CHAPTER 4
Verse 1 “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.”
In this verse John sets forth the present working of evil. He addresses them as beloved ones, beneficiaries of divine love and apostolic ministry. As such they are not to go on believing every spirit. Conflict still goes on between good and evil in creation and for the people of God, particularly in the new spiritual sphere in which they live and act for the realising of divine purpose. We wrestle against principalities and powers in the heavenly places. The people of divine purpose come under the opposing influences of the two powers, God acting in revelation of Himself and evil seducing man in the flesh by its doctrine. Good and evil are now active to persuade man to believe them.
Humanity has acquired a spiritual importance out of all proportion to what is apparent in its present life and place in creation. Man was the last being God created and God has determined and committed Himself to bringing about the ultimate and eternal state in which creation will be found, by human agency. In this, however, there are two sorts of humanity. Natural man believes in himself and is concerned with the power of evil. The new order of humanity, Christ and man in Christ, is concerned with ultimate good. So the beloved of the Lord are called upon not to ‘believe’ in evil. For ultimate good, God is making His truth available to men and divine activity in him is effectively furnishing him for the future.
If the power of evil could prevent this work of God it would prove itself to be greater, wiser and more influential than God and that which He has established on earth for His purpose. The evil would ultimately triumph over good to exercise its authority eternally in creation. It is presently apparent that evil appears to be triumphing. There had not as yet been manifested to men in creation a sufficiently great power of good by which peace and prosperity can be established permanently on earth. The essential teaching of evil, which it has caused humanity to believe, is that the proper government of man’s natural abilities and the control of nature’s resources will result in peace and prosperity. Evil has used the teachings of Christ, applied to life in the present world, to persuade men to dedicate themselves to this task.
The family of God have the means at their disposal to frustrate this power of evil. They have the spiritual ability to try the spirits whether they are of God. If they are of evil they will appeal to the flesh, even in those who embrace Christianity. By appealing to conscious personal effort, devoted will, sanctified intelligence and other pious-sounding doctrines, evil seeks to persuade God’s people to act by the flesh in God’s system. The result would be to make the divine system of Christianity unproductive spiritually.
Many false prophets have gone out into the world. A prophet is one who reveals the mind of God, or that of the god of this world. Just as the God of revelation has His oracles, so also has the power of evil. They are anti-purposeful. The world has become filled and is governed spiritually by their influences. Whereas God has formed a new order of humanity for the realising of divine purpose, evil has taken over the old man by its deceptive powers. In those days God was using this new humanity, in the persons of the apostles, to complete divine revelation. To neutralise the effects this might produce, evil sent forth its prophets to falsify man’s interpretation and appreciation of revealed truth.
Evil deceives by causing man to be governed by a literal or naturalistic appreciation of the Word of God. Divine revelation manifests the spiritual realities beyond that which is external. The latter is natural, the Spirit is supernatural. Though full of religion, sanctified frequently in a worldly way by the name of Jesus, the world seeks a peace and prosperity wherein the God of revelation is unnecessary. Evil has made Christendom believe that Jesus was here on earth and is now a ‘sort of spiritual ideal’ in heaven to help man to act more devotedly and effectively and hence to establish peace and prosperity on earth. This is what their ‘Jesus’ supposedly tried to do but failed in His lifetime because man was not ready for it then.
Mature exponents of the christian system will have the ability to distinguish between good and evil in their essence and existence in the world. Natural conscience and human reason cannot adequately distinguish the two because the powers of both good and evil are greater than natural man’s powers. If we use natural conscience and human reasoning in our exposition of God’s system we will come under the destructive influence of evil.
Verse 2 “Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God.”
Revealed truth had come to them and they had been so formed by it that, as a result, they knew the Spirit of God. This is the highest knowledge to which the new man in the christian system can attain. This is also the ultimate power for good in creation, though it is unseen as yet by the world. In the present time God is developing in an esoteric way in creation this supreme good by which He and humanity in fellowship with Him is triumphing over evil. By His provision man comes to know the Spirit of God, His Person, and His work in completing divine revelation and causing it to be fully and perfectly apprehended.
The Spirit of God is given to them and became known by them so that the Lord Jesus might now be confessed and glorified on earth as a result of His having been in the flesh. At that time, when the Word of God was being communicated, as by John, they had to be absolutely sure that what they received was the Word of God in truth. They had the spiritual ability to do this. For us, now that the Word of God has been completed, the all-important thing is that we know what it signifies. The things of God are spiritually discerned. As a result of the work of many false prophets – the fleshly, worldly interpreters and ecclesiastical authorities – many ways of ‘understanding’ the Bible from a human viewpoint are set forth in the world.
The hallmarks of the Spirit of Christ, who has been sent into the world to take of the things of the Christ and reveal these things to us, can be known and tested. By His presence and ministry, He glorified the Christ who gave up His earthly Messianic rights to glorify His Father. This is set forth in John 16:13-15. Here, however, it is every spirit, the manifestation of the Spirit in man and the resulting ability to discern the Word of God spiritually. Men use natural sciences and knowledge in their critical approach to the Scriptures. They test the spirits by natural powers and arrive at the wrong conclusions.
Verse 3 “And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world.”
True Christianity, however, has as its basic spiritual foundation the fact that in the beginning Jesus Christ came in flesh. Every true spirit is occupied with confessing and presenting Christ rather than Adam. Modern theology often claims to be Christocentric but the ‘‘Christ’ around which it centres is one who springs from Adam rather than one who came from God. His coming in flesh infers His pre-incarnate existence. His incarnation involved taking upon Himself flesh, human nature, sin apart. Every spirit which is of God always has its facts right about Christ. In our case of course we have the written gospels, the Holy Spirit’s perfect confession concerning the Christ come in flesh.
Every spirit that confesses not Jesus Christ come in flesh is not of God. A form of Christianity in which the Deity and humanity of Christ is not basic in its framework and practice to the confessing of Him, is not of God. Christianity is concerned with giving Christ His true place in the Word in our midst now. God involved Himself in creation’s course and hence its destiny in Christ in flesh, but since He is no longer in flesh in nature He is not presenting His Messianic claims at that level. The Holy Spirit is now subsequently active on earth to confess Him in all His fulness by declaring the full spiritual significance of the life He once lived on earth.
It was because Judaism could not contain and mediate all the fulness of this truth that it had to be replaced by this better and more perfect system, as is set forth in the epistle to the Hebrews. The truth involved in Deity having been unveiled in flesh is what has to be laid hold upon. Every spirit which is of God contributes toward this. Every spirit which does not confess this is only making confession concerning the flesh. Even if a spiritual power may use the earthly name of Jesus it is not thereby of God. We should not be interested in a natural, historical Christ but rather in the One perfectly confessed by the Spirit.
Earthbound ‘Christianity’ needs nothing more than human nature for its exposition. This sort of Christianity uses the name of God’s Christ by which to glorify itself. A Christianity which declares that Jesus Christ demonstrated what human nature is capable of being and doing is not of God. Jesus Christ is not different to other human beings merely in that His humanity was different in degree to others, but that in it He brought Deity into humanity.
We are constituted God’s family on earth and true spirits are active in it, not to change and improve what we are in Adam but to confess the Christ who once lived here in His uniqueness. We have now been established on earth to make confession to God in particular concerning the truth involved in His having been here and that which has resulted from it. We are to be one in order that we might glorify the Son, as in John 17:21-24.
It is the spirit or power of the antichrist that confesses not such a Christ. The power of the greatest form of evil might make itself heard in their midst, so they must learn to recognise it. It had been revealed and they already knew that this would ultimately assert itself dominatingly on earth. The coming of the truth of God in all its fulness does not prevent evil developing itself to the full. This spirit, which would become ascendant in nature, had already begun to develop and assert itself even in the midst of those who had the knowledge of good and evil from God. Such a spirit could be tried by them and known for what it truly was if they followed apostolic instruction and used the spirituality they would thereby acquire. So they could keep themselves from this power of evil which would prove itself sufficiently great to captivate the world.
In the days in which we live we see the end-result of this process. Practically none of those who are ‘reputable theologians’ would disagree with the critical approach to the Bible. Almost universally, Christianity has become a religion of human nature rather than the new nature. Jesus Christ is presented as a fleshly example for ordinary humanity. All these things are an effective denial of Jesus Christ come in flesh. By it, evil teaches man to deny God the spiritual effects He desires from His intervention in the course of history, His coming into creation in the likeness of man.
