5 This is the message we heard from Jesus[c] and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all.
6 So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth.
7 But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.
15 Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you.
16 For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world.
17 And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.
20 If someone says, “I love God,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is a liar; for if we don’t love people we can see, how can we love God, whom we cannot see?
21 And he has given us this command: Those who love God must also love their fellow believers.
9 If anyone claims, “I am living in the light,” but hates a fellow believer, that person is still living in darkness.
10 Anyone who loves a fellow believer is living in the light and does not cause others to stumble.
11 But anyone who hates a fellow believer is still living and walking in darkness. Such a person does not know the way to go, having been blinded by the darkness.
1 Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world.
2 This is how we know if they have the Spirit of God: If a person claiming to be a prophet acknowledges that Jesus Christ came in a real body, that person has the Spirit of God.
3 But if someone claims to be a prophet and does not acknowledge the truth about Jesus, that person is not from God. Such a person has the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard is coming into the world and indeed is already here.
4 But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world.
5 Those people belong to this world, so they speak from the world’s viewpoint, and the world listens to them.
6 But we belong to God, and those who know God listen to us. If they do not belong to God, they do not listen to us. That is how we know if someone has the Spirit of truth or the spirit of deception.