4 My loved ones, I warn you: do not trust every spirit. Instead, examine them carefully to determine if they come from God, because the corrupt world is filled with the voices of many false prophets. ² Here is how you know God’s Spirit: if a spirit affirms the truth that Jesus the Anointed, our Liberating King, has come in human flesh, then that spirit is from God. ³ If a spirit does not affirm the true nature of Jesus the Anointed, then that spirit does not come from God and is, in fact, the spirit of the antiChrist.^[a] You have heard about its coming; in fact it is already active in the world. ⁴ My children, you have come from God and have conquered these spirits because the One who lives within you is greater than the one in this world. ⁵ But they are of this world, and they articulate the views of the corrupt world, which the world understands. ⁶ We come from God, and those who know God hear us. Whoever is not from God will not listen to us. This is the way we discern the difference between the spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.

⁷ My loved ones, let us devote ourselves to loving one another. Love comes straight from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and truly knows God. ⁸ Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

⁹ Because of this, the love of God is a reality among us: God sent His only Son into the world so that we could find true life through Him. ¹⁰ This is the embodiment of true love: not that we have loved God first, but that He loved us and sent His unique Son on a special mission to become an atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ So, my loved ones, if God loved us so sacrificially, surely we should love one another. ¹² No one has ever seen God with human eyes; but if we love one another, God truly lives in us. Consequently God’s love has accomplished its mission among us.

¹³ How can we be sure that He truly lives in us and that we truly live in Him? By one fact: He has given us His Spirit. ¹⁴ We have watched what God has done, and we stand ready to provide eyewitness testimonies to the reality that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. ¹⁵ If anyone unites with our confession that Jesus is God’s own Son, then God truly lives in that person and that person lives in God. ¹⁶ We have experienced and we have entrusted our lives to the love of God in us.

God is love. Anyone who lives faithfully in love also lives faithfully in God, and God lives in him. ¹⁷ This love is fulfilled with us, so that on the day of judgment we have confidence based on our identification with Jesus in this world. ¹⁸ Love will never invoke fear. Perfect love expels fear, particularly the fear of punishment. The one who fears punishment has not been completed through love.

¹⁹ We love because He has first loved us. ²⁰ If someone claims, “I love God,” but hates his brother or sister, then he is a liar. Anyone who does not love a brother or sister, whom he has seen, cannot possibly love God, whom he has never seen. ²¹ He gave us a clear command, that all who love God must also love their brothers and sisters.

5 Everyone who trusts Jesus as the long-awaited Anointed One is a child of God, and everyone who loves the Father cannot help but love the child fathered by Him. ² Then how do we know if we truly love God’s children? We love them if we love God and keep His commands. ³ You see, to love God means that we keep His commands, and His commands don’t weigh us down. ⁴ Everything that has been fathered by God overcomes the corrupt world. This is the victory that has conquered the world: our faith.

^5-6 Who is the person conquering the world? It is the one who truly trusts that Jesus is the Son of God, that Jesus the Anointed is the One who came by water and blood—not by the water only, but by the water and the blood.

The Spirit of God testifies to this truth because the Spirit is the truth. ⁷ So there are three testifying witnesses: ⁸ the Spirit, the water, and the blood. All three are in total agreement. ⁹ If we accept the testimonies of people, then we must realize the testimony of God is greater than that of any person. God certified the truth about His own Son. ¹⁰ Anyone who trusts the Son of God has this truthful testimony at the core of his being. Anyone who does not trust God calls God a liar because he ignores God’s truthful testimony regarding His own Son. ¹¹ And this is the truth: God has given us the gift of eternal life, and this life is in His Son. ¹² If you have the Son, you have eternal life. If you do not have the Son of God, you are not acquainted with true life.

¹³ I am writing all of this to you who have entrusted your lives to the Son of God—so you will realize eternal life already is yours. ¹⁴ We live in the bold confidence that God hears our voices when we ask for things that fit His plan. ¹⁵ And if we have no doubt that He hears our voices, we can be assured that He moves in response to our call.

