1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because 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, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world. (1 John 4:1–3)
Herein lies the “smell test.” Every “beloved” Christian has been given the ability through God’s spirit to spot an “antichrist.” But for good measure, John lays it out for us plainly: “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.”
Wuest explains it this way. The Greek word “try” (i.e., test) is dokimazō (δοκιμαζω), “to put to the test for the purpose of approving, and finding that the person put to the test meets the specifications laid down, to put one’s approval upon him.”1
Today we must carry out this vetting process constantly, with the hope that a “self proclaimed” minister is from God. We’re not gunning for those who purport to know God who are imposters, but to deem them faithful! Sadly, many are found wanting.
In John’s day the challenge was to differentiate the Gnostics from the true teachers of the faith. These subtly taught that Jesus and God were not one and the same. Today, the task we face, to “test the spirits,” is even more daunting because of the plethora of ways to communicate, by mouth in typical church settings to AI produced “reels.” The fair question might be, who hasn’t gone to preaching on his or her Facebook page without studying the Greek? The process of spotting antichrists is now 24/7, and it’s on multiple fronts. The antichrists are everywhere.
In years past, someone might assent to the concept of a mythological Jesus, or Jesus as an actual historical philosopher,, but not “from God.” That’s where the line would be drawn. John recognized the subtleties of our challenge and boiled it down to the essentials. True Christians are born of God. As the saying goes, it takes one to know one. It’s not a flying leap to recognize someone of your own ilk. Those of us who possess his Spirit can smell a rat. Today’s pulpit rarely sounds forth this kind of clarity. If you were face to face with Jesus as were the men on the road to Emmaus, eventually you’d recognize whether the one who speaks is authentic or is an imposter.
30 When He had reclined at the table with them, He took the bread and blessed it, and breaking it, He began giving it to them. 31Then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him; and He vanished from their sight. 32 They said to one another, “Were not our hearts burning within us while He was speaking to us on the road, while He was explaining the Scriptures to us?” (Luke 24:30–32)
A child of God possesses enough discernment to know truth, to know the difference between “spiritual pablum,” and the solid food enriched by God’s spirit. In many of today’s sermons and in many of the lyrics of popular worship songs is such “pablum.” We get pep talks and compelling stories, pulsating rhythms and escalating volumes, but perhaps no vision of who Christ really is and what he’s done for us. More importantly, that he has not vanished but lives today in his disciples’ hearts, and as such, inhabits our innermost beings, should “burn within us” when we hear the truth, but recoil at anything even one degree off.
1Wuest, K. S. (1997). Wuest’s word studies from the Greek New Testament: for the English reader (Vol. 13, p. 159). Eerdmans.
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