How to Test the Spirits

By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; (1 John 4:2)

Sadly it has taken altogether too many years for me to just begin to appreciate the real meaning of this verse. Because of the dark misunderstandings that I grew up with about what God is like, whenever I came across things like this they seemed completely incongruent with everything else I thought about in religion and so my frame of reference prevented me from having any clue as to what John was trying to convey here. In fact, I still have to argue with residual assumptions inside my head too often as the light slowly increases inside of me.

Because so many have abused this text by trying to make it support their pet theories about the nature of Christ or other simplistic formulas of religion, it has taken a great deal of time for God to give me enough background information and understanding to begin to see the real import of this passage. What we believe about God and especially our beliefs about why Jesus died on the cross directly affect how we come to view other messages, especially about love. As long as we entertain confused ideas about a God needing appeasement or legal satisfaction, it will be impossible for us to reconcile the truths that John in particular is seeking to get across to us about the real nature of God. But when we begin to embrace the light as it is revealed in Jesus, that light will quickly begin to illuminate the inconsistencies that have long been hiding in the darkness and we will discard much of what we have learned in exchange for the life-giving glory of the truth.

Whenever I come across a phrase like this, By this you know..., I begin looking around at the immediate context to see if there may be a definitive description readily available to update my understanding about some religious term or concept. In this case John is directly addressing the key issue raised in the previous verse of our need to be able to test every spirit. Not every spirit is reflective of the truth about God but very many spirits claim to speak for Him and many with very subtle inferences. I have started to perceive that the religious spirits that a large majority of professed Christians believe are in fact counterfeits of the true Spirit of God. As John points out here, we must be very careful not to believe just any spirit.

But according to John, there is a key here that can unlock how to test spirits to see if they are trustworthy, accurate and particularly if they correctly represent the truth about God. John says that they will confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.

Now, I have puzzled over this most of my life trying to figure out why this is important or what it has to do with salvation. After all, it takes very little faith at all to believe that Jesus was a human being that had real flesh and bones and substance like the rest of us. Even unbelievers, atheists and almost anyone you talk to would likely not take much issue with this simple assertion. So how in the world can confessing that Jesus was a flesh and blood human being make any difference in our life? And even more confusing is how that fact might be used to separate and distinguish between true and deceptive spirits. There must be something missing here that needs to be brought into clarity for this thought to give us power to test the validity of spirits.

Some people will turn to a verse previous to this (3:24) that talks about keeping the commandants. They assert that if someone does not keep all Ten Commandants and teaches others to ignore them then they cannot be trusted at all. I will not argue that anyone reflective of the true spirit of God will not be found trying to undermine the principles of the Ten Commandants, but again, that is too simplistic and even leads toward a legalistic mindset that itself can be a spirit that can deceive us into thinking we are right with God while missing the point completely. Did not the religious leaders of Jesus' day specialize in keeping all the commandants perfectly? Yet they received more rebukes from Jesus than anyone else and they even ended up putting Jesus to death due to their hostility toward His claim to represent the very God of those commandants.

If we back up yet another verse it becomes clear that the commandants have more to do with love than trying to keep up a rigid performance of religion. Jesus also made it abundantly clear that the commandants are all about loving God and everyone around us. John in particular keeps bringing the issue back to love as being the core issue at stake, not external performance. And he also tries to get us to realize that true religion has much more to do with the heart and the condition of our spirit rather than a measurement of our apparent piety or how good we can keep up good appearances. So simply claiming that we can test a spirit by checking them against the Ten Commandants may fall far short of giving us an effective key by which we can test every spirit.

This verse under consideration is actually a twin with the next verse that gives the flip side of it.

...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. (v. 3)

Now given the religious assumptions that many have about Jesus and God, this next verse still is not very helpful in understanding how to effectively test spirits unless one has a better understanding of why it was important for Jesus to come to this earth in the first place. Too many Christians think that religion and salvation are simply matters of profession – that if we just say the right words and do the right acts that we are good to go to heaven. Or many believe that the core issue is our legal standing with God and all we need is to secure a pardon for our breaking of the rules. But these spirits too must be tested to see if they are actually from God or are deceiving spirits.

Do we really think that all God wants for us is to say some words that sound religious enough to pass some litmus test in heaven so He will then take us there? What about the ways we treat each other, our disposition, our attitudes towards God, the condition of our characters? Do we suppose that God will impose some artificial change on our characters when we arrive in heaven so that we suddenly become someone we have never been before? Many in fact do believe in this theory. But such thinking denies the core principle of freedom of choice that is so vital for true love to even exist.

