02.01.07. 1John 4:1- 6 The testing of spirits . .
§ 7. 1 John 4:1-6 THE TESTING OF SPIRITS The world in which St. John was living was, like our own, full of “movements.” To-day we are constantly attending and hearing of meetings which represent this or that movement —that is, this or that group of persons inspired by a common aim, holding some idea in common or following some leader, and accordingly conferring and acting together. Something of the same kind was occurring in St. John’s day.
Most important of all in our eyes, though not so in the eyes of St. John’s contemporaries, was the Catholic Church, which was spreading throughout the Greek and Roman world and was soon to gain such a position that, though the philosophers endeavoured to ignore it, the imperial authorities could not. Then there was the group of movements called Gnostic, partly Christian but much more substantially Oriental in origin. Their nomenclature sounds to us barbaric and weird, but they have remarkable affinities with modern theosophy and other kinds of idealism. Those known to St. John had all been founded by men who had belonged to, and had left, the Christian faith and Church, and the same was the case with some of the later Gnostic sects. And they proved very attractive. A hundred years later than St. John Tertullian speaks of “ this man or that, the most faithful, the wisest, the most experienced in the Church, going over to the wrong side ’’ — that is, the Gnostics. Then in the purely Pagan world there were almost innumerable cults of different divinities, each with its own society of votaries; and the followers of different philosophies and modes of life formed their own circles; and there were guilds innumerable — trade guilds, burial guilds, guilds of all kinds; while the loyalty to the city and empire of Rome, which gave the world peace and order, expressed itself in the deification of Rome and of the emperors, and a vast organization attached itself to this worship. Thus it was an age of movements and associations. Now St. John knew that the inspirer and maintainer of the Church was the Spirit of God; but, believing as lie did in created spirits also, evil as well as good, lie saw perhaps, in each of these contemporary movements, such at least as lie judged false, the action of a personal evil spirit inspiring and controlling it. Thus, where we should bid people not commit themselves to any movement which demanded their adhesion without careful examination, St. John bids them not to believe every spirit, but to “prove” or test the spirits. This is the point of the next paragraph.
They are to test the spirits, because as St. John looks out over the world he sees a widespread activity of false prophets. He knows that they are false and that the spirit which animates them is not of God. What is the test that he applies and would have all his brethren apply?
We should have expected him, perhaps, to apply the practical test of their lives, their works, their character, but here it is the test of doctrine which he makes absolute and all-sufficient.
Every spirit which acknowledges the truth of the Incarnation — which sees in Jesus the Christ, the very Son of God made flesh— is of God.
And, on the other hand, every spirit which refuseth this faith in Jesus is not of God and is a spirit of antichrist, such as they have heard of and can see active among them. The Christians have no cause to fear these false spirits. The power that is in them is greater than anything that is in the world. They are children of God and they have the experience of victory already. Nor have they any reason to be surprised at the popularity of anti-Christian movements. They belong to the world. It is so they speak and so they are listened to: they demand, that is, of people, no change of heart. They take them as they find them, on their own level. On the other hand, the Church comes from God, and those whose hearts God has touched — those who know God — listen to His messengers: those and those only. This acknowledgement of the truth of the Incarnation, this readiness to listen to the message of the Church, is all-sufficient to distinguish the spirit of truth from the spirit of error.
Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: and every spirit which confesseth not Jesus is not of God: and this is the spirit of the antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it cometh; and now it is in the world already. Ye are of God, my little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. They are of the world: therefore speak they as of the world, and the world heareth them. We are of God: he that knoweth Gk)d heareth ns; he who is not of God heareth us not. By this we know the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.
1. Spirits good and evil.—Qt. John no doubt believed, not only in the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, as personal, but in a whole world of created personal spirits good and evil— in the devil and in other evil spirits. If he had only spoken of “the Spirit of truth’’ inspiring the Church, and “the spirit of error,’’ “he that is in the world,” inspiring the false prophets and their followers, or of manifold spirits of error, we should have had no doubt that he was referring to personal spirits. But when he talks of a multiplicity of spirits (“every spirit”) which acknowledge Christ with a true, faith (1 John 4:2) we are in doubt. He can hardly conceive of groups of Christians or individual Christians as inspired by a number of minor personal spirits, true and good. At least that" would be a new doctrine, unheard-of elsewhere.
Only the one Holy Spirit is spoken of as inspiring Christians. So we are driven to wonder whether St. John does not use “spirit’’ (without the definite article) almost in the sense in which we use it when we speak of the “corporate spirit’’ in a movement, or “the group spirit.’’ That is to use the word “spirit’’ not to describe a distinct personal being, but a display of spiritual influence. Of course, this again is a mysterious thing, something plainly not individual, which yet can hardly be thought of as wholly impersonal. But St. John would not be analyzing it; he would simply be using the word spirit in this place vaguely, as we use it, to describe the unseen but compelling force of any movement, good or bad, among men.
2. The doctrinal tests— that “Jesus Christ is come in the flesh,” or that “Jesus is the Christ who has come in the flesh.” There were in early days “Docetics” (so called) who believed that Jesus Christ was a mere apparition with no real and bodily humanity. But St. John’s opponents do not appear to have held any such belief. They had no doubt that the man Jesus was real, “in the flesh.” What they doubted was whether the divine being — the Son or the Christ, as they called him — was really identical with Jesus in person, or was only temporarily associated with Him — visiting Him at His baptism and withdrawing from Him before His death. When St. John then makes the point of faith to be the confession that *’ Jesus is the Christ, come in the flesh,’’ he must mean, as he elsewhere expresses it, the belief that the man Jesus of Nazareth was nothing less than the manifestation in the flesh of the eternal Word and Son of God — Himself God made flesh and Himself the glorified Christ. The contrary judgment is expressed in our text as “every spirit which confesseth not Jesus,’’ i.e. which does not so acknowledge Him as the Christ and the divine Son. This is the reading of all the Greek MSS. But the Latin MSS. and Fathers attest another reading (see R.V. margin) which goes back to quite primitive times, which is translated “ every spirit which annulleth,” or much better, “which dissolveth Jesus, is not of God.” This is so difficult and at the same time so significant a reading that I am disposed to believe that it is original. It would express exactly what Cerinthus and his followers did. They resolved the single person, Jesus Christ, incarnate Son of God, into two persons — one celestial, called Son and Christ; and the other of earth, Jesus of Nazareth. And St. John repudiates this theory of theirs as fundamentally destructive of Christianity. For he has concentrated his mind through a long life on this point, and he is profoundly convinced that the only sufficient basis of Christian practice is the Christian theory or faith in the real incarnation of the Son of God — that Jesus was and is the Christ and Son of God, and not only a human person in some close connection with him. Thus it is that he speaks so dogmatically and decisively.
Only, be it observed, he would not be content with his disciples accepting his word for it.
They must judge for themselves. For themselves tiiey must “test the spirits.’’ Because the same Spirit which has guided their teacher’s judgement and inspired their teacher’s conviction will in like manner guide and inspire them.
3. St. John’s decisiveness. — We to-day, who would be intelligent persons, do not find intellectual decisions easy. We like to see good on all sides and in all opinions. But St. John is intensely persuaded that there is a mortal struggle going on between good and evil, between truth and falsehood, between Christ and the devil. Thus, he seeks to go to the root principle of every claim and determine whether it is, at the root and so in its ultimate issues, for Christ or against Him. It cannot be both. And he sees the root principle of Christian truth, as has just been said, in the real incarnation of God in Jesus. And with an unfaltering decision he proclaims and applies this test. And here, in this paragraph, he proclaims this doctrinal test as if it stood alone and there were no other. But then immediately the note changes. He shows the reason of this zeal for the theological truth. It is because it is the ground, the only adequate ground, of the conviction that God is love and love is the only true life for man.