The test of the Spirit includes checking to see what a teacher says about the Lord Jesus. John instructs us that if a person does not have on orthodox view of Jesus, they cannot have the Spirit of God in them, making them false teachers. Test the teacher!
1 Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world. 2 This is how we know if they have the Spirit of God: If a person claiming to be a prophet acknowledges that Jesus Christ came in a real body, that person has the Spirit of God. 3 But if someone claims to be a prophet and does not acknowledge the truth about Jesus, that person is not from God. Such a person has the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard is coming into the world and indeed is already here.
4 But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world. 5 Those people belong to this world, so they speak from the world’s viewpoint, and the world listens to them. 6 But we belong to God, and those who know God listen to us. If they do not belong to God, they do not listen to us. That is how we know if someone has the Spirit of truth or the spirit of deception.
1John 4:1-6 NLT
At the time of John’s writing, we can see that there were false teachers and prophets trying to confuse people about Jesus and the Christian movement. John offers a test of their integrity: what do they say about Jesus?
Jesus also used this test back in Matthew 16. He asked his followers who the people said he was, and then he asked the twelve. “Who do you say I am?” Simon Peter declared Jesus is Messiah. As the leaders of Jesus’ church all these years later, John is again hearkening back to that day. If you don’t acknowledge that Messiah Jesus came in a real body, you are not of God.
We can see John arguing against gnostic heresies of his time. They denied the humanity of Jesus. What we believe about Jesus is essential to our orthodoxy and our ability to (if we are so-called) to teach others about Jesus).
The world may listen to false teachers and be swayed by them. John accepts this reality. The world speaks to the world and the world listens to itself. Those who belong to God have the Spirit of God and the Spirit is greater. The caveat is, however, that a person will not bear the Spirit if they deny Jesus.
So if someone claims to speak by the Spirit, back to vs. 1, don’t believe them unless they line up with the truth about Jesus. One last word on this. Today, perhaps like in John’s day, there are many people who claim to speak for Jesus. Oftentimes, however, they represent one piece of his teaching that suits their message. Watch for Jesus to be co-opted in this way through politics or to leverage power.
As you can see, the better we know the real Jesus from the Bible, the more able we will be to stay close to him and not fall prey to the falsehoods of the world…
Amen.
Marc Kinna
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