(Tap footnote to read it. Old Testament quotations are underlined. "Love" with a caret ("^love") is agapé.1"agapé" The Greek words ἀγάπη (agapé, noun), and ἀγαπάω (agapaó; verb) are typically translated "love". However, unlike our English word "love" – which primarily speaks of affection and feelings – agapé centers on choice and behavior. It’s the "love" based on will, choice, behavior, and action; not feelings. (Feelings-based love is the Greek word φιλέω (phileó), which properly means "brotherly love/affection".) Thus, you could hate someone passionately and still treat him with "agapé". Agapé "love" is best understood as the pursuit of what is most beneficial to someone or something, regardless of the cost to yourself or the type of response received from the person or thing. It can also indicate a preference for someone or something over other things. )
Test spirits
- Beloved, don’t believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
- By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses Jesus the Anointed has come in the flesh is from God.
- And every spirit that doesn’t confess Jesus [the Anointed has come in the flesh] isn’t from God, and this is the spirit of the anti-anointed, which you have heard that is coming, and now is already in the world.
- You are from God little children. And you have overcome them because the One in you is greater than the one in the world.
- They are from the world. Because of this, they speak from the world and the world hears them.
- We are from God. The man knowing God hears us. He who isn’t from God doesn’t hear us. From this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
^Love
- Beloved, we should ^love one another because ^love is from God, and every man who is ^loving has been born from God and knows God.
- The man who is not ^loving didn’t know God because God is ^love.
- The ^love of God was revealed among us by this, that God has sent His only unique1“only unique” The Greek word here properly means “only one in its class” or “unique of its kind.” Outside the Bible it has been used of the only legitimate heir of a monarch, as opposed to other children from concubines (slave wives in the Bible) who weren’t eligible to inherit. Son into the world so we might live through Him.
- In this is ^love: not that we have ^loved God, but that He ^loved us and sent His Son as a propitiation for our sins.
- Beloved, if God ^loved us this way, we also are obligated to ^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.
- By this we know that we remain in Him and He in us, because He has given to us from His Spirit.
- And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the savior of the world.
- Whoever confesses that Jesus [the Anointed] is the Son of God, God remains in him and he in God.
- And we have known and have believed the ^love which God has in us. God is ^love, and the man remaining in ^love remains in God and God remains in him.
- By this ^love has been perfected with us, so we might have confidence in the day of judgement, because just as He is, we are also in this world.
- There isn’t fear in ^love, but perfect ^love casts out fear because fear has punishment. And the man fearing hasn’t been perfected in ^love.
- We ^love because He first ^loved us.
- If someone says: “I ^love God” and hates his brother, he is a liar. For the man not ^loving his brother whom he has seen isn’t able to ^love God whom he hasn’t seen.
- And this is the commandment we have from Him, that the man ^loving God should also ^love his brother.
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