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Scripture Reading: 1 John 4:1-6
In 4:1 John says, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but prove the spirits whether they are out of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” This verse tells us clearly to prove, discern, the spirits. We should not think that a particular teaching simply comes from the teaching one himself. No, every teaching, whether right or wrong, comes by a spirit. As there are different teachings, there are also different spirits. Hence, we need to test the spirits to see whether they have their source in God, whether they are out of God. In verse 2 John says that every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is out of God. But in verse 3 he says that every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not out of God, for this is the spirit of the antichrist.
The expressions “every spirit” in verses 2 and 3 and “the spirits” in verse 1 refer either to the spirit of the prophets (1 Cor. 14:32) motivated by the Spirit of truth, or to the spirit of the false prophets actuated by the spirit of deception. Every prophet, whether a real prophet or a false one, has his own spirit. When a real prophet speaks, with his spirit there is the motivating of the Spirit of God. But when a false prophet speaks, his spirit is activated by another spirit, by a spirit of deception. Hence, there is the need to discern the spirits by proving them to see whether they are out of God.
We should not think that teaching is merely a matter of the mind and the mouth. With every kind of speaking, every kind of teaching, the spirit of the speaker either is motivated by the Spirit of God or is actuated by a spirit of deception. This means that the speaking of any kind of doctrine always comes from a certain kind of spirit, either from the spirit of a genuine prophet motivated by the Spirit of God or from the spirit of a false prophet actuated by an evil spirit.
According to 4:2, the discernment of spirits is based upon whether or not a spirit confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. Because the spirit of a genuine prophet is motivated by the Holy Spirit of truth, this spirit will confess the divine conception of Jesus and affirm that He was born as the Son of God. Every such spirit is surely out of God.
The word “flesh” in 4:2 is very important. As human beings, we were all born of flesh to be flesh (John 3:6a). Thus every human being is flesh. To confess Jesus Christ coming in the flesh is to confess that He was divinely conceived to be born as the Son of God (Luke 1:31-35). This is marvelous! Christ is God incarnate to become a man through holy conception. He did not have a human father, for He was conceived of the Holy Spirit. His conception is holy because it was carried out by the Holy Spirit. Although He was conceived of the Holy Spirit, this conception took place in the womb of a virgin. Therefore, He, the very God, became a man in the flesh. Contrary to the false teaching of the Docetists, His body was not a phantasm. Rather, He had a real body, a physical body that was solid in its substance. He was conceived of the Holy Spirit; He became flesh and was born of the virgin Mary. Because He was conceived of the Spirit to be born in the flesh, the Spirit would never deny that He has come in the flesh through divine conception.
Anyone who denies that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh denies that He was conceived of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, anyone who rejects Jesus Christ coming in the flesh rejects His humanity and His human living. Such a one also rejects Christ’s redemption. If Christ had not become a genuine man, He could not have had human blood to shed for the redemption of human beings. If He had not become flesh through the conception of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin Mary, He never could have been our Substitute to be crucified to bear our judgment before God. Therefore, to deny that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is to deny His holy conception, His incarnation, His birth, His humanity, His human living, and also His redemption. The New Testament makes it emphatically clear that Christ’s redemption was accomplished in His human body and by the shedding of His blood.
Anyone who rejects Christ’s incarnation and thereby rejects His redemption also denies Christ’s resurrection. If Christ had never passed through death, it would not have been possible for Him to enter into resurrection.
Denying that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is a great heresy. This heretical teaching makes it impossible to have the enjoyment of the Trinity. According to the revelation of the Trinity in the New Testament, the Son came in the flesh with the Father and in the name of the Father. The Son was crucified, and in resurrection He became the life-giving Spirit. Therefore, we have the Spirit as the reality of the Son with the Father. This includes incarnation, human living, redemption by the shedding of human blood, death in a human body, burial, and resurrection. All these are components, constituents, of our enjoyment of the Triune God. If anyone denies Christ’s incarnation, that one denies Christ’s holy birth, humanity, human living, redemption through crucifixion, and resurrection. This utterly annuls the enjoyment of the genuine Trinity. Knowing the seriousness of this matter, John included 4:1-6 in his Epistle as a warning to the believers concerning the need to prove the spirits.
In 4:4 John continues, “You are out of God, little children, and you have overcome them, because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.” The believers are “out of God” because they have been begotten of God (1 John 4:7; 2:29; 3:9).
In verse 4 those who have been overcome are the false prophets (v. 1), the antichrists (v. 3), those who taught heresy concerning Christ’s Person. The believers have overcome them by abiding in the truth concerning Christ’s deity and concerning His humanity through divine conception, according to the teaching of the divine anointing (2:27).