I have long cognitively accepted the facts that Jesus was a human and had flesh; that Jesus came from heaven and was also God and I have been willing to 'confess' those things whenever asked about them. But at the same time I also realized that doing so didn't really have any transforming effect on my own life or give me any clue as to how to discern between the spirit of others who might be out to deceive me in some way. Even John's mention of the spirit of antichrist was not very helpful to fill me in as to how to test every spirit as there are many wild and crazy ideas circulating about what the term antichrist even means or what that involves. There has to be something very significant missing here that will pull of of these facets together to make perfect sense.

As I peruse over the verses before and after this text I see a heavy saturation of references to love and about abiding in God. Those are a vital component in deciphering the meaning of these verses. But something that jumped out at me as being very relevant to my pursuit of understanding how to test every spirit shows up a little ways back in the previous chapter.

Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has sinned from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil. (1 John 3:7-8)

The reason it is so important to test every spirit is to determine whether they are in harmony with the real truth about God or whether they are intent on conveying or reinforcing false ideas about God – in other words, deceiving us. In these last verses John again is talking about how to determine what is truthful and what is not. And it revolves having a correct understanding of what is righteous and what is sin. It also clearly points out that God is righteous and sin is of the devil.

Now that may sound too simplistic at first, but given the background of what God has been revealing over recent years about Himself, this takes on significantly more meaning for me now. As I have come to unpack better definitions of many words that have long been obscured through mistaken use and religious assumptions, coming to verses like this with a new understanding of what righteous means and what sin means opens up a whole different dimension here. In fact, this is very close to another place in this little potent book where John explicitly gives a definition of the core message that Jesus came to reveal and for us to pass on to others.

This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)

All of these clues factor into understanding how to test every spirit.

• Any spirit that promotes any dark views of God in any way is going to be a counterfeit spirit that should be turned away from immediately.
• Any spirit that is not rooted in and filled with love and promotes the practice of abiding in Christ will be a false spirit, a spirit that is against Christ and is an antichrist.
• Any spirit that in any way participants in the works of the devil is going to be a spirit that should be avoided at all costs.

But knowing what the works of the devil are is important to determining the nature of a spirit that is in harmony with the devil and his principles.

Here are a few direct statements about what the devil is up to:

"You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. (John 10:10)

And the great dragon was thrown down, the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. (Revelation 12:9)

It starts to become clear that when Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil that He came to expose the lies of the devil for what they really are; He came to defeat death and bring life and He came to stop the devil from stealing, killing and destroying. But how we perceive the way in which Jesus accomplishes this makes all the difference in how we go about testing every spirit.

I am not going to spend time reciting the false teachings so prevalent about the reason Jesus died on the cross. Rather I want to get straight to the point that is only recently becoming more clear to me about the real truth of the cross. This truth is so potent that I am beginning to appreciate more fully why the early church had such compelling attraction and power to draw thousands to want to know God more for themselves. The true Spirit of God was so present in that group of believers that the message about God was irresistible except by those who clung firmly to their own agenda and preconceptions. All who were honest of heart and seeking for the real truth and were willing to let go of their misconceptions about God amd were drawn to join with the rapidly growing movement. And not any amount of vicious persecution could slow down the progress of the gospel spreading over the whole world.

So, what does Jesus coming in the flesh have to do with any of this? Here is what has come to my attention recently that helps make far more sense than the confusing explanations I have heard much of my life.

When I step back to view the great cosmic conflict from the larger perspective, it begins to make much more sense how all of this fits together. Ever since sin entered our world and blinded us to the love of God and the truth about how good He is, how fair He is, how just and truthful and compassionate He really is, we have harbored a deep resentment against Him, because in our hearts we have blamed Him for all the pain, suffering and tragedies that plague all of our lives. Part of the diabolical effects of Satan's lies has been to feel that God is ultimately the cause of all this mess because, we assume, He could have prevented it long before it ever reached this planet. And He could still intervene to prevent tragedies and horrific crimes from taking place if He would just assert His authority and use His superior power to intervene and forcefully stop these things from transpiring even now.

In our hearts we naturally tend to sympathize with those screaming out at God after some terrible tragedy asking why He seems so impotent to stop all the evil in this world. Others cling to a hope of a final day of reckoning and vengeance (read revenge) when the scores will finally all be settled and all the perpetrators of evil will get their 'just dues'. Of course that logic runs into problems when we also promote a belief in forgiveness, so we insert Jesus' horrific death on the cross as a substitute for the punishment we believe sinners deserve for breaking the rules set down by heaven.

In all of these assumptions the truth about unconditional love, God, justice and pretty much every other term becomes distorted and confused. But even so, our own hearts sometimes secretly wish that, like Job when he suffered so much and could not make sense out of it all, we wish that we could just be able to drag God into a court of real justice so we could expose Him to the reality of how bad things really are down here that He seems to be overlooking. And sometimes we hurt so badly that many wish they could just get their hands on God so they could make Him aware of the suffering that they feel He is allowing (a way of expressing our desires to settle the score or inflict revenge).

