¹ Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has received the new life from God; and everyone who loves him who gave that life loves him who has received it.

² By this we know that we love God’s children — when we love God and carry out his commands.

³ For to love God is to lay his commands to heart; and his commands are not burdensome,

⁴ because all that has received the new life from God conquers the world. And this is the power that has conquered the world — our faith!

⁵ Who is the person that conquers the world but the person who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

⁶ He it is whose coming was by water and blood — Jesus Christ himself; not by water only, but by water and by blood. And there is the Spirit also to bear testimony, and the Spirit is truth itself.

⁷ It is a threefold testimony —

⁸ that of the Spirit, the water, and the blood — and these three are at one.

⁹ We accept the testimony of people, but God’s testimony is still stronger; and there is the testimony of God — the fact that he has already borne testimony about his Son.

¹⁰ The person who believes in the Son of God has that testimony within them. The person who does not believe God has made God a liar, by refusing to believe in that testimony which he has borne about his Son.

¹¹ And that testimony is that God gave us eternal life, and that this life is in his Son.

¹² The person who finds the Son finds life; the person who does not find the Son of God does not find life.

¹³ I write this to you so that you may realize that you have found eternal life — you who believe in the name of the Son of God.

¹⁴ And this is the confidence with which we approach him, that whenever we ask anything that is in accordance with his will, he listens to us.

¹⁵ And if we realize that he listens to us — whatever we ask — we realize that we have what we have asked from him.

¹⁶ If anyone sees one of our people committing some sin that is not a deadly sin, they will ask, and so be the means of giving life to them — to any whose sin is not deadly. There is such a thing as deadly sin; about that I do not say that a person should pray.

¹⁷ Every wrong action is sin, and there is sin that is not deadly.

¹⁸ We know that no one who has received the new life from God lives in sin. No, the person who has received the new life from God keeps the thought of God in their heart, and then the evil one does not touch them.

¹⁹ We realize that we come from God, while all the world is under the influence of the evil one.

²⁰ We realize, too, that the Son of God has come among us, and has given us the discernment to know the true God; and we are in union with the true God by our union with his Son, Jesus Christ. He is the true God and he is eternal life.

²¹ My children, guard yourselves against false ideas of God.