54 - 1Jn 4:1

1Jn 4:1

Ἀγαπητοὶ, μὴ παντὶ πνεύματι πιστεύετε, ἀλλὰ δοκιμάζετε τὰ πνεύματα, εἰ ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐστιν· ὅτι πολλοὶ ψευδοπροφῆται ἐξεληλύθασιν εἰς τὸν κόσμον. The first six verses of the fourth chapter give evidence of the conclusion that the confession of the incarnate Son of God is the assurance of the energy of the Holy Ghost within us. This demonstration is so conducted as to set over against the Holy Spirit, who testifies of Christ and for Christ, the spirit of the world and of Antichrist, which not only opposes this witness, hut diffuses the opposite lie. Thus it is an argumente contrario. The exhortation of the first verse is thus not the main thing to the apostle; but the emphasis lies on1Jn 4:2b: πᾶν πνεῦμα ὃ ὁμολογεῖ κ.τ.λ.,ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐστι [“every spirit that confesses, etc., is from God”]. The Holy Spirit, indeed, is the sure token of divinesonship,but there are many spirits; hence a test is necessary, a standard must be found, to distinguish the divine Spirit from lying spirits. Now assuredly there are only twoπνεύματα [“spirits”],that of God and that of the darkness; but since each of these assumes a different character in individual men, there must be as great a variety of spirits as there is of individuals, while yet they fall into two classes, according as they bear the signature in themselves of the divine or the anti-Christian spirit. Now the necessity of such a testing the apostle grounds on this (ὅτι [“that”]), that lying spirits are not only possible, but also in great numbers actually emerge. Theψευδοπροφῆται [“false prophets”],are not here alone, but everywhere in the New Testament, wherever they are spoken of, connected most intimately with the Antichrist; and as the token of this here and everywhere, there is only one thing adduced, that is, thedenial of the mission of Christ. In Mat 24:24 and the parallels theψευδόχριστοι[“false Christs”] are named together with the false prophets; the former are falseChrists,and the latter bear testimony to them as if they were trueChrists.In Acts 13:6,Bar-jesus announces himself as a false prophet, in that he opposes the preaching of St. Paul concerning Christ. In 2Pe 2:2 we have the sign of false prophets, that they τὸν ἀγοράσαντα αὐτοὺς δεσπότην ἀρνούμενοι [“the ones denying the Master who bought them”];and in the Apocalypse it is the false prophet who seduces men to the beast,—that is, to apostasy from Christ. Thus there is literally everywhere the connection withanti-Christianity.

Yet it is not to be overlooked that the name false prophet is more comprehensive in St. John than in theSynoptists. For as he understands by theἀντίχριστος [“the antichrist”] something more general than they understand by their ψευδόχριστος[“false Christ”],—that is, not only those who give themselves out for Christ, but all who are opposed to Him, who belong to the host of the arch-Antichrist,—so also the false prophets are in his estimation not only those who bear testimony to a false Christ, but all who do not give due honour to the true One. Thus it comes to pass that in the Synoptists the false prophets are only servants and helpers of the Antichrist; in St. John they appear as antichrists themselves. Further, it is not accidental that hereψευδοπροφήται [“false prophets”],is used, and not ψευδοδιδάσκαλοι [“false teachers”]In the former word, to wit, prominence is given to their dependence on a higher spirit working in the souls of men; but this token is wanting in the latter word. Since in our passage the question is of that very higher principle energizing in men’s souls, the former word, and not the latter, is appropriate. And these prophets of the lie εἰς τὸν κόσμον ἐξεληλύθασιν[“have gone out into the world”].The words may bear two interpretations: either we may take theἐξεληλύθασιν[“have gone out”] here in the same sense asἐξἡμῶνἐξῆλθον [“went out from us”]in1Jn 2:19, of the origination of the false teachers in the bosom of the congregation, in which case κόσμος [“world”] is the world as the enemy of the church; or we may understand the ἐξεληλυθέναι [“those who went out”],quite generally asprodire,without referring the ἐξ[“out of”] to the bosom of the church, and then κόσμος [“world”] is the world in its widest meaning, as the scene of their activity. This latter is recommended, not only by the circumstance that the ἐξἡμῶν [“from us”] of 1Jn 2:19 is wanting here, and that without any hint that could supplement it in the connection, but also by some more urgent reasons. For the clause containing the statement that many false teachers had gone out from the congregation into the world, and given in their adhesion to the kingdom of darkness, is by no means a foundation for the requirement δοκιμάζειντὰ πνεύματα, εἰ ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐστιν [“to test the spirits, whether they are from God”]. Such spirits would not have needed to be tested; they had become manifest by their very severance from the church. If it was a plain and palpable fact, and this is presupposed by the ὅτι [“that”] which assigns a reason, that they had gone out into the ungodly κόσμος [“world”], then in this fact there could be no inducement to the δοκιμάζειν [“to test”] for itself was the accomplishment of the δοκιμασία [“test”]. Therefore we take the κόσμος [“world”] in the wider meaning of the scene of the activity of those liars, and the ἐξέρχεσθαι [“departure”] as their appearing. That, in fact, they had gone from the midst of the Christian community is not indeed denied, it is simply not asserted here; that it was so is to be assumed from the fact that the false prophets of this passage must be identified with the antichrists of the second chapter (compare especially, 1Jn 4:3). If we must find an express allusion in the ἐξέρχεσθαι [“departure”], we must think of the kingdom of darkness generally from which they sprang, and into which they in due time will be thrust out as being their ἴδιοςτόπος [“own place”]. This trying of the spirits, which the presence of the lying prophets thus alluded to so urgently required, must all Christians discharge; for the exhortation is addressed to the entire community. Indeed, there was, according to 1Co 12:10, a proper χαρίσματῆςδιακρίσεωςπνευμάτων [“gift of discerning of spirits”], which was related to the charism of the prophets as the ἑρμηνεία [“interpretation”] was related to the γλώσσαιςλαλεῖν [“speak in tongues”] but as every charism was potentially the property of every Christian, the apostle might well enforce, nevertheless, this testing duty upon all. In the very presupposition that all had the Holy Spirit, lay the possibility that every one might detect the spirit opposed.