First Letter of John 5

¹ Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been begotten by God; and whoever loves the Father that begot him loves the child whom he begets.

² We can be sure that we love God’s children if we love God himself and do what he has commanded us;

³ this is what loving God is-keeping his commandments;

⁴ and his commandments are not difficult, because anyone who has been begotten by God has already overcome the world; this is the victory over the world-our faith.

⁵ Who can overcome the world? Only the man who believes that Jesus is the Son of God:

⁶ Jesus Christ who came by water and blood[*a], not with water only, but with water and blood; with the Spirit as another witness-since the Spirit is the truth-

⁷ so that there are three witnesses,

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

⁹ We accept the testimony of human witnesses, but God’s testimony is much greater, and this is God’s testimony, given as evidence for his Son.

¹⁰ Everybody who believes in the Son of God has this testimony inside him; and anyone who will not believe God is making God out to be a liar, because he has not trusted the testimony God has given about his Son.

¹¹ This is the testimony: God has given us eternal life and this life is in his Son;

¹² anyone who has the Son has life, anyone who does not have the Son does not have life.

¹³ I have written all this to you so that you who believe in the name of the Son of God may be sure that you have eternal life.

¹⁴ We are quite confident that if we ask him for anything, and it is in accordance with his will, he will hear us;

¹⁵ and, knowing that whatever we may ask, he hears us, we know that we have already been granted what we asked of him.

¹⁶ If anybody sees his brother commit a sin that is not a deadly sin, he has only to pray, and God will give life to the sinner – not those who commit a deadly sin; for there is a sin that is death, and I will not say that you must pray about that.

¹⁷ Every kind of wrong-doing is sin, but not all sin is deadly.

¹⁸ We know that anyone who has been begotten by God does not sin, because the begotten Son of God protects him, and the Evil One does not touch him.

¹⁹ We know that we belong to God, but the whole world lies in the power of the Evil One.

²⁰ We know, too, that the Son of God has come, and has given us the power to know the true God. We are in the true God, as we are in his Son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God, this is eternal life.

²¹ Children, be on your guard against false gods.