²⁸And now, little children, remain in him, so that whenever he is revealed we may have confidence and not be put to shame before him at his coming. ²⁹If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone^p who practices righteousness has been fathered by him.

3See what sort of love the Father has given to us: that we should be called children of God, and we are! Because of this the world does not know us: because it did not know him. ²Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that whenever he is revealed we will be like him, because we will see him just as he is. ³And everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as that one is pure.

⁴Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. ⁵And you know that that one was revealed in order that he might take away sins, and in him there is no sin. ⁶Everyone who resides in him does not sin. Everyone who sins has neither seen him nor known him. ⁷Little children, let no one deceive you: the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as that one is righteous. ⁸The one who practices sin is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. For this reason the Son of God was revealed: in order to destroy the works of the devil. ⁹Everyone who is fathered by God does not practice sin, because his seed resides in him, and he is not able to sin, because he has been fathered by God. ¹⁰By this the children of God and the children of the devil are evident: everyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, namely, the one who does not love his brother.

God is Love, so Love One Another

¹¹For this is the message that you have heard from the beginning: that we should love one another, ¹²not as Cain, who was of the evil one and violently murdered his brother. And for what reason^a did he violently murder him? Because his deeds were evil and the deeds of his brother were righteous.

¹³Do not marvel,^b brothers, if the world hates you. ¹⁴We know that we have passed over from death to life because we love the brothers. The one who does not love remains in death. ¹⁵Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that every murderer does not have eternal life residing in him. ¹⁶We have come to know love by this: that he^c laid down his life on behalf of us, and we ought to lay down our lives on behalf of the brothers. ¹⁷But whoever has the world’s material possessions and observes his brother in need^d and shuts his heart against him, how does the love of God reside in him?

¹⁸Little children, let us not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.

Read in Logos

1 John 3:1: See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

Footnotes

pSome manuscripts have “everyone also”
aLiterally “on account of what”
bSome manuscripts have “And do not marvel”
cLiterally “that one” (referring to Jesus Christ)
dLiterally “having need”