2 ⁷ Dear friends, I give you no new command. It is the old command which you always had before you; the old command is the message which you heard at the beginning. 2 ⁸ And yet again it is a new command that I am giving you—new in the sense that the darkness is passing and the real light already shines. Christ has made this true, and it is true in your own experience.
2 ⁹ A man may say, 'I am in the light'; but if he hates his brother, he is still in the dark. 2 ¹⁰ Only the man who loves his brother dwells in light: there is nothing to make him stumble. 2 ¹¹ But one who hates his brother is in darkness; he walks in the dark and has no idea where he is going, because the darkness has made him blind.

2 ¹² I write to you, my children, because your sins have been forgiven for his sake. Or: forgiven, since you bear his name. 2 ¹³ I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is and has been from the beginning. Or: him whom we have known from the beginning.

I write to you, young men, because you have mastered the evil one.

To you, children, I have written because you know the Father. 2 ¹⁴ To you, fathers, I have written because you know him who is and has been from the beginning. Or: that none of them truly belong to us.

To you, young men, I have written because you are strong; God's word is in you, and you have mastered the evil one.

2 ¹⁵ Do not set your hearts on the godless world or anything in it. Anyone who loves the world is a stranger to the Father's love. 2 ¹⁶ Everything the world affords, all that panders to the appetites, or entices the eyes, all the glamour of its life, springs not from the Father but from the godless world. 2 ¹⁷ And that world is passing away with all its allurements, but he who does God's will stands for evermore.