Sunset in the Aegean Sea on the coast near Ephesus (Photograph © Patrick Comerford, 2008)Patrick Comerford
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. 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. 4 Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They are from the world; therefore what they say is from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us, and whoever is not from God does not listen to us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
1 Ἀγαπητοί, μὴ παντὶ πνεύματι πιστεύετε, ἀλλὰ δοκιμάζετε τὰ πνεύματα εἰ ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστιν, ὅτι πολλοὶ ψευδοπροφῆται ἐξεληλύθασιν εἰς τὸν κόσμον. 2 ἐν τούτῳ γινώσκετε τὸ πνεῦμα τοῦ θεοῦ: πᾶν πνεῦμα ὃ ὁμολογεῖ Ἰησοῦν Χριστὸν ἐν σαρκὶ ἐληλυθότα ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστιν, 3 καὶ πᾶν πνεῦμα ὃ μὴ ὁμολογεῖ τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ οὐκ ἔστιν: καὶ τοῦτό ἐστιν τὸ τοῦ ἀντιχρίστου, ὃ ἀκηκόατε ὅτι ἔρχεται, καὶ νῦν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ ἐστὶν ἤδη. 4 ὑμεῖς ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστε, τεκνία, καὶ νενικήκατε αὐτούς, ὅτι μείζων ἐστὶν ὁ ἐν ὑμῖν ἢ ὁ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ. 5 αὐτοὶ ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου εἰσίν: διὰ τοῦτο ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου λαλοῦσιν καὶ ὁ κόσμος αὐτῶν ἀκούει. 6 ἡμεῖς ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ ἐσμεν: ὁ γινώσκων τὸν θεὸν ἀκούει ἡμῶν, ὃς οὐκ ἔστιν ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ οὐκ ἀκούει ἡμῶν. ἐκ τούτου γινώσκομεν τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς ἀληθείας καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα τῆς πλάνης.
Introduction
There are two sorts of people that we all meet in parish ministry who take very contrasting attitudes to taking part in the Sunday-by-Sunday, week-by-week worship life of the parish.
On the one hand, there are those who say they love coming to church for the spiritual high they get from the music, the choir, or even, perhaps, the liturgy itself, or for the strong sense of community, and who say that this has a spiritual significance for them, but they do not believe in what the Church teaches about faith and discipleship.
And then there are those people who claim they accept and believe in Christian principles, but who say they do not need to come to Church, on Sundays or the main feast days and festivals, or to receive Holy Communion on a regular basis, because, they claim, they can just as easily worship God at home, in the privacy of their own room, or while they are out walking in the woods or walking the dog in the park.
Is the spiritual experience of the first group really valid? Is the spiritual isolationism and elitism of the second group an expression of Christianity? It appears one group wants the “spiritual high” of Christianity without the love of God, and the other wants the “spiritual high” of Christianity without having to love their fellow Christians and the rest of humanity.
Testing the spirits
This passage in I John comes between two passages on love: love of our neighbour, and the love of God. This section is about testing the Spirits, inviting us to ask questions about the right spirit and about testing the spirits. Chapter 3 ended with us being told: “Those who keep his commandments remain in him, and he in them, and the way we know that he remains in us is from the Spirit that he gave us.”
But how do we know the difference between the Holy Spirit and other promptings and leadings. How can we tell whether others who claim to be inspired by the Spirit are true or false in their claims and in the leadership they provide. This is at the heart of the divisions within the Church that are being address in I John, and that are dealt with in this section, described by C.H. Dodd as an “excursus on inspiration, true and false.”
In this epistle, John has already discussed our relationship with God (1: 5-6), with Christ (2: 3-4), with the things in the world (2: 15), with Sin (3: 4-5), and with our brothers and sisters in faith (3: 11). As chapter 4 begins, we find John discussing what our relationship should be to a very real danger: the danger of false prophets (I John 4: 1-6).
In these six verses, the author says that the many false prophets who have gone out into the world speak as from the world and the world listens to them. But how can we tell the difference? How do we know if someone is just professing Christ as Lord but is a false prophet or if that the person is confessing Christ as Lord and is a true prophet?
This theme of testing the spirits to see whether they are from God is a Johannine theme that we will return to again when we look at the Revelation of John: “I know your deeds and your toil and perseverance, and that you cannot tolerate evil men, and you put to the test those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and you found them to be false” (Revelation 2: 2).
