What was from the beginning,
what we have heard,
what we have seen with our eyes,
what we have observed
and have touched with our hands,
concerning the Word of life—

that life was revealed,
and we have seen it
and we testify and declare to you
the eternal life that was with the Father
and was revealed to us—

But whoever keeps His word, truly in him the love of God is perfected. This is how we know we are in Him:

Do not love the world or the things that belong to the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him.

And this is the promise that He Himself made to us: eternal life.

Look at how great a love the Father has given us that we should be called God’s children. And we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it didn’t know Him.

This is how God’s children—and the Devil’s children—are made evident.

Whoever does not do what is right is not of God, especially the one who does not love his brother.

For this is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another,

We know that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers. The one who does not love remains in death.

Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him.

This is how we have come to know love: He laid down His life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers.

If anyone has this world’s goods and sees his brother in need but closes his eyes to his need—how can God’s love reside in him?

Little children, we must not love with word or speech, but with truth and action.

Now this is His command: that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another as He commanded us.

Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.

The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent His One and Only Son into the world so that we might live through Him.

Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another.

No one has ever seen God. If we love one another, God remains in us and His love is perfected in us.

And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.

In this, love is perfected with us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, for we are as He is in this world.

There is no fear in love; instead, perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment. So the one who fears has not reached perfection in love.

We love because He first loved us.

If anyone says, “I love God,” yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For the person who does not love his brother he has seen cannot love the God he has not seen.

And we have this command from Him: The one who loves God must also love his brother.

This is how we know that we love God’s children when we love God and obey His commands.

For this is what love for God is: to keep His commands. Now His commands are not a burden,

And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.

The one who has the Son has life. The one who doesn’t have the Son of God does not have life.

I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.

If anyone sees his brother committing a sin that does not bring death, he should ask, and God will give life to him—to those who commit sin that doesn’t bring death. There is sin that brings death. I am not saying he should pray about that.

And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know the true One. We are in the true One—that is, in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.