HOW TO KNOW IF YOU HAVE ETERNAL LIFE

First John 5:1-13 . . .  If you believe that Jesus is the Christ -- that he is God's Son and your Savior -- then you are a child of God.  And all who love the Father love his children too.

2 So you can find out how much you love God's children -- your brothers and sisters in the Lord -- by how much you love and obey God.

3 Loving God means doing what he tells us to do, and really, that isn't hard at all;

4  for every child of God can obey him, defeating sin and evil pleasure by trusting Christ to help him.

5 But who could possibly fight and win this battle except by believing that Jesus is truly the Son of God?

6  And we know he is, because God said so with a voice from heaven when Jesus was baptized, and again as he was facing death -- yes, not only at his baptism, but also as he faced death.  And the Holy Spirit, forever truthful, says it too.

7  So we have these three witnesses:

8 the voice of the Holy Spirit in our hearts, the voice from heaven at Christ's baptism, and the voice before he died.  And they all say the same thing: that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

9  We believe men who witness in our courts, and so surely we can believe whatever God declares.  And God declares that Jesus is his Son.

10  All who believe this know in their hearts that it is true.  If anyone doesn't believe this, he is actually calling God a liar because he doesn't believe what God has said about his Son.

11 And what is it that God has said?  That he has given us eternal life and that this life is in his Son.

12  So whoever has God's Son has life; whoever does not have his Son, does not have life.

13 I have written this to you who believe in the Son of God so that you may know you have eternal life.

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Yours in Christ,
Paul N. F.