Test the Spirits 1 John 4:1-6

1 John 4:1-6 Test the Spirits (A called for active reading)

Introduction:

My journey as a hearer of God’s word have been shaped and transformed over the years as a pastor son, I have hear a good share of Sermon, some really good, some not so good and some just down in the middle, but for a long time I was an absent listener I was there physically but not in ‘essence’. I can tell you how many rocks made the first, second and third columns in the church, how many tails on the floor, how many window and how many glasses per window as I seat at the bench I did everything possible to do not pay attention, then I called myself to senses I said Tagle if you are coming (or if they my parents are forcing you to attend) the least that you can do is to listen and I became a empty listener, I open my mouth and hear everything with no questions, no reasoning, in went in and out, with no process inside my head in a kind of way you could say nothing better than the first but everything change for me when I became an active listener, as I brought my brain with me and decidedly to actively listen to the sermon, today as we come to John 4:1-6 we hear what I have entitled A plea for active listening so lets dive in, and discover together why we are called to this active listening.

4 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether

they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.

2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus

Christ has come in the flesh is from God

Test the Spirits, to see were they come from, at this point it will be good if we know why John is saying this, and the answer is found back at 1 John 2:19 lets read together:

19 They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if

they had been of us; they would have continued with us. But they went

out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.

There were some people that have been ‘part’ of the church but have been teaching bad doctrine into the church some have left but there stay close and their teaching was damaging the church so John is saying you need to listen actively or you will get lose into this antichrist teaching,

Antichrist: Any spirit, individual, believer or pastor (minister) that are building a Jesus different from the apostolic teaching and biblical revelation.

And at this point you will probably ask what those Antichrist people are teaching lets read again:

2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus

Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which

you heard was coming and now is in the world already

They were changing Jesus and Irenaeus a church father from the First Century that wrote a lot about those same people brings a lot of insightful light, I will read a small portion of what he wrote about it.

Against Herecies Read Irenaeus chapter 9.1

Such, then, is their system, which neither the prophets announced, nor the Lord taught, nor the apostles delivered, but of which they boast that beyond all others they have a perfect knowledge. They gather their views from other sources than the Scriptures; and, to use a common proverb, they strive to weave ropes of sand, while they endeavour to adapt with an air of probability to their own peculiar assertions the parables of the Lord, the sayings of the prophets, and the words of the apostles, in order that their scheme may not seem altogether without support. In doing so, however, they disregard the order and the connection of the Scriptures, and so far as in them lies, dismember and destroy the truth. By transferring passages, and dressing them up anew, and making one thing out of another, they succeed in deluding many through their wicked art in adapting the oracles of the Lord to their opinions. Their manner of acting is just as if one, when a beautiful image of a king has been constructed by some skilful artist out of precious jewels, should then take this likeness of the man all to pieces, should rearrange the gems, and so fit them together as to make them into the form of a dog or of a fox, and even that but poorly executed; and should then maintain and declare that this was the beautiful image of the king which the skilful artist constructed, pointing to the jewels which had been admirably fitted together by the first artist to form the image of the king, but have been with bad effect transferred by the latter one to the shape of a dog, and by thus exhibiting the jewels, should deceive the ignorant who had no conception what a king’s form was like, and persuade them that that miserable likeness of the fox was, in fact, the beautiful image of the king. In like manner do these persons patch together old wives’ fables, and then endeavour, by violently drawing away from their proper connection, words, expressions, and parables whenever found, to adapt the oracles of God to their baseless fictions. We have already stated how far they proceed in this way with respect to the interior of the Pleroma.

Council of Chalcedon (AD 451)

Debate continued over whether Jesus, as God incarnate, had two natures (divine and human) or only one. Four distinct views emerged:

• Apollinarianism claimed that Jesus maintained a single divine nature, that His flesh was only an outward covering of the Word (Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 291, 310).

• The Nestorians argued that Jesus, as God incarnate, had two distinct natures. Further, they argued that Mary could not have birthed a divine nature; therefore, what she bore was a human vehicle for the divine Word (Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 454–55; Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 311–12).

Both Apollinarianism and Nestorianism were rejected from being considered legitimate explanations (González, The Story of Christianity, 298; Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 444). Two legitimate views remained—that of Cyril of Alexandria, representing the church in the East, and that of the Antiochenes:

• Cyril of Alexandria argued that, because the Word became flesh and did not dwell in or take over a body, Jesus had one nature—one nature that was a combination of human and divine.

