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--

and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but for those of the whole world besides.

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.

I am writing, Children, to you, because your sins have been forgiven you for Christ's sake.

Do not love the world or what the world can offer. When any one loves the world, there is no love for the Father in him;

for all that the world can offer--the gratification of the earthly nature, the gratification of the eye, the pretentious life--belongs, not to the Father, but to the world.

And the world, and all that it gratifies, is passing away, but he who does God's will remains for ever.

From us, it is true, they went out, but they had never belonged to us; for, if they had belonged to us, they would have remained among us. They left us that it might be made clear that they do not, any of them, belong to us.

As for you, let what you were told at the first be always in your thoughts. If, then, what you were told at the first is always in your thoughts, you yourselves will maintain your union both with the Son and with the Father.

He who lives sinfully belongs to the Devil, for the Devil has sinned from the first. It was for this that the Son of God appeared, that he might undo the Devil's work.

For these are the Tidings that we heard from the first--that we are to love one another.

He who does not love has not learned to know God; for God is Love.

His love is seen in this--not in our having loved God, but in his loving us and sending his Son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins.

And, moreover, we have learned to know, and have accepted as a fact, the love which God has for us. God is Love; and he who lives in love lives in God, and God in him.

There is no fear in love. No! Love, when perfect, drives out fear, for fear implies punishment, and the man who feels fear has not attained to perfect love.