^
1 JOHN
1 John 1:1-4
We apostles proclaim to you the message about the One who has lived eternally, so that you may be joined together with us and we may be completely happy.
We should continue to be morally pure, because God is morally pure, and he is able to forgive our sins on the basis that Jesus died to acquit us of the guilt of all our sins.
We should conduct our lives as Christ did, obeying what God commands us to do. We will then be loving God in the manner in which he wants us to.
We ought to love our fellow believers in order to continue behaving like people living in the light.
I am writing all these matters to you because I know that God has forgiven your sins and also because you have come to know the Father and Christ, who has always existed, and because you have overcome the evil one.
Do not esteem the evil manner in which other people in the world live, since you want to live forever.
1 John 2:18-25
Continue to conduct your lives according to what you were originally taught by God’s Spirit.
Continue to live united to Christ, so that you will be confident that he will accept you when he returns.
Do not allow anyone to seduce you to sin, because you are God’s children, and his children maintain themselves free from evil behavior by not continuing to sin as the devil’s children do.
Because we have been changed from being spiritually dead people to being spiritually alive people, we should love each other genuinely by helping our fellow believers who are in need.
We must believe in God’s Son and love each other in order to be confident that we have a close relationship with God and that we will receive what we ask from him.
Continue to test the teachings you hear to know whether or not they are from God. You should test those who teach them by whether or not they acknowledge that Jesus Christ came in human form and also by what kind of people listen to that kind of teaching.
We must love each other. God shows us what real love is.
In order to be assured that we are conducting our lives according to God’s character, we must love God and our fellow believers, because God loved us first.
Those who believe that Jesus is God’s Chosen One are people who have been caused to live spiritually, and they love their fellow believers. They obey God’s commands and overcome the evils of human society.
Jesus came from God to earth. Those who believe in and live united to him have eternal life.
We have a close relationship with God because we are united to his Son. Because of that relationship, we have eternal life.

© 2008-2017 Ellis W. Deibler, Jr.