Spiritual Scrutiny
1st John 4:1 – 6
Jeff Hughes
I. Introduction
a. False teaching is a fatal disease that has spread to become an epidemic in the church. It can choke the life out of those seeking God, and can cripple believers by disillusionment and discouragement.
b. A main purpose of John writing this epistle was to combat this disease, which was spreading in the church. This is illustrated in the text of First John, chapter 4, verses 1 – 6, which is the subject of our study tonight.
c. Follow along with me starting in verse 1.
d. 1 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. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, 3 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 the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world. 4 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. 5 They are of the world. Therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. 6 We are of God. 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.
e. Now, we are going to look at three main thoughts John put forth in this text. First, we’ll see the command to test the spirits. Next, the cognizance as to what is false, and last confidence in right teaching.
f. Tonight, we will look at all three of these in depth as we explore this text.
II. PRAYER
III. Illustration
a. A young American engineer was sent to Ireland by his company to work in a new electronics plant. It was a two-year assignment that he had accepted because it would enable him to earn enough to marry his long-time girlfriend. She had a job near her home in Tennessee, and their plan was to pool their resources and put a down payment on a house when he returned. They corresponded often, but as the lonely weeks went by, she began expressing doubts that he was being true to her, exposed as he was to lovely Irish lasses. The young engineer wrote back, declaring with some passion that he was paying absolutely no attention to the local girls. “I admit,” he wrote, “that sometimes I’m tempted. But I fight it. I’m keeping myself for you.” In the next mail, the engineer received a package. It contained a note from his girl and a harmonica. “I’m sending this to you,” she wrote, “so you can learn to play it and have something to take your mind off those girls.” The engineer replied, “Thanks for the harmonica. I’m practicing on it every night and thinking of you.” At the end of his two-year stint, the engineer was transferred back to company headquarters. He took the first plane to Tennessee to be reunited with his girl. Her whole family was with her, but as he rushed forward to embrace her, she held up a restraining hand and said sternly, “Just hold on there a minute, Billy Bob. Before any serious kissin’ and huggin’ gets started here, let me hear you play that harmonica!”
b. The young woman was skeptical as to whether her boyfriend was true to her or not. She scrutinized his actions overseas. If he couldn’t play a tune on that harmonica, his relationship was in great peril. In that same line of thinking, we as Christians need to be skeptical about the teachings we take in. We need to scrutinize everything we hear in the light of scripture.
c. So, how is your harmonica playing? Do you listen to any and all teachers of the word, taking in all that they say at face value? Think about your spiritual consumption. At the end of this study, we will know how and why we should guard what we take in as Christians.
IV. Study
a. The Command – 4:1
i. 1 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.
ii. For starters, we see that John is addressing believers. He uses a term of endearment, calling them beloved. He is giving them loving advice, as their former pastor and father in the faith. He tells them not to believe, or put their trust in every spirit. You might be a little confused here, as to what John means when he says spirit. This is not to say that the early church had supernatural beings appearing on a regular basis. While the early church certainly did see more of this type of activity than we do today, this is not the definition John was going for. The spirit John is talking about here is the essential nature of a person or group. A translation in our vernacular would be “don’t believe everything you hear.”
iii. We are commanded here to test the spirits, as to their authenticity from a divine source. So, why was this important? What’s the significance of this? Keep in mind that the early church did not have a written New Testament as we do today. Some churches had some letters from the Apostles, but they were not assembled into a collection until much later.
iv. So how did the early church get teaching? I am glad you asked. The early church had teachers, prophets, and evangelists gifted by God to go around and teach His Word, mainly through the Old Testament, along with the teachings of Christ, but much of it was done by the power of the Holy Spirit.
v. But, we know from scriptures that Satan and those who serve him can deceive. Paul tells us this in 2 Corinthians 11:14-15
vi. 14 And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light. 15 Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also transform themselves into ministers of righteousness, whose end will be according to their works.
