1 John 4

1Dear friends, do not trust every spirit. Instead, put the spirits to the test to find out if they come from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

2Here is how you can know the Spirit of God: any spirit that confesses Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh comes from God.

3But any spirit that does not confess Jesus does not come from God. That is the spirit of the antichrist; you have heard that it is coming, and it is already in the world right now.

4You are from God, little children, and you have won the victory over them, because the one in you is greater than the one in the world.

5They come from the world; that is why what they say springs from the world, and the world listens to them.

6We are from God. The person who knows God listens to us, but the person who is not from God does not listen to us. That is how we can tell the Spirit of truth from the spirit of deception.

7Dear friends, let us keep loving each other, since love has its source in God. All who love have been born of God and know God.

8The one who does not love has not come to know God, for God is love.

9In this way God’s love was made visible among us: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that through him we might have life.

10Love consists in this: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

11Dear friends, if God loved us like this, then we too must love each other.

12No one has ever seen God. But when we love each other, God remains in us, and his love is brought to completion in us.

13Here is how we know that we remain in him and he remains in us: he has given us some of his Spirit.

14We ourselves have seen it and bear witness to it: the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world.

15When anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in that person, and that person remains in God.

16We ourselves have come to know the love God has for us, and we have believed it. God is love. Anyone who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in that person.

17In this, love has been brought to completion among us, so that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because just as he is, so are we too in this world.

18There is no fear in love; rather, complete love throws fear out, because fear involves punishment. Whoever is afraid has not been brought to completion in love.

19We love because he first loved us.

20If someone says, “I love God,” and yet hates their brother or sister, that person is a liar. For anyone who fails to love a brother or sister they have seen is unable to love God, whom they have not seen.

21The command we have received from him is this: the one who loves God is to love their brother or sister too.