¹⁴ I am not writing these things to shame you, but to warn you as my beloved children. ¹⁵ For even if you had ten thousand others to teach you about Christ, you have only one spiritual father. For I became your father in Christ Jesus when I preached the Good News to you. ¹⁶ So I urge you to imitate me.

¹⁷ That’s why I have sent Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord. He will remind you of how I follow Christ Jesus, just as I teach in all the churches wherever I go.

11 ¹ And you should imitate me, just as I imitate Christ.

⁵⁴ But anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise that person at the last day.

³ And this is the way to have eternal life—to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one you sent to earth.

Loving One Another

⁷ Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.

¹⁴ If we love our brothers and sisters who are believers,^[a] it proves that we have passed from death to life. But a person who has no love is still dead. ¹⁵ Anyone who hates another brother or sister^[b] is really a murderer at heart. And you know that murderers don’t have eternal life within them.

²² “I have given them the glory you gave me, so they may be one as we are one.

¹⁵ But Jesus said, “It should be done, for we must carry out all that God requires.^[a]” So John agreed to baptize him.