One of the deepest cravings that most of us experience is the desire to have something we call balance. Even our symbols for justice include a mythical set of scales that infers a need for balance between good and bad, righteousness and wickedness. But if we think about this it can be a bit confusing as to why we assume that adding enough righteousness will somehow offset an 'equal' amount of wickedness and thus satisfaction can be achieved. Yet this thinking has been inherent in the human psyche ever since our first parents imbibed of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The principles inherent in that tree are still very much the basis by which we interpret reality to this very day. It is the principle of balance between good and evil, ying and yang, whatever terms you might want to employ.

Now here is the true power of the cross. It is not a revelation of an offended God executing His rage against sinners against His own Son as a substitute to satisfy some distorted notion of justice. Quite the opposite, the cross is a stark revelation of the real truth about a God who is so humble, so gracious, so perfectly agape love that He was willing to become a human with vulnerable flesh and bones that could feel and hurt and know pain for the purpose of giving humans opportunity to vent all the rage pent up inside us against a God whom we could not previously get our hands on because He was out of reach.

As sinners we have intuitively felt that if we could just have the opportunity to inflict enough pain on God that somehow that we could sooner or later get Him to react in some way similar to how we react when we hurt. We have felt that God has somehow been unfair in judging us for indulging in violence and revenge while not really understanding why we do these things. So to answer that very issue, Jesus allowed demoniacally inspired humans to torture Him as much as they could in a feverish attempt to intimidate or compel Him to react in some way like we would react under such treatment. We were certain that given enough pain that sooner or later God would begin to understand our situation better and would finally take offense, resort to retaliation or do something that would then justify our own reactions when we indulge in those same emotions.

Yet to the amazement of the whole universe, God in the flesh could not be swerved from the totally selfless love and unconditional forgiveness that make up His character. Jesus explicitly demonstrated this at the cross under the most extreme circumstances. Beyond all the physical torture, demons added a another layer of intense mental and emotional torture that the world could not witness that went on for hours inside of Jesus. This inner torture from an assault of accusations, lies about God and diabolical insinuations that have perpetuated the whole system of sin since its inception, brought so much torture to the mind of Christ that the physical pain was hardly noticed. Yet through all of this Jesus demonstrated as never before seen in history, the true character of God who is pure love, pure compassion, pure forgiveness. And He did it in a way that could not be displayed any more clearly.

When this view of the real purpose of the cross is taken as our basis for understanding it, these messages from John take on a whole new dimension. Now it can be readily seen that any spirit that denies that God is like what Jesus demonstrated cannot be a spirit that comes from God but is against the truth about God (antichrist). False prophets – people claiming to represent God but not in harmony with the truth about His pure agape love – will promote all sorts of ideas about God that are not in harmony with the real truth about Him as revealed by Jesus. And only those who are willing to lay aside all their preconceptions and distorted views of God in favor of embracing the clear picture of God as only revealed in the life and death of Jesus who is the perfect revelation of God, will begin to grasp the true message of the cross and will begin reflect the same spirit as that revealed by Jesus.

One last note about the nature of how to discern and test every spirit. Any spirit of a person claiming to speak the truth about God that uses fear as a motivation to compel people to accept their message is immediately suspect at best. For John makes it very clear that fear and God are not in any way compatible.

We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment (the day when everything hidden will be exposed); because as He is, so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us. (1 John 4:16-19)

Don't Believe Every Spirit

The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us. 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. (1 John 3:24 – 4:1)

Last time I dwelt on the phrase here test the spirits. There are many important places in this passage where I see things that fill in just what is involved in doing this most important work and I want to explore them much more thoroughly. But first I want to revisit this verse and the phrase that caught my attention this morning, do not believe every spirit.

Lately there seems to be an amping up of the spirit of fault-finding and accusing in many quarters of the church. That this is happening increasingly in politics is to be expected though it is becoming very wearing. But within the body of churches who claim to be followers of the teachings and example of Jesus this is very disconcerting.

Recently I wanted to tap into resources that would provide ongoing news and information about some of the divisive issues swirling around in our church. I have spent some time in discussion groups on the internet and have at times engaged in various discussions as well as reading articles that have helped to give me broader perspectives. Many of the things I have read have helped to give me better understanding and some of them have been very inspirational and useful. But at the same time I have also been alarmed at the high number of people on both sides of these issues who seem to have little regard for the words of Jesus about the spirit that should be reflected by His disciples while they strongly assert that they are following biblical truth and have plenty of proof texts to support their rigid, inflexible beliefs.

Some of these people are ready to deride others who do not see things the way they do and apparently want to consign others to be lost based on which side of certain topics they choose to endorse. Yet the tone of their own comments is so strident at times that it makes me alarmed. But what concerns me even more is how easy I find it to respond in a similar fashion and make my own strong statements in reply to them. I find that I have to constantly pray for a more humble spirit all the time I am composing a statement to post in these discussions lest I discredit the very truths about God that are changing my own life and perspectives and freeing me from the very prejudices that I see in others.

