<p>5:2 <i>Hereby we know that we love the children of God: when we love God and do His commandments</i>- As noted on :3 and elsewhere, I suggest that &quot;His commandments&quot; refer to the one great commandment, to love God's children as the Lord loved them, unto death on a cross. This is why 'doing' or 'keeping' the commandments is always associated in John with love, often love of God. For as he has been at pains to extensively point out in chapter 4, love of God and of His children are interrelated. &quot;This is how we know...&quot; (GNB) and similar language elsewhere suggests that although John so often speaks in absolute terms of our living in love and in the &quot;eternal life&quot;, he recognizes that there are going to be major doubts within us as to whether we really have reached that level of love. John by all means seeks to comfort and encourage. He looks at the equation of loving God and loving His children from the perspective of asking us to enquire whether we love God.</p><p>Or the Greek could simply mean that loving God and do His commandments to love as the Lord loved is the same as loving God's children.</p>