• The Antiochene view was that Jesus possessed human and divine natures that were distinct from each other, yet were intimately connected. As Theodore explains, the Word united Himself with flesh by clothing Himself with it and making it perfect through suffering (Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 416–17, 427–29).

He comes to us in two ways—in his human nature, born; in his divine nature, given.

Immanuel-The Light Of Life, Volume 36, Sermon #2163 - Isaiah 9:1, 2

Charles Spurgeon

In AD 451, the Council of Chalcedon was called in an attempt to settle the debate over Jesus’ incarnate nature(s).

It ended up further dividing the church by adopting a formal confession of faith supporting the Antiochene view that Jesus had two distinct natures. This confession stated:

“Following, then, the holy Fathers, we all with one voice teach that it is to be confessed that our Lord Jesus Christ is one and the same God, perfect in divinity, and perfect in humanity, true God and true human, with a rational soul and a body, of one substance with the Father in his divinity, and of one substance with us in his humanity, in every way like us, with the only exception of sin, begotten of the Father before all time in his divinity, and also begotten in the latter days, in his humanity, of Mary the virgin bearer of God.”

“This is one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, manifested in two natures without any confusion, change, division or separation. The union does not destroy the difference of the two natures, but on the contrary the properties of each are kept, and both are joined in one person and hypostasis. They are not divided into two persons, but belong to the one Only-begotten Son, the Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. All this, as the prophets of old said of him, and as he himself has taught us, and as the Creed of the Fathers has passed on to us” (González, The Story of Christianity, 301).

The church in the East reacted adversely to this definition of the incarnation. Nestorians were driven further east, beyond the Roman Empire. Monophysites, who were supporters of Cyril and the Eastern church, fought the definition and were regarded as Nestorians because of their opposition. Despite the division, the Definition of Chalcedon became the standard view of the incarnation in the Western church (González, The Story of Christianity, 302, 306–09; Grillmeier, Christ in Christian Tradition, 444–45; Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 342–43).

Lisa Woicik, “Incarnation,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary,

Augustus Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1907), 683–684.

They are perverting the Jesus of scripture, and making a Jesus of their own desire and that was in the first century and we continue doing that nowadays, as we ask

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For a Jesus that will make me happy but destroy a Jesus that ask you to be Holy

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Give a Jesus that is going to give success, but I will destroy a Jesus that ask me to Suffer

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Give me a Jesus of Love but I will destroy a Jesus that put restriction into my Love

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Give a Jesus of diversity but I will destroy the Jesus that talk about the narrow gate

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Give what I want, and I will destroy the idea of sin so I can get away with homosexuality, abortion, immoralities, lies, thief’s and etc etc etc.

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So no wonder we end up, with a Jesus that is not a Jesus at all, so brothers and sisters again this is a plea for active listening to go further an active an well informed listening lets get back to the word again.

4:2–3 John not only gives the command to test and the reason for the test (“Every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God,” v. 3), he now provides the actual test itself. Again it is Christological: What do you think about Jesus the Christ? John gives the way in which one can recognize (ginōskete) “the Spirit of God.” The test itself is comprehensive. Every spirit (pan pneuma) will either be approved or rejected based on the Christological test. Not only is the test comprehensive, but it is also confessional. The legitimacy of a prophet should be determined by the content of his message, his confession about Jesus. The verb “acknowledges” (homologei) indicates an unwavering confession and “denotes not mere verbal acknowledgment but an open and forthright declaration of the message as one’s own position.” It is the outward expression of inner faith. The content of the expression is crucial, and it must acknowledge that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (en sarki).

John uses the phrase “Jesus Christ” eight times in his letters (1:3; 2:1; 3:23; 4:2; 5:6, 20; 2 John 3, 7). By it John emphasizes the genuine reality and abiding union of the incarnation. The man Jesus is God’s Christ. Upon this truth the Christian faith stands or falls. The actuality of the incarnation is not secondary or optional. It is essential. The Spirit of God always gives honor to Jesus the Christ, the Son of God. John’s concern with the mode of Christ’s coming again reveals that he is battling a Docetic Christology of the false prophets. Jesus himself was the incarnate Christ, and “far from coming upon Jesus at the baptism and leaving him before the cross, the Christ actually came in the flesh and has never laid it aside.” Therefore, no matter how convincing or eloquent the deceivers may be, they still must be judged by their own confession to Christ. The confession is crucial. It will affect every other aspect of one’s theology and worldview. What one thinks about Jesus always has far-reaching ramifications.

