요한일서 4

Testing the spirits

¹Dear friends, do not believe just any spirit; test the spirits to find out whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out and are now in the world. ²Here is how you recognize the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ as one who has come in the flesh is from God, ³and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist; you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.^{ab 4}As for you, dear children, you belong to God, and you have already won the victory over them, because the one in you is greater than the one in the world. ⁵They belong to the world, so what they say comes from the world, and the world listens to them. ⁶We belong to God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and whoever does not belong to God does not listen to us.^c That is how we tell the Spirit of truth from the spirit of falsehood.

God is love

⁷Dear friends, let us keep loving one another, for love has its source in God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows him. ⁸The one who does not love has never known God, for God is love.^{d 9}This is how God’s love was made visible among us: God has sent his one and only Son into the world, so that through him we may have life.^{e 10}This is where love is found: not in our having loved God, but in his loving us and sending his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.^{f 11}Dear friends, since this is how God loved us, we too should love one another. ¹²No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us, and his love has reached completion in us.^g

Remaining in God

¹³This is how we know that we remain in him and he remains in us: he has given us from his own Spirit. ¹⁴We have seen it with our own eyes, and we testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. ¹⁵When anyone confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in them, and they remain in God. ¹⁶We ourselves have come to know the love God has for us, and we believe it.

Love has no room for fear

God is love. Whoever remains in love remains in God, and God remains in them. ¹⁷In this way love has been brought to completion among us, so that we may have confidence on the day of judgment, for just as he is, so are we in this world.^{hi 18}Love has no room for fear; instead, complete love throws fear out, because fear has to do with punishment, and anyone who is afraid has not been brought to completion in love.^{j 19}We love because he loved us first.^{kl 20}If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a brother or sister, that person is a liar. For anyone who does not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, is not able to love God, whom they have not seen. ²¹And this is the command we have received from him: the one who loves God is to love a brother or sister as well.