1 John 2:3-16

Here’s how we can be sure that we’ve truly come to know God: if we keep his commands. If someone claims, “I have come to know God by experience,” yet doesn’t keep God’s commands, he is a phony and the truth finds no place in him. But the love of God will be perfected within the one who obeys God’s Word. We can be sure that we’ve truly come to live in intimacy with God, not just by saying, “I am intimate with God,” but by walking in the footsteps of Jesus. Beloved, I’m not writing a new commandment to you, but an old one that you had from the beginning, and you’ve already heard it. Yet, in a sense, it is a new commandment, as its truth is made manifest both in Christ and in you, because the darkness is disappearing and the true light is already blazing. Anyone who says, “I am in the light,” while holding hatred in his heart toward a fellow believer is still in the darkness. But the one who truly loves a fellow believer lives in the light, and there is nothing in him that will cause someone else to stumble. But whoever hates a fellow believer lives in the darkness—stumbling around in the dark with no clue where he is going, for he is blinded by the darkness. I remind you, dear children: your sins have been permanently removed because of the power of his name. I remind you, fathers and mothers: you have a relationship with the One who has existed from the beginning. And I remind you, young people: you have defeated the Evil One. I write these things to you, dear children, because you truly have a relationship with the Father. I write these things, fathers and mothers, because you have had a true relationship with him who is from the beginning. And I write these things, young people, because you are strong, the Word of God is treasured in your hearts, and you have defeated the Evil One. Don’t set the affections of your heart on this world or in loving the things of the world. The love of the Father and the love of the world are incompatible. For all that the world can offer us—the gratification of our flesh, the allurement of the things of the world, and the obsession with status and importance —none of these things come from the Father but from the world.