Category Archives: Walking in the Way

Show Your Work

31 Monday May 2021

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I laughed a little as I chose the title to this post.  I can’t tell you how many times I lost points in math class because I failed to show my work.  I didn’t do it on purpose: I’d do the mental steps and write down the answer.  If I got it right, what did actually writing out the steps matter?  It mattered for many reasons, as any math teacher will tell you.  Doing the work and showing the work is important.  And so, before I post the final study on the fruit of the Spirit, I want to address something I wrote in last week’s post, specifically; rather than doing “good works” I seek to be about The Father’s business and do only what I see Him doing.  I did not mean waiting on God is an excuse to not do anything.  In this post, I want to expand on what I mean when I say “good works” and I want to take a look at James 2:26 and Ephesians 2:8-9. 

James 2:26 says, “For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead.”  Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”  In times past, I have looked at these two scriptures and wondered if they didn’t contradict one another.  Someone might say, “Of course not!  It’s obvious!”  I can only speak to my own walk with God and, for a long time, it wasn’t obvious to me. 

These two scriptures appeared to be expressing opposing thoughts regarding works.  That is, of course, even assuming the two Apostles are speaking about the same thing.  Perhaps Paul is speaking merely of Jesus’ death and resurrection while James is speaking directly to how we Christians interact with our fellow men.  And yet, can the two be separated?  Don’t we have a tendency to present God with our good works, almost like a “here’s how Christian I am, aren’t I faithful and good” resume?  Our works are the proof of our faith according to James but then no they aren’t according to Paul. 

Is your head spinning?  I know mine was until my eyes were opened to see that everything comes from God.  I took another look at Ephesians 2: 8-9 and saw that everything mentioned there is a gift of God.  His grace is a gift.  His salvation is a gift.  His faith is a gift.  When I saw that Galatians 2:20 really says “the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith OF the Son of God” rather than IN the Son of God, it changed James 2:8-9 for me.  I do not have to prove that my faith in Jesus is alive by doing good works.  Rather, it’s because He is alive in me through His Spirit, and because I live by His faith, that I do good works.  The works I do are His works.

Continuing on in Ephesians: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).  This is such a beautiful, exciting verse and one that leads me to rest in Jesus.  It’s never me.  It’s not my works.  It’s not doing what I think is good.  God has prepared specific good works for me and I walk in them.

This is, of course, easier said than done.  First, we must know what these works God has prepared beforehand are and there is a subtle difference between good works and the good works prepared beforehand by God.  There is a fact I have found to be often overlooked by pastors and teachers I have listened to.  I find there are few in Christendom who fail to attribute the existence of evil in the world to the fall of mankind that resulted in the eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the garden.  What I do not hear spoken of often is that the eating of the fruit of the tree resulted in man knowing both good and evil.  We humans are capable of great evil as well as great good. 

Doing good works has very little to do with whether or not we are following after God.  There are people who have no belief in any sort of god at all who have done great good.  There are people who believe in a God who have done great good.  There are people who are devout followers of Jesus who have done great good.  The same is true for doing evil but, for the sake of this post, I am focused on good works. 

There are many scriptures that stress the importance of good works like Titus 3:14: “And let our people also learn to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, that they may not be unfruitful.”  Romans Chapter 2 stresses the importance of good works especially in verses 6 & 7: “who will render to each one according to his deeds, eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good…” Good works are crucial and they are expected in the life of a Christian.

The point I am attempting to make is that, for the Christian, there is a difference between good works done FOR God and good works done out of the life OF God.  There is such a thing as “spiritual burnout”.  I am convinced this happens because we are capable of doing great works, the Bible even spells them out for us, and we expend so much energy in doing Christianity that we eventually burn out.  The Spirit is promised to be a spring of living water, flowing out to others through us.  When the works that we do are the works we see the Father doing, it’s His life in us that enables us to do the works.  There is no spiritual burnout when our works flow from the Spirit within us.  His fruit is love, joy, peace…

Knowing whether our works are the result of what we think/believe is good or whether they are the result of the life of Christ in us is impossible without the guidance of the Holy Spirit.  It requires being still, shutting out every other voice, and listening for His because, “…He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak…” (John 16:13).  Whatever He speaks we must do and we must do only what He speaks.