vii. So, John warns the church here also in verse one, saying that many false prophets have gone out into the world. Every one of the New Testament writers warned the church about false teachings. Paul warned the church at Ephesus about this very event in Acts 20:29-30 :
viii. 29 For I know this, that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. 30 Also from among yourselves men will rise up, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after themselves.
ix. What is so astounding is that both Paul and John are addressing the same church, the church at Ephesus. Paul’s warning in Acts came about 59 AD. John writes some 30 years later to combat the heresy that has already taken hold in the church. So, even after being warned, pleaded with by Paul, the false doctrine still crept in. Why was that?
x. It was because they did not recognize the false teaching for what it was. They took the lie as if it were truth, and it was poisoning them. John gives them guidance as to how to recognize false teaching in the next two verses.
b. The Cognizance– 4:2-3
i. 2 By this you know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God, 3 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 the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.
ii. We see here in verse 2 instructions as to how we are to become cognizant of or recognize a true and divine teaching by a person or a group. A true teaching will present the Jesus of the New Testament. This being that –
1. He is God, the third member of the Trinity
2. He became a man and lived a sinless life on earth
3. He suffered and died a death on the cross to pay the price for the sins of the world
4. He rose again on the third day, conquering death.
5. He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father making intercession for us.
6. He will return again soon to set up his kingdom on earth.
iii. The Gnostics in the church were teaching that Jesus did not come in a flesh ad blood body, it did not make sense to them logically, so they decided that He was just a spirit on earth, which is heresy.
iv. Why was it heresy? Why is it significant? Why couldn’t Jesus have been a spirit? Well, think back to the Old Testament. Every year, animals were sacrificed on the Day of Atonement to remind the Jewish nation that blood was necessary because of their sins. This was pointing to the sacrifice that Jesus made. He said in Matthew 26:28 - 28 For this is My blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
v. If Jesus did not come in the flesh, he wouldn’t have blood to shed. It is essential that Jesus was both fully God and man for our salvation. This is non-negotiable. You take away His diety, and He would not have been able to lead a sinless life. You take away His humanity, and it takes away the blood sacrifice He made to purchase our salvation. Both are of equal importance.
vi. But, was John saying that the only way to tell whether a teaching is true of not is by their presentation of Christ? No, but it is essential, since this is at the very core of our faith. People can have a right view of Jesus and have many other things wrong, and be false as well. Remember that the test for an Old Testament prophet was 100% accuracy!
vii. The Gnostic heresy was what John primarily was writing about. So, the test John puts forth here was really useful to them at this point in time.
viii. We see in verse 3 that every teaching that seeks to deny the humanness of Christ is false. John tells us here that it is not of God.
ix. He goes on to qualify this statement – that these teachings are in the same spirit as the Antichrist, who John says is already at work.
x. Paul describes this spirit of the Antichrist as the ‘mystery of lawlessness in 2 Thess 2:7-10 - 7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming. 9 The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, 10 and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.
xi. So we know that this is Satan and his forces at work in the world. The “He who restrains” there is the Holy Spirit, who is at work in the church even today. No doubt Paul was warning the Thessalonian church about this ‘mystery of lawlessness’ that John identifies as the spirit of the Antichrist.
xii. Scripture does tell us of a body of believers that were quite skilled at recognizing a Godly teaching from an ungodly one was the Berean church. Let’s look at Acts 20:10-12 – 10 Then the brethren immediately sent Paul and Silas away by night to Berea. When they arrived, they went into the synagogue of the Jews. 11 These were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so. 12 Therefore many of them believed, and also not a few of the Greeks, prominent women as well as men.
xiii. The church that Paul and Silas left was the one at Thessalonica. The same church being warned in 2 Thessalonians.
xiv. So, why was that letter sent to the Thessalonians instead of the Bereans? The Apostle knew that the believers at Berea would scrutinize the word being brought to them in the light of scripture.
xv. God has given us this wonderful tool to filter things we hear and see through. People say all the time – “Well, I have a word from God…” If it doesn’t line up with THE Word of God, it is false. The Bereans knew that, and they had confidence in the Word. Why did they have that confidence? They were children of God! If we are of the Family of God, we can have that confidence. John tells us about this confidence in verses 4-6.
