1Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Whoever loves the Father also loves the child who is born of him. 2By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments. 3For this is loving God, that we keep his commandments. His commandments are not grievous. 4For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world: your faith. 5Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
6This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ; not with the water only, but with the water and the blood. It is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. 7For there are three who testify: 8the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and the three agree as one. 9If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for this is God’s testimony which he has testified concerning his Son. 10He who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in himself. He who doesn’t believe God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given concerning his Son. 11The testimony is this: that God gave to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12He who has the Son has the life. He who doesn’t have God’s Son doesn’t have the life.
13These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.
14This is the boldness which we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he listens to us. 15And if we know that he listens to us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of him.
16If anyone sees his brother sinning a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life for those who sin not leading to death. There is sin leading to death. I don’t say that he should make a request concerning this. 17All unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin not leading to death.
18We know that whoever is born of God doesn’t sin, but he who was born of God keeps himself, and the evil one doesn’t touch him. 19We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. 20We know that the Son of God has come and has given us an understanding, that we know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life.
21Little children, keep yourselves from idols.
"For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one."
First John 5:7-8 in the King James Bible says, “(7) For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. (8) And there are three that bear witness in earth, the spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.” Virtually all modern translations, however, lack v 7 as well as “in earth” in v 8. Verse 7 in the KJV is the most explicit verse on the Trinity in the Bible. Why, then, do modern translations omit it?
The issue is not heresy, but history. The first Greek New Testament published on the printing press was done in 1516 by Erasmus. His text did not have this Trinitarian formula. However, after his text appeared, such a furor arose over the absence of the passage that Erasmus needed to defend himself: he did not put it in because he found no Greek manuscripts that included it. When one was discovered (now known to be written by a scribe named Roy at Oxford in about 1520), Erasmus apparently felt obliged to include the reading, which he did in his third edition of 1522. The King James translators used this edition when they translated the New Testament, and thus the verse has infected the history of the English Bible ever since. Since Luther based his translation on Erasmus’s second edition of 1519, the history of the Bible in German has taken a less rabid path.
To date, only nine Greek manuscripts are known to have the Trinitarian formula in them, the earliest of which is from the fourteenth century. It is not found in any ancient version until the fourth century, when in some Latin manuscripts it arose as an allegory (based on the number three) to refer to the members of the Trinity. The Greek church fathers did not cite it, though it would have served their purposes well in defending the Trinity had they known of its existence. Not a single New Testament scholar today considers it authentic. It should be noted that the biblical basis for the Trinity has never depended on this passage, for its case was made for centuries without knowledge of this reading.