1 John 4
Contemporary English Version
God Is Love
4 Dear friends, don't believe everyone who claims to have the Spirit of God. Test them all to find out if they really do come from God. Many false prophets have already gone out into the world, 2 and you can know which ones come from God. His Spirit says that Jesus Christ had a truly human body. 3 But when someone doesn't say this about Jesus, you know this person has a spirit that doesn't come from God and is the enemy of Christ. You knew this enemy was coming into the world and now is already here.
4 Children, you belong to God, and you have defeated these enemies. God's Spirit[a] is in you and is more powerful than the one who is in the world. 5 These enemies belong to this world, and the world listens to them, because they speak its language. 6 We belong to God, and everyone who knows God will listen to us. But the people who don't know God won't listen to us. This is how we can tell the Spirit that speaks the truth from the one that tells lies.
7 My dear friends, we must love each other. Love comes from God, and when we love each other, it shows we have been given new life. We are now God's children, and we know him. 8 God is love, and anyone who doesn't love others has never known him. 9 God showed his love for us when he sent his only Son into the world to give us life. 10 Real love isn't our love for God, but his love for us. God sent his Son to be the sacrifice by which our sins are forgiven. 11 Dear friends, since God loved us this much, we must love each other.
12 (A) No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is truly in our hearts.
13 God has given us his Spirit. This is how we know we are one with him, just as he is one with us. 14 God sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. We saw his Son and are now telling others about him. 15 God stays one with everyone who openly says Jesus is the Son of God. This is how we stay one with God 16 and are sure God loves us.
God is love. If we keep on loving others, we will stay one in our hearts with God, and he will stay one with us. 17 If we truly love others and live as Christ did in this world, we won't be worried about the day of judgment. 18 A real love for others will chase those worries away. The thought of being punished is what makes us afraid. It shows we have not really learned to love.
19 We love because God loved us first. 20 But if we say we love God and don't love each other, we are liars. We cannot see God. So how can we love God, if we don't love the people we can see? 21 The commandment that God has given us is: “Love God and love each other!”
Footnotes
- 4.4 God's Spirit: The Greek text has “he” and may refer to the Spirit or to God or to Jesus.
1 John 4
Easy-to-Read Version
John Warns Against False Teachers
4 My dear friends, many false prophets are in the world now. So don’t believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God. 2 This is how you can recognize God’s Spirit. One spirit says, “I believe that Jesus is the Messiah who came to earth and became a man.” That Spirit is from God. 3 Another spirit refuses to say this about Jesus. That spirit is not from God. This is the spirit of the enemy of Christ. You have heard that the enemy of Christ is coming, and now he is already in the world.
4 My dear children, you belong to God, so you have already defeated these false prophets. That’s because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 And they belong to the world, so what they say is from the world too. And the world listens to what they say. 6 But we are from God. So the people who know God listen to us. But the people who are not from God don’t listen to us. This is how we know the Spirit that is true and the spirit that is false.
Love Comes From God
7 Dear friends, we should love each other, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has become God’s child. And so everyone who loves knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love to us: He sent his only Son into the world to give us life through him. 10 True love is God’s love for us, not our love for God. He sent his Son as the way to take away our sins.
11 That is how much God loved us, dear friends! So we also must love each other. 12 No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us. If we love each other, God’s love has reached its goal—it is made perfect in us.
13 We know that we live in God and God lives in us. We know this because he gave us his Spirit. 14 We have seen that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world, and this is what we tell people now. 15 Anyone who says, “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God,” is a person who lives in God, and God lives in that person. 16 So we know the love that God has for us, and we trust that love.
God is love. Everyone who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in them. 17 If God’s love is made perfect in us, we can be without fear on the day when God judges the world. We will be without fear, because in this world we are like Jesus.[a] 18 Where God’s love is, there is no fear, because God’s perfect love takes away fear. It is his punishment that makes a person fear. So his love is not made perfect in the one who has fear.
19 We love because God first loved us. 20 If we say we love God but hate any of our brothers or sisters in his family, we are liars. If we don’t love someone we have seen, how can we love God? We have never even seen him. 21 God gave us this command: If we love God, we must also love each other as brothers and sisters.
Footnotes
- 1 John 4:17 Jesus Literally, “that one.”
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