4 ⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God. Everyone who loves is a child of God and knows God, 4 ⁸ but the unloving know nothing of God. For God is love; 4 ⁹ and his love was disclosed to us in this, that he sent his only Son into the world to bring us life. 4 ¹⁰ The love I speak of is not our love for God, but the love he showed to us in sending his Son as the remedy for the defilement of our sins. 4 ¹¹ If God thus loved us, dear friends, we in turn are bound to love one another. 4 ¹² Though God has never been seen by any man. God himself dwells in us if we love one another; his love is brought to perfection within us.

4 ¹³ Here is the proof that we dwell in him and he dwells in us: he has imparted his Spirit to us. 4 ¹⁴ Moreover, we have seen for ourselves, and we attest, that the Father sent the Son to be the saviour of the world, 4 ¹⁵ and if a man acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwells in him and he dwells in God. 4 ¹⁶ Thus we have come to know and believe the love which God has for us.

God is love; he who dwells in love is dwelling in God, and God in him. 4 ¹⁷ This is for us the perfection of love, to have confidence on the day of judgement, and this we can have, because even in this world we are as he is. 4 ¹⁸ There is no room for fear in love; perfect love banishes fear. For fear brings with it the pains of judgement, and anyone who is afraid has not attained to love in its perfection. 4 ¹⁹ We love because he loved us first. 4 ²⁰ But if a man says, 'I love God', while hating his brother, he is a liar. If he does not love the brother whom he has seen, it cannot be that he loves God whom he has not seen. 4 ²¹ And indeed this command comes to us from Christ himself: that he who loves God must also love his brother.