God has prepared the way for us to walk in.  We are His workmanship: His work is shown in us.  We can be confident that He who began a good work in us will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1:6, emphasis mine).  We can trust that He watches over His word to perform it (Jeremiah 1:12).  We can trust that the good works expected of us are not a call to busyness and exhaustion but rather a promise that His life in us bears fruit. Let us remember we only bear fruit when we abide in Him.  It’s His life flowing through us that bears fruit and the Father is the husbandman who prunes us that we may bear more fruit.  Let us not fall into the trap of “I ought to be doing this or I should be doing that.”  It is God who works in us both to will and to do for His good pleasure (Philippians 2:13).  He wants our lives to bear fruit and we can trust that He will ensure they do so no matter our circumstances or stations in life. 

If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit! (Galatians 5:25)

Amen.

Leaving It All Behind

10 Monday May 2021

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Over the last week, I had the opportunity to find and read a book I had never read before; a book by one of my favorite authors.  The book was exceptionally written and yet, when I closed the covers for the last time, I was left wondering if I’d enjoyed it.  There was a tone of misery throughout the entire work and I felt a bit down after I’d finished it.  This got me thinking of a previous post where I mentioned trying a book by my favorite author even though the title and description gave me qualms and where I wondered if what I was about to read meant I would have to stop reading this author. 

“Have to stop reading” sounds a bit legalistic now that I think about it and legalism was not at all what I meant to imply.  Life changes as I move forward in the Spirit. Books I used to read are no longer enjoyable.  Television shows I used to watch are no longer entertaining.  Jokes I used to laugh at are no longer funny.  These things are so not because I’m worried about GOD getting mad at me and judging me.  No, these things are so because I AM a new creation in Christ.  I have been born again by His Spirit.  The same mind that was in Christ Jesus is in me.  I have been and am still being transformed by the renewing of my mind.  This transformation has meant leaving behind many things.

I closed last week with the comment: “If our denominations, doctrines, creeds, and knowledge have become a substitute for this living in vital union with Jesus through his Spirit, let us turn from them.”  I want to take this week to expound on that and, while doing so, write more on the goodness of God.  My main scripture passage for this week is Romans 2 verse 4: “Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?”

What do you think of when you think of repentance?  Whatever the word originally meant, it has come to mean the doing of penance over and over.  If that is the definition we hold in our minds, then this verse also takes on a meaning far different than that intended by the Apostle Paul.  If the end result we Christians are looking for is doing penance over and over, then we need look no further than the religious institutions that define themselves by lists of rules and regulations.  We cannot help but fail if our focus is on not breaking rules and being sure we pray enough and read our bibles enough and attend enough meetings and memorize enough and serve enough.  The guilt that goes along with that sense of failure always ensures there are people flooding the altars on Sunday mornings, repenting, re-dedicating, seeking renewal and hoping enough anointing of the Lord had been received to last through another week.  At least, it always ensured I was doing and hoping so.

What freedom there is in the Spirit!  Some of the truest words ever written are 2 Corinthians 3:17: “Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”  Liberty.  Freedom.  He does not call us to a life of doing penance over and over.  His goodness leads us to metanoia (G3341) which means “change of mind”1.  Malcolm Smith calls it a radical change of mind and indeed it is.  It is not a changing of our minds about Jesus, it is exchanging our minds for His.  “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2: 5).  “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2).  As my mind is transformed, so is my entire inward life, and the outward life cannot help but change as well.

The goodness of God that leads us to this radical change of mind is not the agathosune (G19) I wrote about last week.  The Greek word isn’t chrestotes (G5544) either but a related word chrestos (G5543).  This word means “employed, useful, better, easy, good(-ness), gracious, kind”.  There is no harsh edge or admonishment associated with this word.  It is the word translated “easy” in Matthew 11:30: “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 

His yoke is easy and His burden is light.  He does not demand.  Rather, He lives in me and wroughts changes I’m not even aware of until the day comes when I realize I’ve lost the enjoyment I used to have in a thing and He bids me come away from it.  I don’t want to give the impression it’s always easy.  Sometimes it is.  Sometimes there is the realization that I don’t enjoy whatever the thing is anymore and it’s done.  Then there are the times when, even though my enjoyment has fled, I do want to keep reading, watching, or doing it.  These are times when there needs to be a subduing of my flesh but He gives the strength for that as well.  I promise this much is true: there is not one thing I have turned away from that I ultimately miss.  There is nothing I leave behind but He does not give me the greater portion of Himself.

