The First Letter of John
1 IT WAS THERE from the beginning; we have heard it; we have
seen it with our own eyes; we looked upon it, and felt it with our own
hands; and it is of this we tell. Our theme is the word of life. This life
was made visible; we have seen it and bear our testimony; we here declare
to you the eternal life which dwelt with the Father and was made visible to
us. What we have seen and heard we declare to you, so that you and we
together may share in common life, that life which we share with the
Father and his Son Jesus Christ. And we write this in order that the joys of
us may be complete.
Here is the message we heard from him and pass on to you: that God is
light, and in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to be sharing in his
life while we walk in the dark, our words and our lives are a lie; but if we
walk in the light as he himself is in the light, then we share together a
common life, and we are being cleansed from every sin by the blood of
Jesus his Son.
If we claim to be sinless, we are self-deceived and strangers to the truth.
If we confess our sins, he is just, and may be trusted to forgive our sins and
cleans us from every kind of wrong; but if we say that we have committed no
sin, we make hm out to be a liar, and then his word has no place in us.
2 My children, in writing thus to you my purpose is that you should not
commit sin. But should anyone commit a sin, we have one to plead our
cause with the Father, Jesus Christ, and he is just. He is himself the
remedy for the defilement of our sins, not our sins only but the sins of all
the world.
Here is the test by which we can make sure that we know him: do we
keep his commands? The man who says, 'I know him', while he disobey
his commands, is a liar and a stranger to the truth; but in the man who is
obedient to his word, the divine love has indeed come to its perfection.
Here is the test by which we can make sure that we are in him: whoever
claims to be dwelling in him, binds himself to live as Christ himself lived.
Dear friends, I give you no new command. It is the old command which
you always had before you; the old command is the message which you
heard at the beginning. And yet again it is a new command that I am giving
you – new in the sense that the darkness is passing and the real light already
shines. Christ has made this true, and it is true in your own experience.
A man may say, 'I am in the light', but if he hates his brother, he is still
in the dark. Only the man who loves his brother dwells in the light; there is
nothing to make him stumble. But no one who hates his brother is in darkness;
he walks in the dark and has no idea where he is going, because the darkness
has made him blind.
I write to you, my children, because your sins have been forgiven for
his sake.
I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is and has been from
the beginning.
I write to you, young men, because you have mastered the evil one.
To you, children I have written because you know the Father.
To you, fathers, I have written because you know him who is and has
been from the beginning.
To you, young men, I have written because you are strong; God's word
remains in you, and you have mastered the evil one.
Do not set your hearts on the godless world or anything in it. Anyone
who loves the world is a stranger to the Father's love. Everything the
world affords, all that panders to the appetites or entice the eyes, all the
glamour of its life, springs not from the Father but from the godless world.
And that world is passing away with all its allurements, but he who does
God's will stands for evermore.
MY CHILDREN, this is the last hour! You were told that Antichrist was
to come, and now many antichrists have appeared; which proves to us
that this is indeed the last hour. They went out from our company, but
never really belonged to us; if they had, they would have stayed with us.
They went out, so that it might be clear that not all in our company truly
belong to it.
You, no less than they, are among the initiated; this is the gift of the
Holy One, and by it you all have knowledge. It is not because you are
ignorant of the truth that I have written to you, but because you know it,
and because lies, one and all, are alien to the truth.
Who is the liar? Who but he that denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is
Antichrist, for he denies both the Father and the Son: to deny the Son is
to be without the Father; to acknowledge the Son is to have the Father too.
You therefore must keep in your hearts that which you heard at the begin-
ning; if what you heard then still dwells in you, you will yourselves dwell
in the Son and also in the Father. And this is the promise that he himself
gave us, the promise of eternal life.
So much for those who would mislead you. But as for you, the initiation
which you received from him stays with you; you need no other teacher,
but learn all you need to know from his initiation, which is real and no
illusion. As he taught you, then, dwell in him.
Even now, my children, dwell in him, so that when he appears we may
be confident and unashamed before him at his coming. If you know that he
is righteous, you must recognize that every man who does right is his child.
3 How great is the love that the Father has shown to us! We were called God's
children, and such we are; and the reason why the godless world does not
recognize us is that it has not known him. Here and now, dear friends, we
are God's children; what we shall be has not yet been disclosed, but we
know that when it is disclosed we shall be like him, because we shall see
him as he is. Everyone who has this hope before him purifies himself, as
Christ is pure.
To commit sin is to break God's law: sin, in fact, is lawlessness. Christ
appeared, as you know, to do away with sins, and there is no sin in him.
No man therefore who dwells in him is a sinner; the sinner has not seen
him and does not know him.
My children, do not be misled: it is the man who does right who is
righteous, as God is righteous; the man who sins is a child of the devil,
for the devil has been a sinner from the first; and the Son of God appeared
for the very purpose of undoing the devil's work.
A child of God does not commit sin, because the divine seed remain
in him; he cannot be a sinner, because he is God's child. That is the dis-
tinction between the children of God and the children of the devil: no one
does not do right is God's child, nor is anyone who does not love his
brother. For the message you have heard from the beginning is this: that
we should love one another; unlike Cain, who was a child of the evil one
and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own
actions were wrong, and his brother's were right.
