The Word of Life

¹We write to you about the Word of life, which has existed from the very beginning. We have heard it, and we have seen it with our eyes; yes, we have seen it, and our hands have touched it.

²When this life became visible, we saw it; so we speak of it and tell you about the eternal life which was with the Father and was made known to us.

³What we have seen and heard we announce to you also, so that you will join with us in the fellowship that we have with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

⁴We write this in order that our joy may be complete.

God Is Light

⁵Now the message that we have heard from his Son and announce is this: God is light, and there is no darkness at all in him.

⁶If, then, we say that we have fellowship with him, yet at the same time live in the darkness, we are lying both in our words and in our actions.

⁷But if we live in the light—just as he is in the light—then we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin.

⁸If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and there is no truth in us.

⁹But if we confess our sins to God, he will keep his promise and do what is right: he will forgive us our sins and purify us from all our wrongdoing.

¹⁰If we say that we have not sinned, we make a liar out of God, and his word is not in us.

Christ Our Helper

¹I am writing this to you, my children, so that you will not sin; but if anyone does sin, we have someone who pleads with the Father on our behalf—Jesus Christ, the righteous one.

²And Christ himself is the means by which our sins are forgiven, and not our sins only, but also the sins of everyone.

³If we obey God's commands, then we are sure that we know him.

⁴If we say that we know him, but do not obey his commands, we are liars and there is no truth in us.

⁵But if we obey his word, we are the ones whose love for God has really been made perfect. This is how we can be sure that we are in union with God:

⁶if we say that we remain in union with God, we should live just as Jesus Christ did.

The New Command

⁷My dear friends, this command I am writing you is not new; it is the old command, the one you have had from the very beginning. The old command is the message you have already heard.

⁸However, the command I now write you is new, because its truth is seen in Christ and also in you. For the darkness is passing away, and the real light is already shining.

⁹If we say that we are in the light, yet hate others, we are in the darkness to this very hour.

¹⁰If we love others, we live in the light, and so there is nothing in us that will cause someone else to sin.

¹¹But if we hate others, we are in the darkness; we walk in it and do not know where we are going, because the darkness has made us blind.

¹²I write to you, my children, because your sins are forgiven for the sake of Christ.

¹³I write to you, fathers, because you know him who has existed from the beginning. I write to you, young people, because you have defeated the Evil One.

¹⁴I write to you, my children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who has existed from the beginning. I write to you, young people, because you are strong; the word of God lives in you, and you have defeated the Evil One.

¹⁵Do not love the world or anything that belongs to the world. If you love the world, you do not love the Father.

¹⁶Everything that belongs to the world—what the sinful self desires, what people see and want, and everything in this world that people are so proud of—none of this comes from the Father; it all comes from the world.

¹⁷The world and everything in it that people desire is passing away; but those who do the will of God live forever.

The Enemy of Christ

¹⁸My children, the end is near! You were told that the Enemy of Christ would come; and now many enemies of Christ have already appeared, and so we know that the end is near.

¹⁹These people really did not belong to our fellowship, and that is why they left us; if they had belonged to our fellowship, they would have stayed with us. But they left so that it might be clear that none of them really belonged to us.

²⁰But you have had the Holy Spirit poured out on you by Christ, and so all of you know the truth.

²¹I write you, then, not because you do not know the truth; instead, it is because you do know it, and you also know that no lie ever comes from the truth.

²²Who, then, is the liar? It is those who say that Jesus is not the Messiah. Such people are the Enemy of Christ—they reject both the Father and the Son.

²³For those who reject the Son reject also the Father; those who accept the Son have the Father also.

²⁴Be sure, then, to keep in your hearts the message you heard from the beginning. If you keep that message, then you will always live in union with the Son and the Father.

²⁵And this is what Christ himself promised to give us—eternal life.

²⁶I am writing this to you about those who are trying to deceive you.

