1 John 4
4
Don’t Believe Everything You Hear
1My dear friends, don’t believe everything you hear. Carefully weigh and examine what people tell you. Not everyone who talks about God comes from God. There are a lot of lying preachers loose in the world.
2-3Here’s how you test for the genuine Spirit of God. Everyone who confesses openly his faith in Jesus Christ—the Son of God, who came as an actual flesh-and-blood person—comes from God and belongs to God. And everyone who refuses to confess faith in Jesus has nothing in common with God. This is the spirit of antichrist that you heard was coming. Well, here it is, sooner than we thought!
4-6My dear children, you come from God and belong to God. You have already won a big victory over those false teachers, for the Spirit in you is far stronger than anything in the world. These people belong to the Christ-denying world. They talk the world’s language and the world eats it up. But we come from God and belong to God. Anyone who knows God understands us and listens. The person who has nothing to do with God will, of course, not listen to us. This is another test for telling the Spirit of Truth from the spirit of deception.
God Is Love
7-10My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.
11-12My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
13-16This is how we know we’re living steadily and deeply in him, and he in us: He’s given us life from his life, from his very own Spirit. Also, we’ve seen for ourselves and continue to state openly that the Father sent his Son as Savior of the world. Everyone who confesses that Jesus is God’s Son participates continuously in an intimate relationship with God. We know it so well, we’ve embraced it heart and soul, this love that comes from God.
To Love, to Be Loved
17-18God is love. When we take up permanent residence in a life of love, we live in God and God lives in us. This way, love has the run of the house, becomes at home and mature in us, so that we’re free of worry on Judgment Day—our standing in the world is identical with Christ’s. There is no room in love for fear. Well-formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life—fear of death, fear of judgment—is one not yet fully formed in love.
19We, though, are going to love—love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
20-21If anyone boasts, “I love God,” and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won’t love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can’t see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You’ve got to love both.
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.
1 John 4
4
1Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, if they are of God; because many false prophets are gone out into the world. 2Hereby ye know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesses Jesus Christ come in flesh is of God; 3and every spirit which does not confess Jesus Christ come in flesh is not of God: and this is that power of the antichrist, of which ye have heard that it comes, and now it is already in the world.
4 Ye are of God, children, and have overcome them, because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. 5They are of the world; for this reason they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. 6We are of God; he that knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
7Beloved, let us love one another; because love is of God, and every one that loves has been begotten of God, and knows God. 8He that loves not has not known God; for God is love. 9Herein as to us has been manifested the love of God, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. 10Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son a propitiation for our sins. 11Beloved, if God has so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has seen God at any time: if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us. 13Hereby we know that we abide in him and he in us, that he has given to us of his Spirit.
14And we have seen, and testify, that the Father has sent the Son as Saviour of the world. 15Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16And we have known and have believed the love which God has to us. God is love, and he that abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
17Herein has love been perfected with us that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, that even as he is, we also are in this world. 18There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has torment, and he that fears has not been made perfect in love. 19We love because he has first loved us. 20If any one say, I love God, and hate his brother, he is a liar: for he that loves not his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen? 21And this commandment have we from him, That he that loves God love also his brother.
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First published in 1890. This edition is maintained by the British and Foreign Bible Society.