“But” (kai) expresses the negative corollary. Failure to confess Jesus reveals that one is not of God (ek tou theou ouk estin). Indeed this is the “spirit” (implied by the context) of the antichristou. By their refusal to confess the truth about Jesus, these false prophets now reveal their true colors. Theirs is a spirit that stands in hostile opposition to Jesus (cf. 2:18–28). John reminds his readers this is something they have already heard, so they should neither be surprised nor caught off guard. The spirit of the arch enemy of Christ is “now” in the world “already.” His presence was active in John’s day. It remains active in our day. It will continue until this age ends with the revelation of God’s Christ, the true Christ (cf. 2:28–3:3).

Daniel L. Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, vol. 38, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001), 171–173.

4 Little children,

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you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater

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Than he who is in the world.

He goes again and give us assurance if we read the end of chapter 3, we see a number of assurances:

Assurance of the Heart 3.19

Assurance of Confidence 3.21-22

Assurance of Valid faith 3.23

Assurance of Abiding 3.24

Assurance of Victory 4.4

Assurance of Victory and why is this important imagine that you have recorded a football match because you want to see it, but you cannot wait and you check the result, your team have won the game was tense, but Bobby Firmino did his thing and score the winning goal in the 95th minute, we won. How silly will be to sweet like crazy or stress out during the match when the other team score and the game is tie imagine that you turn to your friend and say and don’t think we are going to pull this out, you know the result and we won the thought of the whole thing is a complete absurd, nevertheless we have been given the result of history, the assurance of salvation and new life but we turn to the side and say I don’t know if we are going to pull this out, how absurd is that, John is saying here WAKE UP, WE WON so be clear who is in your team, so John closes with a formula for our active listening lets read:

4:4 In the face of the threat posed by the spirit of antichrist active through the secessionists, the author seeks to encourage his readers by reminding them: You, dear children, are from God. The author addresses his readers as ‘dear children’ (teknia) seven times in this letter (2:1, 12, 28; 3:7, 18; 4:4; 5:21), and in each case this direct form of address introduces something which he wants to impress upon them. Here he wants them to know that by their confession of Jesus come in the flesh they show that they ‘are from God’. To say that people are ‘from God’ means that they are children of God (3:10), or born of God (3:9; 4:7; 5:1, 4, 18). The author also wants them to know that they are people who have overcome them. In John 16:33 Jesus says: ‘In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world’. Here in 4:4 the readers are told that they have ‘overcome them’, that is, the secessionists, and what is meant is that they have overcome them by rejecting their heretical teaching that denies Christ come in the flesh.

The author recognises that his readers have overcome them, not by their own unaided efforts, but because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. According to 1 John, believers are not only ‘from God’ as this verse indicates, but also indwelt by God (4:12, 13, 15), an indwelling effected by the Spirit (4:13). The Spirit of God who indwells the believers is certainly greater than the spirit of antichrist which operates in the secessionists. The author speaks of the spirit of antichrist operating in the secessionists as ‘the one who is in the world’, suggesting an identification with ‘the prince of this world’ mentioned in the Fourth Gospel (John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11). The secessionists, having gone out from the community of believers, are now part of the world. They have joined that part of humanity which hates the author’s community and is subject to the control of the evil one (cf. 3:13; 5:19). True believers overcome the secessionists because God is at work in them through his Spirit so that they reject their erroneous teaching.

The author knew that the spiritual security of his readers depended ultimately upon God’s work within them by his Spirit, and that there is no power greater than the Spirit of God that would be able to destroy that work. In the present day and age also, our own spiritual security depends on the Spirit of God and his work within us, and this is a firm basis of Christian assurance.

