So don’t forget what you have received and heard. Obey it. Change your hearts and lives! You must wake up, or I will come to you and surprise you like a thief. You will not know when I will come.
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.
We are telling you about what we have seen and heard because we want you to have fellowship with us. The fellowship we share together is with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ.
Let the teaching of Christ live inside you richly. Use all wisdom to teach and counsel each other. Sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
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.
What they have written agrees with what we learned from the people who saw those events from the beginning. They also served God by telling people his message.
Everyone must continue to follow only the teaching about Christ. Whoever changes that teaching does not have God. But whoever continues to follow the teaching about Christ has both the Father and his Son.