What I am seeing – and this is certainly nothing new – are people assuming that if they just assert their own conclusions strongly enough that maybe someone else will be intimidated to change their opinions from the other side of some issue and join them. They seem to believe that truth apparently has to have more force behind it so that others will be convinced that it is true. Yet when I have pointed out that when often the real problem is faulty assumptions about the meanings of words or much deeper issues than the topics under discussion that are far more important and concern our fundamental attitudes and views of how God wants us to see things, almost without exception no one even notices.

I am not suggesting that I am feeling miffed because my comments are not appreciated. What I am saying is that I am baffled at times when people desire to argue endlessly using illogical reasoning or worse yet, depending on traditions passed down from unbiblical sources without any willingness to examine their own assumptions. I often see that many are relying on singular references to prop up their insecure positions on some subject while remaining unwilling to honestly consider the validity of their opponents line of thinking.

John here warns us about the danger of believing every spirit. But that is a curious way of putting it that we don't normally discuss. Our methods of testing almost without fail come down on the side of testing assertions based on the accuracy of how they fit our interpretations of key texts that we rely on to prop of our agendas. But I have seen very little attention paid, either from the people writing articles and especially among those engaged in vigorous debate after the articles, who are giving any weight to this instruction to test every spirit. I wonder if that is because we are so far removed from an intelligent awareness of what is going on in our own spirit that it is just easier to ignore this teaching. This results too often in freeing us from divine inhibitions so we treat others any way we feel like when they see things differently than us.

As I read these words this morning that I need to beware of what spirits I believe, I am reminded of the vital importance that our spirit has to our salvation. I am coming to realize that the devil has a very easy time keeping people distracted with intellectual sparring over issues that we feel are vital for the unity of the church while not noticing that the spirit motivating our own hearts is very often the real cause of disunity. It matters far less that we can successfully prove our positions on some topic than the spirit that we allow to control us while discussing them. What I am observing is that on the part of many there is little reluctance to accuse others harshly while insisting that everyone has to agree with their particular interpretations and think there is nothing amiss in their own spirit. Yet to me it seems rather evident that this attitude is more in line with the one that the Bible calls 'the accuser of the brethren'.

I am coming to see more and more that a far better method for measuring what is valid or safe for us to consider is the atmosphere surrounding the person in regards to their spirit. Deception is very easy to disseminate when it comes to facts, proof-texts, quotations and arguments. In addition, because there is such a wide diversity of meanings behind our words it is impossible to communicate with others without some level of misunderstanding. But too often our statements move beyond misunderstanding to intentional deception whether that happens consciously or without our conscious awareness.

To combat error, we can try to spend enormous amounts of time and energy trying to decipher what is factually true, untrue, provable or disprovable. But we will usually only accomplish taking ourselves and others into even greater confusion and deeper prejudices. We are surrounded with people eager to get us to believe their version of what they are certain is gospel truth. But what I have been learning is that much of what is being promoted as truth has very little if any real 'good news' within it. And many of these interactions contain large doses of intimidation, fear and threats that if we do not accept some particular position that we are endangering our souls for eternity.

My own father was caught up in this vortex of intensity and became very bitter and combative for a number of years. He, like many I encounter today, was sure that his salvation depended on the accuracy of his beliefs while largely ignoring the condition of his own spirit. He believed like many do that truth is solely in the arena facts, doctrines and cognitive beliefs and that the spirit is just a topic somewhere down the list to be considered as another item to study.

But over the years God has been convicting me that my spirit and my attitudes are the main issue, not a peripheral side note. This truth can frighten many who are highly dependent on carefully crafted arguments to support their dogmatic positions and they usually reject such suggestions out of hand. But the more I open myself up to receiving insights from God's Spirit in the context of His Word, the more I cannot avoid that God seems to be primarily concerned with this area of my life while all the other facts and proofs and discussions are mainly supplementary for conditioning my spirit in preparation for integration into a society of holy, joyful beings.

Satan's greatest decoy is not to confuse us on the accuracy of what day is the Sabbath, what happens to people when they die or who we should ordain. Satan's most effective weapon to keep us in deception is to get us to obsessively study facts about doctrines in order to attack others in an accusing spirit. Just because I may gain a broad grasp of factual and doctrinal truth in no way is assurance that I am experiencing a saving, transformational relationship with God. If Jesus tried to teach anything it was this point. The Jews in His day were similar to many of us today who are confident that we know the truth from our study of the Scriptures while oblivious to the condition of own own spirit.

