1 John, Part 10: Test Every Spirit

1 John 4:1-6 (BSB)

Today’s passage is from 1 John 4:1-6, and since this is week 10 of our series on 1 John, to bring anyone just joining us up to speed, I want to offer some background.

1 John is the first book in a three-part set of letters, written by the Apostle John, who was one of Jesus’ disciples. He also wrote the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation. We don’t know who he was writing these letters to, although some scholars think it is the same group of churches he wrote to in Revelation.

He began this letter by stating that he was a first-hand witness of the Word of Life—who is Jesus, and the reason for writing is so these believers could have fellowship with him and other true believers, and with God. He told them that he was simply repeating the message he heard from Jesus. As he said in 1 John 1:5-7, the message is this: “God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.”

John has been repeating a lot of the same things, slowly building a message that he wants everyone to understand. We are now in chapter four, but as we look the text for today, we also will be seeing how this section fits into his overall message.

But first, let’s read it in its entirety, and then we will go back and look at it verse by verse. 1 John 4:1-6 says:

1 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. 

2 By this you will know the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 

3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and which is already in the world at this time.

4 You, little children, are from God and have overcome them, because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. 

5 They are of the world. That is why they speak from the world’s perspective, and the world listens to them. 

6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. That is how we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.

One of John’s refrains is a warning about people who would try to deceive the believers, and because he doesn’t want them to be led astray, he gives them ways to evaluate people—including themselves. That way, they could not only spot deceivers, but they could be assured of their own salvation.

As you probably remember, earlier in the letter, John explained that there were many antichrists who were trying to deceive people. To review, that word simply means “one who opposes Christ.” So, we must be on the lookout for those who oppose Christ. That’s why he says in verse 1: “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.”

These ‘antichrists’ are false prophets or evil spirits who are opposing what Christ said. They have manipulated God’s word. They have lied and spread false doctrines. And they are intent on deceiving people.

There are definitely ‘antichrists’ at work today. Whether we call them by that name, or call them false prophets, evil spirits, sheep in wolves’ clothing or heretics, there are people who are deliberately trying to deceive believers. We need to “test the spirits to see whether they are from God,” because this has become a real problem.

He says next, in verses 2-3: “By this you will 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 have heard is coming and which is already in the world at this time.”

John has carefully been building a case all throughout this book. Remember, he started off in chapter one speaking about having personally seen, heard, and physically touched Jesus in the flesh. He was countering a lie that claimed Jesus was only spiritual and had not truly come in the flesh. So, he explained that we must know who Jesus really is.

Then he said we must confess our sins so Jesus can forgive us and cleanse us so we can walk with Him in the light, practicing righteousness as he puts it. And also, we must love our brothers and sisters in Christ. Back in 1 John 3:10, he summarized this by saying, “By this the children of God are distinguished from the children of the devil: Anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is anyone who does not love his brother.” Really, John was telling them that one way to spot a deceiver is to look at how people are behaving. To be a child of God, a person must walk righteously and love fellow Christians. If someone isn’t doing those things, then, as John says, they are acting like “children of the devil.”

John has given us three criteria to discern whether someone is from God and is a child of God, or if that person is a child of the devil: If a person is not confessing that Jesus is the Christ who has come in the flesh, is not practicing righteousness, and is not loving their brother and sister, then conclusively we should not think that person is from God.

I think it’s really important that we understand these three criteria. So, before we move on to the rest of our text, let’s look at each of them.

The first one, confessing that Jesus is the Christ who has come in the flesh and is who He says He is, is foundational to our faith. That is how someone is born again. In order to abide in God and be in fellowship with Him and other believers, we must believe that Jesus came from God. That means we will confess that Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus was not just some prophet or teacher. He was not just a ‘good man.’ If someone does not believe that Jesus came to earth, was born and died and physically rose again, then they do not believe the truth. Right away, we should know they are not in true fellowship with God, and the spirit in which they speak is not from God.

The second litmus test is whether a person who confesses Jesus is the Christ is also practicing righteousness. Are they following God’s commandments? A true believer is living righteously. Someone who is following Christ is not comfortable with sin. They aren’t practicing sin; they are practicing holiness. They are trying to obey all that God has commanded in the Bible. As John said in 1 John 2:3, “By this we can be sure that we have come to know Him: if we keep His commandments.” To continue to abide in Christ, our aim must be toward holiness in all areas of our lives. And as John explains, when we do sin, we can confess our sin, find forgiveness and “walk in the light.” John knows we will not be perfect, but this is not an excuse to walk in darkness, though. It is the good news that if we confess and repent of our sins, we can find forgiveness and help to walk in the light.

Third, a true follower of Jesus Christ will love his or her brothers and sisters. This doesn’t just mean our immediate family, although that could include them, too. John is speaking of our brothers and sisters in Christ. He has been writing a lot about the family of God. We believers are children of God. That means fellow believers are our siblings. If we can’t love our fellow siblings, how will we be able to remain in fellowship with the family of God?

These are the three criteria we are to use to test whether someone is speaking the truth and is a child of God or not.  John sees things in very clear terms. There is right and there is wrong. If someone says they are a believer, but they deny that Jesus is the Messiah, if they are willfully living in sin, or if they are not loving other people, then we shouldn’t consider them a believer. John is saying it is really that simple. Not only will a child of God believe the truth about Jesus, but he or she will walk as Jesus walked.

These three things matter a great deal because we have an enemy who is prowling around seeking to harm the body of Christ on purpose. The devil wants to destroy our witness. He wants to destroy Christianity. We need to remember that we are in a spiritual war. Like any war, identifying who is on which side is vital. If spies have infiltrated the ranks of an army and are giving false information, it is going to cripple that side. Propaganda, misinformation, and deception are all tactics that are used in warfare. This is most certainly a problem within the ranks of Christianity. That's why we must "test the spirits."

Though John doesn’t use this language of warfare, we see it used in other places in Scripture. Ephesians 6:11-12 says, “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can make your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world’s darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

Also, 2 Corinthians 10:3-5 says, “For though we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh. The weapons of our warfare are not the weapons of the flesh. Instead, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God; and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”

Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but the battle is real, and we have enemies. That is why John says to test the spirits. That means there is clearly right and clearly wrong. He is making the distinction that the battle is between good and evil, because it is the devil who is ultimately behind every deception. That is how we can still love people while engaging in warfare. It is not the people whom we are to destroy; it is the false arguments. Our battle is against the deceitful arguments being waged against the Word of God.

The first step in defeating these false arguments is to test the spirit behind the argument. Then we can identify it and reject it. The problem is that today, just as it was in John’s time, there are many false prophets who are spreading many false doctrines, and it’s difficult to tell who is a false prophet and who is not. Just like a devious spy of war, these people appear legitimate at first. Maybe they have all the right credentials. They speak the language and know all the basic key phrases to fit in. But if you dig a little deeper, start asking questions, and do some critical reading, the truth starts to come out. The flaws in their arguments appear. They might say that sin doesn’t really matter. Perhaps they preach cheap grace. Maybe they don’t preach love and instead they preach hate. Maybe they are divisive and put down their fellow brothers and sisters in Christ. Maybe they don’t believe that Jesus was from God. It might seem pretty obvious to us that, of course, Jesus is the Son of God. He is truly God and truly man. He is the Messiah. Yet many people who claim to be experts on the Bible do not believe that. And many religions who claim to be following God do not believe that either. 

The trouble is this is not simply a matter of differing opinion. This is an actual spiritual battle. The devil is actively trying to confuse believers and keep other people from believing in Jesus. He wants to keep people in bondage to sin. He wants people to not practice righteousness, to sow division among believers, and tear down the authority of scripture. The devil’s whole goal is to destroy.

If we don’t use John’s criteria to evaluate and test the spirits to see whether they are from God, we are going to create a lot of problems. Then the body of Christ will have all sorts of people and ideas attached to it, trying to have fellowship, and it won’t work properly. Again, this isn’t just a matter of different denominations or groups getting along. For any denomination to be accepted as a member of the Body of Christ, it should be subject to these same criteria. Does it teach that Jesus is the Christ who came in the flesh? Does it teach that believers must live righteously? Does it teach that believers are to love people? Those three things might seem too basic to matter, but believe me, everything stems from those three things. If the body of Christ made those three things a requirement for fellowship, our body would be healthy and functioning properly. Instead, we are weak, and our witness to the world is perplexing to unbelievers because the definition of who a Christian is has become very confusing.

Back to John’s text, verse 3 ended by saying, “This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and which is already in the world at this time.” Just like in John’s day, this antichrist spirit is alive and actively deceiving believers and unbelievers, harming the Body of Christ. 

Interestingly, there is a lot of talk right now about the antichrist, but we need to remember that this word only appears in two of John’s epistles and nowhere else in the Bible. There are other passages that speak of a “man of lawlessness” or a “son of destruction” but never do they refer to that person as “the antichrist.”  

Some people think John is speaking of a future singular antichrist as well as “the spirit of the antichrist,” and at first reading I thought so too, but if we look carefully at what he says in 1 John 2:18 and we read it in a literal translation from the Greek, we see that’s not true. He says, “Little children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have arisen, whereby we know that it is the last hour.” You might have noted, as I did, that there is no “the” before the word antichrist.

So, when John says, “This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and which is already in the world at this time,” he doesn’t mean one particular person. He had explained exactly who antichrists are. In 1 John 2:22-24, he said: “Who is the liar, if it is not the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father, but whoever confesses the Son has the Father as well.”

There are many antichrists in the world. Any religion that does not acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ—the Messiah—is an antichrist religion. Just as any person who does not believe that Jesus is God is, per John’s definition, an antichrist. It simply means they are opposed to Jesus Christ.

If you stop to think for just a moment about just how many antichrists there are in this world, it can feel rather overwhelming, though. But even though we may be outnumbered, we do not have to be afraid. As John tells us in verse 4, “You, little children, are from God and have overcome them, because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.”

That tells me that we don’t need to fear, because God, who is in us, is greater than the devil who is in the world. We who believe Jesus is the Son of God have overcome the world because God lives inside of us. Our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit as 1 Corinthians 6:19 says, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God?” That is how we have the power to overcome these false prophets who are spreading these false ideas. It is God’s power inside of us, made alive in us, through faith.

This circles back to John’s criteria for testing the spirits. Does the “prophet,” the person who claims to be speaking the truth, do they believe Jesus is the Son of God? If they fail that test, we should reject their message, for they are not of God.

2 Corinthians 11:3-4 says, “I am afraid, however, that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may be led astray from your simple and pure devotion to Christ. For if someone comes and proclaims a Jesus other than the One we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit than the One you received, or a different gospel than the one you accepted, you put up with it very easily.”

Paul is telling us that the way people end up being deceived and led astray from their devotion to Christ is when they encounter a different message and instead of rejecting it, they “put up with it very easily.” Doesn’t that describe exactly what is happening today? People put up with the most ridiculous ideas—very easily I must add—and it’s led them astray.

We are not to “put up with” false ideas. We are to overcome them. We are not to love the world and its ideas. We are to overcome the world. If we are abiding in Jesus, reading His Word, obeying His commands, walking as He walked, then we can overcome these false spirits that are trying to get us to abandon the truth.

The spirits that do not confess Jesus, John says next in verses 5-6: “They are of the world. That is why they speak from the world’s perspective, 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. That is how we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.”

The ‘world’ is speaking one language and everyone in the world can speak to each other. They understand one another. They get along with each other and accept each other’s ideas. Whereas we believers are speaking a totally different language. John says that if we are speaking the things of God, the world will not listen to us. Only those who know God will listen to us. He says, “That is how we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.”

This isn’t arrogance, and John doesn’t intend this be interpreted that way. He just wants to point out that the world is not on board with the truth. John says, “They are of the world.” But “We are from God.” There are two different groups.

If we believe that Jesus is the Christ, that means we believe in all that title infers upon Jesus. That means we believe He is God’s Son who died on the Cross for us and rose again, and the only way to the Father is through Him. And while it may seem like we are speaking a foreign language to the world, we should not stop speaking and sharing this message of truth. Instead, we should be careful to test all the spirits, so we don’t end up changing our message to fit the world’s language. If we believe in Jesus, the Spirit of God lives in us. And He who is in us, is greater than he who is in the world. That means we have all the power we need to overcome the lies and deceptions of the world.

John uses this language of overcoming, for he learned it directly from Jesus. In John 16:33, he quotes Jesus as saying: “I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take courage; I have overcome the world!”

This is our hope and why we have faith. Jesus is the One who overcame the world. When He died on the Cross and rose again, He overcame sin and the devil. This is why to be a follower of the only true God, we must put our faith in Jesus, the Only Son of God. Without Jesus, there is no way to the Father. And as John says, anyone who preaches otherwise is a false prophet or antichrist.

And while it’s vital that a person proclaim that Jesus is the Christ, it should not be the only criteria we judge someone on. It’s easy for false prophets and deceivers to make statements that declare that Jesus is the Christ. There is a trend where people are posting on social media that “Jesus is King” but some of the people are not following Jesus. They are trying to deceive Christians so Christians will accept them and be led astray. We also need to consider if someone also fits John’s two other criteria. Is that person living righteously, and are they loving others? If not, then we should not believe that they are following Jesus. And then, we should not have fellowship with them. A believer must confess that Jesus is the Christ, must live in the light, and love others.

If we don’t test the spirits, we can be led astray. So let me encourage you to examine yourself. Ask yourself, have I accepted any false teachings? Am I truly following what God’s Word says or have I believed any messages of the world? Am I taking the time to examine people and ideas to see where they are coming from? The people I’m listening to—do they exhibit the Fruit of the Spirit? There will be evidence if someone is following God.

It might feel counterintuitive to evaluate people and ideas, because after all, Jesus tells us clearly to love one another, but as we will see next week as we continue in John’s letter, we are not abandoning love. In fact, by holding to the message we’ve received from God’s Word, we will find that then we will truly love people, the way Jesus loves. Not in a selfish, self-serving sort of way the world loves, but in selfless true love. Just like Jesus.

Let’s pray: Heavenly Father, we thank You and praise You for giving us the Holy Spirit to live inside of us. Please, by Your Holy Spirit, give us wisdom and discernment so we are not deceived by false prophets.  Help us to be able to know who is speaking truth and who is speaking lies. Help us also to live righteous lives and to love our brothers and sisters in the faith. Thank You for giving us Jesus who overcame sin and death, so that we might have forgiveness and peace in this world. We love You and in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.