1 We want to tell you about the Word^[a] that gives life—the one who existed before the world began. This is the one we have heard and have seen with our own eyes. We saw what he did, and our hands touched him. ² Yes, the one who is life was shown to us. We saw him, and so we can tell others about him. We now tell you about him. He is the eternal life that was with God the Father and was shown to us. ³ We are telling you about what we have seen and heard because we want you to have fellowship^[b] with us. The fellowship we share together is with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. ⁴ We write these things to you so that you can be full of joy with us.

God Forgives Our Sins

⁵ We heard the true teaching from God. Now we tell it to you: God is light, and in him there is no darkness. ⁶ So if we say that we share in life with God, but we continue living in darkness, we are liars, who don’t follow the truth. ⁷ We should live in the light, where God is. If we live in the light, we have fellowship with each other, and the blood sacrifice of Jesus, God’s Son, washes away every sin and makes us clean.

⁸ If we say that we have no sin, we are fooling ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ⁹ But if we confess our sins, God will forgive us. We can trust God to do this. He always does what is right. He will make us clean from all the wrong things we have done. ¹⁰ If we say that we have not sinned, we are saying that God is a liar and that we don’t accept his true teaching.

Jesus Is Our Helper

2 My dear children, I write this letter to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone sins, we have Jesus Christ to help us. He always did what was right, so he is able to defend us before God the Father. ² Jesus is the way our sins are taken away. And he is the way all people can have their sins taken away too.

³ If we obey what God has told us to do, then we are sure that we know him. ⁴ If we say we know God but do not obey his commands, we are lying. The truth is not in us. ⁵ But when we obey God’s teaching, his love is truly working in us. This is how we know that we are living in him. ⁶ If we say we live in God, we must live the way Jesus lived.

Jesus Told Us to Love Others

⁷ My dear friends, I am not writing a new command to you. It is the same command you have had since the beginning. This command is the teaching you have already heard. ⁸ But what I write is also a new command. It is a true one; you can see its truth in Jesus and in yourselves. The darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.

⁹ Someone might say, “I am in the light,” but if they hate any of their brothers or sisters in God’s family, they are still in the darkness. ¹⁰ Those who love their brothers and sisters live in the light, and there is nothing in them that will make them do wrong. ¹¹ But whoever hates their brother or sister is in darkness. They live in darkness. They don’t know where they are going, because the darkness has made them blind.

¹⁵ Don’t love this evil world or the things in it. If you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. ¹⁶ This is all there is in the world: wanting to please our sinful selves, wanting the sinful things we see, and being too proud of what we have. But none of these comes from the Father. They come from the world. ¹⁷ The world is passing away, and all the things that people want in the world are passing away. But whoever does what God wants will live forever.

Don’t Follow the Enemies of Christ

¹⁸ My dear children, the end is near! You have heard that the enemy of Christ is coming. And now many enemies of Christ are already here. So we know that the end is near. ¹⁹ These enemies were in our group, but they left us. They did not really belong with us. If they were really part of our group, they would have stayed with us. But they left. This shows that none of them really belonged with us.

²⁰ You have the gift^[c] that the Holy One^[d] gave you. So you all know the truth. ²¹ Do you think I am writing this letter because you don’t know the truth? No, I am writing because you do know the truth. And you know that no lie comes from the truth.

²² So who is the liar? It is the one who says Jesus is not the Messiah. Whoever says that is the enemy of Christ—the one who does not believe in the Father or in his Son. ²³ Whoever does not believe in the Son does not have the Father, but whoever accepts the Son has the Father too.

²⁴ Be sure that you continue to follow the teaching you heard from the beginning. If you do that, you will always be in the Son and in the Father. ²⁵ And this is what the Son promised us—eternal life.

²⁶ I am writing this letter about those who are trying to lead you into the wrong way. ²⁷ Christ gave you a special gift. You still have this gift in you. So you don’t need anyone to teach you. The gift he gave you teaches you about everything. It is a true gift, not a false one. So continue to live in Christ, as his gift taught you.

²⁸ Yes, my dear children, live in him. If we do this, we can be without fear on the day when Christ comes again. We will not need to hide and be ashamed when he comes. ²⁹ You know that Christ always did what was right. So you know that all those who do what is right are God’s children.

John Tells About This Book

1 This is a revelation^[a] from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must happen soon. And Christ sent his angel to show it to his servant John, ² who has told everything he saw. It is the truth that Jesus Christ told him; it is the message from God. ³ Great blessings belong to the person who reads the words of this message from God and to those who hear this message and do what is written in it. There is not much time left.

John Writes to the Churches

⁴ From John,

To the seven churches in the province of Asia:

Grace and peace to you from the one who is, who always was, and who is coming; and from the seven spirits before his throne; ⁵ and from Jesus Christ. Jesus is the faithful witness. He is first among all who will be raised from death. He is the ruler of the kings of the earth.

Jesus is the one who loves us and has made us free from our sins with his blood sacrifice. ⁶ He made us his kingdom and priests who serve God his Father. To Jesus be glory and power forever and ever! Amen.

⁷ Look, Jesus is coming with the clouds! Everyone will see him, even those who pierced^[b] him. All peoples of the earth will cry loudly because of him. Yes, this will happen! Amen.

⁸ The Lord God says, “I am the Alpha and the Omega.^[c] I am the one who is, who always was, and who is coming. I am the All-Powerful.”

⁹ I am John, your fellow believer. We are together in Jesus, and we share these things: suffering, the kingdom, and patient endurance. I was on the island of Patmos^[d] because I was faithful to God’s message and to the truth of Jesus. ¹⁰ On the Lord’s Day, the Spirit took control of me. I heard a loud voice behind me that sounded like a trumpet. ¹¹ It said, “Write down in a book what you see, and send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.”

¹² I turned to see who was talking to me. When I turned, I saw seven golden lampstands. ¹³ I saw someone among the lampstands who looked like the Son of Man. He was dressed in a long robe, with a golden sash tied around his chest. ¹⁴ His head and hair were white like wool—wool that is white as snow. His eyes were like flames of fire. ¹⁵ His feet were like brass that glows hot in a furnace. His voice was like the noise of flooding water. ¹⁶ He held seven stars in his right hand. A sharp two-edged sword came out of his mouth. He looked like the sun shining at its brightest time.

¹⁷ When I saw him, I fell down at his feet like a dead man. He put his right hand on me and said, “Don’t be afraid! I am the First and the Last. ¹⁸ I am the one who lives. I was dead, but look, I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades. ¹⁹ So write what you see. Write the things that happen now and the things that will happen later. ²⁰ Here is the hidden meaning of the seven stars that you saw in my right hand and the seven golden lampstands that you saw: The seven lampstands are the seven churches. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches.