First Letter of John 2

¹ I am writing this, my children, to stop you sinning; but if anyone should sin, we have our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, who is just;

² he is the sacrifice that takes our sins away, and not only ours, but the whole world’s.

³ We can be sure that we know God only by keeping his commandments.

⁴ Anyone who says, ‘I know him’, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, refusing to admit the truth.

⁵ But when anyone does obey what he has said, God’s love comes to perfection in him. We can be sure that we are in God

⁶ only when the one who claims to be living in him is living the same kind of life as Christ lived.

⁷ My dear people, this is not a new commandment that I am writing to tell you, but an old commandment that you were given from the beginning, the original commandment which was the message brought to you.

⁸ Yet in another way, what I am writing to you, and what is being carried out in your lives as it was in his, is a new commandment; because the night is over and the real light is already shining.

⁹ Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the dark.

¹⁰ But anyone who loves his brother is living in the light and need not be afraid of stumbling;

¹¹ unlike the man who hates his brother and is in the darkness, not knowing where he is going, because it is too dark to see.

¹² I am writing to you, my own children, whose sins have already been forgiven through his name;

¹³ I am writing to you, fathers, who have come to know the one who has existed since the beginning; I am writing to you, young men, who have already overcome the Evil One;

¹⁴ I have written to you, children, because you already know the Father; I have written to you, fathers, because you have come to know the one who has existed since the beginning; I have written to you, young men, because you are strong and God’s word has made its home in you, and you have overcome the Evil One.

¹⁵ You must not love this passing world or anything that is in the world. The love of the Father cannot be in any man who loves the world,

¹⁶ because nothing the world has to offer-the sensual body, the lustful eye, pride in possessions-could ever come from the Father but only from the world;

¹⁷ and the world, with all it craves for, is coming to an end; but anyone who does the will of God remains for ever.

¹⁸ Children, these are the last days; you were told that an Antichrist must come, and now several antichrists have already appeared; we know from this that these are the last days.

¹⁹ Those rivals of Christ came out of our own number, but they had never really belonged; if they had belonged, they would have stayed with us; but they left us, to prove that not one of them ever belonged to us.

²⁰ But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and have all received the knowledge.

²¹ It is not because you do not know the truth that I am writing to you but rather because you know it already and know that no lie can come from the truth.

²² The man who denies that Jesus is the Christ-he is the liar, he is Antichrist; and he is denying the Father as well as the Son,

²³ because no one who has the Father can deny the Son, and to acknowledge the Son is to have the Father as well.

²⁴ Keep alive in yourselves what you were taught in the beginning: as long as what you were taught in the beginning is alive in you, you will live in the Son and in the Father;

²⁵ and what is promised to you by his own promise is eternal life.

²⁶ This is all that I am writing to you about the people who are trying to lead you astray.

²⁷ But you have not lost the anointing that he gave you, and you do not need anyone to teach you; the anointing he gave teaches you everything; you are anointed with truth, not with a lie, and as it has taught you, so you must stay in him.

²⁸ Live in Christ, then, my children, so that if he appears, we may have full confidence, and not turn from him in shame at his coming.

²⁹ You know that God is righteous – then you must recognise that everyone whose life is righteous has been begotten by him.