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Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
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Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.
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But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin.
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No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.
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The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.
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No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.
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This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister.
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More on Love and Hatred
For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.
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Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you.
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Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.
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This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
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If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person?
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Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.
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This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence:
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And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.
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The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.
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On Denying the Incarnation
Dear friends, 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.
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This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,
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but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.
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They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them.
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We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.
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This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.
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This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
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Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
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No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
