It’s God’s love for us that we can be called children of God. If that is your hope, to be God’s children, purify yourself as He is pure.

How do we purify ourselves? We walk in the light. We practice righteousness and remain in the light to continually have sin cleansed away from us.

Jesus came to take away sin. If you are abiding, dwelling in Christ and Christ dwelling in you, you don’t keep on sinning. If you are choosing sin, you don’t know Jesus.

It’s a deception to think you are righteous before God if you aren’t living a righteous life.

If you make a practice of sinning, you are of the devil, not of God.

Someone born of God CANNOT continue in sin. You can see who is of God and who is of the devil if you can see if they are living in righteousness or in sin.

A righteous person loves his brother. The world will hate you, but you love others.

Hating another is murdering them. Murderers don’t have eternal life.

Jesus laid down His life for us. We ought to lay down our lives for others. If we see a brother in need and close our heart to helping him when we are able, we don’t have God’s love in us. God’s love moves us to love and to have compassion and mercy for others.

We’re not to love in just word, but in deed.

This section keeps using the word “brother” for the one we are to love. We can take that to mean other believers, but think of the story of the Good Samaritan. The scribe wanted to justify himself over whom he needed to love. Jesus points out that we love even our “enemies.”

If you want to come boldly to the throne and expect answers to your prayers, have a clean heart and a clear conscience before God. If we keep His commandments and live pleasing to God, then we can know we’ll receive what we ask in prayer.

Want your prayers answered? Love one another.