Study Desk

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

This is how you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,

but every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming; even now it is already in the world.

You are from God, little children, and you have conquered them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.

We are from God. Anyone who knows God listens to us; anyone who is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.

Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him.

Love 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.

Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another.

No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and his love is made complete in us.

Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God—God remains in him and he in God.

And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.

If anyone says, “I love God,” and yet hates his brother or sister, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother or sister whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

And we have this command from him: The one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father also loves the one born of him.

This is how we know that we love God’s children: when we love God and obey his commands.

For this is what love for God is: to keep his commands. And his commands are not a burden,

because everyone who has been born of God conquers the world. This is the victory that has conquered the world: our faith.

Who is the one who conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?