1 John 5

Faith in God’s Son Who Became a Human Being

¹Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is a child of God. And everyone who loves the Father loves his child as well.

²Here’s how we know that we love God’s children: by loving God and obeying his commands.

³In fact, this is what it means to love God: to obey his commands. And his commands aren’t hard to obey,

⁴because everyone who’s a child of God has won the battle over the world. Our faith has won the battle for us.

⁵Who is it that has won the battle over the world? Only the person who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

⁶This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He didn’t come by water only, but by water and blood. The Spirit is a truthful witness about this, because the Spirit is the truth.

⁷So there are three witnesses about Jesus:

⁸the Spirit, the water, and the blood. And the three of them agree.

⁹We accept what humans say when they’re witnesses. But when God is a witness, what he says is much stronger evidence, because it’s God talking, and he’s talking about his own Son.

¹⁰Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts what God says about him. Whoever doesn’t believe what God says is calling him a liar by not believing what God has said about his Son.

¹¹And this is what God is saying: He has given us eternal life, and this life is found in his Son.

¹²Whoever has the Son has life. Whoever doesn’t have the Son of God doesn’t have life.

Final Words

¹³I’m writing these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you’ll know you have eternal life.

¹⁴When we pray to God, we can be confident of this: If we ask anything according to his will, he hears us.

¹⁵And if we know that God hears us, we know that we have whatever we ask for.

¹⁶If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that doesn’t lead to death, then you should pray for them, and God will give them life. I’m talking about someone whose sin doesn’t lead to death. There is a sin that does lead to death. I’m not saying you should pray about that.

¹⁷Doing wrong is always sin, but there are sins that don’t lead to death.

¹⁸We know that anyone who is God’s child will not sin continually. The Son of God keeps them safe, and the evil one can’t harm them.

¹⁹We know that we are children of God and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.

²⁰We also know that the Son of God has come and given us understanding so that we can know the God who is true. And we are in the true God by being in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

²¹Dear children, keep yourselves away from idols.