1 John 4
4
The Spirit of God and the Spirit of the Antichrist
1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to verify* whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. 4 You are from God, little children, and have subdued them, because greater is the One who is in you than the one in the world. 5 They are from the world; because of this, they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. The one who knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us.* By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
The Supremacy of God’s Love
7 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves* has been born of God and knows God. 8 The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 By this the love of God was revealed in us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through Him. 10 In this is love:* not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as a propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God has so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been brought to perfection in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given to us of His Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Saviour of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. 16 And we have come to know and to believe the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 In this love has been perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as He is, we also are in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love expels fear, because fear entails punishment, and the one who is afraid has not been brought to perfection in love. 19 We love, because He first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar. For the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God must also love his brother.
Notes
1 The infinitive phrase to verify is supplied to the text based on context for the sake of clarity
6 Two ancient Greek manuscripts omit the declarative sentence: whoever is not from God does not listen to us
7 One ancient Greek manuscript inserts the name God at this point
10 Two ancient Greek manuscripts insert the genitive phrase of God
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Copyright © 2026 Michael Adeyemi Adegbola. This Scripture text is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-SA 4.0).
