1 Beloved, don’t believe 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 how you know God’s Spirit: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. 3 Every spirit that fails to acknowledge Jesus isn’t from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming, and now it is already in the world. 4 You are from God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 5 They are from the world, therefore they talk like they are from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

7 Beloved, let us sincerely love one another, for sincere love is from God, and everyone who sincerely loves is born of God and knows God. 8 The one who doesn’t sincerely love doesn’t know God, for God is sincere love. 9 The sincere love of God was manifested in us by this, that God has sent His only born Son into the world so that we might live through Him. 10 In this is sincere love: not that we sincerely loved God, but that He sincerely loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God sincerely loved us like this, we ought to sincerely love one another, too. 12 No one has ever seen God, but if we sincerely love one another, God lives in us and His sincere love is made complete in us.

13 This is how we know that we live in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. 14 We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. 15 God lives in whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, and that person lives in God. 16 We have come to know and have believed the sincere love which God has for us.

God is sincere love. One who lives in sincere love lives in God, and God lives in him. 17 Sincere love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have confident boldness on the judgment day, because as He is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in sincere love, but perfect, sincere love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment. But whoever fears has not been made perfect in sincere love. 19 We sincerely love, because He first sincerely loved us. 20 If someone says, “I sincerely love God,” and hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. If someone doesn’t sincerely love a brother or sister he has seen, how can he sincerely love God whom he hasn’t seen? 21 This commandment we have from Him: that whoever sincerely loves God must sincerely love his brothers and sisters, too.