1 John 4
1Dearly loved friends, do not trust every spirit. Instead, test these spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh is from God, 3and every spirit that does not confess this Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and is already here in the world.
4You are from God, little children, and you have overcome these people, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5They are from the world; that is why they speak from the world’s perspective, and the world listens to them. 6We are from God. The person who knows God listens to us; the person who is not from God does not listen to us. From this, we recognize the spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.
7Dearly loved friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8The one who does not love has not known God, because God is love. 9This is how God’s love was revealed among us: God sent his unique Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.
11Dearly loved friends, if God loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has ever seen God; yet if we love one another, God dwells in us and his love reaches its intended goal in us. 13We know that we dwell in him and he in us by this: he has shared his own Spirit with us. 14And we have seen and we testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. 15Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwells in him and he dwells in God. 16We have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who dwells in love dwells in God, and God dwells in him. 17In this way, love reaches its goal among us, so that we may have unreserved confidence on the day of judgment, because just as he is, so also are we in this world. 18Fear does not exist in love. On the contrary, love that has reached its goal drives out fear, because fear carries its own punishment. The one who is afraid has not reached the goal of love. 19We love because he first loved us. 20If someone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. 21And we have this commandment from him: the one who loves God must love his brother as well.