Here in these six verses in I John we are told of the need to test the spirits and to determine whether they are from God. At first glance this passage may appear to say that anyone who professes that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. But that is not what it is being said, and the next few verses go on to say it is a little bit more complicated than that.
The writer is saying that right belief and right behaviour go hand-in-hand. There has to be a direct connection between orthodoxy and orthopraxis. There are those who profess Jesus with their mouths but deny him in their deeds and in their failures in love and in action.
Verse 1:
This section opens with a typical Johannine greeting and term of endearment:
Ἀγαπητοί (Beloved, dearly beloved, from the Greek ἀγαπητός, beloved, esteemed, dear, favourite, one worthy of love).
Note the use of phrases such as “all the spirits” or “the spirits” in this verse, which are supernatural powers claimed by the false spirits, and, in verse 2, the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit, which inspires the true confession about Christ.
The expression “to test the spirits” also occurs in the Dead Sea Scrolls, where it is used in reference to new members of the community. Not everyone who wants to join the community necessarily holds to the beliefs and values of the community, and they need to be tested.
Verse 2:
The Greek verb translated as “to confess” in verse 2 is ὁμολογέω (homologeo), from homos, “the same,” and lego, “to speak.” In other words, it means to say the same thing as another, to agree with, to assent, to concede, to promise, to profess, to confess, to declare, to confess or to admit or to declare oneself guilty of what one is accused of, to declare openly, to speak out freely, to profess oneself the worshipper of one, to praise, celebrate or to say the same thing as another, to agree with or assent, to declare openly, to speak out freely, to “speak the same thing as another.”
The mark of the spirit or the Spirit of God is belief that Jesus Christ is the Messiah or Christ incarnate. To confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is to be moved by the Holy Spirit to say the same thing that God himself says about the person and work of Christ, and to same the same as other, fellow, true believers say. This is deeper than mere intellectual assent; this is confession that comes from the heart and that agrees both with God and with other believers.
Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, but false propagandists destroy his claims by denying and neglecting his human career.
Verse 3:
Verses 2-3 are best understood in light of the Gnostic-like errors that were threatening the Johannine community in Ephesus at the time. Those who accepted these errors included some who denied that Jesus Christ actually came in the flesh (see II John 7), and those whose doctrine was leading many astray, those false teachers who claimed they were inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Those who would teach such falsehood are not led by the Spirit of God, but possess the spirit of the Antichrist (see II John 7).
Jesus too addressed questions about those who claimed to be his disciples but who did not really confess him. In Matthew 7: 21-23, he says: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many deeds of power in your name?’ Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers’.”
The false prophets Jesus is speaking about also professed him as Lord, but they did not abide by the Word of God or do his Father’s will. Instead they did evil.
Verses 4-5:
Little children (τεκνία): you will remember when we were looking at the poetic section in I John 2: 12-14, the members of the Johannine community were addressed in three ways: as fathers, young people, and little children (2: 12) or children (2: 14), whose sins are forgiven on account of his name (2: 12), and who know the Father (2: 14).
This term, “little children,” is used throughout this letter for the whole community. In I John 3: 1, we are told that in God’s love we are called his children (3: 1), we are God’s children (3: 2), God’s little children, and we should let no-one deceive us (3: 7), and the children of God are contrasted with the children of the devil (3: 10). Later on, John tells them: “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action (3: 17).
The term “little children” is used once again here to address the whole community.
In the midst of these warnings to test the spirits, John provides the whole community with some comforting words in verses 4-5. By being children of God, because they have heeded the words of the apostles – in other words, because they have loved in truth and in action – they can overcome the false prophets, for the One who is in them is greater than “the one who is in the world.”
We should not be surprised to see the world following false prophets, for those false prophets are of the world and they speak in a way that appeals to the world. But we should not be deterred by the “apparent success” of the false teachers – for we know that size and numbers are not the proper measures of truth.
Verse 6:
“Whoever knows God listens to us …”
At the end of this section, I John comes to the ultimate test of truth and deceit – the ability “to listen to us” or conformity to the teaching within the Johannine school.
When the writer uses the first person plural here, this not a majestic we, but calling on the witness of all true Christian teachers.
Whoever knows God discriminates between truth and error. Verse 6 reveals how we can distinguish between “the spirit of truth” and “the spirit of error”: those who truly know God listen to the apostolic teachers, while those who are not of God will reject them.
Next: I John 4: 7-21.
Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This essay is based on notes prepared for a Bible study in a tutorial group on Wednesday 7 January 2009.
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