2 John 1
Greetings
1I, the Elder, write this letter to you. God has chosen your congregation and all the believers who belong to your congregation. I love you because you know the truth that comes from God. It is not only I who love you. Everyone who knows the truth that comes from God also loves you. 2Because the truth lives in our hearts and it will always be with us. 3I pray that God the Father and Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, will give his grace to us and help us when we suffer. And I pray that God will give us peace so that we will know the truth of God and his love.
Truth and Love
4I was very glad when I met some of your believers, people who live as the Father wants. Yes, God told us to live this way.
5All of you who belong to the church, I ask you now to love each other. This is not a new law that I give to you. We have had this law from the beginning. 6If we love each other, then we do what God tells us. It is the law that He gave us from the beginning and that is what we must do. 7There are a lot of people who have gone away from us into the world and who tell lies. They do not believe that Jesus Christ really came to this world and became a Man. Any person who says this lies. He is the antichrist. 8You must be careful. If you are not_careful, you will lose everything that we have worked for, and you will lose the full reward that God wants to give to us.
9There are people who do not believe what Christ has taught us. They believe other things. They do not have God in their hearts. But all who believe what Christ has taught us, and keep on believing it, have the Father and the Son in their hearts. 10If people come to you and they want to teach you something that is not the same as what Christ has taught us, then you must not welcome them into your home or even greet them, 11because if you greet or welcome them, then you are helping them to do wrong and then you also are doing wrong.
12There are a lot of other things that I want to say to you, but I do not want to write them in a letter. I hope I can come to you, and then we can talk and we will all be very happy. 13God has chosen our congregation, and all the believers in our congregation send greetings to you.
English Bible for the Deaf © Bible Society of South Africa 2019. Used with permission. All rights reserved.