Testing Spirits, Perfecting Love

Discernment and the God Who Is Love

Text: 1 John 4:1–21 (NASB 2020)

Central Idea: Testing the spirits and loving one another can't be separated. The God who is truth is the same God who is love.

Introduction

We live in a world overflowing with spiritual voices. Podcasts, books, social media influencers, and self-proclaimed prophets compete for our attention, each claiming to speak truth.

How do we know which voices are from God and which are not?

And in a culture that often reduces love to a warm sentiment, what does it actually look like to love as God loves?

Chapter 4 of 1 John addresses both questions—and reveals that they are more connected than we might think. True discernment and true love are not competing virtues; they are two expressions of the same reality: abiding in the God who is both truth and love.

1. Test the Spirits (vv. 1–6)

John opens with a command that every generation of Christians needs to hear:

1 John 4:1 NASB 2020

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

Notice that John does not say “reject every spirit”—he says “test.” The Christian posture is not blanket suspicion or blanket credulity. It is careful discernment.

And John gives a clear criterion for the test. Verse 2:

1 John 4:2 NASB 2020

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God;

Verse 3:

1 John 4:3 NLT

But if someone claims to be a prophet and does not acknowledge the truth about Jesus, that person is not from God. Such a person has the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard is coming into the world and indeed is already here.

The test is Christological. It centers on the incarnation. Does this teaching, this prophet, this spiritual influence affirm that Jesus Christ—fully God and fully human—came in the flesh from God and dwelt among us? If not, it fails the test.

In John’s day, the Gnostic teachers denied the physical incarnation. In our day, the denial takes different forms: Jesus was just a good teacher, or Jesus was a spiritual master but not uniquely God, or the historical Jesus is less important than the “cosmic Christ.” Every era has its version of the antichrist spirit—a spirit that subtly or overtly divorces the divine from the human in Jesus.

But John immediately reassures his readers:

1 John 4:4 NASB 2020

You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.

The Holy Spirit dwelling in every believer is more powerful than every deceiving spirit in the world. We are not victims of deception—we are overcomers. This does not mean we can be careless. It means we can be confident.

Verses 5–6 draw the dividing line:

1 John 4:5–6 NASB 2020

They are from the world, therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. The one who knows God listens to us; the one who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.

Popularity with the world is not a mark of divine approval. The prophets, the apostles, and Jesus himself were rejected by the world’s system. If a teaching is universally applauded by a culture that does not know God, that should give us pause.

2. God Is Love (vv. 7–12)

Having addressed discernment, John now turns to the theme that dominates the rest of the chapter: love. And he makes one of the most profound theological statements in all of Scripture:

1 John 4:7–8 NASB 2020

Beloved, let’s love one another; for love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

This is not the same as saying “love is God.” John is not deifying a human emotion. He is making a statement about the eternal character of the triune God. Within the Trinity—Father, Son, and Spirit—love has always existed in perfect relational fullness. God did not become loving when He created us. He has always been love. And everything He does flows from that nature.

The proof of God’s love is not found in sentimental feelings but in concrete action:

1 John 4:9 NASB 2020

By this the love of God was revealed in us, that God has sent His only Son into the world so that we may live through Him.

And verse 10 clarifies the direction of this love:

1 John 4:10 NASB 2020

In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Love begins with God. It always has. We did not initiate this relationship. God did.

The implication is relentless:

1 John 4:11 NASB 2020

Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

The logic is inescapable. If we have been recipients of this kind of self-giving, sacrificial, incarnational love, we are obligated to extend it. And verse 12 adds a stunning claim:

1 John 4:12 NASB 2020

No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God remains in us, and His love is perfected in us.

God’s invisible love becomes visible in the way His children love each other. The church is meant to be the place where the world sees the love of God with skin on.

3. Abiding in Love, Abiding in God (vv. 13–16)

John now weaves together the Spirit, confession, and love into a unified tapestry of abiding. Verse 13:

1 John 4:13 NASB 2020

By this we know that we remain in Him and He in us, because He has given to us of His Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is the assurance of mutual indwelling—the guarantee that we are in God and God is in us.

Verse 15 names the confession that secures this abiding:

1 John 4:14–15 NASB 2020

We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him, and he in God.