It takes special watchfulness to keep the affections alive and our hearts in a condition where we shall be sensible of the good that exists in the hearts of others. If we do not watch on this point, Satan will put his jealousy into our souls; he will put his glasses before our eyes, that we may see the actions of our brethren in a distorted light. Instead of looking critically upon our brethren we should turn our eyes within, and be ready to discover the objectionable traits of our own character. As we have a proper realization of our own mistakes and failures, the mistakes of others will sink into insignificance.

Satan is an accuser of the brethren. He is on the watch for every error, no matter how small, that he may have something on which to found an accusation. Keep off from Satan's side. {TMK 181}

When I hear comments that are forceful and have a sharp thrust to them, I realize that the intensity of the writer is intended to push others to agree with them and come to believe that what they have to say is the truth. But John here is saying that truth is not necessarily found by intellectual investigation but will be discerned by first paying attention to the kind of spirit that is present in the medium of delivery.

This of course indicts me along with everyone else. I am keenly aware of how often my own spirit becomes defensive, combative and at times even accusing. I am far from consistently reflecting the spirit of humility that I am beginning to see marks the character of God. It still seems like an oxymoron to view God as being extremely humble, especially God the Father. Yet I have to stick with that conclusion because Jesus and the Father are exactly alike and Jesus clearly was the perfect example of humility. Thus it only follows that the most likely sources of God's kind of truth will be those who most closely reflect the spirit of Jesus rather than the spirit of the accuser.

So what happens when a person might have 'truth', factual, biblical, verifiable doctrines, and yet delivers these ideas utilizing methods and attitudes more reflective of the accuser? Am I to attempt to separate the information away from the person, or will that only cause me to become infected with the highly contagious virus of criticism by interacting with them at all? Do I have to embrace factual truth from people who are unwilling to be molded by the gentle spirit of Jesus, or might I be better off drawing back a bit from them and waiting for God to send someone more in tune with His ways to share with me where I might be doctrinally misinformed?

I am not taking a hard position here but am wrestling with real questions that remain partially unanswered in my own mind. Given my own track record of discouraging others by coming on too strong with 'truth' at times, I wonder how people should relate to me when I am on the delivery end of this issue. Either way, it seems that clearly there is a serious and pervasive problem in the body of Christ of ignoring the state of our spirit while putting far too much weight on winning arguments and trying to force our beliefs on those around us. I find myself having to turn away from some of the debates in order to quiet and rejuvenate my own spirit by dwelling on the beauties and attractiveness of God in His presence in order to regain my own perspective and peace. And I long to be completely free of the aggressive edge that too often creeps into my own interactions with others when I seek to share with them what I have been learning about God.

So I come back to the clear instruction of John that I must learn how to test every spirit. I am reminded that this includes testing the right spirits as well as the wrong ones. God's Spirit along with all those who reflect His Spirit in their own lives, are never afraid of being tested, for their value does not come from what others think of them but from God alone. On the other hand, every false spirit will be afraid of being challenged because there are always elements within them that might be exposed as fraudulent when increased light is brought to bear.

The light that I must learn to use to examine every spirit must be light received from the only reliable Source of truth. That means I must maintain daily a close connection in my own spirit with the Spirit of truth in order to have enough light in me to discern whether a spirit is of God or whether it is otherwise no matter how factually accurate someone may be. I am learning that the more important part for me is to make the choice that Mary did when she broke all the rules and chose to sit with men at Jesus' feet instead of remaining in the role that everyone expected her to play. Marinating in the presence of Jesus is the only way I know to absorb more of His spirit and mindset so as to be better prepared when I encounter a need to test another spirit.

Test Every Spirit

The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us. 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. 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; 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 3:24 – 4:3)

These verses contain one of my father's favorite proof texts that he abused to support his favorite doctrine about the nature of Christ. Subsequently I developed for many years an aversion to this verse. But not long ago as I was reading this again it struck me what the true meaning of this text really is and I found myself getting really excited about it instead of avoiding it. This has happened with me in regards to a number of proof texts he used that were seriously distorted to often imply nearly the very opposite of what they actually were intended to convey when taken in proper context.

The world around me which includes my church seems to be intensifying in conflict. Attitudes are sharpening, people are polarizing over singular issues and proponents from both sides are employing similar tactics to demand that their opinions are right and everyone else is not just wrong but downright dangerous. Too often deception is also employed to attempt to cover up evidence that may discredit their position while emphasizing verses and quotations that make their position look favorable. All this is creating battle lines behind which all neutral parties are demanded to choose sides and give support.

This greatly concerns me, for most of the time I find myself in disagreement with the hard-line positions on both sides of these issues. What I am observing is that people who approach their search for truth in this manner often don't want other people to really study and pray and contemplate the issues for themselves but simply want others to take their opinions as the truth. The mindset of simply accepting what other 'experts' have researched is promoted over wrestling with issues individually with an open mind and a humble heart. Today there is more and more emphasis on facts and knowledge and proving who is right and wrong and less attention to the condition of the heart and the spirit.

