True generation from God through faith and works

Having received the Holy Spirit from the Lord, many false apostles were driven by the devil, pretending to teach the gospel. It is necessary to have that gift of the Holy Spirit, which is named the discernment of spirits, so that we may have knowledge to test the spirits, so as for one to believe and for the other to resist.

For there came some who were saying in a human fantasy that the Lord had descended from heaven, whose glories the Manichaeans confirmed. Having understood this: 'It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me' (Gal 2:20), through accepting Christ Jesus living in me, through carrying around the death of Jesus in the body (Gal 6:17); confessing that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, not by his own alone, but also in mine.

He calls characteristic of the antichrist, of whom we have heard that he is coming, but is already in the world, the denying the incarnation of Jesus through false prophets and spirits in not confessing that he has come in the flesh; to say this is now truly to be heard; for many say it by tongue alone.

Just as a crime and arrogance brings to the one not taking up the excellent and not loving the lovable, so the writer makes praise for those loving the worthy of being loved to be beloved; but when can this happen, except when the Savior takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29), so that the man may be shown as what he has become by God according to likeness and having been shown an image of the Maker? For when the man is revealed, being immediately beloved and worthy of being loved, he becomes so; since therefore the Savior sent to the world, through love toward the works of the Father which are his own, came for the showing of the beauty of those who have become according to the image of God, those possessing this gift are beloved, whence they love one another; for each has both being the beloved and being the loving, having the commandment to love the neighbor.

If love is from God and God is love, who would be the one proceeding from him or the Word himself? If anyone therefore has love, he has Christ in himself; namely, he who said: 'God is love' (1 John 4:8), he again knew.

A love from God, which must be considered as nothing other than the Only-begotten, just as God is from God, so also is a love existing from love.

Those being born from God through uprightness according to virtue are these, and they are children of God and friends, just as Abraham was (Gen 15:6).

He who is born from God, having believed that Jesus is the Christ, is not born from God having a mere mental assent regarding the preaching of the Christ, but rather that faith which is joined to works according to virtue; which Abraham, having, was reckoned to have righteousness (Gen 15:6). According to this, the thing signified is to be accepted: 'to find a faithful man'; for such a one is rarely found, among many being eager but having a dead faith without works, which is not even at all faith. He who has believed thus, as to be born from God, has eternal life, as the Savior says: 'he who believes in me has eternal life' (John 3:36); if indeed someone is born from God by acting uprightly in the things said, being worthy of acceptance, he must love also him who begot him before that.

And the substance, and—so that I may phrase it this way—the matter which must have love toward God, he says is the keeping of the divine commandments; which things carry up to God the virtues acting through them; whence they are neither useless nor heavy.

If indeed anyone, coming to them, says they are heavy in a way other than what is required, he blamed his own weakness; for it is considered a friend to those who excessively cast off strength to think commandments heavy and everything light and trivial; whence he did not write: 'his commandments are light', but: 'they are not heavy' alone, and of one perceiving everything, having known through experience the just pursuing the just despite their uselessness, that the yoke of Christ is light, having much kindness (Matt 11:30). He who is thus disposed is born from God, and having obtained this, he despises the life of the entering world and the pleasant things of the world; and by this he conquers the world, having passed from it into a super-cosmic citizenship. This thus progressing in faith will work even toward righteousness reckoned as such; which he also shows as having been established and remaining, saying: 'this is the victory that has conquered the world' (1 John 5:4); which faith we have, having adhered to Jesus being the Son of God.