1Beloved, do not believe every spirit. Test the spirits to see whether they are from God. This is because many false prophets have gone out into the world. 2Here is how you know the Spirit of God, every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ came in the flesh is from God. 3Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist that you heard was coming and now it is already in the world. 4You are of God, my little children. You have overcome them because he that is in you is greater than he that is in the world. 5They are from the world. They speak that which is from the world and the world listens to them. 6We are from God. He who knows God listens to us. He who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the vital principle spirit of truth, and the principle spirit of deception error. 7Beloved let us love one another, for love is from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8He who does not love does not know God for God is love. 9The love of God was made known through us. God sent his only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. 10In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation atonementsacrificial payment for our sins. 11Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12No one has seen God at any time! If we love one another, God lives with us, and his love is perfected accomplishedmatured through us. 13We know that we live with him and he with us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14We see and testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. 15Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives with him, and he with God. 16We know and believe the love that God has for us. God is love! He who continues with love lives with God and God lives with him. 17This is love made perfect through us, that we may have boldness in the Day of Judgment. Just as he is, we are, amid exposed to this world. 18There is no fear in love. Perfect mature love throws out expels fear because fear involves restraint punishment. He who fears is not made perfect maturecomplete through love. 19We love, because he first loved us. 20If a man says, I love God, yet he hates his brother, he is a liar! He who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21We have this commandment from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also.