36 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
36 lines
2.6 KiB
Markdown
The Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of Error
|
|
|
|
# Chapter 4
|
|
1. Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
|
|
|
|
2. This is how you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,
|
|
3. but every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming; even now it is already in the world.
|
|
|
|
4. You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.
|
|
5. They are from the world. Therefore what they say is from the world, and the world listens to them.
|
|
6. We are from God. Anyone who knows God listens to us; anyone who is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.
|
|
|
|
Knowing God through Love
|
|
|
|
|
|
7. Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
|
|
8. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
|
|
9. God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might 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 atoning sacrifice for our sins.
|
|
11. Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another.
|
|
12. No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us.
|
|
13. This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.
|
|
14. And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent his Son as the world's Savior.
|
|
15. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God--God remains in him and he in God.
|
|
16. And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.
|
|
God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.
|
|
17. In this, love is made complete with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because as he is, so also are we in this world.
|
|
18. There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears is not complete in love.
|
|
19. We love because he first loved us.
|
|
20. If anyone says, "I love God," and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
|
|
21. And we have this command from him: The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|