Test the Spirits

1 John 4:1–21 ESV

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. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 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. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. 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. Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

Antichrist

Say the word, “Antichrist” and you’re sure to get a lot of attention today. Certainly, with what appears to be the fall of the world going on right now, our minds are more open to tuning in to things concerning the end times. One of those things is the coming of the anti-christ.

The word anti-Christ does not mean “against Christ” but “in place of Christ.” This will be one, who by the power of evil deception has as his goal to lead people away from Christ, destroy followers of Christ, and ultimately to get people to forsake Christ. He is but a tool of the devil. He is very powerful, but no match for Jesus.

There have been many attempts to identify who this person is. John, in the Revelation, seems to point at Nero Caesar, the Roman numerals made from the letters of his name are 666, the number John ascribes to this one. In the Lutheran Confessions, the antiChrist is identified as the office of the Papacy, for it teaches a doctrine that is opposed to the Gospel, leading people astray. In modern times people have suggested personages such as Hitler, Mussolini, Jim Jones, and a host of other speculative names.

The issue is that the Bible does not specifically name who it is. It just warns us THAT it will be. Any speculation on it tampers with God’s hidden will and, as Luther says, “where God is silent, there I must be silent also.”

Whether or not this person is among us today we cannot say.

Revelation actually tells of of three different evil powers that will come into play: Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet. Satan is the fallen angel cast to the earth by Michael, whose eternal destiny is the lake of fire. The Antichrist is a person with much power in the world that destroys Christians and leads them away from God. The false prophet is one who arises in the Church and twists the Gospel, appealing to “love is love” in an evil way and turning the church into another pathway that leads to hell due to heretical, false teaching. As with anything evil, the lines of distinction of this unholy trin-disunity, are often blurred and hard to distinguish who is behind what.

There is no doubt, the world, and the church are in for a tough time as history unfolds. But what John is telling us in this Epistle is that even in the first century, the spirit of Antichrist was very much present in the church then.

There were those, even in John’s day, who were showing signs of the antichrist’s work. They did this by infiltrating the church with false teaching. John, like a german shepherd sheep dog, perks up his ears and tail and readies himself for the kill to those who would lead his little children astray, little children are another name for his congregational members.

So he gives them a litmus test to use so that they might test the spirits to see if they are of God.

Many types of spirits

The people teaching false doctrine were guilty of gnosticism. Gnosticism is the heresy that believes that anything that is flesh is evil. To be fully absorbed into God you must be spiritual, and put your body to death. It’s an ancient heresy, really, first spawned by the Greeks centuries before Jesus. But just like any heresy, there is nothing new under the sun. They just rebrand it, make it more attractive to the present culture, and generally have no problem selling it. One common statement throughout the history of the Church is that “there are no new heresies.” They play on Paul’s dichotomy between flesh and spirit, preaching that flesh is bad and spirit it good and to be desired. So they separate the two and do everything they can to put the flesh to death- literally. This is why some monks slept on beds of nails, others ran through hot coals, because they wanted to shed the body. But to God, even our flesh is redeemed. The ultimate proof of this is the resurrection of the body. And the fact that we will live bodily— not spiritually— in heaven. We await that day.

This provides and easy test, though. Did Jesus come into the world in the flesh? He had to. That is the only way He could redeem you to the Father. It was in the flesh that Adam sinned, and so it would have to be in the flesh that the commandments would be kept perfectly if this were to be reversed. You’re not a candidate to do that, neither am I. Sin disqualifies you from doing it. And our flesh is sinful. But not Jesus. It was in the flesh that He keeps the law perfectly. And it is as God that He dies. Both impossibilities.

Gnosticism still shows its ugly head out there today. The Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that Jesus rose in the spirit. Not in the flesh. Gnostic. New Age teaches that it is the spiritual energy from crystals that restore you. That’s both gnostic and of the occult. And those dear Christians who say,”I’m spiritual but I’m not religious” are also in the hell-bound lanes of gnosticism.

There are other types of spirits as well, and this remains a wonderful test that John gives us. The Charismatic movement that swept through the Lutheran Church in the 1970s and 80s proves this. It fractured the church between the haves and the have-nots. Besides granting saving faith and forgiveness of sins that the Holy Spirit grants in Baptism— WATER BAPTISM— what is the Spirit’s work? It is to make us one. But the Charismatic movement split the church in two. Could that possibly be from the Holy Spirit? Nope.

Here is where it is so important to know the Christian faith inside and out. This is why Bible Study with the Pastor is so vitally important. There is still a lot more space in the pews. When I first came to Long Island, I was shocked that almost no one attended Adult Bible Class. I was used to attending Bible classes each Sunday growing up with over 100 people in them, who would then all go to church. This was both in the Midwest and in New Jersey. I think it is a cultural thing here, but that culture is killing us. People are not equipped to discern and test the spirits because they really don’t know the faith as they should. They are still drinking milk when they should be having steak. I place this before you as a challenge. To follow this command of God through John, we need to do better.

Trying Times

We are entering into very trying times. The Tribulation that Jesus spoke about in Matthew 24 certainly speaks to our age. Never before in America have we seen the government coming after people of faith as they are right now. Isis has resumed their martyring of Christians in the Middle East. Christians are losing court battles because they hold to their faith rather than cave to the demands of the government. New laws are being legislated that directly impact the faith and our ability to be who we are called to be. For instance, military chaplains now face court martial if they speak about Jesus in public, or speak against morals that go against the Scriptures. Prayers are eliminated at virtually every public event now, where at one point were commonplace. I could go on. Situations are not my point.

My point is that just like in John’s age, the Spirit of Antichrist exists. And it is powerful. And it seeks to destroy Jesus by ultimately destroying His followers. And there are many who are forsaking the faith. Many are not testing the spirits and following other teachings, when they should know better. In doing so they are abandoning the faith given to them by the Holy Spirit.

Come back to Jesus, beloved.

John ends this with the following exhortation. I pray that it speaks to your heart:

By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

That’s how we live as Christians. With the hope given us by God. With the love received by God. With our love for God and others. We love because He first loved us. Don’t lose that love. Test the spirits to see if they are of God.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.