This was a
classic case of poor judgment.
Fortunately, in the providence of God the ramifications of my action
were fairly tame; a few points on my driver’s license and a few dollars out of
my bank account. But the news is filled
every day with stories of people who have exercised excruciatingly bad judgment
that have injured themselves or others, damaged property, and sometimes cost
lives. In many cases the perpetrators of
these offenses spend years behind bars.
If they were young when convicted the typical assessment is that they
ruined their life before they even got started.
And these situations are easy for us to evaluate. It is clear when someone has made a visible
and obvious mistake in issues dealing with the physical realm we exist in.
However, the
eyesight of Christians is not always 20/20 when it comes to exercising good
judgment for themselves in the spiritual realm.
In other words, sometimes we make really dumb decisions relating to
spiritual matters. And what’s worse is,
that we may not always even realize what we have done because we lack the
visual clarity to properly assess our conduct.
The theological term for this spiritual clarity and judgment, or lack
thereof, is discernment.
This is
truly a backwards state of affairs. In
Matthew 10:28 Christ teaches us: Do not
fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear
Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. In the context of that passage the Lord is
speaking about how to respond to evildoers who persecute us. It is not particularly related to the issue
of discernment. But the principal is the
same. Our minds should be tuned and honed
to a razor’s edge on heavenly issues, with worldly concerns trailing a distant
second. It’s not that we are to be
ignorant of the world. But our focus is
not on the world. Unfortunately, often
it is the other way around for Christians.
We spend so much time and energy learning to operate in the worldly
sphere of reality that we allow our spiritual muscles to atrophy. We fall victim to the danger Paul warned of
in Colossians 2:8: See to it that no one
takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the
tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather
than according to Christ.
This issue
of discernment is on John’s mind as he moves into the next section of his
letter. We know it in our modern English
Bible translations as chapter 4. The
first verse reads as follows: Beloved,
do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from
God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. There are two key words in this verse that we
need to understand; spirit and false prophets.
The English
word spirit in this verse and the following five verses is a translation of the
Greek “pneuma”. It can mean breath,
wind, the Holy Spirit of God, inner life as well as the rendering here of
simply spirit. Breath and wind don’t fit
the context of the verse because the implication is that of a moral agent
capable of professing either truths or falsehoods. Similarly, John cannot possibly be talking
about the Holy Spirit, because He leaves room for these spirits to be in
error. If he was referring to the Spirit
of God this would be blasphemy. Therefore,
John must be talking about an inner life or a spirit. But what does this mean exactly.
Here are a
few passages that will shed light on this for us. In John chapter 4 Jesus is speaking with the
woman of Samaria whom He met at Jacob’s well.
In verse 24 He tells her: God is
spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. In other words, God the Father is a
non-corporeal being with a soul. It is
this that makes Him a living being, even having no flesh such as the dust we
humans are made of. Because of this
aspect of who He is we, being subservient to Him, must approach Him on His
terms not ours; with our spirits. It is
the soul or the spirit which provides animation, reasoning, and volition to an
entity. If bereft of our souls, we would
be vacant husks of flesh with no motive force to compel our limbs to move in a
purposeful pattern.
In John
11:33 Jesus, coming to the home of His friends Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, sees
Mary weeping over the recent death of her brother. The Scriptures say: He was deeply moved in spirit and was troubled. It was not the Lord’s feet, presumably aching
from the journey, which caused Him distress.
No, it was His inner life that was emotionally affected, resulting in His
sorrow. We understand this.
To see
another angle on this principle we can look to Revelation 11:11: But after the three and a half days, the
breath of life from God came into them, and they stood on their feet. The scene is of two messengers from the Lord
who have been killed by the beast. Their
dead bodies are left in the street for three days, after which verse 11 comes
to pass. So we can see in this verse
that “pneuma” is something directly given by God to those of His creations that
He chooses. It is the quality that makes
one truly alive and the absence of which that makes one truly dead.
Going back
to our 1st John passage, the point is that spirit simply refers to
any created being that God has chosen to imbue with that inner quality of life
that is a reflection of His own quality of life. But this is still not enough for us to gain a
full understanding of John’s meaning here.
After all, “pneuma” used in this way could conceivably be used to refer
to either humans or angels. Which is
John talking about here? Who or what is
it that we are being instructed to test?
The answer to that can be found by examining the other important word;
false prophets.
The Greek is
a single compound word, “pseudoprophetes”.
“Pseudo” means lying, deceitful, or false. We still use this word today in English in
its original form so it may already be familiar to you. English dictionary definitions convey an
additional quality for this word: that of almost, approaching, or trying to be
something but not actually. Applied to
people, it is a person who purports to be someone else. Revelation 2:2 gives an excellent picture of
this: you put to the test those who call
themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false.
