Test the Spirits

Not every claim to spiritual authority comes from the Holy Spirit. False prophets have always troubled the people of God, and they are particularly active in the Apostolic age. John therefore opens 1 John 4 with a charge to discernment and a clear test by which true and false spirits may be distinguished. He writes: “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world” (v. 1). The exhortation cuts against the assumption that any spiritual claim must be received with reverence. Christians are not to be naive about religious experience or prophetic pretension. Spirits and the prophets who claim to speak by them are to be tested.

John’s reason is sober: “Many false prophets have gone out into the world” (v. 1). The same false teachers whom John has been combating throughout the letter no doubt claimed inspiration for their heretical doctrines. They presented themselves as bearers of new spiritual revelation, channels of truth higher than the simple Apostolic gospel. The church’s resistance to them required more than vague spiritual sensitivity; it required a definite test by which spurious claims could be exposed.

That test is given in verses 2–3: “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.” The criterion is doctrinal, focused on the person of Christ. The Spirit who inspired the Apostolic writings cannot contradict the Apostolic gospel. Any spirit that denies the incarnation, that fails to confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, is not the Holy Spirit. The true deity and true humanity of Christ are nonnegotiable. When a teaching denies either, the spirit behind that teaching is not from God.

John concludes by identifying this denying spirit. “This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already” (v. 3). The spirit at work in the false teachers is not merely an alternative theological perspective. It is the very spirit of opposition to Christ that the church had been warned to expect. To embrace such teaching is to align oneself with that opposition, however orthodox the language used to describe it. The testing of spirits is not a luxury but the church’s defense against the antichrist, whose assault is already underway.