¹⁶ In this regard, if you notice a brother or sister in faith making moral missteps and blunders, disregarding and disobeying God even to the point of God removing this one from the body by death, then pray for that person; and God will grant him life on this journey. But to be clear, there is a sin that is ultimately fatal and leads to death. I am not talking about praying for that fatal sin, ¹⁷ but I am talking about all those wrongs and sins that plague God’s family that don’t lead to death.

¹⁸ We all know that everyone fathered by God will not make sin a way of life because God protects His children from the evil one, and the evil one can’t touch them. ¹⁹ Have confidence in the fact that we belong to God, but also know that the world around us is in the grips of the evil one. ²⁰ We also can be sure of the fact that the Son of God has come and given us a mind so that we may know Him as the embodiment of all that is true. We live in this truth, in His Son Jesus, the Anointed One. He is the True God and eternal life.

²¹ My little children, keep away from idols.

¹ I, the elder, to you, a lady chosen by God along with her children. I truly love all of you and am confident that all who know the truth share in my love for you. ² The truth, which lives faithfully within all of us and will be with us for all eternity, is the basis for our abounding love. ³ May grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Jesus the Anointed, the Father’s own Son, surround you and be with you always in truth and love.

⁴ I was so filled with joy to hear stories about your children walking in truth, in the very way the Father called us to live. ⁵ So now, dear lady, I am asking you to live by the command that we love one another. I’m not writing to you some new commandment; it’s one we received in the beginning from our Lord. ⁶ Love is defined by our obedience to His commands. This is the same command you have known about from the very beginning; you must live by it. ⁷ The corrupt world is filled with liars and frauds who deny the reality that Jesus the Anointed has come into the world as a man of flesh and blood. These people are deceivers and antiChrists.^{[a] 8} Ensure that you do not lose what we have worked for so that you will be fully rewarded.

⁹ Any person who drifts away and fails to live in the teachings of the Anointed One, our Liberating King, does not have God. But the person who lives in this teaching will have both the Father and the Son. ¹⁰ If any person comes to you with a teaching that does not align with the true message of Jesus, do not welcome that person into your house or greet him as you would a true brother. ¹¹ Anyone who welcomes this person has become a partner in advancing his wicked agenda.

¹² I have so much more to tell you, but I would rather meet with you personally than try to capture these sentiments by ink on paper. I hope to come and see you so that our joy will be complete.

¹³ The children of your chosen sister send you warm greetings.

¹ I, the elder, to Gaius, who is much loved by all and loved in truth by me.

² My beloved friend, I pray that everything is going well for you and that your body is as healthy as your soul is prosperous. ³ I was thrilled when the brothers and sisters came and told me stories of your faithfulness as you continue to walk in the truth. ⁴ The greatest joy in my life is hearing how my children are walking in the truth.

⁵ My friend, you demonstrate your faithfulness in all the things you do for the brothers and sisters; even when they are strangers to you, you treat them as family. ⁶ These friends tell the entire church how you have extended your hand to them in love. You will do well to send them on in a way that is in keeping with God. ⁷ They have gone out to serve under the banner of the Name, and they do not accept gifts from those outside our faith community. ⁸ We should give people like this our full support so that we can share in this work for the truth.

⁹ I wrote some things specifically to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be the one up front, rejects us. ¹⁰ If I come, you can be sure that I will call him out and draw attention to his actions. He assails us with lies and deceit. As if that were not enough, he does not welcome the traveling missionaries into his home. Instead, he hinders any who do so and expels them from the church.

¹¹ Dear friend, don’t follow his evil ways. Instead, imitate the good and righteous life. The one doing what is good belongs to God, but those who pursue evil have never even laid eyes on God.

¹² Demetrius has a good reputation with everyone we know. The truth stands on his side, and we add our unreserved recommendation to the long list of accounts on his behalf. You can rest assured that we are telling the truth.

¹³ There is so much I would like to say to you, but I do not want to say it with ink and pen. ¹⁴ I expect us to be together soon and talk about these things face-to-face.

