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.
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.
- BSB Beloved, let us love one another, because love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows 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.
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 a man says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?
- 1 Jn 4:8He who doesn’t love doesn’t know God, for God is love.
- 1 Pet 1:22Seeing you have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth through the Spirit in sincere brotherly affection, love one another from the heart fervently:
- 1 Jn 2:10He who loves his brother remains in the light, and there is no occasion for stumbling in him.
- Gal 5:22But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith,
- 1 Th 4:9–10But concerning brotherly love, you have no need that one write to you. For you yourselves are taught by God to love one another,
- 2 Tim 1:7For God didn’t give us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control.
- 1 Jn 4:12No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God remains in us, and his love has been perfected in us.
- 1 Jn 3:10–23In this the children of God are revealed, and the children of the devil. Whoever doesn’t do righteousness is not of God, neither is he who doesn’t love his brother.
- 1 Jn 2:29If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.
- Deut 30:6Yahweh your God will circumcise your heart, and the heart of your offspring, to love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, that you may live.
- John 17:3This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
- 2 Cor 4:6seeing it is God who said, “Light will shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
- Gal 4:9But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, why do you turn back again to the weak and miserable elemental principles, to which you desire to be in bondage 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.