Test the Spirits

1Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. 4You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. 5They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world hears them. 6We are from God. The one who knows God hears us; the one who is not from God does not hear us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

God Is Love

7Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves has been [†]born of God and knows God. 8The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9By this the love of God was manifested [†]in us, that God has sent His [†]only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. 13By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. 14We have beheld and bear witness that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

15Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has in us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17By this, love has been perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as He is, so also are we in this world. 18There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear [†]involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. 19We love, because He first loved us. 20If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.