Dual Panel1WE are writing to you about something which has always existed yet which we ourselves actually heard and saw with our own eyes: something, which we had opportunity to observe closely and even to hold in our hands, something of the Word of life!
2For it was [life] which appeared before us: we saw it, we are eyewitnesses of it, and are now writing to you about it. It was the very life of all ages, the life that has always existed with the Father, which actually became visible in person to us.
3We repeat, we really saw and heard what we are now writing to you about. We want you to be with us in thisin this fellowship with the Father, and Jesus Christ his Son.
4We write and tell you about it, so that our joy may be complete.
5Here, then, is the message which we heard from him, and now proclaim to you: GOD IS LIGHT and no shadow of darkness can exist in him.
6Consequently, if we were to say that we enjoyed fellowship with him and still went on living in darkness, we should be both telling and living a lie.
7But if we really are living in the same light in which he eternally exists, then we have true fellowship with each other, and the blood which his son Jesus shed for us keeps us clean from all sin.
8If we refuse to admit that we are sinners, then we live in a world of illusion and truth becomes a stranger to us.
9But if we freely admit that we have sinned, we find him reliable and justhe forgives our sins and makes us thoroughly clean from all that is evil.
10For if we say "we have not sinned", we are making him a liar and cut ourselves off from what he has to say to us.