1 Dear friends, do not trust every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

2 This is the way to recognize the Spirit of God: those who acknowledge Jesus Christ as come in the flesh have God's Spirit, 3 while a spirit that doesn't acknowledge Jesus isn't from God. Instead it is the spirit of the antichrist; you have heard that it was coming, and it is now already in the world!

4 You, my children, come from God, and you have successfully resisted such people as these, because he who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 Those people belong to the world and therefore they speak as the world speaks, and the world listens to them. 6 We come from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; the person who does not come from God does not listen to us. This is how we distinguish the spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God and everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. 8 Those who do not love know nothing of God, for God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: he sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is what love is: it is not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

11 Dear friends, since God loved us in this way, we should love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love reaches perfection within us. 13 We know that we live in him, and he lives in us, because he has given us a measure of his Spirit. 14 Moreover, we have seen for ourselves and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever acknowledges that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, God lives in them, and they live in God. 16 And so we have come to know and believe the love which God has for us.

God is love; and whoever lives in love lives in God, and God lives in them. 17 This is the way love has reached its perfection among us, so that we may have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like Christ. 18 There is no fear in love; perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. So anyone who is afraid has not reached perfection in love. 19 We love, because God first loved us. 20 If someone says ‘I love God,’ and yet hates others, they are a liar. For the person who does not love their brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 Indeed, we have this command from Christ: Those who love God must also love each other.