Paragraph 2:3–6

Read 2:3–6 in both Berean Standard Bible and Good News Translation. Compare the two versions.

Paragraph Theme: Here John begins to give the reason why we should not sin. He says that we should obey God’s commands as Jesus did. If we do that our behavior shows that we know God.

2:3a

to know Him: (Multiple Senses) The word know is here used in the sense of knowing someone personally as you would know your family and friends. This is different from knowing who someone is, or knowing about them.

Him: (Alternative Interpretations) There are two opinions about who the word Him refers to here:

(1) Good News Translation, The Jerusalem Bible, Phillips’ New Testament in Modern English make it clear that this refers to God.

(2) Some commentators think it refers to Jesus.

2:3b

if we keep His commandments: (Emotive Impact) This clause is emphasized in the Greek because John is telling his readers that this is what they should do. This emphasis can be shown in your translation by making if we keep His commandments the main clause of the sentence. For example:

“We should obey his commands because that is what will show us that we really know him.”

keep: (Tense) The tense of the verb here implies continual obedience.

© 2000 by SIL International®

Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0

All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible. BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.