¹⁵ May you experience true peace. I send you greetings from the fellow believers here. Greet all our friends there personally.

¹ Jude, a slave of Jesus the Anointed and a brother of James, to you, the ones whom God our Father loves and has called and whom Jesus, the Anointed One, has kept. ² Kindness, peace, love—may they never stop blooming in you and from you.

³ Friends, I have been trying to write you about our common salvation. But these days my heart is troubled, and I am compelled to write to you and encourage you to continue struggling for the faith that was entrusted to the saints once and for all. ⁴ Vile men have slithered in among us. Depraved souls who stand condemned have made a mockery of the grace given to us, using it as a pretext for a life of excess, lived without any thought of God. These poor fools have denied Jesus the Anointed, our one Lord and Master.

⁵ You have heard the stories many times, and the Spirit has enlightened you about their meaning, but you still need to be reminded. Remember when the Lord saved our ancestors from the land in Egypt? He breathed life into their earthen lungs and took back the life from those who did not believe. ⁶ And God has kept the rebellious heavenly messengers bound and chained in utter darkness—shadowy gloom—until the time when His judgment arrives, because they failed to keep their rightful positions and abandoned their appointed realms. ⁷ Sodom and Gomorrah and all their neighbors were defeated by their own sexual perversions as they pursued the strange and unnatural impulses of the flesh. Let these who went their own way and are experiencing the eternal heat of God’s vengeance—a punishment by fire—be a warning to you.

⁸ These stories are examples to help you understand the fate of those dreamers who have slipped in and defiled your community, rejected those in charge, and insulted the glorious majesty of the heavenly messengers. ⁹ Even their chief, Michael, when disputing with the devil over Moses’ body, did not offer his own taunting judgment against him. Michael simply said, “May the Lord’s rebuke fall on you.”^[a]

¹⁰ The deceivers among you despise what they do not understand; they live without reason like animals, reacting only with primal instincts; and their ways are corrupting them. ¹¹ Woe to these deceivers! They are doomed! They have followed in the footsteps of their father Cain, sold their souls for profit into Balaam’s deceit, and suffered the devastation of Korah’s rebellion.

¹² These men are cold stones on the warm hearth of your love feasts as they glut themselves without fear, thinking only of their own benefit. They are waterless clouds, carried away by the wind; autumn’s lonely and barren trees, twice dead, uprooted; ¹³ violent waves of the sea breaking over the bow, foaming with shame; lost and wandering stars destined to live forever in gloomy darkness.

¹⁴ During the seventh generation after Adam, the prophet Enoch said, “Look! The Lord came, and with Him tens of thousands of His holy messengers ¹⁵ to judge wicked men and convict the impious and ungodly for all they have said and all the hard things they have done against the Holy One.” ¹⁶ These men are complainers who look long and hard to find the faults of other men. They are led by their own lustful desires like fools down the path of destruction. They are arrogant liars who want only to get ahead of others.

¹⁷ But you, friends, remember the words of the emissaries^[b] of our Lord Jesus the Anointed, the Liberating King: ¹⁸ “At the end of time, some will ridicule the faithful and follow their lusts to the grave.” ¹⁹ These are the men among you—those who divide friends, those concerned ultimately with this world, those without the Spirit. ^20-21 You, however, should stand firm in the love of God, constructing a life within the holy faith, praying the Spirit’s prayer, as you wait eagerly for the mercy of our Lord Jesus the Anointed, which leads to eternal life.

²² Keep being kind to those who waver in this faith. ²³ Pursue those who are singed by the flames of God’s wrath, and bring them safely to Him. Show mercy to others with fear, despising every garment soiled by the weakness of human flesh.

²⁴ Now to the One who can keep you upright and plant you firmly in His presence—clean, unmarked, and joyful in the light of His glory— ²⁵ to the one and only God, our Savior, through Jesus the Anointed our Lord, be glory and greatness and might and authority; just as it has been since before He created time, may it continue now and into eternity. Amen.