4:1 Beloved, don't believe every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
4:2 Hereby you+ know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God:
4:3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not of God: and this is the [spirit] of the antichrist, of which you+ have heard that it comes; and now it is in the world already.
4:4 You+ are of God, [my] little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he who is in you+ than he who is in the world.
4:5 They are of the world: therefore they speak [as] of the world, and the world hears them.
4:6 We are of God: he who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.
4:7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and everyone who loves is begotten of God, and knows God.
4:8 He who doesn't love doesn't know God; for God is love.
4:9 In this was the love of God manifested in us, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him.
4:10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son [to be] the propitiation for our sins.
4:11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
4:12 No man has seen God at any time: if we love one another, God stays in us, and his love is perfected in us:
4:13 hereby we know that we stay in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.
4:14 And we have seen and bear witness that the Father has sent the Son [to be] the Savior of the world.
4:15 Whoever will confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God stays in him, and he in God.
4:16 And we know and have believed the love which God has in us. God is love; and he who stays in love stays in God, and God stays in him.
4:17 In this love has been made perfect with us, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment; because as he is, even so are we in this world.
4:18 There is no fear in love: but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has punishment; and he who fears has not been made perfect in love.
4:19 We love, because he first loved us.
4:20 If a man says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar: for he who doesn't love his brother whom he has seen, can't love God whom he has not seen.
4:21 And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God love his brother also.