The other
half of the word, “prophetes”, means just what it sounds like. It is, outside of Judaism, an interpreter of
oracles or other hidden things. Within
the bounds of the Jewish religion that John was familiar with, “prophetes”
refers to one who, moved by the Spirit of God, becomes the Lord’s spokesman, as
in the case of Jeremiah 1:5 and 7: “Before
I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated
you; I have appointed you a prophet to the nations…Do not say, ‘I am a youth,’
because everywhere I send you, you shall go, and all that I command you, you
shall speak.”
Prophets of
antiquity, both Jewish and otherwise, were always humans. Even if hypothetically a demon had taken
possession of a Greek oracle, his status as prophet to everyone who heard him
would have been tied to his humanity. And
for a Jew prophets were unquestionably men that God chose, not angels. So getting back to the question of what does
John mean by a spirit, we are left with the following. This is a human who professes to be a teacher
of truth, but is really not. They appear
to have knowledge but are filled with empty shadows of wisdom.
I think in
John’s mind he was specifically referring to false Bible teachers and
preachers. These are those who claim to
be relaying accurate truth about the word of God but in reality are distorting
it, compromising it, and outright contradicting it. That image of a false teacher certainly has
relevance today. The world is filled
with those who claim to be agents of truth but in reality are teaching a
different gospel and are to be accursed according to Paul in Galatians chapter
1. This is why we need to be serious
students of the Bible. The only way we
can possibly spot error when we hear it is to have an understanding of truth so
as to notice the discrepancies between the two.
If we don’t know what God’s word says how will we know when someone is
mis-interpreting it?
This is
John’s point in verses 2 and 3: By this
you 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, of which you have heard
that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.
In the first
verse John has told us to be sure we test the spirits to see whether they are
truly from God or not. And now in the
next two he is going to tell us how to test them. He begins with a command: know the Spirit of
God. To “ginosko” something is to come
to understand it intimately. John
commands with the imperative voice to “ginosko” the Spirit of God. Before we can even think about performing
accurate tests of the truthfulness of the spirits in the world we must have an
intimate, relational, thorough, and experiential knowledge of who God is. Because the Bible is His revelation of His
own character we come to know Him through studying it. And then in turn we are equipped to recognize
who is from God and who is not.
Think of it
this way. A Christian immerses
themselves in the Scriptures over months and years of study, discipleship,
preaching, and prayer. They may not know
every verse by memory. They may not be
the most articulate expositors of doctrine.
But they have a solid practical working knowledge of what sounds like
God from the Scriptures and what does not.
Therefore, when they hear someone speaking or teaching false truth about
God there should be an almost instinctive red flag that goes off in the
Christian’s mind. This drives them to
search the Scriptures to clarify their hunch and determine truth from the
written text rather than the spoken word.
That being
said, John is not content to leave us with just a nebulous proof test of
authenticity. He gives us an explicit
benchmark to measure the truth that we hear against. If it doesn’t pass this initial test, then
there’s no point in bothering to go any further. The premise is quite simple. Anyone purporting to be proclaiming truth who
does not confess that Jesus has come in the flesh cannot possibly be from God.
It is
incredibly important that we understand exactly what John is saying here. He uses a very specific word in the Greek;
“homologeo”. This is different from
“pisteuo”. To “pisteuo” something is to
think it is true, or to be persuaded of its truthfulness, or even to place
confidence in it. It is a solid
profession of belief. But to “homologeo”
something is to not only agree with or assent to something, but to do so
publicly and openly. In other words,
when you “homologeo” you are sticking your neck out if it is in reference to
some sort of controversial topic.
Let me show
you two examples from John’s other writings that will really drive this point
home and make the distinction clear. In
John chapter 12 we find Christ nearing the end of His earthly ministry. He has performed wonders, cured disease,
prophesied about the future, expertly dissected the Old Testament Scriptures to
explain them, and sprung the traps of the Jews unscathed at every turn. Yet in spite of all this evidence many of the
authorities refused to believe in Him.
And in verse 42 we find that: nevertheless
many even of the rulers believed (pisteuo) in Him, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing (homologeo) Him, for fear that they would be put out
of the synagogue. Do you see the
difference? The rulers were willing to
believe that Jesus was the Christ privately.
But they were not prepared to declare that belief openly out of fear and
peer pressure. Their belief was rendered
null and void by their love of the approval of men rather than the approval of
God (v.43).
