. But God usually doesn't ask for that. He asks for the small, unglamorous, daily version. Your time. Your comfort. Your money. Your convenience. Your preferences. Laid down piece by piece, over and over, for people who are right in front of you.
And John won't let us get away with a general feeling of goodwill toward each other. In verse 18, he says:
Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.
I John 3:18
It is so easy to feel warm, generic goodwill toward "people," while never actually loving the specific, inconvenient, sometimes exasperating person sitting three feet away from you. Loving humanity in the abstract is easy. Loving your actual brother, the one who talks too much, or never texts back, or gets under your skin, that's the real test. Lewis said it best:
Loving everybody in general may just be an excuse for loving nobody in particular. ~ C.S. Lewis
Laying Down Your Life Is Your Reassurance Before God
Next, John moves from, "here's what love looks like," to "here's what that love actually does for you." He says:
By this we shall know that we are of the truth, and reassure our heart before him.
I John 3:19
By this, that's pointing straight back to what we just talked about. Sacrificial love, in deed and truth. When you see that kind of love flowing out of your life, not perfectly, but really, that becomes evidence. It's proof you belong to the truth, and it settles your heart before God.
And I want you to catch what John's saying here, because it's easy to miss. This isn't wishful thinking. This isn't, "I hope I'm saved." John says you can know. This is a real, knowable assurance. But John's not naive. He knows some of us are sitting here right now, and our hearts are still condemning us. Maybe you're thinking, "I don't feel that kind of love. I don't feel settled. I feel like a fraud." John's got an answer for that too:
For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything.
I John 3:20
Every single believer wrestles with self-doubt at some point. And notice, John doesn't tell you to try harder to silence your conscience, to talk yourself into feeling better. He points you upward, not further inward. Your feelings are not the final court of appeal. Sometimes, your heart hands down a verdict, and you get to appeal that verdict to a higher court, the God who knows everything about you. Including the love He's already growing in you that you can't even see yet.
Sometimes, that condemnation you feel has nothing to do with your actual standing before God. Maybe it's just an overactive conscience. Maybe it's the accuser doing what he does, accusing. Either way, in those moments, you don't rest in how you feel. You rest in what God has said.
But then John flips it:
Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.
I John 3:21–22
When you're walking in real, honest fellowship with God, not fooling yourself, that confidence is precious. Paul describes this same thing in Romans:
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.
Romans 8:16
That word "confidence" is worth sitting with for a second. In the ancient Greek world, this word described a free citizen's most treasured right, the right to speak your mind, without fear, without shame, in front of anyone. That's the kind of access John says you have with God. Not groveling. Not tiptoeing. Bold access.
And that confidence doesn't just sit there, it overflows into prayer. Not because your obedience earns you answers like some kind of transaction. It's because obedience keeps you close, and when you're close to God, your requests naturally start lining up with what He already wants to do:
If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
John 15:7
That's the whole spirit of real prayer, not "my will be done," but "Thy will be done." We're not trying to talk God into things. We're praying into motion what He already desires, even when it's something that blesses us too.
This closeness does more than shape what you ask for, it shapes what you want in the first place. The person who's walking near to God starts wanting what pleases Him, not just out of duty, gritting their teeth through obedience, but because the two aren't opposites. God is glorified when we enjoy the good things He gives.
So, we see here that loving others gets us reassurance before God.
SUMMARY
Before John moves on, he pulls everything together in one summary sentence:
And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him…
I John 3:23–24a
Notice, John calls this one commandment, but there are two pieces that can't be pulled apart: Believe in Jesus, and love one another. That's not a coincidence. It's the same pairing Jesus gave us when He named the two greatest commandments to love God, and love our neighbor:
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Matthew 22:37–39
"Believe on the name of His Son," echoes what Jesus said in John 6:29:
Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
John 6:29
This isn't just intellectual agreement, it's trusting Him, clinging to Him. And "love one another" is straight out of John 15:12, Jesus' own command to His disciples:
This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.
John 15:12
Belief without love is hollow. Love without right belief in Christ has no real source or power behind it. You can't have one without the other—they stand or fall together.
Which Spirit?
John doesn't stop at "believe and love." He tells us how we can know our confidence is real:
And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.
I John 3:24b
John tells us the answer to our question: how is this possible? He says, it is by the Spirit whom he has given us. Which naturally raises a question, right? Okay, it's the Spirit. But which spirit? Because we live in a world that throws that word around constantly.
I felt a spiritual energy.
That concert was such a spiritual experience.
I'm spiritual, just not religious.
So how do you know if what you're feeling, or what you're being taught is from God, or from somewhere else entirely?
That's exactly what John tackles next.
Test the Spirits
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
I John 4:1
John says right away, we cannot assume, because something feels spiritual or even good, that it's from God. Sincerity isn't proof. Spiritual-sounding language isn't proof. Someone can be completely genuine, completely convinced, and completely wrong.
And notice, John isn't just talking to the pastors and elders here. This job belongs to the whole church. Paul says the same thing to the Corinthians, "…let the others judge" (1 Cor. 14:29), and to the Thessalonians, "…test all things; hold fast what is good" (1 Thess. 5:21). This isn't a job you get to outsource. Every single one of us is responsible for testing what we hear.
So what's the test? Not "how moving was it," not "how did it make me feel." We test against what God has already revealed. Peter tells us:
…knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. 21 For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
2 Pet. 1:20–21
Genuine truth is going to line up with what the body of Christ has always confirmed, even if some people don’t agree with it. We know the feeling when we're new to something, when we're excited, when we're amazed. We don't stop to ask if it's actually true. We just get swept up. And that's exactly where deception slips in the side door.
