1 Dear friends, you must not believe just any and every spirit, but must test the spirits, to discern whether God is the one from whose presence they are sent, in view of the fact that so many have gone out into the world who are false prophets. 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: If a spirit acknowledges that it is “as a real man with a mortal nature” that Jesus the Messiah has come, then God is in fact the one from whom it comes. 3 Any spirit that refuses to affirm this about Jesus, however, is most certainly not from God. Indeed, such a spirit is representative of the spirit that will anoint that imposter who will oppose the true Messiah, the spirit that you were taught is going to come, and at the present time is already right here in the world. 4 As for you, it is God, my dear children, to whom you belong; you remain victorious over them, so much more powerful as he is who lives in you than the one who is in the world. 5 As for them, it is the world to which they belong. That is why they speak words of worldly origin, and why the world gives them its ear and full attention. 6 As for us, it is God to whom we belong. If someone knows God, he gives his ear to us; if someone isn’t of God, he doesn’t listen to us. That is how we discern the Spirit of truth from the spirit of deception.

7 Dear friends, let us continually love one another, because love comes from God; anyone who loves has by God’s power been newly conceived, and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God displayed his love to us: He sent into the world his matchless Son, so that we would experience life through him. 10 This is what love is: Not that we have loved and chosen God, but that he loved and chose us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice that calms God’s wrath against us and removes the guilt of our sins. 11 If God showed such great love as this to us, we, too, must show love, dear friends, to one another. 12 God no one has seen at any time. If we are showing love to one another, however, God is through his union with us imparting life in fellowship, and his love has inside of us been made blameless. 13 This is how we know that it is God in union with whom we are dwelling in fellowship, and he in union with us: It is his very own Spirit of which he has given us a share. 14 And we, as firsthand witnesses, solemnly declare that the Father has sent the Son as the Savior of the world. 15 If someone professes that Jesus is the Son of God, then God is dwelling in union with him, and he in union with God. 16 And so as for us, we have come to know and rely on the love that God has placed within us. God is love; if someone continues in love, it is God in union with whom he continues in fellowship, and God in union with him. 17 This is how love has and continues to be made blameless within us, so that we may have at the Day of judgment great courage and confidence. For just as Jesus himself is, so are we, too, as we live our lives in this rebellious world. 18 Where there is love there is no reason to be afraid; indeed, love that is blameless drives fear away. Fear, after all, anticipates what? Punishment. If someone fears punishment, he still hasn’t been made blameless in love. 19 We love because he loved us first. 20 If someone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. Anyone who refuses to show love to his brother or sister, you see, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21 Indeed, this is the commandment that we have received from him: Whoever loves God must also love his brother and sister.