| ….Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess this Jesus is not from God; And this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard that it is coming and is now already in the world. You are from God, dear children, and have conquered them, because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. They are from the world, therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, the one who knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the Spirit of deception. | 1-6 |
| ….Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The person who does not love does not know God, because God is love. By this, the love of God was revealed in us, because God had sent his only begotten son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God loved us in this way, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at anytime. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. | 7-12 |
| ….By this we know that we abide in Him, and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have beheld and bear witness that the Father has sent His Son to be the savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he in God. We have come to know and believe the love that God has for us. | 13-16a |
| ….God is love, and the person who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is completed with us, in order that we may have confidence on the day of judgment, because just as Jesus is, we also are in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has punishment and the person who fears has not been perfected in love. We love because He first loved us. If anyone says “I love God” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the person who does not love his brother whom he has seen is not able to love God whom he has not seen. And this is the commandment we have from Him, that the person who loves God should also love his brother. | 16b-21 |
ΑΚΟΛΟΥΘΩ.ΧΡΙΣΤΩ
I follow Christ
Subscribe to ἀΧ
RSS/XML Feed:
Email:
Copyright Info
This Blog Chose You by
Bryan Lilly is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
A few minor comments:
Regarding your first not, about δοκιμάζετε, the phrase itself is only “technically” not in the text. I say technically because its actually part of the meaning of the verb itself:
The two definitions given by BDAG are:
“to make a critical examination of something to determine genuineness, put to the test, examine”
“to draw a conclusion about worth on the basis of testing, prove, approve”
For that reason, I don’t think you really need the note. There isn’t a one to one correspondence between δοκιμάζετε and any one English word and these cases its perfectly legitimate to translate with multiple English words (in some none Indo-European Language, certain Greek words might need to be translated with potentially 10 or more words).
Secondly, in verse 20a, “If someone may say, ‘I love God,’” you don’t need the “may.” In conditional clauses the subjunctive can be simply translated as an indicative. “If someone says, ‘I love God.’” (cf. ISV, NASB95, NIV, TNIV, NRSV, HCSB, KJV, NET, ESV) If you want to retain the subjective so that readers are aware of the difference in mood, I’d suggest a translation such as “If someone should say…”
Finally, and this has more to do with translation in general, I would encourage you to eventually, as grow more comfortable with Greek, to get beyond the wooden translation from a form based translation to a meaning based translation. Wooden translations are a good start, but a quality interpretive translation takes work, practice, and skill.
I’ve written about this HERE – Part I
And HERE – Part II
And if you want it, my blog is:
http://evepheso.wordpress.com
Keep up the hard work.
Mike Aubrey