Sermon Tone Analysis

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/1 //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. 2 //By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 //and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.

This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

4 //Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

5 //They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.

6 //We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us.

By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error./

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The book of 1 John is about assurance.

It is about truth.

And certainty.

And confidence.

The reason why these things are needed is because we live in a world of doubt and lies and error and deceit.

The Apostle John wants us to know that the Christian life is supposed to be lived victoriously.

But that means we have to do battle.

We have to fight.

And we have to fight because we have an enemy.

In fact, we have many enemies.

And it is important that we know who our enemies are.

John’s original readers were probably facing threats and persecution.

They had been abandoned by many who had left the church, perhaps leaving them even more vulnerable.

But these were not their enemies.

In spite of the attacks against them, John wants them to know that /people/ are not the real enemy.

There is something much more serious going on here.

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THERE ARE MANY FALSE PROPHETS

Chapter three ended with a reference to God’s Spirit given to believers as proof that God himself abides in them.

John’s reference to the Spirit was intended to demonstrate that obedience to God’s commandments is not something we can do without God’s help.

Christians depend on the presence and power of God’s Spirit to live out the Christian life.

The problem is that God’s Spirit is not the only spirit at work.

Those who had left the church (1 John 2:19) did so with the spirit of the antichrist, and now they were going out like Christian missionaries attempting to convert others to their beliefs.

The Apostle John took such people very seriously.

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/For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh.

Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.

Watch yourselves, so that you may not lose what we have worked for, but may win a full reward/.

(2 John 7-8)

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John is obviously concerned that these “antichrists” not succeed in their attempts to deceive.

Everything he writes in this letter is part of his attempt to prevent any more in the church from being deceived.

He says, “I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you” (1 John 2:26), and “Little children, let no one deceive you” (1 John 3:7).

For John, the spirit of the antichrist was a dangerous enemy, and he felt it was necessary to protect the church from its attacks.

The spirit of the antichrist was what was behind the “many false prophets” that had “gone out into the world.”

And the spirit of the antichrists is still at work today, so John’s admonition to “not believe” every spirit is just as relevant now as it was in the apostle’s day.

But how dangerous are these “spirits”?

What can they do to you and me?

What happens if we do end up believing them?

In answering such questions let us not be tempted to reduce the level of the threat to something less than John did.

The spirit of the antichrist at work in many false prophets is a greater threat to you and me than any terrorist plot stewing in the Middle East.

I say this because Osama Bin Laden can only take your life.

The spirit of the antichrist is after your soul.

I pray that God gives us all unusual perception into the gravity of this situation.

But first we should try to identify these “false prophets” that John speaks about.

Who are they?

John does not identify them by name because he says there are many of them.

Instead he urges us to “test” them to see if “they are from God.”

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A TEST FOR DISCERNMENT

A test is given for the purpose of identifying truth and distinguishing it from error.

For the Christian, this is important because God is the source of all truth.

Because God exists, truth exists.

And because truth exists, error also exists.

Error is simply the absence of truth.

But how can we tell the difference between the two?

Because the spirit of the antichrist attempts to persuade through deception, we cannot assume that their error will always be obvious to us.

It may be obvious that /differences/ exist between two ideas, but it is not always easy to know which of the two is true.

We need a way to discern, and the Apostle gives us two ways to do so.

!! Belief about Jesus

In verses 2-3, John gives us the first way that we can test the spirit behind a teaching, idea, or philosophy.

“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 first test, then, centers on the Person of Jesus.

What we believe and confess about him is of paramount importance.

The spirit of the antichrist is a spirit of theological error.

Therefore, what we believe about God (theology) matters a great deal.

This does not mean that we must have /everything/ right theologically, but it means that we must have /some/ things right.

Most importantly, we have to be right about who Jesus is.

If we get that wrong, it matters little what else we might have right.

For the Christian, every belief revolves around our beliefs about Jesus.

John says what we must confess is this: “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.”

This is not a meaningless slogan.

John is not concerned so much with these words as he is with the belief.

So we need to unpack this confession.

What John wants us to insist upon is that Jesus, the historical person, is the Christ, the promised Messiah, who has appeared in human flesh.

The emphasis of the confession lies squarely on the event of the incarnation.

But it’s not so much that John wants us to believe that the event happened; rather, he wants us to believe the significance of the event, namely, that the Christ became a man and continues to be so.

John’s concern with the significance of the incarnation was certainly due to the fact that he was combating proto-gnostic ideas about who Jesus was.

Some Gnostics taught that Jesus was the Christ, but that he only appeared to be human.

Others taught that the Christ indwelt the human person Jesus only for a temporary period between his baptism and his crucifixion.

But John’s confession is that Jesus /is/ the Christ and that he is fully human.

In our day, heretical views about Jesus are usually somewhat different from what John was combating.

While the heresy in John’s day sought to protect Christ from Jesus by refusing to accept that the Christ could become human, the lie today seeks to protect Jesus from Christ by refusing to accept that the human Jesus could have been divine.

This is exactly what the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Mormons continue to teach about Jesus.

What John insists upon is the miracle of the Incarnation.

God became a man in the historical person Jesus.

!! Response to God’s Word

But confessions with the mouth are useless if they do not truly reveal the belief in the heart.

In verse 3 John says that the spirit of the antichrist “does not confess Jesus” and so “is not from God.”

To confess Jesus means not only to assert one’s loyalty to him but also to accept him as he is: God in the flesh.

We have not confessed Jesus if we make him something different than what he is.

He was not just a good teacher, moral example, or religious guru.

He is God incarnate.

And because he is God, we cannot show allegiance to him while refusing to obey him.

That’s why we should not be too surprised at John’s second test for discerning between truth and error.

We find it at the end of this passage, in verse 6: “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us.

By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”

Now this seems to be a rather bold if not arrogant thing to say.