Study Desk

Those who are children of God do not continue to sin, for God's very nature is in them; and because God is their Father, they cannot continue to sin.

If we are rich and see others in need, yet close our hearts against them, how can we claim that we love God?

If our conscience condemns us, we know that God is greater than our conscience and that he knows everything.

Those who obey God's commands live in union with God and God lives in union with them. And because of the Spirit that God has given us we know that God lives in union with us.

My dear friends, do not believe all who claim to have the Spirit, but test them to find out if the spirit they have comes from God. For many false prophets have gone out everywhere.

This is how you will be able to know whether it is God's Spirit: anyone who acknowledges that Jesus Christ came as a human being has the Spirit who comes from God.

But anyone who denies this about Jesus does not have the Spirit from God. The spirit that he has is from the Enemy of Christ; you heard that it would come, and now it is here in the world already.

But you belong to God, my children, and have defeated the false prophets, because the Spirit who is in you is more powerful than the spirit in those who belong to the world.

But we belong to God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever does not belong to God does not listen to us. This, then, is how we can tell the difference between the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Whoever loves is a child of God and knows God.

Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.

And God showed his love for us by sending his only Son into the world, so that we might have life through him.

This is what love is: it is not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the means by which our sins are forgiven.

Dear friends, if this is how God loved us, then we should love one another.

No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God lives in union with us, and his love is made perfect in us.

We are sure that we live in union with God and that he lives in union with us, because he has given us his Spirit.

If we declare that Jesus is the Son of God, we live in union with God and God lives in union with us.

And we ourselves know and believe the love which God has for us. God is love, and those who live in love live in union with God and God lives in union with them.

We love because God first loved us.

If we say we love God, but hate others, we are liars. For we cannot love God, whom we have not seen, if we do not love others, whom we have seen.