Yet the more that I immerse myself in these teachings of Jesus, particularly in the writings of John, I find myself wondering why both sides on these issues get so worked up and even angry at times as they attack each other openly in a spirit that is anything but like what I am finding in my reflections on the life of Jesus. It seems that any attempts on the part of some to move toward an experiential relationship with God is viewed with great suspicion by those eager to control other people's minds and dictate to them what they should believe. It almost appears that such people are afraid to trust the Holy Spirit to bring unity to the body of Christ and they feel that unless they can control the direction of investigation and dictate how everything should be interpreted that disaster is sure to result.

This brings me back to what came to my attention this morning as I read this passage again. John says here that many prophets have gone out into the world. That means that these prophets came from the group of Christ-followers, the church as we would now call it. But he did not necessarily imply that they intended to leave the church; he simply said that they went out into the world.

It occurred to me that many today who claim to speak for God in our church go out into the world to warn the world, to scold the world, to condemn those in the world believing that somehow these tactics will somehow intimidate or frighten people into wanting to join our church. At the same time people are lining up on the other side of the same issues from inside the church accusing those who are claiming to speak for God as being false prophets. Both sides say that anyone who is on the opposite side of any issue is wrong and is trying to split the church with their resistance to truth. But in reality it appears to me that both sides are participating in a very similar spirit, the spirit of fault-finding, criticism, slander, condemnation and even at times deception in order to vindicate their own positions.

There are at least two definitions for what a prophet is that comes to my attention. One is that a prophet is someone who supposedly speaks on God's behalf to others who do not have such a connection with God. Another definition, and one that is more common in the world is that a prophet is someone who can foretell the future accurately. But does not this include people who predict dire consequences to come upon the church if the church does not align itself with their views and opinions about the hot topic of the day? Are not our attempts to intimidate others by predicting terrible results if people don't agree with us a form of prophesying? Or such prophets may enjoy assaulting the outside world with predictions of vengeance from an offended God if they do not 'repent' and align their beliefs with those of the church. But what spirit is behind all of these dire predictions, these stern prophecies of warning?

What I find compelling in these words of John is that his focus is not on the accuracy of the facts or doctrines that one side or the other may be promoting but rather is instructing us to test every spirit. Now, if your theology has not yet taken into account that each person has a spirit you may find yourself casting about or confused as to what might be implied here. But having accepted that truth some years ago, I now firmly believe that the real issue that is vital to understand and that affects each person's salvation is the condition of our own spirit in alignment to God's Spirit. There are many spirits in this world, both supernatural spirits of demons and heavenly messengers, but also there are as many spirits besides those as there are living people on the earth today.

Each spirit of each person has the means of communicating in some way with other spirits in ways we don't understand very well. But this communication takes place between us whether we are even aware of it or not. What has long been understood is that spoken or written words are only a very small segment of the real communication that takes place between us. Much more is communicated through the means of body language, voice tone and even things like scents and touch. But beyond all of those things there is the reality of how our spirits communicate attitudes and information that is beyond our conscious awareness but that may in fact be even more efficient that we ever dared to consider.

This concept is very intimidating to those who want to believe in a religion based solely on cognitive facts alone. It means that they cannot control information nearly as much as they would like to believe and as a reaction many move toward denying these realities about the spirit realm. They do not want to believe that there are channels of communicating that may be conveying things they cannot control, so they simply deny that it is happening. But that does not change the fact that it is still taking place. It only means that such ones are choosing to remain in ignorance about a whole segment of activity that is having an enormous impact on everyone's lives whether they are aware of it or not.

I have noticed over the years that many people have taken this verse and immediately twisted it to mean nearly the opposite of what it actually says. Rather than admitting that there is such a thing as our spirit and that it does communicate a great deal whether we consciously perceive it or not, they use this text to insist that we must test every doctrine, every belief, every fact by how it aligns with the Bible. Of course what happens next is that they insist on personally determining how each passage must be interpreted in the Bible to prove what they already want to believe. But all of this misses the main point of what John is talking about here. He is not telling us that we should test every cognitive doctrine we come across to see if it is factually provable or not; he is talking about something completely different here – the condition of a person's spirit. But if we have ignored or denied the whole reality of the spirit world and how we constantly interact with it through our own spirit, this verse makes little sense.

One reason that many do not want to take this instruction at face value may be because if their own spirit were to come under examination it might be exposed to be very unlike the spirit that was seen in the Jesus they claim to represent. Yet it is our spirit and the condition of our spirit that has the most effect on our influence for good or for evil. It is the condition of our spirit that determines whether we are safe to live and interact in the presence of holy angels or whether we would be abjectly miserable in an atmosphere of pure unselfishness. And it is our spirit that betrays whether we are really speaking on behalf of God or whether we are promoting our own agenda.

