Testing the Spirits - July 16 Reading: 1 John 3:11-4:21

Today’s Readings

Context

1 John 3 and 4 are about love - loving God and loving one another. It is no accident then that the passage which will be the subject of our devotional is there at the beginning of 1 John 4. Too often our love becomes an excuse to abandon doctrinal and practical standards. To call something sin is "unloving" or to call someone's beliefs wrong is mean. But we must never let our love prevent us from practicing discernment. Of course, we must never all our discernment to keep us from practicing love - they tend to stand in conflict and the art of Christian living is to balance them. 

Devotional - Testing the Spirits

There has been much in the news about Christian celebrities - celebrity pastors and others. Some of them, seem grounded in the truths of the faith and hold fast to what is true, but many make me shake my head a little. One in particular, who loudly proclaimed faith in Jesus Christ also completely redefined what it means to be a Christian, who Jesus was and what is right and wrong.

John gave us a warning, in 1 John 4:1, that needs to be heard and heeded.

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to determine if they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.

This verse asserts one fact and makes one command based on that fact. The fact is that there are man false prophets who have gone out into the world. These false prophets are not skeptics and atheists and teachers of false religions. These are people who claim to be Christians, who open the Bible and "preach the Word," who talk about how much they love Jesus, but they are false. Fake. Frauds. Scripture after scripture warns us about false christs who come claiming to be the "second coming," false prophets who claim new revelation that violates the teachings of God's Word, false apostles who claim authority over God's church and lead it astray and false teachers who twist the Word for their own purposes. These fakes are always going to be in the church of Jesus Christ. 

So, according to John, we need to be on guard. "Do not believe every spirit." Never assume that just because someone claims to love Jesus or to preach God's word, that he or she actually does so. Test it. Test that which is being spoken by the revealed Word of God. If someone either adds to or takes away from what God revealed to the apostles and prophets, then the alarms should ring. 

The key to discernment is found in verse 2. Those who are of God confess Christ, the real Christ, not some creation of their own imagination. They believe that Jesus is the Incarnation of God in a human body, the Messiah long promised come to inhabit human flesh. He lived a perfect life, died in our place to pay the eternal price for our sins and rose again as Lord over all. Anything less than a full confession of Christ is fully unacceptable. 

Christians ought to be people of grace and ought never let small differences cause schisms in the Body of Christ. But we must be willing to stand on what is essential. On the truth of the Word of God, the salvation offered by Christ, only by Christ, on the Lordship of Jesus over all things - on these we can never compromise. The courage of discernment is essential to the survival of the church. 

Father, thank you for Jesus Christ. May I be faithful to him and faithful in testing those who speak in his name but who do not speak his truth. 

Think and Pray

Finding the right place for discernment is difficult. Some become critical and judgmental; others refuse to make any biblical judgments at all.
Are you in God's word and using that word to guide you?
Do  you foolishly accept everyone who claims Christ and who claims to teach God's word as genuine?