²⁷But as for you, Christ has poured out his Spirit on you. As long as his Spirit remains in you, you do not need anyone to teach you. For his Spirit teaches you about everything, and what he teaches is true, not false. Obey the Spirit's teaching, then, and remain in union with Christ.

²⁸Yes, my children, remain in union with him, so that when he appears we may be full of courage and need not hide in shame from him on the Day he comes.

²⁹You know that Christ is righteous; you should know, then, that everyone who does what is right is God's child.

Children of God

¹See how much the Father has loved us! His love is so great that we are called God's children—and so, in fact, we are. This is why the world does not know us: it has not known God.

²My dear friends, we are now God's children, but it is not yet clear what we shall become. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he really is.

³Everyone who has this hope in Christ keeps himself pure, just as Christ is pure.

⁴Whoever sins is guilty of breaking God's law, because sin is a breaking of the law.

⁵You know that Christ appeared in order to take away sins, and that there is no sin in him.

⁶So everyone who lives in union with Christ does not continue to sin; but whoever continues to sin has never seen him or known him.

⁷Let no one deceive you, my children! Whoever does what is right is righteous, just as Christ is righteous.

⁸Whoever continues to sin belongs to the Devil, because the Devil has sinned from the very beginning. The Son of God appeared for this very reason, to destroy what the Devil had done.

⁹Those who are children of God do not continue to sin, for God's very nature is in them; and because God is their Father, they cannot continue to sin.

¹⁰Here is the clear difference between God's children and the Devil's children: those who do not do what is right or do not love others are not God's children.

Love One Another

¹¹The message you heard from the very beginning is this: we must love one another.

¹²We must not be like Cain; he belonged to the Evil One and murdered his own brother Abel. Why did Cain murder him? Because the things he himself did were wrong, and the things his brother did were right.

¹³So do not be surprised, my friends, if the people of the world hate you.

¹⁴We know that we have left death and come over into life; we know it because we love others. Those who do not love are still under the power of death.

¹⁵Those who hate others are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life in them.

¹⁶This is how we know what love is: Christ gave his life for us. We too, then, ought to give our lives for others!

¹⁷If we are rich and see others in need, yet close our hearts against them, how can we claim that we love God?

¹⁸My children, our love should not be just words and talk; it must be true love, which shows itself in action.

Courage before God

¹⁹This, then, is how we will know that we belong to the truth; this is how we will be confident in God's presence.

²⁰If our conscience condemns us, we know that God is greater than our conscience and that he knows everything.

²¹And so, my dear friends, if our conscience does not condemn us, we have courage in God's presence.

²²We receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him.

²³What he commands is that we believe in his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as Christ commanded us.

²⁴Those who obey God's commands live in union with God and God lives in union with them. And because of the Spirit that God has given us we know that God lives in union with us.

¹From Paul, Silas, and Timothy— To the people of the church in Thessalonica, who belong to God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ:

²May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.

The Judgment at Christ's Coming

³Our friends, we must thank God at all times for you. It is right for us to do so, because your faith is growing so much and the love each of you has for the others is becoming greater.

⁴That is why we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God. We boast about the way you continue to endure and believe through all the persecutions and sufferings you are experiencing.

⁵All of this proves that God's judgment is just and as a result you will become worthy of his Kingdom, for which you are suffering.

⁶God will do what is right: he will bring suffering on those who make you suffer,

⁷and he will give relief to you who suffer and to us as well. He will do this when the Lord Jesus appears from heaven with his mighty angels,

⁸with a flaming fire, to punish those who reject God and who do not obey the Good News about our Lord Jesus.

⁹They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, separated from the presence of the Lord and from his glorious might,

¹⁰when he comes on that Day to receive glory from all his people and honor from all who believe. You too will be among them, because you have believed the message that we told you.

¹¹That is why we always pray for you. We ask our God to make you worthy of the life he has called you to live. May he fulfill by his power all your desire for goodness and complete your work of faith.

