3:21. Dearly beloved, if our heart do not reprehend us, we have confidence towards God.
3:22. And whatsoever we shall ask, we shall receive of him: because we keep his commandments and do those things which are pleasing in his sight.
3:23. And this is his commandment: That we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as he hath given commandment unto us.
3:24. And he that keepeth his commandments abideth in him, and he in him. And in this we know that he abideth in us by the Spirit which he hath given us.
1 John Chapter 4
What spirits are of God, and what are not. We must love one another, because God has loved us.
4:1. Dearly beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits if they be of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
Try the spirits... Viz., by examining whether their teaching be agreeable to the rule of the Catholic faith, and the doctrine of the church. For as he says, (ver. 6,) He that knoweth God, heareth us [the pastors of the church]. By this we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.
4:2. By this is the spirit of God known. Every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:
Every spirit which confesseth, etc... Not that the confession of this point of faith alone, is, at all times, and in all cases, sufficient; but that with relation to that time, and for that part of the Christian doctrine, which was then particularly to be confessed, taught, and maintained against the heretics of those days, this was the most proper token, by which the true teachers might be distinguished form the false.