Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
Parallel translations
- WEB Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves has been born of God, and knows God.
- KJV Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
- NKJV Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
- NASB Beloved, let’s love one another; for love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.
- NLT Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.
Quick answer
We should love one another because love comes from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows him. Genuine love is the fruit of the new birth.
Overview
John returns to the command to love, grounding it in God's own nature as the source of love. Those who truly love show they are born of God and know him. This introduces the great section on God's love, climaxing in 'God is love,' and ties love inseparably to genuine knowledge of God through Christ.
Cross-references & the web
Cross-references · 14
- 1 Jn 4:20If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
- 1 Jn 4:8Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.
- 1 Pet 1:22Since you have purified your souls by obedience to the truth so that you have a genuine love for your brothers, love one another deeply, from a pure heart.
- 1 Jn 2:10Whoever loves his brother remains in the light, and there is no cause of stumbling in him.
- Gal 5:22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
- 1 Th 4:9–10Now about brotherly love, you do not need anyone to write to you, because you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another.
- 2 Tim 1:7For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control.
- 1 Jn 4:12No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is perfected in us.
- 1 Jn 3:10–23By this the children of God are distinguished from the children of the devil: Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is anyone who does not love his brother.
- 1 Jn 2:29If you know that He is righteous, you also know that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of Him.
- Deut 30:6The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, and you will love Him with all your heart and with all your soul, so that you may live.
- John 17:3Now this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.
- 2 Cor 4:6For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
- Gal 4:9But now that you know God, or rather are known by God, how is it that you are turning back to those weak and worthless principles? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again?
Themes, concepts, people & topics
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Christ at the center
Jesus is the Word of life made manifest, the propitiation for our sins, the Son in whom is eternal life — 'that you may know that you have eternal life.'
How 1 John 4:7 points to him is part of the one story that runs through all Scripture — meet Jesus at the heart of the web, or follow a trail that traces him from Genesis to Revelation.
Original language
Each word below is tagged with its Strong’s number — tap one to see the underlying Greek word, its meaning, and every verse that uses it.