3:11–15 The history of the world is the story of hatred, right back to the archetypal conflict between Cain and Abel. John traces Cain’s hatred to the radical difference of his motivations from those of Abel (John 3:19; 8:37), a difference that will always exist between the world and the people of God (v. 13). When the fellowship of believers is free from animosity, as John expects it will be, we know that we “have passed out of death into life” (v. 14). But if such animosity invades the fellowship, it does so only by rejection of “the message that you have heard from the beginning” (v. 11).