4:5 In 4:4 the author told his readers that they ‘have overcome them’. In this verse he says of ‘them’: They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. Those he has in mind are the secessionists. They left the author’s community and went out into the world; that part of humanity which is opposed to the gospel (cf. the commentary on 2:1; 4:1–3). Now the secessionists may be said to be ‘from the world’ (ek tou kosmou), for by rejecting the message heard from the beginning they have to all intents and purposes thrown their lot in with the world. When they speak, they ‘speak from the viewpoint of the world’ (ek tou kosmou), because their teaching about the person of Christ is shaped, not by the original gospel message, but by worldly (albeit religious and philosophical) categories. And ‘the world listens to them’, because their teaching is shaped by worldly categories and is therefore acceptable to those of the world.

4:6 In stark contrast to what he has just written about the secessionists, the author, now adopting the first person plural, says to his readers: We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us. While the secessionists are from the world and listened to by the world, the author and his community are from God (ek tou theou), and those who truly know God will listen to them, and not to the secessionists. The opposite is also true, as the author observes: but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. He and his readers must not be surprised if they cannot get a hearing for the original gospel from the secessionists, or from others who are not from God. A persistent acceptance of the gospel proclaimed by the author and his community marks those who are from God, and a persistent rejection of their gospel marks those who are not from God.

In 4:6b the author finishes the section 4:1–6 as he began it: This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood (cf. 4:1–2). This reference to the two spirits is reminiscent of teaching about ‘the spirits of truth and falsehood’ in the Qumran literature (1QS 3:18–19, 25), indicating that the author was using a well-known concept here. The whole section is concerned with testing the spirits ‘to see whether they are of God’ (4:1), and two related tests are put forward. The first concerns the confession of Jesus Christ come in the flesh (4:2–3) and the second concerns giving heed to those who make that confession. The author tells his readers that they may, by the application of these two related tests, distinguish the Spirit of truth from the spirit of falsehood. In the context of 1 John this means that they will be able to recognise that the secessionists are not speaking by the Spirit of God (the Spirit of truth), but by the spirit of antichrist (the spirit of falsehood). It is important to note that here, as in 4:2, it is implied that the role of the Spirit is to bear witness to the truth about Jesus Christ.

In the commentary on 4:6 above, the ‘we’ and the ‘us’ have been interpreted inclusively, and so taken to denote the author and his community (including his readers). However, the ‘we’ and the ‘us’ could be interpreted exclusively to denote the author and some of his associates to the exclusion of his community as a whole, and to the exclusion of his readers as well. This would leave the way open to see in this text a reference to official teachers of the church. In this case what would distinguish those who know God from those who do not know God would be the acceptance or rejection respectively of the teaching authority of the church.

It is difficult to decide between these two approaches because the use of first person plural forms (‘we’/‘us’) in 1 John is varied. The author uses first person plural forms exclusively when he groups himself with other eyewitnesses and writes about the message they heard from the lips of Christ, or their having seen him and touched him (1:1–3, 5; 3:11; 4:14). He uses it inclusively when he speaks in general terms about Christian experience (so, e.g., 1:6, 7–10; 2:1–3, 5, 28; 3:1–2, 14, 16, 18–19, 21–24; 4:9–13, 16–17, 19; 5:2–3, 14–15, 18–20). In a couple of places (2:19; 4:6) it is difficult to determine whether the usage is inclusive or exclusive, and 4:6 is one of these. However, while 4:6a may be ambiguous, 4:6b is clear enough. It reads: ‘This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood’. In this sentence, the ‘we’ is clearly inclusive of the readers, because the purpose of the whole passage, 4:1–6, is to provide the readers with the means to test the spirits (4:2). If the ‘we’ of 4:6b is inclusive, then most likely the ‘we’ and the ‘us’ of 4:6a are also inclusive. This would mean that the author is saying that the second mark of those who know God mentioned in this passage (4:1–6) is that they listen to the author, his community, and his readers rather than saying they listen to the teaching authority of the church. This is the approach adopted in the commentary on 4:6 above.

Colin G. Kruse, The Letters of John, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B. Eerdmans Pub.; Apollos, 2000), 148–151.5 They are from the world; therefore, they speak

from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Whoever

knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By

this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

So listen actively and in an smart way, check your preacher not what he wear and how he looks but:

What they are saying about Jesus

Who they are listening too, do they mention other with evangelical convictions?

What they are saying about the apostolic message, the Old and New Testament, they pick and choose.

Brother and Sister we are called to listen the word of God, not human words so we need to be sure what we believe so we will not be moved away from him, do I am preaching the whole counsel of God welcome me in, do I move away through me out do not welcome me as John writes in his second letter: