1 John chapter 4

1 John chapter 4

vs 1

Ok, here's the thing - every time the word spirit is used and actually means something like a spirit, the NT uses the word pneuma. This word means everything - God's Holy Spirit, the rational spirit or soul of a human, an angel, or demon, or evil spirit, and then of course it also means a movement of air, such as breath.So when John tells you to "test the spirits", he could mean angels or demons, or he could mean spirit of people who speak, or he could mean every movement of what is supposedly God's Hoyl Spirit.

His qualifier is that "many false prophets have gone out into the world". That suggests to me that it's a little bit of everything - whether it be an angel (or demon) that has spoken to someone and given them a message (like Mohammed or Joseph Smith), or someone claiming a movement of the Holy Spirit giving them a message (I heard a guy at Mt Tambourine that said he had been told he was the one who would fulfil the prophecy of Matt 24:14 by sending out Christian music to the leaders of all countries, I mean wtf?), or even someone coming to a conclusion through their own rational spirit about something theological or spiritual.

vs 2-3

So here is the test - Jesus (already revealed in this letter as Son of God) must have come in the flesh. If they don't believe that, then they don't have the Spirit of God. If not, it's the spirit of the antichrist.

Notice how limited this test is! This is not a test for seeing if someone's a Christian. It's not a test to see if someone's theology is correct. It's an occasional test against a specific problem.It's interesting that the early church suffered from the opposite problem we do. We have trouble convincing people that Jesus is God - most people will grudgingly admit he's a real figure from history who was born. Well, the early church false prophets were happy to say that Jesus is God, but would deny his humanity! So perhaps we could expand the test to whether Jesus Christ is fully God and fully Man, but that leaves a lot of open territory. This test is, however, a key stone of the church's theology, and so it is worthwhile - just limited.

vs 4

So the people John was writing to have overcome these antichrists, but have obviously been a little shaken by the whole experience. I don't think there's any way we can apply this verse in its past tense, except to say that we can also overcome because the one in us is still stronger than the one who is in the world.

vs 5

The world has its own langauge - we all know it to a certain degree. But isn't it interesting that, the more Christian you get, the less the world understands you? I'm not talking about our Christianese jargon - I hate that but use it out of expedience. No, I'm talking about when you express yourself in the world's language but using God's ideas, a lot of the time people just blink and say "What? That makes no sense". For example, when William Carey wanted to take the gospel to India, the East India Company considered "the sending out of missionaries into our Eastern possessions to be the maddest, most extravagant, most costly, most indefensible project which has ever been suggested by a moonstruck fanatic. Such a scheme is pernicious, imprudent, useless, harmful, dangerous, profitless, fantastic." Gee, those guys weren't just there to make money were they?

vs 6

And there's your other test of the Spirit of Truth and spirits of falsehood - by who listens to John. John has introduced himself as an apostle with authority because he saw, heard and touched Jesus personally. He is from God. And possibly by inference, he is talking about the Christians he wrote to, which would logicall flow on to us too. But beware - John in 1 John doesn't always use the term 'we' corporately.

vs 7

And John comes back to loving each other again. Those who love are born of God and know God.

vs 8

God is love. It's such a profound statement, much like God is light. John uses them both. The very embodiment, the source of all other love. The word is agapeo, but don't put too much stock in that, because agapeo and phileo are used interchangebly, even in the Bible, the classic verse being John 21.

vs 9

God's love becomes obvious to us by his act of sending his Son so that we might live through him. For all the other things that God might or might not do for us, this is the premiere event that marks out God's love for us.

vs 10

Our love for God can only come from God, because God is love. We don't have little love generators that we made ourselves. God is love. Yes, we can take that faculty of love given to us by God and screw it up and make it horrible. We can try and love God. But the truth is that God is love, borne out by his Son's sacrifice at his request.