Test the Spirits - 2 - Gods Word For You

THOUGHTS FROM JOHN’S LETTERS

TEST THE SPIRITS - 2

In the previous meditation we looked at John’s instruction ‘test the spirits to see whether they are from God’ – 1John 4:1. Now we look at a critical question by which to discern whether or not a person speaks from God.

The second test: Do they teach the truth about Jesus Christ? – 4:2, 3
John says ‘This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.’

The Spirit of God is ‘the Spirit of truth’. He teaches the followers of Jesus the truth about Jesus. John spoke of this in 2:20 when he told his readers ‘you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth’. Anyone speaking from God will speak the truth, because they have been taught by the Spirit of God. Anyone who does not speak the truth about Jesus Christ is not from God and does not have the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit.

So John says in 4:3 that if a person denies the real deity and the real humanity of Jesus Christ, that person, and their teaching, is not from God. The source of their teaching is ‘the spirit of the antichrist’. Both in 1John 2:18 – 23 and here John acknowledges that there is ‘the antichrist’ who is coming, but that there were also, already in John’s day, ‘many antichrists’ already in the world, doing the work of ‘the antichrist’ even as John wrote. These contemporary ‘antichrists’ were identified by their denial of the Son, and in denying the Son, their denial of the Father also (2:22, 23).

[Note: the word ‘antichrist’ has two meanings: it is commonly understood that ‘anti’ means ‘against’, so that ‘antichrist’ refers to someone who actively opposes Jesus Christ; but ‘anti’ can also refer to an alternative or other – a fake, substitute Christ who is promoted and set up in place of the real Christ.]

Here the bottom line given to us by John is: is this person and their teaching affirming or denying that the real, flesh-and-blood, human Jesus is also ‘the Christ, the Son of God’? Is this person affirming the Jesus taught by the apostles in the gospels, in Acts and in their letters? Or are they teaching a different Jesus?

This question about the identity of Jesus Christ is not a side issue. It is the one critical question on which the eternal destiny of every human being depends.

In Matthew 16:15 Jesus asked his disciples ‘Who do you say that I am?’ When Peter answered ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God’ Jesus said ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.’

In John 6, where Jesus gave heavy teaching about his divine origin in heaven and his real, human flesh, many of the wider group of his disciples could not accept this teaching and no longer followed him (6:60 – 71).

In John 8:24 Jesus said to the Pharisees ‘If you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins.’

Jesus was obviously a real human being. It was his repeated claim to equality and identity with God that moved the leaders of the Jews to plot his death (John 5:18; 10:33).

John’s letter addresses this critical issue, because there were those in the church whose teaching interfered with the real deity and the real humanity of Jesus Christ.

‘Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist – he denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also’ – 2:22, 23.

‘This is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ ...’ – 3:23.

‘If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God’ – 4:15.

‘Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God’ – 5:1.

‘Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God’ – 5:5.

So John challenges us to believe the truth that God has affirmed about his Son:

‘We accept man’s testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life’ – 1John 5:9 – 12.