If we claim that we have fellowship with him but keep living in darkness, we are lying and not practicing the truth.

But if we keep living in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

It is he who is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world's.

The person who says, "I have come to know him," but does not continually keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth has no place in that person.

But whoever continually keeps his commandments is the kind of person in whom God's love has truly been perfected. This is how we can be sure that we are in union with God:

Dear friends, I am not writing to you a new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning. This old commandment is the word you have heard.

The person who says that he is in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.

But the person who hates his brother is in the darkness and lives in the darkness. He does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

For everything that is in the world the desire for fleshly gratification, the desire for possessions, and worldly arrogance is not from the Father but is from the world.

And the world and its desires are fading away, but the person who does God's will remains forever.

They left us, but they were not part of us, for if they had been part of us, they would have stayed with us. Their leaving made it clear that none of them was really part of us.

I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because lies don't come from truth.

Who is a liar but the person who denies that Jesus is the Messiah? The person who denies the Father and the Son is an antichrist.

Dear friends, we are now God's children, but what we will be like has not been revealed yet. We know that when the Messiah is revealed, we will be like him, because we will see him as he is.

But every spirit who does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist. You have heard that he is coming, and now he is already in the world.

This is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.

Whoever says, "I love God," but hates his brother is a liar. The one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love the God whom he has not seen.

This man, Jesus the Messiah, is the one who came by water and blood not with water only, but with water and with blood. The Spirit is the one who verifies this, because the Spirit is the truth.