First Letter of John 3

¹ Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us, by letting us be called God’s children; and that is what we are. Because the world refused to acknowledge him, therefore it does not acknowledge us.

² My dear people, we are already the children of God but what we are to be in the future has not yet been revealed; all we know is, that when it is revealed we shall be like him because we shall see him as he really is.

³ Surely everyone who entertains this hope must purify himself, must try to be as pure as Christ.

⁴ Anyone who sins at all breaks the law, because to sin is to break the law.

⁵ Now you know that he appeared in order to abolish sin, and that in him there is no sin;

⁶ anyone who lives in God does not sin, and anyone who sins has never seen him or known him.

⁷ My children, do not let anyone lead you astray: to live a holy life is to be holy just as he is holy;

⁸ to lead a sinful life is to belong to the devil, since the devil was a sinner from the beginning. It was to undo all that the devil has done that the Son of God appeared.

⁹ No one who has been begotten by God sins; because God’s seed remains inside him, he cannot sin when he has been begotten by God.

¹⁰ In this way we distinguish the children of God from the children of the devil: anybody not living a holy life and not loving his brother is no child of God’s.

¹¹ This is the message as you heard it from the beginning: that we are to love one another;

¹² not to be like Cain, who belonged to the Evil One and cut his brother’s throat; cut his brother’s throat simply for this reason, that his own life was evil and his brother lived a good life.

¹³ You must not be surprised, brothers, when the world hates you;

¹⁴ we have passed out of death and into life, and of this we can be sure because we love our brothers.

¹⁵ If you refuse to love, you must remain dead; to hate your brother is to be a murderer, and murderers, as you know, do not have eternal life in them.

¹⁶ This has taught us love – that he gave up his life for us; and we, too, ought to give up our lives for our brothers.

¹⁷ If a man who was rich enough in this world’s goods saw that one of his brothers was in need, but closed his heart to him, how could the love of God be living in him?

¹⁸ My children, our love is not to be just words or mere talk, but something real and active;

¹⁹ only by this can we be certain that we are children of the truth and be able to quieten our conscience in his presence,

²⁰ whatever accusations it may raise against us, because God is greater than our conscience and he knows everything.

²¹ My dear people, if we cannot be condemned by our own conscience, we need not be afraid in God’s presence,

²² and whatever we ask him, we shall receive, because we keep his commandments and live the kind of life that he wants.

²³ His commandments are these: that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and that we love one another as he told us to.

²⁴ Whoever keeps his commandments lives in God and God lives in him. We know that he lives in us by the Spirit that he has given us.