I don’t have to work on myself and clean up my behavior before He’ll come live in me.  No, the good news of the gospel is that “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). There is no great work I must do but I confess with my mouth the Lord Jesus, I believe in my heart God has raised Him from the dead, and I am saved (See Romans 10:9-10). Truly, He has put His spirit in me.  He causes me to walk in His statutes.  He enables me to keep His judgments and do them.  (See Ezekiel 36:27) I “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8) and His goodness leads me to metanoia. 

Amen

Unless notes otherwise, scriptures are quoted from the New King James Version of the Holy Bible, Thomas Nelson, Inc. 1982

  1.  Hastings, James, Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, Hendrickson Publishers, Inc., Fifth Printing-March 2001, Page 790

Other References:

Strong, James, LLD., S.T.D., The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1990

Testing the Fruit

01 Monday Mar 2021

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Photo by Kai-Chieh Chan from Pexels

This week, I find myself still in 1 John 4.  Specifically, his admonition in verse 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.”  I have seen stories of those claiming to be prophets and/or claiming to have received prophetic messages from God.  Statements made by these prophets have since turned out to be untrue.  No doubt I need look no further to see what John meant by false prophets. 

Here is where I find study important when I am attempting to understand scripture.  I bring whatever I believe a word means to scripture when I read it and this can be dangerous when I thus interpret the meaning of a passage.  Whenever I read the word “prophet” I know that means “someone who says what God is going to do in the future”.  A modern day prophet is someone like the Old Testament prophets but better because that person is (ought to be) spirit-filled.  Or, at least I assume I know because that’s how the word has been used and is thus the definition foremost in my mind when I read scripture but; is that really what the word means?  It is important to me that I know and so I turn to my Strong’s Concordance.

The Greek word translated “false prophet” is pseudoprophetes (S5578).  What’s cool about studying Greek is the words can be broken into parts and their meanings looked at.  Pseudoprophetes can be split into pseudes which means “untrue, i.e. erroneous, deceitful, wicked–false, liar” and prophetes (S4396) which, while it does mean “a foreteller (“Prophet”)” it also means “An inspired speaker, a poet;-prophet”.  Prophetes can be split into its parts of pro (S4253) and phemi (S5346).  Pro means “fore, i.e. in front of, prior to” and phemi means “to show or make known one’s thoughts”.  My trusty Vine’s Expository Dictionary has: “PROPHETES, one who speaks forth or openly, A), a proclaimer of a divine message…one to whom and through whom God speaks.”1  With just this bit of study, I see that a prophet can be but is not necessarily someone who foretells the purposes of God in the future.  Rather, anyone who stands up and claims to be speaking on behalf of God is a prophet which would include any teacher, pastor, writer, etc. 

I see this is so when I look at Hebrews 1:1-2 and Revelation 19:10.  The Hebrews passage says, “God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds” and the Revelation passage says, “…for the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.”  It bears repeating: God speaking by His Son and the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.  To me, these scriptures say it isn’t just a prophet’s declaration of the future I need to be testing but also I need to be testing whatever is said by anyone claiming to speak on the word of God.  I sincerely hope my words are being subjected to the same test.  What test?

 For further clarification, I turn to the words of Jesus Himself.

In Matthew 7: 15-20, Jesus warns to beware of false prophets.  He says “you will know them by their fruits” in verse 16 and says it again in verse 20: “Therefore by their fruits you will know them.”  Jesus speaks about two kinds of fruit in this small passage.  “Do men gather grapes from thorn bushes or figs from thistles?” He asks and then continues, “Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit…every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 7:16-17, 19).

How can there be both good fruit and bad fruit?  In the parable of the Vine and the branches recorded in the 15th chapter of John’s Gospel Jesus says, “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you aide in Me.”  To me, this says there’s fruit and no fruit, not good fruit and bad fruit.  Does Jesus contradict Himself?  Can both passages be true?

I find my answer to that is yes but only when I consider the life that flows from the vine to the branch in terms of the Holy Spirit.  There is Jesus and there is Me.  We are separate in a sense (We can’t ever be truly separate as in Him all things hold together as described in Colossians 1:17.  That’s a vast subject I don’t have space to address here).  And yet, His life is my life because His Spirit lives in me.  I am only aware of His life in me because the Spirit reveals it to me.  This is true of every believer so how can a believer bear bad fruit?  When I return to Matthew 7, Jesus says “I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you’.” (Verse 23). 

