What Does 1 John 3:15 Mean?
Everyone who hates his brother is a human-slayer. And you know that no human-slayer has the life of the ages remaining in him.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.THE KEY
Hatred is called murder before a body falls, while the life of the ages is named as an inward dwelling that does not abide in the hater.
THE MEANING
Hatred of a brother is already named murder; the verse does not wait for a body to fall before it names what hostility is doing. The life of the ages is not abiding in the one who hates, so the rupture has an inward consequence now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that hatred is harmless as long as it never becomes physical violence; this verse names the hater a murderer and says the life of the ages is not abiding within.
THE ROOT
μένουσαν
menousan
GROWS FROM
μένω (menō), stem μεν- (men-)
remain, stay, dwell
“remaining in him” in this verse is menousan. Abiding gives the claim a present, inward shape: this life is described as remaining within a person. The same word family can name both remaining and a dwelling place, so the verse speaks of life as an inward residence, not only distant duration.
ALSO GROWS
menō: remain, stay, dwell
μένω
This is the verb behind abiding, making the verse’s claim about what remains within a person explicit.
monē: dwelling place, abode
μονή
The related noun turns remaining into a place of residence, illuminating the verse’s image of life within someone.
epimenō: remain, continue
ἐπιμένω
The compound carries the sense of staying on, reinforcing the contrast between life’s presence and absence.
ἀδελφόν
adelphon
GROWS FROM
ἀ- + δελφύς (a- + delphys)
from the same womb; a person of shared origin
The verse’s brother carries a shared-womb image: hatred turns against someone named through common origin. The word can name a fellow believer as kin, so the image reaches beyond biological siblings without erasing its bodily root.
ALSO GROWS
adelphē: sister
ἀδελφή
The feminine sibling form carries the same shared-origin image.
adelphotēs: brotherhood, kinship
ἀδελφότης
The word extends sibling language to a community understood as kin.
αἰώνιον
aiōnion
GROWS FROM
αἰών
aiōn
age, era, or span of time
“the life of the ages” in this verse is aiōnion. The word translated eternal keeps the age-language visible underneath it. The phrase reads as life of the ages, and the verse says this life is not dwelling in the one who hates.
ALSO GROWS
aiōn: age, era
αἰών
This is the noun from which the adjective translated eternal comes.
aiōnes: ages
αἰῶνες
The plural makes the age-language audible across successive ages.
aiōnios: of an age, age-related
αἰώνιος
This adjective describes the life in the verse through its relation to the ages.
THE PATTERN
The text treats hostility toward a brother as a life-and-death reality before blood is shed.
But if any man hates his neighbor, and lies in wait for him, and rises up against him, and strikes his living soul so that he dies, and flees into one of these cities;We know that we have crossed over out of death and into life, because we love the brothers. The one who does not love his brother remains in death.THE THREAD
We know that we have crossed over out of death and into life, because we love the brothers. The one who does not love his brother remains in death.The KJV’s abideth in 1 John 3:14 and abiding here both translate μένω (menō), remain or dwell. The neighboring verse says the one who does not love his brother remains in death; this verse describes the life of the ages as unable to remain within the one who hates.
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