My brothers, do not be surprised if the world hates you. We for our part
have crossed over from death to life; this we know, because we love our
brothers. The man who does not love is still in the realm of death, for
everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and no murderer, as you
know has eternal life dwelling within him. It is by this that we know what
love is: that Christ laid down his life for us. And that we in our turn are bound
to lay down our lives for our brothers. But if a man has enough to live on,
and yet when he sees his brother in need shuts up his heart against him,
how can it be said that the divine love dwells in him?
My children, love must not be a matter of words or talk; it must be
genuine, and show itself in action. This is how we may know that we belong
to the realm of truth, and convince ourselves in his sight that even if our
conscience condemns us, God is greater than our conscience and knows all.
Dear friends, if our conscience does not condemn us, then we can ap-
proach God with confidence, and obtain from him whatever we ask, because
we are keeping his commands and doing what he approves. This is his
command: to give allegiance to his Son Jesus Christ and love one
another as he commanded. When we keep his commands we dwell in him
and he dwells in us. And this is how we can make sure that he dwells within
us: we know it from the Spirit he has given us.
4 BUT DO NOT TRUST any and every spirit, my friends; test the spirits,
to see whether they are from god, for among those who have gone out into
the world there are many prophets falsely inspired. This is how we may
recognize the Spirit of God: every spirit which acknowledges that Jesus
Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit which does not
thus acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is what is meant by 'Anti-
christ'; you have been told that he was to come, and here he is, in the
world already!
But you, my children, are of God's family, and you have the mastery
over these false prophets, because who inspires you is greater than he
who inspires the godless world. They are of that world, and so therefore is
their teaching; that is why the world listens to them. But we belong to
God, and a man who knows God listens to us, while he who does not belong
to God refuses us a hearing. That is how we distinguish the spirit of truth
from the spirit of error.
Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God. Every-
one who loves is a child of God and knows God, but the unloving know
nothing of God. For God is love; and his love was disclosed to us in this,
that he sent his only Son into the world to bring us life. The love I speak
of is not our love for God, but the love he showed to us in sending his Son
as the remedy for the defilement of our sins. If God thus loved us, dear
friends, we in turn are bound to love one another. Though God has never
been seen by any man, God himself dwells in us if we love one another; his
love is brought to perfection within us.
Here is the proof that we dwell in him and he dwells in us: ha has im-
parted his Spirit to us. Moreover, we have seen for ourselves, and we attest,
that the Father sent the Son to be the saviour of the world, and if a man
acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwells in him and he dwells
in God. Thus we have come to know and believe the love which God
has for us.
God is love; he who dwells in love is dwelling in Go, and God in him.
This is for us the perfection of love, to have confidence on the day of judge-
ment, and this we can have, because even in this world we are as he is.
There is no room for fear in love; perfect love banishes fear. For fear brings
with it the pains of judgement, and anyone who is afraid has not attained
to love in its perfection. We love because he loved us first. But if a man says,
'I love God', while hating his brother, he is a liar. If he does not love the
brother whom he has seen, it cannot be that he loves God whom he has not
seen. And indeed this command comes to us from Christ himself: that
he who loves God must also love his brother.
5 Everyone who believes that Jesus s the Christ is a child of God, and to
love the parent means to love his child; it follows that when we love God
and obey his commands we love his children too. For to love God is to
keep his commands; and they are not burdensome, because every child of
God is victor over the godless world. The victory that defeats the world is
our faith, for who is victor over the world but he who believes that Jesus
is the Son of God?
This is he who came with water and blood: Jesus Christ. He came, not
by water alone, but by water and blood; and there is the Spirit to bear
witness, because the Spirit is truth. For there are three witnesses, the Spirit,
the water, and the blood, and these three are in agreement. We accept
human testimony, but surely divine testimony is stronger, and this three-
fold testimony is indeed that of God himself, the witness he has borne to his
Son. He who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his own
heart, but he who disbelieves God, makes him out to be a liar, by refusing
to accept God's own witness to his Son. The witness is this: that God has
given us eternal life, and that this life is found in his Son. He who possesses
the Son has life indeed; he who does not possess the Son of God has not
that life.
THIS LETTER is to assure you that you have eternal life. It is addressed
to those who give their allegiance to the Son of God.
We can approach God with confidence for this reason: if we make
requests which accord with his will he listens to us; and if we know that
our requests are heard, we know also that the things we ask for are ours.
If a man sees his brother committing a sin which is not a deadly sin, he
should pray to God for him, and he will grant him life — that is, when men
are not guilty of deadly sin. There is such a thing as deadly sin, and I do
not suggest that he should pray about that; but although all wrongdoing is
sin, not all sin is deadly sin.
We know that no child of God is a sinner; it is the Son of God who keeps
him safe, and the evil one cannot touch him.
We know that we are of God's family, while the whole godless world lies
in the power of the evil one.
We know that the Son of God has come and given us understanding to
know him who is real; indeed we are in him who is real, since we are in his
Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, this is eternal life. My children, be
on the watch against false gods.
The New English Bible (with Apocrypha)
Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, 1970
Posted Jan 7, 2019, 1:48 PM UTC · edited
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