Verse 4 “Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is He that is in you, that he that is in the world.”
God has successfully established on earth a community which is of Himself as a result of the coming of the Son and then of the Holy Spirit. This community had attained to the high state of spiritual excellence which John is describing. They had acquired the knowledge of good and evil. They knew the good which God desired of them in their service. They knew the spiritual evil that had to be avoided. They had their Christianity right and were glorifying God in it. The Word of God and His people’s response is the ultimate power for good which God is building up in man for the realising of His declared intentions to bless.
The power of evil in full maturity had come into conflict with God’s people in this state and they had overcome it. They had, so to speak, demonstrated the feasibilities of divine purpose. What God had provided for man, the means whereby He will realise His intentions, had produced effective results. In them God had enabled man to be and to do ultimate spiritual good in the face of all evil’s powers. God had given to such humanity an uncorrupted knowledge of Himself by apostolic ministry. This was because He that was in them, a Christ glorified by them, was greater than he that was in their false-prophet adversaries. The ultimate conflict between good and evil in creation is now proceeding at this level. The power of ultimate good is in the Word of God and it acts to build up communities which are of God in the present time. Evil in its worst form is the power that corrupts man’s understanding of revealed truth.
They had demonstrated the excelling greatness of the divine system by which they were of God in constitution and practice. Evil’s system in the world is of inferior spiritual power to that of God’s properly established and practised. The world and its prince is coming to nought despite outward appearances to the contrary. They demonstrate that good is prevailing even though ultimate good in them is not yet manifested to the world.
Verse 5 “They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.”
They, the false prophets and now the false interpreters of the Word of God, are of the world. The world, in its present unblessed state where evil acts, is the place in which their sort of ‘Christianity’ belongs. By their life and doctrine they seek to gain the world for their christ who is really antichrist. They will ultimately, according to divine intention, succeed in doing so when the antichrist comes in person. They are already preparing the world to receive him. The sort of christ the world would like and will appear to get is one who will have and use miraculous powers for the present natural benefit of humanity in the world of nature.
So now, in naturalistic Christianity, the concern is with direct involvement in the world’s problems and troubles. It takes the form of ‘christian’ aid, struggling for the politically oppressed, care for the drug addicts and so on. These intractable problems are supposedly amenable to their sort of teaching and religion. If the world would only accept this brand of ‘Christianity’ then supposedly its troubles would be over. It was by helping man in the world at this natural level that Christendom extended its influence and has become important and significant in bringing about considerable natural good in creation. “They speak of the world and the world heareth them.”
Yet this goes on according to divine intention. Evil is not really triumphing by corrupting natural humanity’s appreciation of the Word of God. Rather it is being triumphed over by God in what is happening. It is according to divine purpose that evil will extend its power over nature but it will also expend itself ultimately in this way. The ultimate kingdom of evil thus being formed is unstable. The manifestation of God’s righteous judgment in the last days, His power to separate good from evil in creation, will manifest its instability. It will not withstand the fire of His wrath.
Verse 6 “We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us: he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.”
“We” refers to the apostles, rendering their apostolic ministry on earth, particularly in their completing of the Word of God. “He that knows God” refers to those who are already believers, gathered to the name of the Lord Jesus. There is no other way of knowing the God of Christianity. What the apostles said was heard in its true and full significance by those who already knew God. The truth which the system of Christianity mediates to man is known by them. They can understand apostolic writings, receiving them as the oracles of God.
The purpose of the ages, the return of the Lord Jesus, the forming of the church, the gathering of the churches now, the present spiritual form of the Kingdom of God, the truth of the new man, the present purposeful possession of the divine nature: these are the sort of truths which the apostles were given to present. Here, however, it is the content of Christianity rather than its form or constitution that is in view.
The people of God in Christianity are built upon the foundational truths of the apostles in order to lay hold upon God, or the full knowledge of a God completely revealed by the presence and work of the Holy Spirit on earth. The family of God can contain that which the heavens cannot contain, the Spirit of the truth.