Intimacy with Jesus Christ is the answer.  When I realize I abide in Him, that apart from Him I can do nothing, that I need the flow of His Spirit every moment of my life, the fruit I bear will be good fruit.  If that flow is stifled or diminished somehow, I would still bear fruit but it would be shriveled, tasteless, perhaps rotten fruit.  I wonder if this is what the Apostle Paul meant when he said “do not quench the Spirit” in 1 Thessalonians 5:19. 

In the very next verse Paul says, “Do not despise prophecies.”  Prophecies are important.  Teachers of the Word are important.  Knowing the difference between good fruit and bad fruit is important.  Galatians 5: 22-23 tells me what the fruit of the Spirit is, “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”  Here is an entire list of Spirit fruit I can taste for myself, savor, become familiar with as they become part of me.  It’s only by tasting the good fruit that comes from a life in the Spirit that I can recognize the taste of the bad fruit when it is served up to me.

  1. Vine, W.E., Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, Thomas Nelson Inc., Nashville, Tennessee, 1997, Prophet, Page 894

Testing the Spirits-Part Two

22 Monday Feb 2021

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Revelation 1:8 records Jesus saying, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End…who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty.”  J. Preston Eby has a teaching series on the Book of The Revelation of Jesus Christ called “From the Candlestick to the Throne” and Part Ten is entitled “Who Is and Was and Is to Come”.  In Part Ten, Mr. Eby shares a different interpretation of 1 John 4:1-4.  Mr. Eby begins in 1 John 2:22-23: “Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ?  He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son.  Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.”  Mr. Eby states 1 John 4 is an elaboration of these verses and says:

“These verses have a deeper meaning!  They are not speaking of the fact of Jesus Christ having lived on earth as a man.  Almost anyone will admit that!  But the profound truth which all of popular religion has missed, is the fact of the Christ actually coming into this flesh, my flesh, your flesh, and becoming an eternal and inseparable part of us!  Millions confess Him who was, but very few in this dark age confess Him who is!…“…ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them (the antichrists): because GREATER IS HE THAT I-S IN YOU (your flesh), THAN HE THAT I-S IN THE WORLD” (I Jn. 4:3-4).”1

I had a bit of a knee-jerk reaction when I read this.  The spirit of Antichrist?  In churches?  In me?  Is such a thing possible?  Years ago I read studies on the book of Revelation which taught the Rapture and The Antichrist.  Further study had me looking at how John used the word “antichrist” in his letter and I learned it had to mean more than an Antichrist rising in the last days because there were already “many antichrists” when John wrote his letter (1 John 2:18).  There was nothing I could find that suggests John was writing about a period of time thousands of years in the future.  Therefore, he was aware of many antichrists at work while he was alive and writing and his letter makes clear how to recognize these spirits. 

I haven’t looked at, or really thought about these passages in 1 John in years; not until they surfaced in my mind after listening to the video.  This along with Mr. Eby’s interpretation made me think I need to take another look at what the spirit of antichrist really means and what John meant when he said to “test the spirits”.

The Dictionary of New Testament Theology says, “the prep. anti originally meant “in the place of” and then “against”.2   Another source stated: “Antichristos can mean either against Christ or instead of Christ, or perhaps, combining the two, “one who, assuming the guise of Christ, opposes Christ’ (Westcott)”3   Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament has, “Antichrist: it may mean one who stands against Christ or one who stands instead of Christ…John never uses the word pseudochristos false Christ. While the false Christ is merely a pretender to the Messianic office, the Antichrist “assails Christ by proposing to do or to preserve what He did while denying Him.”4

I looked up anti in my Webster’s and found: “Anti: a person opposed to some policy, proposal, action etc.,…opposed; against facing, opposite, near, against, hostile to 2. That counteracts, that operates against, 3. That prevents, cures, or neutralizes”.5   Unger’s Bible Dictionary says, “The Greek preposition ‘anti, in composition, sometimes denotes substitution, taking the place of another; hence, “false Christ.”  The connection in which the word is used appears to import opposition, covert rather than avowed, with a professed friendliness.”6

Mr. Eby also writes, “Would God that Christians could be awakened to the glory of Him who is!…Truly, Christ in us is our only hope of glory!  HE IS the glory!  But antichrist will hear of no such hope of glory.  His hope does not rest wholly in the Christ within, but in his own ability and works, his own faithfulness or endurance.  He is cluttered about with laws, regulations, creeds, ordinances, observances, rituals, ceremonies, programs, traditions, and religious exercises of this order and that, all of which are designed to assure his right standing with God.  He is thus denying the Father and the Son, for the living Christ alone is not his life!”7

