Read the New Testament in 24 Weeks

False prophets

4 Beloved, do not believe every spirit. Rather, test the spirits to see whether they are from God. Many false prophets, you see, have gone out into the world. ² This is how we know God’s spirit: every spirit that agrees that Jesus the Messiah has come in the flesh is from God, ³ and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This spirit is actually the spirit of the Antimessiah. You have heard that it was coming, and now it is already in the world.

⁴ But you, children, are from God, and you have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. ⁵ They are from the world, and that is why they speak from the world, and why the world listens to them. ⁶ We are from God; people who know God listen to us, but people who are not from God do not listen to us. That is how we can tell the spirit of truth from the spirit of error.

God’s love

⁷ Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God, and all who love are fathered by God and know God. ⁸ The one who does not love has not known God, because God is love. ⁹ This is how God’s love has appeared among us: God sent his only son into the world, so that we should live through him. ¹⁰ Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son to be the sacrifice that would atone for our sins. ¹¹ Beloved, if that’s how God loved us, we ought to love one another in the same way. ¹² Nobody has ever seen God. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is completed in us. ¹³ That is how we know that we abide in him, and he in us, because he has given us a portion of his spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and bear witness that the father sent the son to be the world’s savior. ¹⁵ Anyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s son, God abides in them and they abide in God. ¹⁶ And we have known and have believed the love which God has for us.

God is love; those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. ¹⁷ This is what makes love complete for us, so that we may have boldness and confidence on the day of judgment, because just as he is, so are we within this world. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love; complete love drives out fear. Fear has to do with punishment, and anyone who is afraid has not been completed in love. ¹⁹ We love, because he first loved us. ²⁰ If someone says, “I love God,” but hates their brother or sister, that person is a liar. Someone who doesn’t love a brother or sister whom they have seen, how can they love God, whom they haven’t seen? ²¹ This is the command we have from him: anyone who loves God should love their brother or sister too.

Faith wins the victory

5 Everyone who believes that the Messiah is Jesus has been fathered by God. Everyone who loves the parent loves the child as well. ² That is how we know that we love the children of God, because we love God and do what he commands. ³ This is what loving God means: it means keeping his commandments. His commandments, what’s more, are no trouble, ⁴ because everything that is fathered by God conquers the world. This is the victory that conquers the world: our faith.

⁵ Who is the one who conquers the world? Surely the one who believes that Jesus is God’s son! ⁶ It was he who came by means of water and blood, Jesus the Messiah, not by water only but by the water and the blood. The spirit is the one who bears witness, because the spirit is the truth. ⁷ There are three that bear witness, you see, ⁸ the spirit, the water and the blood, and these three agree together. ⁹ If we have received human witness, God’s witness is greater. This is the witness of God, the testimony he has borne to his son. ¹⁰ All those who believe in the son of God have the witness in themselves, but anyone who does not believe God has made a liar of him, because they have not believed in the witness which God bore concerning his son. ¹¹ This is the witness: God has given us the life of the age to come, and this life is in his son. ¹² Anyone who has the son has life. Anyone who does not have the son of God does not have life.

The true God

¹³ I am writing these things to you so that you may know that you, who believe in the name of the son of God, do indeed have the life of the age to come. ¹⁴ This is the bold confidence we have before him: if we ask for something according to his will, he hears us. ¹⁵ And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we already possess the requests we have asked from him.

¹⁶ If anyone sees a brother or sister committing a sin which is not deadly, they should ask, and God will give life to the people who are sinning in a way which is not deadly. There is such a thing as deadly sin; I do not say that one should pray about that. ¹⁷ All sin is unrighteousness, and there is a sin which is not deadly.

¹⁸ We know that everyone fathered by God does not go on sinning. The one who was fathered by God keeps them, and the evil one does not touch them. ¹⁹ We know that we are from God, and the whole world is under the power of the evil one. ²⁰ We know that the son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we should know the truth. And we are in the truth, in his son Jesus the Messiah.

This is the true God; this is the life of the age to come. ²¹ Children, guard yourselves against idols.