Those who do not know God do not hear what the apostles say. They cannot rightly divide the word of truth. The error is the systematised error, arising from the spirit of error, which has gone forth into the world. It declares that man in the flesh has something ultimate to contribute, particularly in Christianity where it can do most damage to the realising of divine purpose. The Spirit of truth is the Holy Spirit who has brought with Him the fulness of divine truth into the world in such a way that the people of God can know it. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”, free from the influences of the spirit of the error which captivates the world, this despite the manifestation of divine truth in it. If the Holy Spirit is allowed free activity – and this can only be where all the essential, basic doctrines of Christianity are obeyed collectively – then the truth as well as the error will be known. Man will then have the supreme, ultimate form of knowledge, which is divine ability to distinguish between good and evil. This is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which it is now lawful for man, the new man, to partake of. Man will be able to render effective service to God in the world in his present possession of divine life by partaking of the tree of life, which also grows in the midst of the garden of God.
Verse 7 “Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God: and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.”
John then exhorts them as beloved ones, those in whom this divine life abides and acts, to continue profitably for God in such life and knowledge. They are to go on loving one another. This is how to acquire and develop a spiritual mind, that which God seeks in His people. God has acted and still acts in the world for the realising of divine purpose. This activity, His love, produces a new sort of human life which is capable of acting as God does, that is, of loving others who possess it. The divine life in the people of God is exercised within the family for its growth and development. For example, during personal study of divine revelation fresh thoughts of God and His Christ, or of the ideal involved in His people, are formed in their minds. These are brought to the family gathering and shared, added to, discerned. In this way divine love goes on acting toward one another for the spiritual growth of all.
For the love is of God. The power which activates men in Christianity is divine and not natural affection. It is not, or should not be, a question of purifying or sanctifying ones natural feelings toward others who possess divine life. It is God who acts in us both to will and to do His good pleasure. Nature and natural activity has been excluded by God and should be by us in the assembly, Rom.6:11. God has bestowed His love upon us and desires to see its activity in His family as a result.
He who loves in this practical, productive way is born of God. “Born” is in the perfect tense: he is showing that his new birth was an effective, spiritual reality. Practical Christianity, contrary to what is generally understood, consists of conferring the knowledge of a God of love, that is of revelation, upon one another rather than in showing natural favour. One who loves is one who has acquired the capacity to contain the love of God and to cause it to overflow to others. He has gone in for that which the love of God has produced on earth, the Scriptures of truth, and gives to others that which he has thus acquired. This is the love for the brethren which Christianity can activate.
Verse 8 “He that loveth not knoweth no God: for God is love.”
The one who does not go on loving in his Christianity knoweth (aorist) not God. He has not known, as a basic fact of his christian life, that it is essential for its adherents to go on acting as God has acted, in divine life with divine love. If his practice of Christianity is not wholly in the supernatural things given to us by God but digresses into the secular, he knows not God. Spiritual Christianity is the only means whereby man can know God.
God is love. It is His nature. The great and significant thing about Christianity is that God has fully acted according to His nature to substantiate it in the world. The coming of Jesus Christ in flesh and the subsequent declaration of this in the completed Scriptures is the demonstration that He is love. God is love and loves. This love can now be known on earth in all its fulness by those who practise Christianity aright. In Christ there was nothing to prevent the complete display of divine love. In Christianity there need not be anything to prevent man knowing that God is love.
Nature, though created by God, is not great enough to demonstrate the love of God. Further, there is evil as well as good in it. Judaism also was not a great enough system to declare the depths of divine love. Only the Only-Begotten who is in the bosom of the Father could tell Him forth fully. What has now resulted from this is the Word of God. The New Testament has been given and Christianity established, whereby the full significance of the Old Testament can be known. Unlike nature, there is no evil in the Word of God. The Word is wholly of God and declares absolutely faithfully who God is and what He has done.
To know divine love, the function of the people of God in Christianity, it is necessary to know Genesis to Revelation in terms of the Spirit it contains, rather than just the letter. This is what mature spirituality can cause the people of God to know – love. Natural ability, wisdom and knowledge, cannot do this. To bring natural powers into the sphere in which the God of revelation loves and acts is to introduce imperfection and failure and to debase truth. All things in it are of the God of love.
Verse 9 “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His Only Begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him.”
Christ, and subsequently Christianity, is the manifestation of the love of God toward humanity. It is now manifested that the new order of humanity formed by divine intervention can be occupied with divine love and come to know it fully. The love of God, though it has been fully manifested, is not yet manifested for the world’s direct benefit.