I think I understand what Mr. Eby is saying and I cannot disagree.  I’ve experienced a neutralized Christian life inside religious systems.  I have been in places where I was offered “in the place of”: program involvement, more Bible reading, more prayer, etc.  I knew Jesus lived in me: He’d come into my heart when I first believed and said the sinner’s prayer.  I could rest assured I would escape judgement and hell and would go to heaven when I died.  Until then, I was to attend a church and, if my life was a barren, dusty, thirsty place…there wasn’t an answer for that.  Where were the fountains of living waters the Spirit was supposed to be to me?

I cannot remember attending a church where the message was Jesus is my life NOW!  Christ, in me, my hope of Glory!  I think the reason for that is I rarely heard about the Holy Spirit.  I’d been baptized in the Holy Spirit but now I was on my own.  Nobody taught me exactly why I’d been baptized in the Spirit except now I could pray in tongues and that’s how I was supposed to pray when I couldn’t think of my own words.  There had to be something more.  How I thank God for the discontent that drove me to keep searching for the life the writers of the New Testament insisted I could have, the life Jesus promised I could have!  No rules and regulations: relationship with the Father and Son through the Holy Spirit.  Eternal life.  (See John 17:3) 

Is this sidelining of the Holy Spirit the spirit of antichrist?  I don’t know.  I’ve always believed the spirit of antichrist was a deliberate denial of Jesus Christ and I never experienced that.  On the contrary; I knew earnest, seeking people who loved Jesus.  Only, no one seemed to expect anything in Christ beyond what we had.  It’s a subject I’ll have to study more but it does bring me to my third litmus test: what is being said about the Holy Spirit?  More specifically, what is being said about His work in the lives of believers NOW!  It is a sad fact but this third test is where I find I cannot follow a teacher.  In Galatians 5:25, Paul says, “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.”  To which I add a resounding Amen.

  1. Eby, Preston J., Kingdom Bible Studies, From the Candlestick to the Throne, Who Is and Was and Is to Come, Part 10
  2. Brown, Colin, Dictionary of New Testament Theology Vol. 1., Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1975, Antichrist, Page 124
  3. Vine, W.E., Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Nashville, Tennessee, Pages 53-54
  4. Vincent, Marvin R., D.D., Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament Volume II, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts, 1 John, Page 337
  5. Guralnik, David B., Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second College Edition, William Collins + The World Publishing company, 1976, Page 59 
  6. Unger, Merrill F., Unger’s Bible Dictionary, Third Edition, Moody Press, Chicago, Illinois, 1982, Page 68
  7. Eby, Preston J., Kingdom Bible Studies, From the Candlestick to the Throne, Who Is and Was and Is to Come, Part 10

Testing the Spirits-Part One

15 Monday Feb 2021

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I listen to my favorite teachers and podcasts while I’m at work and, early last week, I listened to a YouTube video where another video was being discussed.  The other video was of a gentleman who was stating there was nowhere in the Bible where Jesus was called God.  I wasn’t paying much attention because I couldn’t fathom which version of the Bible this gentleman was reading in order to state a thing with such confidence.  Every version of the Bible I have available to me consists of the Old Testament which points to Jesus and the New Testament which reveals Jesus and tells me who I am in Him as well as who He is in me.  There is Jesus’ name: Yeshua in the Hebrew which means “He will save”.  There was Jesus’ not so subtle declaration in John 8: 58 where He says, “Before Abraham was I AM” using the Name God used when He revealed Himself to Moses.  There’s John 1:1-14 which is such a beautiful passage: I read and re-read and re-read it.  There are so many other specific scriptures I could list but the purpose of this post is not to convince anyone Jesus is God. (Except do read 1 Timothy 3:16!) I’m going to assume that, if you are reading this, you already declare Jesus is God from God, God manifest in the flesh, or are at the very least open to the possibility and I am going to get to my material point.

Which is: my ears perked up when I heard this same gentleman say he had the holy spirit which had shown him these things.  That arrested me and I mulled on it for days.  I, of course, do not agree the spirit teaching this man comes from God at all but there is no discounting his sincerity.  It took me quite a chunk of time to digest the irony of someone saying they have the holy spirit who has revealed Jesus is not God when 1, if Jesus is not God there is no possibility of the Holy Spirit and for this I point you to John Chapter 16.  The entire chapter is worth reading but for the sake of this post I am referencing verses 7-16.  And 2: if Jesus is not God made flesh, and assuming God still had a reason to pour His Spirit out on us humans, what would He say?  John 15:26: But when the Helper comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me.”

