¹ My dear friends, not every spirit is to be trusted, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets are at large in the world.

² This is the proof of the spirit of God: any spirit which acknowledges Jesus Christ, come in human nature, is from God,

³ and no spirit which fails to acknowledge Jesus is from God; it is the spirit of Antichrist, whose coming you have heard of; he is already at large in the world.

⁴ Children, you are from God and have overcome them, because he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

⁵ They are from the world, and therefore the world inspires what they say, and listens to them.

⁶ We are from God; whoever recognises God listens to us; anyone who is not from God refuses to listen to us. This is how we can distinguish the spirit of truth from the spirit of falsehood.

⁷ My dear friends, let us love one another, since love is from God and everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.

⁸ Whoever fails to love does not know God, because God is love.

⁹ This is the revelation of God's love for us, that God sent his only Son into the world that we might have life through him.

¹⁰ Love consists in this: it is not we who loved God, but God loved us and sent his Son to expiate our sins.

¹¹ My dear friends, if God loved us so much, we too should love one another.

¹² No one has ever seen God, but as long as we love one another God remains in us and his love comes to its perfection in us.

¹³ This is the proof that we remain in him and he in us, that he has given us a share in his Spirit.

¹⁴ We ourselves have seen and testify that the Father sent his Son as Saviour of the world.

¹⁵ Anyone who acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him and he in God.

¹⁶ We have recognised for ourselves, and put our faith in, the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him.

¹⁷ Love comes to its perfection in us when we can face the Day of Judgement fearlessly, because even in this world we have become as he is.

¹⁸ In love there is no room for fear, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear implies punishment and no one who is afraid has come to perfection in love.

¹⁹ Let us love, then, because he first loved us.

²⁰ Anyone who says 'I love God' and hates his brother, is a liar, since whoever does not love the brother whom he can see cannot love God whom he has not seen.

²¹ Indeed this is the commandment we have received from him, that whoever loves God, must also love his brother.

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The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) is a Catholic translation of the Bible published in 1985. The New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) has become the most widely used Roman Catholic Bible outside of the United States. It has the imprimatur of Cardinal George Basil Hume.

Like its predecessor, the Jerusalem Bible, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) version is translated "directly from the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic." The 1973 French translation, the Bible de Jerusalem, is followed only "where the text admits to more than one interpretation." Introductions and notes, with some modifications, are taken from the Bible de Jerusalem.

Source: The Very Reverend Dom (Joseph) Henry Wansbrough, OSB, MA (Oxon), STL (Fribourg), LSS (Rome), a monk of Ampleforth Abbey and a biblical scholar. He was General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible. "New Jerusalem Bible, Regular Edition", pg. v.

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