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Testing the Spirits

¹ Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to determine if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. ² By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses Jesus as the Christ who has come in the flesh is from God, ³ but every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God, and this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming, and now is already in the world.

⁴ You are from God, little children, and 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 they speak from the world's perspective and the world listens to them. ⁶ We are from God; the person who knows God listens to us, but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit.

God is Love

⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been fathered by God and knows God. ⁸ The person who does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ By this the love of God is revealed in us: that God has sent his one and only Son into the world so that we may live through him. ¹⁰ In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

¹¹ Dear friends, if God so loved us, then we also ought to love one another. ¹² No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God resides in us, and his love is perfected in us. ¹³ By this we know that we reside in God and he in us: in that he has given us of his Spirit. ¹⁴ And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.

¹⁵ If anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God resides in him and he in God. ¹⁶ And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him. ¹⁷ By this love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as Jesus is, so also are we in this world. ¹⁸ There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears punishment has not been perfected in love. ¹⁹ We love because he loved us first.

²⁰ If anyone says "I love God" and yet hates his fellow Christian, he is a liar, because the one who does not love his fellow Christian whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. ²¹ And the commandment we have from him is this: that the one who loves God should love his fellow Christian too.