c. The Confidence – 4:4-6
i. 4 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.
ii. In verse 4, we see that if we are of God, we have already overcome them. This means that we as Christians do not need to fear the spirit of the Antichrist, that is Satan. That word overcome there is Nee-kay-oh in the Greek. It means “to carry off the victory”. It is a form of the Greek work Nee-kay, meaning victory. Two guys from Portland, Oregon in 1971 liked the Greek word for victory so much they named their new tennis shoe company after it. Nike. You might have heard of them…
iii. Nike’s slogan in the 90’s was “Just Do It”. We have that victory John is telling us about here because Jesus “Just Did It” – He gave His life on the cross that we might have eternal life. If you have accepted Him today, He is in you, and just like the verse says – “greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.”
iv. Have you ever won a big sporting event? Like a championship? How about if you’ve ever lost one? I have been on both ends of the stick. I was on a football team that lost a state championship. I was on a powerlifting team that won a national championship.
v. If you are on the winning end, there is a great celebration, yelling, jumping around, you congratulate your teammates, and they congratulate you. You don’t really notice the guys who lost as they leave quietly, downtrodden. You talk with your teammates, going over what happened, and how it all came together. If you do say something to the other team it is something like “good game”, or “better luck next time”. You go back to the camaraderie of your victorious teammates.
vi. The guys that lost have camaraderie, too. They stick to themselves. The last two verses are comparable to that same line of thought..
vii. 5 They are of the world. Therefore they speak as of the world, and the world hears them. 6 We are of God. 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.
viii. The “they” there is those who are false teachers. Those who operate in the spirit of the Antichrist. They don’t have victory. They have not had that victory bought for them like those who are of God. They are like the losing team. But, they sure would like to drag you down with them, because they are, to use a term from my childhood – “sore losers”.
ix. The world does not have that victory. They tend to listen to the false teachers.
x. Look at verse 6 there. This one is for us, the church – We are of God. We have that victory. They guys on our team tend to stick to the others on their team, and hear what the others have to say.
xi. But look here – “he who is not of God does not hear us”. Why is that? Well, besides the fact that we are on the winning team, they just don’t understand. 1 Corinthians 1:18 tells us - 18 For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
xii. Now, this does not let us out of the Great Commission – to go and make disciples. However, it does tell us why some people never come to Christ. They are of the world, and as this verse tells us, they listen to the world, false teachers – ones that say “Many roads lead to heaven”. Wrong! Jesus tells us and it’s recorded in John 14:6 “I am the Way, The Truth, and The Life, and no one comes to the Father but by me.”
xiii. Wrapping up, John tells us that this is how we know who is operating in the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
xiv. It is found in understanding who is of the world and who is of God - by how people who claim to be of God relate to the world and how they relate to the fellowship of God’s people.
xv. God’s written Word is the standard by which we must judge how a teacher or group relates to us as God’s people. If it does not line up, we should not hear it. As I said in the beginning, it is a disease in the church. At worst, it leads those seeking Christ astray, at best, it leads believers into disillusionment and discouragement.
V. Conclusion
a. So, what can we take away from all this? I told you that at the end, if you stayed awake, you would be able to know the difference between the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. It all boils down to this one question. How does it line up with God’s Word?
b. You know, healthy Christians are well-fed ones. As human beings we need food to be healthy. Science tells us that we need a diet consisting of meat, fruits and vegetables, and grains or bread to have a well-balanced diet, and be healthy physically. Likewise, Christians need prayer, Bible Study, and Fellowship with God’s people in a church where the Word is taught to be healthy spiritually. I remember one time I got food poisoning in college, and I thought I was surely going to die. I wanted to! I was so sick – just ask my wife. The doctor at the University said it was one of the worst cases of food poisoning he had ever seen. False teaching is a lot like food poisoning, it may taste good going down, but it will make you
