By the time John sat down to write this letter, he was an old man looking back on a young man’s memories. He was writing to people he loved — brothers, sisters, spiritual children, maybe even grandchildren in the faith — and what he wanted for them was simple: he wanted them to know the same joy he had known, the same fullness of love he’d found in Christ (1 John 1:4; 2:5). That’s not a small thing to want for someone. It’s the kind of wish that only comes from having tasted something real yourself and refusing to keep it to yourself.
And John had tasted it. He’d seen the “Word of life” with his own eyes, touched Him with his own hands (1:1–3). For three years he walked dusty roads beside Jesus, ate with Him, watched Him heal, listened as He taught His followers to live in Him the way a branch lives in a vine — drawing everything it needs from something bigger than itself, bearing fruit it could never produce alone (2:6; John 15:5). That image stuck with John. A branch doesn’t strain to make fruit happen. It just stays connected, and the fruit comes.
So when John writes to his spiritual family, he’s honest about the tension. No one gets to claim perfection — not even John himself gets to say that (1:8–10). But there’s a difference between admitting you’re not perfect and drifting back into a life without love, back into what he calls death and darkness. That’s the warning underneath his words. He doesn’t want his people wandering there again.
Then he gives them — and us — a test. Not a test of theology, not a checklist of right beliefs, but something simpler and harder: love. “We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brothers” (3:14). The word behind “love” here is agape, and it’s worth sitting with for a second. Agape isn’t the warm feeling you get around people you already like. It’s a love that gives itself away, that looks for the good of someone else even when it costs you something. It’s the kind of love that shows up in a hospital room, or on a hard phone call, or in patience with someone who’s wronged you. John says this kind of love is evidence. If it’s growing in you, something real has happened. You’ve moved out of death and into life.
But he doesn’t stop at the positive side. He turns it around too. Whoever does not love abides in death. That word “abide” matters, because John isn’t writing to outsiders here — he’s writing to believers, to people already inside the family. And Jesus had already raised the stakes on this back in the Sermon on the Mount, saying that hatred carries the same spiritual weight as murder (Matthew 5:21–22). Not because hating someone and killing someone are identical acts — obviously they’re not — but because both come from the same root, the same refusal to see another person as someone worth loving. Christians can absolutely feel hatred. It happens. But John is clear that whatever fellowship with Christ looks like, it never produces that fruit. If hate is where someone lives, that’s either serious sin needing repentance, or it’s a sign that the relationship with Christ was never really there to begin with.
That’s a sobering thought to sit with. But it’s also, strangely, an invitation. Because if love is the evidence, then love is also the path back. You don’t have to wonder in the abstract whether your faith is real. You can look at how you’re loving the people right in front of you — the ones who annoy you, the ones who’ve hurt you, the ones easy to overlook. Are you giving yourself away for them, even a little? Are you shaking the hand nobody else wants to shake?
That’s where Diana’s photograph and John’s letter meet. Neither one is asking for grand gestures or perfect people. They’re asking for love that moves toward someone instead of away — love that isn’t afraid to touch what fear tells us to avoid. Practically, that might look like reaching out to someone you’ve quietly written off, showing up for someone whose situation makes you uncomfortable, or simply choosing patience over irritation with someone in your own house. Small as those moments seem, John says they’re not small at all. They’re proof of life.
By: Frank Mulder