By Bob Vaughn -
uca@uncommonanswers.com
"Contending for the faith once delivered to the saints"
Uncommon Answers
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Test
The Spirits!
1 John 4:1-6
Beloved, do not believe every spirit,
but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because many false
prophets have gone out into the world.
John encourages us to “test” the
spirits of those who claim to speak for God, because there are many who
are false.
By this you know the spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that
Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, and every spirit that
does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God.
And this is the spirit of antichrist, which you have heard was coming,
and is now already in the world.
John says we can know these false
teachers by their confession that Jesus
Christ has come in the flesh.
Do you
think their ability to say these words proved that they were of God? I
think he meant more than
only
confessing with words. Other scriptures (Matthew 7:21-27) confirm that
words alone are not
enough.
Could he mean that we can know them because their Godly life confesses
that Jesus
has come
in
their flesh -
that He lives in them. And likewise, we can know by their ungodly life
that Jesus has not
come
in their flesh and that they are not of God. Furthermore John says that
this ungodly lifestyle of
those
who claimed to speak for God is the spirit of antichrist which was
already in the world.
You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who
is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are of the
world. Therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them.
Since they were of God, He who
was in them - in their flesh, was greater than the worldly spirit of
antichrist.
These teachers who lived worldly lives and spoke of the world were
received by the world -
not by
the Christians. Consider what John said in chapter 2, verse 15-17.
He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By
this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
John was confident that a true
Christian would receive the instruction - that a true messenger of God
must
live a life that shows that Christ is in him.
Some related
passages:
Revelation 2:2 The church at Ephesus
had tested those who said they were apostles and were not.
Matthew
7:15-26 Jesus said we could know
false prophets - wolves in sheep’s clothing - by their
fruits, just as we would know a tree by it’s
fruit.
1
Timothy 6:3-5 Paul taught that
if a man’s doctrine didn’t teach godliness, the man was destitute ofthe
truth.
Bob Vaughn