Jesus made it abundantly clear that there will be those who show up on judgment day – the day when the secrets of every heart will be publicly exposed – fully expecting to be ushered into paradise only to discover that the condition of their spirit has disqualified them to live in the presence of the Lamb. They will be very confused and will engage in arguing with the Judge, claiming they they had the truth all down pat and have done everything they felt God had required of them to be saved. But all of this is completely ignored as the Judge responds that He simply does not know them. This is not because they did not have their arguments about factual truth figured out enough, but rather because they had indulged in a spirit throughout their lifetime that was foreign to the spirit of heaven.

I take this warning by John very seriously. Testing every spirit is not just a suggestion but is something that may determine my eternal destiny in the light of what I just noted above. I have come to realize that the condition of my spirit has far, far more to do with my fitness for heaven than any amount of good deeds or correctness of doctrine may ever accomplish. I am not inferring that false doctrines make no difference. Rather I am saying that a dependence on a cerebral religion that ignores or minimizes the state of our inner being and the spirit that we cherish is a counterfeit religion that will result in eternal death. It is a fraud no matter how succinctly we may be able to proof-text our beliefs. Only by having our spirit synchronized with the Spirit of God can we become fitted to live in the company of holy angels and in the presence of God. And this must begin with the choices we make right now that affect our spirit, not something that will magically happen to us sometime off in the future.

The surrounding passage of this verse gives important clues as to how to test every spirit. I don't want to miss these clues or to misinterpret them. My own father for years made this very mistake by trying to lift this verse out of context to insist that salvation pivoted on whether one believed that Jesus had sinful flesh or not. But in doing so his spirit became so embittered and vindictive that in trying to push what he strongly believed was 'the truth' on everyone around him, he actually alienated everyone and became sour, depressed and even hateful. Not until he was allowed to suffer a series of strokes which removed him from the rabid sources of reading that fed his addition to critical attitudes could he respond to the spirit of love which is what his heart needed the most.

This demonstration of the effects of a wrong spirit has been a severe warning to me ever since that time. I too am in great danger of succumbing to the spirit of rightness, the spirit of criticism, the spirit of condemnation that has been in my family for generations. But God has been convicting me for years of my need to allow the mind of Christ to take shape in me as I learn to abide in Him and let Him abide in me. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.

But it is not just enough to claim that we have the spirit of God in us. Many claim to have the spirit of God while attacking others who disagree with them. This is why John immediately says that we must test every spirit, not just people's words. People who have a divisive spirit often go to great lengths to prove that their facts and doctrines must be believed because they can prove that truth is on their side. But no amount of proving or investigation or arguing will ever settle many matters under dispute. Rather, if we take the words of John seriously and learn how to check a spirit using the means that John lays out in this little book, we will discover that it is not nearly so difficult to detect who is really speaking on God's behalf and who is simply using God's name as a means of gaining access to our attention.

I wanted to get into the clues that I find all through this passage as to just how to go about testing spirits. But this post has already gotten so long that I feel I should explore that more thoroughly another time. But it is vital for anyone serious about wanting to come into alignment with God's Spirit and to not be deceived by spirits claiming to speak for God to spend time meditating on this passage. To really grasp the truths embedded here it is also very important to ask God's Holy Spirit to guide our minds, open our hearts and help us to lay aside every preconception so as to be open and humble and teachable enough to receive the truth as revealed in the life and death of Jesus.

Father, I ask that you test my spirit and transform my spirit to be in closer harmony with You through the work of renewing my mind and the presence of Your Spirit within me. Give me Your wisdom and Your humility and allow my heart to be warmed with Your passion of love. I am filled with so many misconceptions and distorted notions about You that confuse me. In addition I am bombarded with ideas and spirits of people insisting that they are speaking on your behalf. But often the spirit that I sense in them seems foreign to the gentle, loving Spirit that I have come to love about You. But worst of all I all too often detect that same spirit of harshness emanating from my own being as I passionately seek to share exciting truths I am discovering about You with people resistant to change. Please heal my spirit and cleanse me of everything that is not like Your Spirit. For ultimately it is Your reputation that is on the line most of all. Thank-you Jesus.

Fear and Punishment

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. (1 John 4:18)

Over the past few years my understanding of the real truth about God, about how He deals with sinners and about rewards and punishments have radically changed from what I was taught growing up and what mainstream Christianity still teaches. I have come to discover in the Bible and through promptings from the Holy Spirit in my own study that God is very little like what He has been represented to be by those claiming to teach about Him. Rather He is exactly like what Jesus taught and demonstrated in His life while here on earth. I have come to realize the powerful implications of this truth and how much it indicts most of what we have assumed is truth.

