¹Beloved, do not trust every spirit, but test the spirits whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

²By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses Jesus the Anointed One having come in the flesh is of God.

³And any spirit that does not confess Jesus the Anointed One having come in flesh is not from God; and this is that of the antichrist which you have heard is coming, and now is already in the world.

⁴You yourselves are from God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is the One in you than the one in the world.

⁵They themselves are of the world; because of this they speak from out of the world, and the world listens to them.

⁶We ourselves are of God; the one who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

⁷Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who is loving has been born from God and knows God;

⁸The one not loving has not known God, because God is love.

⁹In this the selfless love of God among us has been revealed, that God has sent his only Son into the world so that we may live through him.

¹⁰In this is the selfless love: not that we ourselves have loved God, but that he himself loved us and sent his Son as an atonement for our sins.

¹¹Beloved, if God so loved us, we ourselves also ought to love one another;

¹²No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love has been perfected in us.

¹³By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given to us from out of his Spirit.

¹⁴And we ourselves have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world.

¹⁵Whoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, the Anointed One, God abides in him and he in God.

¹⁶And we ourselves have come to know and have come to trust the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.

¹⁷In this love has been perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as He is, so also we are in this world.

¹⁸There is no fear in love, but perfect love throws the fear out, because fear has punishment; and the one who fears has not been perfected in love.

¹⁹We ourselves love him because He himself first loved us.

²⁰If anyone shall say that I love God and may hate his brother, he is a liar; for the one not loving his brother whom he has seen is not able to love God whom he has not seen;

²¹And this is the commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God may love also his brother.