So, John gives us the actual test.
God's Spirit
By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.
I John 4:2
Now, in John's day, people weren't really struggling to believe Jesus was God. The struggle was believing He was truly, fully human. There was a teaching floating around, some of you may have heard the term Docetism, that said Jesus wasn't really a man, He just appeared to be one, like a ghost wearing a body. In their thinking, God couldn't touch something as "impure" as physical flesh.
John draws the line right there: any spirit, any teaching, that gives you a false Jesus, whether it strips away His deity or strips away His humanity, fails the test. The true Jesus, the Jesus of Scripture, fully God and fully man, is the baseline. No exceptions.
And I'd say today the error usually runs the other direction. We don't meet many people denying Jesus was a real man. We meet people who'll tell you Jesus was a good teacher, a good moral example, fully human, but not God. Either way you deny it, you end up with a Jesus who cannot save you, because both His deity and His humanity are essential to the gospel.
Not God's Spirit, The Spirit of Antichrist
John continues in verse 3:
And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
I John 4:3
John already warned his readers about this back in chapter 2. We see that deception doesn't always look hostile. It doesn't always mock Jesus or the cross. Most of the time, it just offers a substitute, a counterfeit Jesus close enough to the real one to seem completely plausible. And that's exactly the point. The enemy isn't threatened by your devotion to a Jesus who isn't real, because a false Jesus was never able to save anybody.
You Don't Need to Listen to That Spirit, Because of Jesus
But John doesn't leave us there, scared and looking over our shoulders. He says:
Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
I John 4:4
That's not John trying to hype you up. That is a statement for every single believer. He says, "have overcome." Past tense. Done. This isn't a battle you're hoping to win someday; it's a victory you're already standing on, because of what Jesus already did.
The cross wasn't a loss that got rescued by the resurrection. It was the moment John says the ruler of this world was judged (John 16:11). Jesus told His disciples plainly:
In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.
John 16:33
That's the whole foundation for verse 4. You have overcome, because He overcame first, and He handed that victory to you.
This isn't a call to walk around anxious, scanning every sermon, every podcast or every conversation for heresy. It's a call for us to be confident! Confident in the finished work of Jesus. Greater is He who is in you than those of the world, because Jesus already beat the world, at the cross, out of the tomb, forever.
The Chain, Restated
Let's pull this whole thing together, because I don't want you walking out of here with five disconnected points. I want you to see the chain, link by link, each one holding up the next.
Love one another, that's the command. Not a suggestion, not a nice idea for people who are naturally warm and friendly. A command, straight from Jesus, that goes all the way back to the beginning of what it means to follow Him (I John 3:11).
How do we love like that? Not by simply avoiding hatred, that's the floor, not the finish line. We do it by laying our lives down. Piece by piece. Not one dramatic, heroic moment we tell stories about for years, but the daily, unglamorous kind: our time, our money, our comfort, handed over for the person right in front of us (I John 3:12, 16).
What does that give us? Reassurance. A real, settled confidence before God. Not the kind you talk yourself into on a good day and lose on a bad one, the kind John says you can know with confidence (I John 3:19).
How is that even possible? Because none of it originates with you. It's the Spirit of God, alive and abiding in you, producing something you could never manufacture on your own (I John 3:24).
And then John asks the question that guards the whole thing: which spirit? Not everything that feels spiritual is from God. So we test it: does it point to the real Jesus, fully God and fully man? Only the Holy Spirit produces this kind of love in a human heart
(I John 4:1–4).
Here's the big idea
Loving one another sacrificially is reassuring, because only the Spirit of God would ever produce that kind of love in a human heart. Sacrificial love comes from reassurance. That reassurance comes from the Spirit. And the Spirit is the only source in the entire universe capable of producing this love in the first place.
Every link in that chain depends on the one before it. You can't get reassurance from a love that isn't sacrificial. And you can't produce sacrificial love apart from the Spirit of God doing something in you that you didn't do yourself.
Conclusion
Remember where we started, "You're becoming your parents." That moment you catch yourself saying something your mom used to say, and you think, wait, when did that happen? You didn't decide to become them. Their life was in you the whole time, and eventually, it just started coming out.
Here's what I love: most of the time, this happens without any effort. It just shows up naturally, because of whose life was already inside you. And that's the good news sitting underneath everything John has told us this morning. This isn't a checklist you white-knuckle your way through. It's a family trait, surfacing because the Spirit of God lives in you.
Think about that. The God who spoke galaxies into existence, who conquered sin and death, who is right now seated in glory, He didn't just forgive you and leave you to figure out the rest on your own. He moved in. He's producing something in you that you could never manufacture yourself. That's not a burden. That's a gift you get to unwrap a little more every day.
This is freeing, because the Spirit isn't finished with you, and He's not in a hurry. He's patiently, joyfully working, and He will finish what He started. You don't have to manufacture proof of your faith by stacking up Bible trivia or chasing an emotional high on a worship night. John points somewhere better, somewhere simpler: a life that's slowly starting to look like the Father. Love that costs you something and gives you joy anyway, because it's not coming from your own strength, it's coming from His.
And that is genuinely something to celebrate. Not with white knuckles, not with striving, but with the kind of joy that comes from knowing His life is already at work in you, growing, showing, becoming more visible every single day. The Father's love is in you, and it's spilling out of you.
