¹See what great love the Father has given us: We’re even called children of God! And that’s what we really are. The world doesn’t know us, because it didn’t know him.

²Dear friends, now we are children of God. We don’t know yet what we will be. But we know that when Christ appears, we’ll be like him, because we’ll see him as he really is.

³All who hope to be like him make themselves pure the way Christ is pure.

⁴Everyone who sins breaks the law. In fact, sin is breaking the law.

⁵But you know that Christ came to take our sins away. And there is no sin in him.

⁶No one who lives in him keeps on sinning, but no one who keeps on sinning has seen him or known him.

⁷Dear children, don’t let anyone lead you astray. The person who does what is right is holy, just as Christ is holy.

⁸The person who does what is sinful belongs to the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. But the Son of God came to destroy the devil’s work.

⁹No one who is God’s child will keep on sinning, because God’s life is growing inside them. They can’t go on sinning, because they’re God’s children.

¹⁰Here’s how you can tell the difference between God’s children and the devil’s children. Anyone who doesn’t do what is right isn’t God’s child, and anyone who doesn’t love their brother or sister isn’t God’s child either.

More Instructions About Loving and Hating One Another

¹¹We’ve heard from the beginning that we should love one another.

¹²Don’t be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because the things he did were wrong, and the things his brother did were right.

¹³My brothers and sisters, don’t be surprised if the world hates you.

¹⁴We know that we’ve passed from death into life, because we love one another. Anyone who doesn’t love remains in death.

¹⁵Anyone who hates their brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life.

¹⁶This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ gave his life for us. So we should give our own lives for our brothers and sisters.

¹⁷If anyone sees a brother or sister in need and they have the means to help them, but they don’t care about them enough to do anything, how can the love of God be in that person?

¹⁸Dear children, let’s not love just with words or talk. Let’s really love, by doing something.

¹⁹This is how we know that we belong to the truth; it’s how we find peace in our hearts when we’re with God.

²⁰If we feel guilty in our hearts, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

²¹Dear friends, if we don’t feel guilty in our hearts, we can be confident when we pray,

²²and God will give us anything we ask for. That’s because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.

²³And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.

²⁴The one who obeys God’s commands lives in him, and he lives in them. Here’s how we know that God lives in us: We know it by the Holy Spirit he gave us.