4:1-3 Beloved,
believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because
many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of
God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of
God: And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the
flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit
of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already
is it in the world, cont.
What is the major determiner of whether we know a message
is genuine or not? John’s focus was on Jesus Christ, because Jesus is the
center and sum of the church, and the subject of Scripture.
The Old Testament
likewise focused Israel’s attention to whether or not the teacher desired to
truly glorify God: “If there arises among you a prophet or a
dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the
wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other
gods’—which you have not known—and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to
the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is
testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and
with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him, and
keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and hold fast to
Him,” Deuteronomy 13:1-4.
The matter John presently speaks about concerns the fact
that Jesus Christ truly came in the flesh. Every spirit that confesses such a
thing is of God; every spirit that rejects this truth was not sent by God, but
is the spirit of the Antichrist. Any teacher posing as a Christian teacher and
setting himself against God’s revealed truth about Jesus is then in fact an
antichrist, a type of the lawless one yet to come who shall be Satan’s champion
against God’s people.
What about the coming of Christ in the flesh needs to be
clearly proclaimed? That Jesus, both before and after His resurrection, possessed
a material body of flesh, Luke 24:39; John 20:27-28. That inhabiting that flesh
was the very God whom Israel served and worshiped for thousands of years,
Romans 9:5; 1st Timothy 3:16. Jesus was (and is) God Almighty. Cults and
various pseudo-Christian religions that reject this unique message of a
transcendent, monotheistic God coming in the flesh to redeem humanity by the
act of vicarious sacrifice are in fact agents of the Devil, functioning and
empowered by the spirit of the Antichrist. The word “Anti” means “opposed to”
and “in the place of;” an apt description of the many cults who in reality
function in the stead of God, judging the salvation and standing of their
adherents. The Christian confession of Jesus Christ being God and man,
being the only way of salvation, of rising the third day in a physical body in
triumph over the grave, all of this is bound up in the message of the cross
that Christians preach, and the groundwork of what Christianity is.
John cautions at the end of his epistle to keep ourselves
from idols, 1st John 5:21. There is no more dangerous idol than to erect than a
Christ that is less than the perfect Savior Scripture reveals to the lost
world. To tamper with either His humanity or His deity is heresy of the worst
sort, and John cautions that the men who champion this doctrine have not God’s
Spirit, but the antichrist’s. This subtle idolatry was endangering John’s
spiritual children, which was another reason the apostle opted to write his
epistle, 1st John 2:26.
The Corinthian church was in danger of embracing
another Jesus conducted by another spirit than the Holy Spirit, 2nd Corinthians
11:4. Decades later John confronts similar heresy and writes to remind his
children what they believe, why it is true, and how to detect error creeping
into the church. Discernment of the spirits is sorely needed because many shall
come in Christ’s name, and lead astray many, Matthew 24:4-5, 11. John’s final
words are sobering if we contemplate them: keep yourselves from idols. Keep
yourselves from turning to and embracing a Christ constructed from men’s
corrupt ideologies, and not the Jesus of history, sent by the Father to be the
world’s Savior, John 3:17; 1st John 2:2.
The current furor over the discovery of a Coptic writing referring to Christ as married dating from four hundred years after his death illustrates the ease with which such things are accepted, as does modern theology's attempts to find the historical Jesus while ignoring the Biblical record as mythological.
ReplyDeleteTheological degrees do not replace the Holy Spirit.
Seminary and theological school actually seem to be by and large a breeding ground for producing a healthy skepticism in the Bible and its inerrancy. I have heard some troubling things from such schools, which appear to be more and more compromised. I agree wholeheartedly that there is no substitute for the Holy Spirit. Peter did not have and degree when he spoke at Pentecost, and yet thousands were moved to faith and repentance.
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