| [an error occurred while processing this directive] | Holman Christian Standard Bible |
| 1[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 1Dear 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[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 2This is how you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. |
| 3[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 3But every spirit who does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist; you have heard that he is coming, and he is already in the world now. |
| 4[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 4You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them, because the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. |
| 5[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 5They are from the world. Therefore what they say is from the world, and the world listens to them. |
| 6[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 6We are from God. Anyone who knows God listens to us; anyone who is not from God does not listen to us. From this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception. |
| 7[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 7Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. |
| 8[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 8The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. |
| 9[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 9God's love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and Only Son into the world so that we might live through Him. |
| 10[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 10Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. |
| 11[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 11Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. |
| 12[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 12No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us. |
| 13[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 13This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given assurance to us from His Spirit. |
| 14[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 14And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent His Son as the world's Savior. |
| 15[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 15Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God--God remains in him and he in God. |
| 16[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 16And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him. |
| 17[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 17In this, love is perfected with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, for we are as He is in this world. |
| 18[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 18There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears has not reached perfection in love. |
| 19[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 19We love because He first loved us. |
| 20[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 20If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen. |
| 21[an error occurred while processing this directive] | 21And we have this command from Him: The one who loves God must also love his brother. |
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