Human love is extremely difficult to define for it is a combination of many different emotions. God’s love however is pure and, as already stated, it takes the whole of the Word of God, the completed work of the Spirit of truth, to define it. For our present purpose we would define it as follows:
‘love is the supreme power, faculty and desire in God.”
God is self-existent, not dependent on any created thing or being for His continued existence. But God is love and it’s activity produced a creation in which He will be fully known and in which man will live in blessing according to His intentions. It took the life and death of Christ to bring this about. Christianity likewise is also a means of manifesting divine love in such a way as to produce present effects. By it God is securing a people who can fully know the love of God which passes natural knowledge, as in Eph.3:19.
Here it is the love of God toward us. In verse 12 it is in us, in verse 17 with us. There is spiritual development as we shall see as we proceed. It was manifested toward us in Christ. It is in us as a result of the forming of divine life by believing. It is with us subsequently as we walk in purposeful ways, profitably for God.
The manner in which God’s love was manifested was by sending His only-begotten Son into the world. He who was uncreated came into creation to prepare man in it to receive the love of God and mediate its effects to creation ultimately. The incarnation and subsequent life of the Son in fleshly humiliation was what was required to manifest love toward us. His death, in the flesh and to flesh, was what it took to form the only sort of life capable of appreciating the manifestation – man begotten of the Holy Spirit. All the Persons of Deity are and have been active to manifest divine love. It takes the coming or procession of God into creation to display Himself in the fulness of His glory. God has acted unhinderedly, without reference to other beings, to manifest His love and satisfy it by the effects it produces. Love always existed in divine Persons in Godhead. It acted then as a power which makes them One Being. Now it has acted in creation to produce a people who are made one through its activity.
God made creation, not by love, but by power: He spoke and it was so. Creation came about by power and wisdom only as a natural scene wherein full divine activity would take place. The world was made and humanity begotten that God, the Only-Begotten, might come into it in flesh to complete a perfect work. Apart from Him nothing has been made that is made, John 1:3.
The externally existent love of God flowed out into creation to manifest the life and nature of God in it in an appreciable way. This involved one Person in the Godhead, the Son, becoming obedient to another, the Father. He agreed to make His Sonship subservient to God’s Fatherhood in order to beget many sons and bring them into glory with Himself. Yet He did not proceed out of Deity but in Deity into humanity. The love of God came to be embodied in that which was not Deity but of creation. That was the body and fleshly nature of the Lord Jesus. God determined that His love would be manifested and become known by that which was of creation. So the love that unifies Deity came to unite Deity to humanity in the case of the Lord Jesus on earth.
So God, for the display of His love and the realising of His intentions, bound Himself in the full manifestation of His love to a part of His creation, the holy thing conceived in Mary and born of her, the Lord’s human body. The will of God to do this and the willingness and ability of the Son to comply, manifests the fulness of divine love toward us. An effect produced from this is that God will be bound to His creation universally by the unbreakable power of His love.
It was the only-begotten Son whom He sent. This term does not mean that He became the Son or became the Only-Begotten at incarnation. That would have involved a change in Deity and of course God is unchanging and unchangeable. Only-Begotten (one word in the original) sets Him forth as One whose life eternally existed. He was not begotten as we are when we receive divine life but was eternally only-begotten. God sent Him in Deity into the world to live in it in possession of human life.
He did so that we might live (aorist) through him. This is the present effect produced by the manifested love of God in Christ. The love of God which sent the Son to take up created life was to flow out further, that this new form of life might be produced in others. Love is the power that reproduces. God so loved His only-begotten Son that He desired to reproduce His life in others. This was why the world was made and why the Son was sent into it. Our living through Him is our becoming alive to God as an effective result produced by His work.
In the experience of the Lord Jesus, the order is the reverse of that which we experience. By nature we are partakers of created life and then come to live before God in uncreated life begotten in us by the love of God. So the present time is characterised Godwardly by the forming of a new people from the intervention of divine love. This love has been manifested and certain men are now made ‘alive’ through the work of the only-begotten Son. The present time is a divinely necessary stage in the final realising of all God’s intentions. Then all creation will live eternally through Him, being blessed by this love of God manifested through His Son.