| Holman Christian Standard Bible | New Living Translation |
| 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. | 1Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world. |
| 2This is how you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. | 2This is how we know if they have the Spirit of God: If a person claiming to be a prophet acknowledges that Jesus Christ came in a real body, that person has the Spirit of God. |
| 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. | 3But if someone claims to be a prophet and does not acknowledge the truth about Jesus, that person is not from God. Such a person has the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard is coming into the world and indeed is already here. |
| 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. | 4But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world. |
| 5They are from the world. Therefore what they say is from the world, and the world listens to them. | 5Those people belong to this world, so they speak from the world’s viewpoint, and the world listens to them. |
| 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. | 6But we belong to God, and those who know God listen to us. If they do not belong to God, they do not listen to us. That is how we know if someone has the Spirit of truth or the spirit of deception. Loving One Another |
| 7Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. | 7Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. |
| 8The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. | 8But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. |
| 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. | 9God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. |
| 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. | 10This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. |
| 11Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. | 11Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. |
| 12No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us. | 12No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. |
| 13This is how we know that we remain in Him and He in us: He has given assurance to us from His Spirit. | 13And God has given us his Spirit as proof that we live in him and he in us. |
| 14And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent His Son as the world's Savior. | 14Furthermore, we have seen with our own eyes and now testify that the Father sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. |
| 15Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God--God remains in him and he in God. | 15All who declare that Jesus is the Son of God have God living in them, and they live in God. |
| 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. | 16We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love. God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. |
| 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. | 17And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect. So we will not be afraid on the day of judgment, but we can face him with confidence because we live like Jesus here in this world. |
| 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. | 18Such love has no fear, because perfect love expels all fear. If we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we have not fully experienced his perfect love. |
| 19We love because He first loved us. | 19We love each other because he loved us first. |
| 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. | 20If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see? |
| 21And we have this command from Him: The one who loves God must also love his brother. | 21And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers. |
| Holman Christian Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1999, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2009 by Holman Bible Publishers. Used by permission. | Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. |
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