Wednesday Extravaganza: Sabotage–Sabotage Prevention: Discernment (10 of 13)

For those of you who were expecting this post yesterday, sorry!  It’s been a packed out week…

1 John 4:1-6

Beloved, do not believer every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world.  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; and this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.  You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.  They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them.  We are from God; we who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us.  By this we know the spirit of truth from the spirit of error.

Background
John takes time in this section to contrast himself and his fellow apostles (the rest of the 12 who were with Jesus during his time on earth, and the apostle Paul) with the false teachers who were sabotaging Jesus.  This section focuses on the differences in their messages about Jesus. 

What it means…
John transitions from his previous section–which he ended by mentioning the Holy Spirit, who lives in every Christian–by encouraging his readers not to accept every message they hear about Jesus without examining it first.  If someone says that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, then they’re teaching the correct message (it agrees with the message of the apostles–see 1 John 5:6).  If someone says that Jesus isn’t the Christ, or that He didn’t come in the flesh, then they’re teaching falsehood.  They have the spirit of the antichrist–they stand in opposition to Jesus.  John reassures his readers that they have overcome the false teachers, because God (specifically the Holy Spirit) is in them–and He is greater than the false teachers.  John then contrasts the false teachers with himself and the other apostles (who have by this time all died, but their message lived on in Scripture).  The false teachers are from the world, but the apostles are from God.  Those who choose to listen to the false teachers are in error.  Those who choose to listen to John and the other apostles are in the truth.

How we can apply it…
Like John’s original readers, we, too, are to examine every message we hear about Jesus before accepting it.  Just because someone has a particular title or a fancy TV show with a gold throne and wife who looks like she lost a paintball battle doesn’t mean we should automatically accept what they say about Jesus.  The criteria we’re to use is the message of the apostles–which we find in the Bible.  They were eyewitnesses to Jesus, they learned from Jesus, and they were empowered by Jesus.  Therefore, we should listen to them and use their message as a filter to everything else we hear about Jesus.

There are many different messages about Jesus that are sabotage.  They range from relatively minor error (the prosperity gospel–you can have perfect health, wealth, and relationships now.  This mistakes future promise for present reality, and can lead to disillusionment) to major errors that question the deity of Jesus, the humanity of Jesus, the reason for His death, and the nature of His resurrection (the same errors of the false teachers that John confronted in his letter). 

The only way we can discern between what is true and what is garbage is to regularly read our Bibles.  The more we read and study them, the more familiar we become with the message of the Bible; the more familiar we become with the person, character, and work of Jesus; the more able we are to discern between truth and error.

So let’s read our Bibles more regularly and more intentionally.