And verse 16 brings it full circle:

1 John 4:16 NASB 2020

We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who remains in love remains in God, and God remains in him.

To abide in love is to abide in God. To abide in God is to abide in love. They are not two separate spiritual practices—they are one reality.

4. Love Casts Out Fear (vv. 17–21)

The chapter’s climax comes in verse 18:

1 John 4:17–18 NASB 2020

By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, we also are in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love.

Fear of judgment, fear of God’s rejection, fear that we are not enough—these are not evidence of healthy reverence. They are evidence that God’s love has not yet fully permeated our hearts.

This does not mean mature Christians never experience anxiety or doubt. It means that the deep, settled fear of divine punishment is displaced by the experiential knowledge that we are loved. Perfect love—love that has reached its full intended effect in us—drives out the terror that we will ultimately be rejected by God.

Verse 19 is the heartbeat of the gospel in seven words:

1 John 4:19 NASB 2020

We love, because He first loved us.

Every act of love we offer is a response to the love we have received. We are not generating love from our own reserves—we are channeling love that originated in the heart of God.

And John closes the chapter with one of his sharpest statements:

1 John 4:20 NASB 2020

If someone says, “I love God,” and yet he hates his brother or sister, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother and sister whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

Loving God and hating people are mutually exclusive. You cannot claim the vertical relationship while violating the horizontal one.

The command is clear:

1 John 4:21 NASB 2020

And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.

Not merely the easy-to-love brother. Not just the kindred spirit. The difficult one. The one who requires something of you. That is where love is perfected.

Application: Discerning and Loving

First, develop a Christological filter for every teaching you encounter.

Before asking “Is this inspiring?” or “Is this popular?” ask “Does this honor the full person of Jesus Christ—truly God and truly human, crucified and risen?” If it does not, reject it, no matter how attractive the packaging.

Second, let God’s prior love be the engine of your love for others.

You cannot sustain sacrificial love from your own emotional reserves. You will burn out. But if you are continually receiving God’s love through worship, Scripture, prayer, and community, you will have a wellspring from which to pour out love for others.

Third, stop loving God and hating people.

If there is someone in your life—a family member, a fellow church member, a coworker—whom you harbor resentment or contempt toward, John says your claim to love God is compromised. Ask the Holy Spirit to do the hard work of softening your heart, and take a step toward that person this week.

Here's a closing that should land with warmth and weight:

Conclusion: The God Who Is Both

Here's what I want you to walk out of here knowing today: you don't have to choose between being discerning and being loving.

In fact, if you're only one without the other, something has gone wrong. Discernment without love becomes cold orthodoxy — the kind that's always right and never kind. Love without discernment becomes soft sentimentality — the kind that affirms everything and transforms nothing. But when you are abiding in the God who is both truth and love, these two things stop competing and start completing each other. You speak the truth because you love people too much to let them be deceived. And you extend grace because you know the truth about how much grace you've been given.

So here's my challenge to you this week — and it's a two-sided coin. On one side: pay attention to the voices you're letting shape your soul. That podcast, that book, that influencer — run it through the filter. Does it honor the full Jesus? Not a domesticated Jesus, not a vague spiritual energy, but the incarnate Son of God who bled real blood on a real cross and walked out of a real tomb. If it doesn't pass the test, it doesn't get the microphone in your life. Be lovingly ruthless about that.

On the other side: think of one person you've been withholding love from. You know who they are — the name that just came to mind. The person you avoid, the person you've written off, the person you're "right" about but have stopped being kind toward. John doesn't give us an out here. He calls it what it is. And the path forward isn't to manufacture feelings you don't have — it's to go back to the well. Let the love that found you when you were far from God overflow toward the person who feels hardest to love right now. You don't love out of your own reserves. You love because He first loved you. That's the only engine that doesn't run dry.

Church, the world is not short on opinions and it's not short on outrage. But it is desperately short on people who can hold truth and love together without flinching. That's our calling. That's what it looks like to abide in the God who is love. Let's be those people — not perfectly, but faithfully. And let's trust that the One who is in us really is greater than anything we'll face out there.

Transition: With discernment and love firmly established, John brings his letter to a conclusion in chapter 5 by returning to the themes of faith, testimony, and confident assurance.