1 John
Chapter 4
Overview
First John 4 addresses a community facing teachers who claim spiritual authority while giving a false picture of Jesus. Spiritual confidence, the writer suggests, is no substitute for a careful test. The chapter begins by explaining how to recognize messages that come from God. It then turns to the clearest test of all: love. God’s love became visible through his Son, and that love should take shape in the way believers treat one another. As love reaches its purpose among them, fear of judgment loses its grip, and claims about loving God become wonderfully practical.
1Dear friends, do not trust every spiritual claim. Test the spirits behind such messages to see whether they come from God, because many false prophets—people falsely claiming to speak for God—have gone out into the world.
2Here is how you recognize God’s Spirit: a spiritual message comes from God if it acknowledges that Jesus the Messiah came as a real human being.
3But any spiritual message that does not acknowledge Jesus does not come from God. It comes from the spirit opposed to the Messiah. You heard that this spirit was coming, and it is already in the world.
4Dear children, you belong to God, and you have defeated those false prophets. God’s Spirit within you is greater than the spirit at work in the world.
5Those false prophets belong to the world opposed to God. That is why they speak from the world’s point of view, and the world listens to them.
6We belong to God. Whoever knows God listens to us, but whoever does not belong to God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit that leads to truth and the spirit that leads people astray.
7Dear friends, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has received new life from God and knows God.
8Anyone who does not love has not known God, because God is love.
9This is how God’s love was revealed among us: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we could live through him.
10This is what love is: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as the sacrifice that deals with our wrongdoing.
11Dear friends, since God loved us this way, we too must love one another.
12No one has ever seen God. But if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love reaches its full purpose in us.
13We know that we live in God and that he lives in us because he has given us a share in his Spirit.
14We have seen that God the Father sent his Son to save the world, and we tell others that this is true.
15If anyone openly acknowledges that Jesus is God’s Son, God lives in that person, and that person lives in God.
16We have come to know and trust the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever continues to live in love lives in God, and God lives in that person.
17This is how love reaches its full purpose among us: it gives us confidence on the day God judges everyone, because even in this world we are like Jesus.
18There is no fear in love. Instead, complete love drives fear out, because fear is tied to punishment. Anyone who remains afraid has not yet allowed love to reach its full purpose.
19We love because God loved us first.
20If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar. Someone who does not love a fellow believer who can be seen cannot love God, who cannot be seen.
21This is the command we have received from God: whoever loves God must also love fellow believers.