In
Revelation 3:5 we find the risen Christ coming in power and addressing the
church at Sardis. This church as a whole
was condemned because of their lack of spiritual life. But there were a few there who were faithful. To them the Lord says: He who overcomes will thus be clothed in white garments; and I will not
erase his name from the book of life, and I will confess (homologeo) his name before My Father and before His
angels.
Several weeks ago we looked
at 1st John 2:1 where Christ is described as our advocate, or our
lawyer, or our legal defense. How would
it be if Jesus said He would defend us in the court of the Father, but then
when the trial date arrived He was nowhere to be found? His profession of availability for our
defense wouldn’t mean much would it?
That’s the idea of “homologeo”.
We “pisteuo” Jesus because we have confidence that He will “homologeo”
us before the Father. He will not leave
us stranded high and dry or up the creek without a paddle.
That is the
benchmark for approving whether a professing spirit is truly from God or not. Someone may claim to be a Christian. Talk is cheap. But when the chips are down, the game is on
the line, and the starting pistol fires what do their actions tell us? Is there a disconnect between their spoken
profession and their demonstrated actions?
If there is then we need to understand very clearly that the person we
are observing is labeled by Scripture as an antichrist. They are of the group spoken about in chapter
2 verse 18 who are opposed to the work, the ministry, the glory, the authority
of Jesus Christ. John once again uses
the perfect tense of the verb “akouo”, or to hear. He is telling us that we have heard about
these antichrists in the past, are still hearing about them in the present, and
will continue to hear about them in the future.
There is no shortage of those who would either claim outright to be
Christ or seek to more subtly undermine His character and reputation. We must remain on guard against such as
these.
I think that
for most of the people who read this, this need to guard against false Bible
teaching may be fairly obvious. But I
think that if we take the principle at stake and apply it to the world we live
in today, we will see that the core issue that defined a false prophet in
John’s mind is alive and well today in far more than just the religious
spectrum of life. The problem for John
was that people were claiming to be agents of truth but were not. The arbiters of truth in his day were the
religious elite, typically. It was the
priests, the oracles, the Pharisees, the prophets. It was primarily from these sorts of
individuals that people received their ultimate truth in life. Philosophers and doctors were present in the
culture, to be sure, but it was the sages of religious wisdom that people went
to for direction in life.
Now take
that concept and apply it to our day. We
live in a quite godless age.
Increasingly, preachers and teachers of the Bible are marginalized and
made irrelevant in the minds of the populace today, especially among the
young. We live in an age of humanism
where the altar of science is primarily where people sacrifice their
affections. In this environment, I am
suggesting that it is the scientists, the doctors, and the professors who rule
the hearts and minds of our country as the dispensers of truth.
Let me be
clear. I think that when John wrote
these words what was in his mind was false Bible teachers. I think he is referring very narrowly to
religious charlatans masquerading as Christians and professing to be possessed
of truth from God. But at the same time
I think if we take the timeless truth, or the core principle, that was behind the
false teachers in John’s day, we will find that the issue has spread to more
than just the religious spectrum of life.
So I believe that in addition to the need to guard against Bible
teachers who speak lies we have to be on guard against secular intelligentsia
who speak lies; specifically lies that controvert biblical truth.
Let me give
you an example of what I’m talking about.
National Public Radio produces a radio talk show called Fresh Air. The format is an interview style program
where the host, Terry Gross, brings on guests and discusses topics relevant to
their profession or personal life. A few
months ago the guest was a physician named Siddartha Mukherjee. He is an Indian-born American. In addition to his oncology work he is a
scientist and writer specializing in the area of genome research. During the interview Terry asked Dr.
Mukherjee about the current scientific thought regarding the role the human
genome plays in sexual preference and identity.
In response
to the question Siddartha proceeded to lay out what he called “the data”. The premise that he presented was based on
studies done of identical twins compared with regular siblings. Apparently the research showed that in
identical twins the percentage chance that both twins would share their sexual
preference was much greater than in siblings.
From this evidence Siddartha made the specific statement that there “may
be genetic determinants”. He went on to
say that the percent chance of shared sexual preference in identical twins is not
100% but he never gave an exact figure.
Further, he stated “we know that there are either genes, or
intra-uterine exposures, or some other factors; environments have a powerful
effect on this; society, culture has powerful effects on this.” About forty seconds deeper into the interview
Siddartha made the following statement: “we know that there are some genetic
determinants.”
