1 John 2:1-11 - Keeping The New Commandment

¹ My children, I am writing to you to keep you from sinning; but if any one should sin, we have one who can plead for us with the Father--Jesus Christ, the Righteous-- ² and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but for those of the whole world besides.

³ And by this we know that we have learned to know him--by our laying his commands to heart. ⁴ The man who says 'I know Jesus,' but does not lay his commands to heart, is a liar, and the Truth has no place in him; ⁵ but, whenever a man lays his Message to heart, in that man the love of God has indeed reached its perfection. By this we know that we are in union with God-- ⁶ He who professes to maintain union with God is himself bound to live as Christ lived.

⁷ Dear friends, it is no new command that I am writing to you, but an old command, which you have had from the first. That old command is the Message to which you listened. ⁸ Yet, again, it is a new Command that I am writing to you-- manifest in Christ's life and in your own--for the Darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.

⁹ He who says that he is in the Light, and yet hates his Brother, is in the Darkness even now. ¹⁰ He who loves his Brother is always in the Light, and there is nothing within him to cause him to stumble; ¹¹ while he who hates his Brother is in the Darkness, and is living in the Darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the Darkness prevents his seeing.