1 John 3:10-23

10In this way, we can see clearly who are God's children and who are the Devil's children. Anyone who does not live in a way that is good and right does not belong to God. People like that do not love other believers.

11Yes, we must love one another. That is the message which you have heard from the beginning.

12We should not be like Cain. He belonged to Satan and he even killed his brother, Abel. Why did he do that? Cain did bad things and he killed Abel because Abel did things that were right.

13So, my Christian friends, do not be surprised when people who belong to this world hate you.

14We know that we now have new life with God. Death no longer has power over us. We know this because we love our Christian friends. But anyone who does not love other believers is still under the power of death.

15Anyone who hates other believers is like someone who murders other people. You know that a person like that does not have true life with God.

16This is how we know what true love is: Jesus Christ gave his own life on the cross. He died on our behalf. So we too ought to give our lives for other believers.

17When another believer has trouble, we need to be kind to him. Maybe you have all the things that you need to live. If you see another believer who needs things like that, you should help him. If you refuse to be kind to him, it shows that you do not belong to God. You do not love people in the way that God loves them.

18My little children, we should not show love for each other only by what we say. We should also show true love by the things that we do.

19Then we will know that we truly belong to God. We will be obeying God's true message. As a result, our thoughts will not make us ashamed to come to God.

20Even if our thoughts tell us that we have done something wrong, we still will not be afraid of God. We can trust God more than we trust our thoughts. He already knows everything about us.

21My friends, if our thoughts do not tell us that we are guilty, we will not be afraid to come to God.

22We can pray to God and we can ask him to help us. He will give us what we ask him for. That is because we obey his commands and we do the things that please him.

23This is God's command to us: we must believe that Jesus Christ is his Son. And we must love each other, as Jesus commanded us.