¹²In this way the name of our Lord Jesus will receive glory from you, and you from him, by the grace of our God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Wicked One

¹Concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to be with him: I beg you, my friends,

²not to be so easily confused in your thinking or upset by the claim that the Day of the Lord has come. Perhaps it is thought that we said this while prophesying or preaching, or that we wrote it in a letter.

³Do not let anyone deceive you in any way. For the Day will not come until the final Rebellion takes place and the Wicked One appears, who is destined to hell.

⁴He will oppose every so-called god or object of worship and will put himself above them all. He will even go in and sit down in God's Temple and claim to be God.

⁵Don't you remember? I told you all this while I was with you.

⁶Yet there is something that keeps this from happening now, and you know what it is. At the proper time, then, the Wicked One will appear.

⁷The Mysterious Wickedness is already at work, but what is going to happen will not happen until the one who holds it back is taken out of the way.

⁸Then the Wicked One will be revealed, but when the Lord Jesus comes, he will kill him with the breath from his mouth and destroy him with his dazzling presence.

⁹The Wicked One will come with the power of Satan and perform all kinds of false miracles and wonders,

¹⁰and use every kind of wicked deceit on those who will perish. They will perish because they did not welcome and love the truth so as to be saved.

¹¹And so God sends the power of error to work in them so that they believe what is false.

¹²The result is that all who have not believed the truth, but have taken pleasure in sin, will be condemned.

You Are Chosen for Salvation

¹³We must thank God at all times for you, friends, you whom the Lord loves. For God chose you as the first to be saved by the Spirit's power to make you his holy people and by your faith in the truth.

¹⁴God called you to this through the Good News we preached to you; he called you to possess your share of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

¹⁵So then, our friends, stand firm and hold on to those truths which we taught you, both in our preaching and in our letter.

¹⁶May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and in his grace gave us unfailing courage and a firm hope,

¹⁷encourage you and strengthen you to always do and say what is good.

Pray for Us

¹Finally, our friends, pray for us that the Lord's message may continue to spread rapidly and be received with honor, just as it was among you.

²Pray also that God will rescue us from wicked and evil people; for not everyone believes the message.

³But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and keep you safe from the Evil One.

⁴And the Lord gives us confidence in you, and we are sure that you are doing and will continue to do what we tell you.

⁵May the Lord lead you into a greater understanding of God's love and the endurance that is given by Christ.

The Obligation to Work

⁶Our friends, we command you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to keep away from all believers who are living a lazy life and who do not follow the instructions that we gave them.

⁷You yourselves know very well that you should do just what we did. We were not lazy when we were with you.

⁸We did not accept anyone's support without paying for it. Instead, we worked and toiled; we kept working day and night so as not to be an expense to any of you.

⁹We did this, not because we do not have the right to demand our support; we did it to be an example for you to follow.

¹⁰While we were with you, we used to tell you, “Whoever refuses to work is not allowed to eat.”

¹¹We say this because we hear that there are some people among you who live lazy lives and who do nothing except meddle in other people's business.

¹²In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ we command these people and warn them to lead orderly lives and work to earn their own living.

¹³But you, friends, must not become tired of doing good.

¹⁴It may be that some there will not obey the message we send you in this letter. If so, take note of them and have nothing to do with them, so that they will be ashamed.

¹⁵But do not treat them as enemies; instead, warn them as believers.

Final Words

¹⁶May the Lord himself, who is our source of peace, give you peace at all times and in every way. The Lord be with you all.

¹⁷With my own hand I write this: Greetings from Paul This is the way I sign every letter; this is how I write.

¹⁸May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.

²⁰This is how an unfaithful wife acts: she commits adultery, takes a bath, and says, “But I haven't done anything wrong!”

²¹There are four things that the earth itself cannot tolerate:

²²a slave who becomes a king, a fool who has all he wants to eat,

²³a hateful woman who gets married, and a servant woman who takes the place of her mistress.