1 John 4

₁Friends, do not believe everyone who says that the Spirit of God is in him. You must first find out if that person really has God's Spirit, because there are a lot of false_prophets in the world. ₂How will you know if someone has the Spirit of God in him? When people say they believe that Jesus is the Christ who really came to the world and became a Man, then they have the Spirit of God in them. ₃But people who say they don't believe that Jesus Christ really became a Man do not have the Spirit of God in them. They have the spirit of the antichrist in them. They have told you that the antichrist will come. But I tell you: He is already here in the world.

₄Friends, you are children of God. You have defeated the false_prophets, because God is with you and He is stronger than Satan who is with the people of this world. ₅The false_prophets are people of this world. That is why they speak like the people of this world and the people of this world do what the false_prophets tell them. ₆But we are children of God and everyone who knows God does what we say. Everyone who is not a child of God does not listen to what we say. That is how we know who has a spirit that lies and who has God's Spirit, the Spirit of truth, in them.

₇Friends, we must love each other because love comes from God. Everyone who loves other people is a child of God and knows God. ₈People who do not love other people do not know God, because God is love. ₉God showed us how much He loves us when He gave his Son to come to the world. No other person is the same as his Son. God's Son came to give us eternal_life. ₁₀True love is not the love that we have for God but the love that God has for us. He sent his Son to save us. His Son died. He was the Sacrifice that took away our sins and He made us righteous. ₁₁Friends, God has shown us how much He loves us, so now we must also love each other.

₁₂No person has ever seen God. If we love each other, then God lives with us and we are full of his love. ₁₃We know that we live with God and that He lives with us because He has given his Spirit to us. ₁₄We have seen and now we tell other people that the Father has sent his Son so that his Son can be the Saviour of the world.

₁₅If people say they believe that Jesus is the Son of God, then God is with them and they are with God. ₁₆We have seen God's love and we believe that God loves us. God is love and everyone who loves other people lives with God and God lives with him. ₁₇The love of God grows in us. If we really love other people and we live like Christ did, then we are not afraid of the day of judgement because in this world we live like Jesus did and we are not afraid to stand before God. ₁₈People who really know that God loves them are not afraid to be with God, because real love takes away all fear. Some people are afraid that God will punish them. Those are the people who do not have God's love in their lives.

₁₉We love God and we love each other because God first loved us. ₂₀If people say they love God but they hate other believers, then they are lying. They can see other believers, but if they say they do not love them, how can they say that they love God if they have never seen God? No, ₂₁God has told us that if we love Him, we must also love the other believers.