Do you see
what he did? He presented research that
is both far from complete and far from clearly understood. He even admitted that the results were
inconclusive. But then just a minute or
two later he casually states his conclusion as a certainty; namely, that
genetic determinants play some role in sexual preference. This is a man that most of the listening
audience of Fresh Air would naturally assume knows what he is talking
about. He presents himself well. He is eloquent of speech. He laudably pleads for an avoidance of wild
statements and irrational conclusions about the very research he is
describing. By all accounts he comes off
as a reasonable, sophisticated, and supremely intelligent man who should be
listened to as a source of truth in this area of genetics.
Yet, whether
wittingly or unwittingly the doctor contradicts himself with his own words for
those who are listening closely enough to catch it. It is very subtle. The point in the interview that I am
describing is almost offhand or casual.
It would be extremely easy to miss it.
And what this man is presenting as fact is in clear opposition to the
only written source of absolute truth that exists; the Bible.
This is why
I am making the claim that John’s warning in chapter 4 about false prophets and
antichrists must be extended beyond the religious establishment of our
day. To be sure, it must include them,
but it must also go farther. Our
discernment radar must be honed and trained to spot anomalies wherever they
exist. This should not mean that we
concoct falsehoods out of thin air. But
we as Christians in an increasingly godless society and world simply cannot
afford to fall asleep at the wheel in this area.
This leads
me to verse 4: You are from God, little
children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he
who is in the world. Frankly, I
think at first glance we might be tempted to question the apostle here. After all, the condition of our country
doesn’t look very much like conquering or overcoming. To add insult to injury, John uses the
perfect tense for overcome. So he is
claiming that we have already won and are continuing to win, with results that
are constantly ongoing. Is John going a
little batty here? Or is his
understanding of the world just not relevant for our day and time?
To answer
that I will continue on to verse 5: They
are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world
listens to them. The word “them” in
verse 4 and the two occurrences of “they” in verse 5 all refer to the same
source; the antichrists and false prophets of verses 1 and 3. John is telling us that these liars are born and
bred by the evil world system they are fully a part of. They are all of the same family. So naturally the world is going to gravitate
toward listening to them and giving heed to their supposed wisdom. Why would those in rebellion against God
follow the teaching of Christians who are born of God?
To be blunt,
the United States of America, with whatever level of ingrained Christianity it
has possessed over the past 250 odd years, is a historical anomaly. It is not normal for Christians, living in the
world, to be ascendant or triumphant on a material or physical level. Our victory is not in terms of political
power, temporal wealth, or the respect and admiration of our worldly peers in
society. John actually makes this quite
clear in the next chapter. Verse 4 of
chapter 5 reads: For whatever is born of
God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world –
our faith. Whom do we have faith
in? Jesus Christ. Where is His kingdom? He gives the answer to Pilate in John 18:36: Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this
world. If My kingdom were of this world,
then My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the
Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm.”
So I don’t
think John is talking about temporal victory at all in 4:4. He is speaking of our eternal future, our
unfading inheritance, and our ruling authority to come in Christ’s
kingdom. Picture a boxing match. It is round 3 of a twelve round fight. One of the fighters is getting pummeled and
everyone in attendance is sure he is going down. But somehow he hangs on and makes it to the
bell. Not only that but he, incredibly,
gets stronger the further into to the match he gets, until ultimately he knocks
out his opponent in the final seconds of round 12 and wins the
championship.
That’s not a
very good analogy, but it’s kind of like the situation we face as
Christians. God does not promise us
honor and glory and victory in this life.
He promises it to us in the next.
God does not promise us a triumph and a powerful kingdom on this
earth. He promises that we will reign
beside Christ in His future kingdom which is not of this world.
John
concludes in verse 6 with a contrast of his preceding statement as well as a summary
of the whole passage: We are from God;
he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to
us. By this we know the spirit of truth
and the spirit of error. The world
is inclined to listen to the words of the antichrists who tickle their ears with
speech they like. In the same way, those
people who are truly from God are naturally disposed to listen to and give heed
to the truth of the gospel.
This raises
an interesting, albeit easily answered question. Namely, does this mean that if someone doesn’t
agree with our theology they are not from God?
That might seem an extreme interpretation of this verse, and it is. But rest assured someone somewhere will make
that leap and use 1st John 4:6 as a mandate to vilify anyone who
doesn’t line up with them right down the doctrinal dogma line.
To be blunt,
such an interpretation is a perversion of John’s words. He is not talking about disagreements between
Christians. He is not talking about
doctrinal differences or preferences of tradition. Remember that the whole context of these six
verses is that of the conflict between those who are from God and those who are
from the world. John uses the exact same
construct in verse 2 to describe those who confess Jesus as the Christ as he
does in verse 5 to describe the antichrists as being of the world. The former group is literally “out of God”
while the latter is “out of the world”.
The distinction is quite clear in the original language and makes it
obvious who the opposing sides are.
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