1 John 4:1-6: How important is Jesus to your Christianity?

“By this we know,” used twice in 1 John 4:1-6, is always a helpful phrase. When we see something like this, it’s good to find out two things: 1) what can we clearly know, and 2) by what means can we clearly know it?

So, we can clearly know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. When John says not to believe every spirit, he is pointing out something we overlook. Satan is the father of lies (John 8:44) and when we are dealing with religion, we are always always always dealing with the spiritual, with God and the devil.

When we hear something about God, we need to test it, since none of it is neutral. It is either true and helpful to us, or it is dangerous. If in error, it is not just another idea, but it comes from a lying spirit we cannot see. This makes it sound kind of weird and even a little goofy in our day, but that’s how God presents it in this text.

Therefore, we can know if something is from the Holy Spirit or from a lying spirit of error. Now, how can we know it?

A) Is it claimed that Jesus Christ is from God? B) Is it claimed that Jesus Christ was flesh too? The dual nature of Jesus Christ (the “hypostatic union” of two natures, if you want to sound technical) is here clearly presented. This isn’t everything, but its enough to rule out a lot of pseudospirituality. Someone on TV makes a claim about human nature, what do they say about the nature of Jesus? Someone makes a claim about Jesus’ teaching? What do they say about his nature?

Back in John’s day, they were saying Jesus was God, but he only was faking the human part. Now, a lot of people will say he was human, but was delusional about the God part.

Both are important. It was something expressly taught by Athanasius in the 300’s (in the short classic you really ought to read, De Incarnatione/On the Incarnation). If people are sinners and need to be reconciled to God, then nothing short of God can do it. Since people need to be reconciled, then nothing outside of humanity could do it.

Finally, John adds one extra, “by this we know.” “Whoever knows God listens to us” (6). John was an eyewitness (see John 1:1-4), but is now dead. What we have remaining to “listen” to, is the Bible. After you test what they say about Jesus, test what they say against what the Bible says. Not what they say it “really” means, but how it plainly and obviously reads.

Application: Little children, John says, we are from God, who is greater in you than he who is in the world (4). Don’t believe every little thing you hear. Test it. Christianity is founded on Jesus, and if they get that wrong, you have to reject their truth-claims.

Ps. Heaven and hell, children of God and enemies of God–these are black and white issues. Among God’s children, there is a little bit of difference, as none of us has all the answers. Learn to do a little theological triage for those who speak correctly about Jesus and the Bible.

1 John 1:1-4: Seeing, touching, knowing God–is it possible?

They were saying, in John’s final years, that the carpenter Jesus was not the Christ, not the Son of God. Also, that when God was walking among us and people were calling him “Jesus,” he was not truly physical, touchable, for how could God eat, sleep, suffer on a cross, or die? Or maybe the man Jesus died on the cross, but only after the God part of him, the supernatural Christ, left his body. These gnostic teachings were being circulated by people who had heard of Christianity, had felt drawn to certain aspects, but who felt they ought to change other aspects of it so that it might make more sense to them. (People still do this today, in the 21st century, all the time.)