Chapter 3

¹Think what love the Father has had for us, in letting us be called God’s children, for that is what we are. This is why the world does not know what we are—because it has never come to know him. ²Dear friends, we are God’s children now; it has not yet been disclosed what we are to be. We know that if he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. ³And everyone who possesses this hope in him tries to make himself as pure as he is.

⁴Whoever commits sin disobeys law; sin is disobedience to law. ⁵You know that he appeared to take our sins away, and that there is no sin in him. ⁶No one who keeps in union with him sins. Anyone who sins has never seen him or come to know him. ⁷Dear children, let no one mislead you; whoever acts uprightly is upright, just as he is upright. ⁸Whoever commits sin is a child of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. This is why the Son of God appeared—to undo the devil’s work.

⁹No one who is a child of God commits sin, for God’s nature remains in his heart, and he cannot sin, because he is a child of God. ¹⁰This is how the children of God and those of the devil can be distinguished: No one who does not act uprightly or who does not love his brother is a child of God. ¹¹For the message you have heard from the beginning is this: We must love one another. ¹²We must not be like Cain who was a child of the evil one, and butchered his brother. And why did he butcher him? Because his own actions were wicked and his brother’s upright.

¹³You must not be surprised, brothers, if the world hates you! ¹⁴We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love is still in death. ¹⁵Whoever hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer can have eternal life remain in his heart. ¹⁶We know what love means from the fact that he laid down his life for us; so we also ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. ¹⁷But if someone who is rich sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how can he have any love for God in his heart? ¹⁸Dear children, let us love not with words or lips only but in reality and truth.

¹⁹From that we can be sure that we are on the side of the truth, and satisfy our consciences in God’s sight, ²⁰if they condemn us for anything, for God is greater than our consciences, and he knows all. ²¹Dear friends, if our consciences do not condemn us, we approach God with confidence, ²²and we obtain from him whatever we ask for, because we are obeying his commands and doing the things that please him. ²³His command is this—that we are to believe in his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he has commanded us to do. ²⁴All who obey his commands keep in union with him, and he does with them; and this is how we know that he keeps in union with us—by the Spirit which he has given us.