In verse 4, John tells the believers that He who is in them is greater than he who is in the world. The One in the believers is the Triune God, who dwells in the believers as the all-inclusive, life-giving, anointing Spirit, and who strengthens us from within with all the rich elements of the Triune God (Eph. 3:16-19). Such a One is much greater and stronger than Satan, the evil spirit.
The words “he who is in the world” refer to Satan, the fallen angel. Satan usurps fallen mankind as the evil spirit and operates in evil persons, who are the components of his world system. Such a one is less than the Triune God and weaker than He is.
In verse 5 John goes on to say, “They are out of the world; therefore they speak out of the world, and the world hears them.” In this verse “they” denotes the false prophets, the antichrists. Both the heretics and the heresies concerning Christ’s Person have their source in the satanic world system. Hence, the people who are the components of this evil system listen to them and follow them.
In verse 6 John concludes, “We are out of God: he who knows God hears us; he who is not out of God does not hear us. From this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception.” The apostles, the believers, and the truth which they believe and teach concerning Christ have their source in God; they are out of God. Hence, the God-knowing people, who have been begotten of God (v. 7), listen to us and stay with us. The worldlings are not out of God because they have not been begotten of God. Hence, they do not listen to us.
Literally, the Greek words rendered “from this” in verse 6 mean “out of this.” “This” refers to what has been mentioned in verses 5 and 6. From the fact that the heretics and what they speak out from their spirit, actuated by the spirit of deception, are out from the world, and that we and what we speak out from our spirit, motivated by the Spirit of truth, are out from God, we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception. This implies that the Holy Spirit of truth is one with our truth-speaking spirit, and that the evil spirit of deception is one with the heretics’ deception-speaking spirit.
In verse 6 John speaks of both the Spirit of truth and the spirit of deception. The Spirit of truth is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of reality (John 14:17; 15:26; 16:13). The spirit of deception is Satan, the evil spirit, the spirit of falsehood (Eph. 2:2). The word “truth” in 4:6 denotes the divine reality revealed in the New Testament, especially here concerning the divine incarnation of the Lord Jesus, which the Spirit of God testifies (1 John 4:2). This reality is in contrast to the deception of the evil spirit, the spirit of the antichrist that denies the divine incarnation of Jesus (v. 3).
In a foregoing message we pointed out that the principle of antichrist is to deny some aspect of Christ’s Person and replace it with something other than Christ. If someone denies an aspect of Christ revealed in the Scriptures, that one is following the principle of antichrist, although what he is doing may be done unconsciously and unintentionally. Likewise, if someone replaces an aspect of Christ with something that is not of Christ, he is also practicing the principle of antichrist.
The teaching among today’s Christians follows this principle, at least to some extent. For instance, the traditional teaching concerning the Trinity is not complete. Moreover, this teaching makes the Trinity an objective doctrine that has very little to do with Christian experience. Some teach that the One who dwells in us is only the Spirit, representing the Son and the Father, who are in the heavens. These are illustrations of inaccurate and incomplete teachings concerning the Trinity.
We agree with much of the traditional, fundamental teaching, as far as it goes. We surely believe that God created the entire universe and, in particular, man in His image; that man sinned and became fallen; that God so loved the world that He sent His Son to be our Savior and Redeemer to die on the cross for our sins; that Christ, the Son of God, resurrected from the dead and ascended to the heavens, where He is now the Lord; that the Holy Spirit has been sent to convince people, to move in them, and to help them repent and believe in the Lord Jesus; and that the Holy Spirit enables us to behave in a way that glorifies the name of God. Although all this is correct, there is nothing here concerning the enjoyment and experience of the entire Triune God.
When I was with the Brethren, from 1 John I was taught to love others. I was told that God is love and that a Christian should imitate God by loving others. However, I was not taught that this very God who is love abides in me and that He wants to impart Himself into my being and saturate me with Himself so that I may enjoy Him inwardly as love. Neither was I taught that this love should saturate me until it becomes the love with which I love others. From the way I was taught, I understood that God is on the throne and that this God is love. As He looks down upon us, He loves everyone, and now He commands us, His children, to love others. But I did not realize that my love should have anything to do with His love. Rather, His love was presented as an example for me to imitate. The two kinds of love had nothing to do with each other.
