Chapter 4

¹Dear friends, do not believe every inspired utterance, but test the utterances to see whether they come from God, for many false prophets have come out into the world. ²You can tell the Spirit of God in this way: all inspiration that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in human form comes from God, ³and any inspired utterance that does not acknowledge Jesus does not come from God; it is the inspiration of the Antichrist. You have heard that it was coming, and here it is already in the world.

⁴You are children of God, dear children, and you have been victorious over these men, for he who is in our hearts is greater than he who is in the world. ⁵They are children of the world; that is why they speak as the world directs, and the world listens to them. ⁶We are God’s children. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not a child of God will not listen to us. In this way we can tell what is inspired by truth from what is inspired by error.

⁷Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God, and everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. ⁸Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. ⁹God’s love for us has been revealed in this way—that God has sent his only Son into the world, to let us have life through him. ¹⁰The love consists not in our having loved God, but in his loving us and sending his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

¹¹Dear friends, if God has loved us so, we ought to love one another. ¹²No one has ever seen God; yet if we love one another, God keeps in union with us and love for him attains perfection in our hearts. ¹³This is the way we know that we keep in union with him and he does with us—because he has given us some of his Spirit. ¹⁴We have seen and can testify that the Father has sent the Son to be Savior of the world. ¹⁵If anyone acknowledges that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, God keeps in union with him and he with God. ¹⁶So we know and believe in the love God has for us.

God is love, and whoever continues to love keeps in union with God, and God with him. ¹⁷Love attains perfection in us, when we have perfect confidence about the Day of Judgment, because here in this world we are living as he lives. ¹⁸There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear. For fear suggests punishment and no one who feels fear has attained perfect love. ¹⁹We love because he loved us first. ²⁰If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. ²¹This is the command that we get from him, that whoever loves God must love his brother also.