And so, while I don’t believe this gentleman and I are hearing from the same spirit, how can I be certain?  Well, the Bible gives me guidelines.  There is 1 Corinthians 12:3 which states, “Therefore I make known to you that no one speaking by the Spirit of God calls Jesus accursed, and no one can say that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit.”  There is Romans 8:15-16 which state, “For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, “Abba, Father.”  The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”  There is 1 John 4 which popped into my head while I was listening to the video and verses 1-5 state; “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.  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 the Antichrist, which you have heard was coming, and is now already in the world.”

The Amplified has, “…prove (test) the spirits…By this you may know (perceive and recognize) the Spirit of God: every spirit which acknowledges and confesses [the fact] that Jesus Christ (the Messiah) [actually] has become man and has come in the flesh is of God [has God for its source]; And every spirit which does not acknowledge and confess that Jesus Christ has come in in the flesh [but would annul, destroy, sever, disunite Him] is not of God [does not proceed from Him].”

Francois du Toit expounds on disuniting Jesus in the Mirror Study Bible and it’s so great I have to share it.  Verse 3 and his commentary state: “No so-called “spiritual revelation” that fails to communicate the revelation of the incarnation of Jesus Christ, is of God.  This is the anti-Christ spirit that you have heard of and even now witness in the world.  Any idea that Jesus Christ is not the incarnate word of God does not originate in God but is the typical pseudo mindset of the spirit of this fallen cosmic system. (The Latin rendering from the 2nd century reads, “No spirit that would separate the human Jesus from the divine Christ, is of God.”)1

My Archeological Study Bible tells me John wrote this passage to refute Gnostic heresy and I found an interesting blurb on Gnosticism which I’ll quote parts of:

1 John 4.  Gnosticism was one of the earliest Christian heresies.  Gnostic writings are many and varied, frequently drawing upon Platonic concepts, imagery from the New Testament and pagan myth…Certain broad observations can be made of Gnostic literature.

  • From the Greek word gnosis meaning “knowledge”, Gnosticism was a movement that claimed to provide secret knowledge about God.  Its adherents considered the Biblical God, the Creator of the world, to be an inferior god.  In Gnostic teaching the material world was innately evil and thus its Creator a lesser deity.
  • The Gnostic Savior, rather than providing atonement for sin, brought the knowledge of humanity’s “true” divine origins, thus freeing people from their ignorance and enslavement to the material world.
  • Some Gnostics believed that “the Christ” (a kind of spiritual anointing or presence) came upon the man Jesus at his baptism and departed before his crucifixion—thus, that there was no lasting union of divine and human natures in Jesus.  In their view, the true Christ had no physical body. 
  • One particular brand of Gnostics, called “Docetists”, believed that Jesus was actually a divine spirit who only appeared to be physical: His body, they argued, was not truly flesh but was only an illusion.  First John 4:2 (“Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God) refutes this teaching.  Possibly those whom John countered were forerunners of the groups that later wrote Gnostic texts.

John’s warnings indicate that heresy can come in many forms, often in the guise of apostolic teaching.  Those who deny the humanity of Jesus are equally as heretical as those who deny his deity.  In addition, any doctrine that understands the created, material world to be intrinsically evil is dangerous and misguided.2

I find this so fascinating, especially in light of the idea of “Christ Consciousness” I see gaining momentum today.  I do not know if it’s “now more than ever” but certainly the necessity of testing, proving, and discerning the spirits if they be of God is just as important as it was when John wrote his letter.  Here are two of my three litmus tests:

  1.  Who is this person saying The Father is?
  2. Who is this person saying Jesus is?

My third litmus test is in regard to the Holy Spirit and, for that, I want to look at another interpretation of 1 John 4 I found.  I plan to share that next week.

To be continued…

  1.  du Toit, Francois, Mirror Study Bible, Francois du Toit, 2012, Page 473. “Scripture taken from THE MIRROR. Copyright © 2012.  Used by permission of The Author.” 
  2. Archaeological Study Bible, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2005, “The Reliability of the Bible: The Gnostics and their Scriptures”, Page 2029