The revelation concerning love in 1 John is very different. John tells us that God is love. The very God who is love abides in us, and we abide in Him. According to 3:24, “we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He gave to us.” This Spirit keeps us in an organic union with the very God who is love, causing this God to become our life and even our being. Furthermore, this Spirit is saturating us with the substance of the God who is love. Eventually, the fibers of our being will be constituted of the loving essence of God. This means that the divine love becomes us. Then spontaneously we love others. However, we do not love them by our own love; we love them by God as our love. What a great difference between this kind of love and the love that is simply a human attempt to imitate the love of God!
What many Christians have today is for the most part an objective religion with teachings and regulations. Often the believers are advised and encouraged to do good. However, this teaching is not related to the divine life, which is actually the Triune God within us. In this sense, much of the teaching among today’s Christians is in the principle of antichrist, although unintentionally, either in denying certain aspects of Christ or in replacing Christ with other things.
All the virtues in our human living should be Christ Himself as the embodiment of the Triune God expressed from within us. Christ should be our love, humility, kindness, meekness, patience. Can you see that the teaching to improve our behavior and character leads to a replacement of the living Christ who dwells within us? Paul could say, “To me to live is Christ” (Phil. 1:21). Christ was Paul’s love, meekness, patience, and humility. Christ was every aspect of Paul’s human virtues. By this we see that we should not have anything of ourselves in place of Christ. If we replace Christ with something of our own behavior and character, we are practicing the principle of antichrist in the sense of allowing certain things to replace Christ Himself.
We all need to apply this word to ourselves and be on the alert lest in any way we follow the principle of antichrist. If we deny an aspect of Christ’s Person, we are against Him, anti Him. If we have something in our daily living that replaces Christ, we also are against Christ, anti Christ. To be anti Christ is both to be against Christ and to replace Christ with something else. If we replace Christ with our own good character and behavior, we are practicing the principle of antichrist. In a practical way, we are against the anointing, anti the moving, working, and saturating of the Triune God within us. Instead of being anti the anointing, we must live according to the anointing. Otherwise, we shall be against Christ or we shall replace Christ with something else.
Do you realize that we may follow the principle of antichrist in our daily living? We may replace Christ with things of our culture and our natural life. The Chinese may replace Christ with their ethics; the Japanese, with their way of being mysterious; the Americans, with their kind of frankness; the northern Europeans, with their conservatism. Whatever our race or culture may be, we may replace Christ with our culture or with our way of having our daily life according to our culture. To replace Christ in this way is to practice the principle of antichrist.
The Epistle of 1 John is on the fellowship of the divine life. This means that this Epistle is concerned with the enjoyment and experience of the Triune God. The divine fellowship is a matter of enjoying the Divine Trinity, for the divine life is actually the Triune God Himself. Hence, when we speak of the fellowship of the divine life, we actually mean the experience and enjoyment of the Triune God. We have seen that this fellowship, this enjoyment, is carried out by the anointing within us (2:27). The anointing is the moving, the working, of the Triune God in us to saturate us with Himself and make Him everything to us. I believe that this thought was in the heart of the apostle John as he was writing this book.
On the one hand, traditional theology may deny certain aspects of what Christ is. On the other hand, this theology may make the Triune God mostly a doctrine that is not related to our daily Christian life. Therefore, this theology may be according to the principle of antichrist in that it either denies something of what Christ is or replaces Christ with something else. Christ may be replaced with religion, culture, improved character, or good behavior. Those who hold to traditional theological teaching may not even believe that Christ dwells in the believers. They may believe only that the Holy Spirit is a power to inspire us that we may do good. But this kind of theology has nothing to do with God’s essence wrought into our being to become our daily enjoyment and experience. By this we can see that much of today’s theology is in the principle of antichrist.
But what is the situation with us? Perhaps doctrinally we do not deny anything of Christ’s Person. But in our daily life we may replace Christ with many natural, religious, cultural, and ethical things. We may replace Christ with our thinking and habits, with our cultural standards, with our religious tradition, and with our ethical concepts, none of which has anything to do with the anointing. In this sense, we may be according to the principle of antichrist. Although we are not against Christ, we may be anti Christ in the sense of replacing Christ with other things, even the good things of religion, culture, and ethics.
We need to repent for replacing Christ with other things. We need to repent for having a daily living that is in the principle of antichrist, that allows culture, religion, ethics, and natural concepts to replace Christ. We need to pray, “Lord, save us, rescue us, and deliver us from all replacements. Lord, bring us back to Your anointing. We don’t want to be anti Christ in any way. We don’t want to be anti the anointing. Lord, we want to live and walk in, with, through, and by the anointing. We want to live and walk by the moving, working, and saturating of the Triune God within us.” This is the revelation of the Bible, and this is also our burden in the Lord’s recovery today.