Part of what I have learned has to do with how God plans to overcome the problem of evil and the lies of Satan about Him. Satan has done everything possible to deceive us in regards as to what God is like and unfortunately he has largely succeeded, especially among those professing religion. Far from helping to improve God's reputation and seeking to vindicate Him, much of what we believe about God is still reinforcing many false assertions about Him originated in the mind the the great deceiver. Yet through it all God patiently works to bring about a final resolution that will forever settle the issues without ever resorting to employing the tactics and methods of His enemy.

Fear is possibly the primary tool that Satan relies on to keep us in darkness about God. Of course deception is also the main instrument he uses to keep us afraid of God. Through the use of these two elements he has managed to prolong his tyranny for thousands of years even though the results have been tragic and painful. God will never change His tactics for meeting the charges against Him or resort to using force, intimidation and fear to overcome evil. Satan's methods are counterfeits of God's true ways and using them even for a moment would vindicate Satan's claims that they are necessary to keep order in the universe.

However, because all of humanity is deceived in regards to these things we have believed that God indeed does resort to using at least some of Satan's methods for control when things become too difficult for love to handle. But in believing such things about God all we have accomplished is to 'create' a God – a distortion of God at best – in our own image rather than believe the glorious truth about Him that Jesus revealed. God is not the kind of person we have always thought Him to be: arbitrary, harsh, waiting to punish those who reject His love or even One handing out rewards for good behavior. All of this has come as a surprising revelation to me over recent years as I have come to discover the real truth about the amazing character of our heavenly Father.

As I contemplated this verse this morning I was reminded of this and how much my fear of God has subsided over the years. When I was growing up I was so afraid of God's punishment that I came to hate Him secretly. Yet I was so intimidated by His assumed wrath that I was fearful to even admit to anyone or even to myself that I felt that way. I lived under a constant and increasing load of fear, guilt and condemnation trying desperately to somehow appease this angry God who seemed bent on finding any excuse to keep me from entering paradise.

In recent years I have come to realize that not only was my heart and mind filled with myriads of lies about God derived from religion, but that fear itself was my greatest enemy and that it was actually fear itself that was tormenting me ruthlessly. I still have residual pockets of this twisted thinking in my brain that tortures me at various times, for my healing from these many lies is far from complete. But the peace and the ability to even begin to love God spontaneously that I have begun to experience in recent years is in stark contrast to the heaviness of the fear that suffocated my heart for much of my life.

Out of curiosity I compiled a list of translations of the phrase from this verse that gives a broader perspective of the truth embedded here.

fear implies [that we are afraid of] punishment (2001)

where fear is, there is pain (BBE)

The thought of being punished is what makes us afraid (CVE)

fear has torment (Darby, KJV, Webster, MKJV)

fear involves punishment (EMTV, FAA, GW, ISV, NASB95, TSV)

fear has to do with punishment (ESV, GNB, NET, NIV, NRSV)

fear worries about punishment (FBV)

feare hath painefulnesse (Geneva)

fear suggests punishment (GSNT)

fear has punishment (LITV, NHEBYSE, RV, YLT)

fear has always torment (MNT)

fear implies punishment (TCNT)

fear involves pain (WNT)

What began to become obvious to me today is the truth that fear itself is the origin of the punishment and pain that we suffer while making us assume that it is God who is punishing us. Most Christians believe that God is in the punishing and rewarding business, but recently I have begun to realize that the whole system of rewards and punishments is a counterfeit of God's system of life-giving love alone. This truth can be seen from the very beginning of the Bible but has been largely overlooked. The two systems of operation or models for relationships was represented by two distinctly different trees in the Garden of Eden. This truth has long been little investigated but recently was brought to my attention in a book I am just finishing called The Demonization of God Unmasked by Oswald Grant.

In this book which is a very detailed examination of the enormous implications embedded in the wrong tree in particular, it is becoming clear to me that much of what we have long assumed was good and righteous and as emanating from God in our world can actually be traced back to the counterfeit system designed to keep us occupied pursuing the wrong version of 'good'. All of our lives we have assumed that all good comes from God, but clearly as seen in the very name of this tree, the tree that introduced sin and all its consequences into our world, there is a good that masks the fact that it ends up in death.

This tree, The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil as the Bible calls it, is representative of the whole counterfeit system of living as promoted by the archenemy of God. This enemy is so smart – the smartest being in the universe other than God, at least at one time – that there is no hope of figuring out his deceptions ourselves. Only through revelations from God Himself can we ever hope to escape the massive labyrinth of lies that we find ourselves in as sinners. Only by choosing to believe that God is right and is the only source of both life and truth can we ever find salvation from the deep darkness and resulting death of sin.

For years I pondered the name of this tree and saw that one of the significant parts of its name was the word 'knowledge'. I could see how many are deceived, particularly through religion into thinking that what can save us is more knowledge. Thus we find ourselves obsessed with gaining more and more knowledge – information that is – and thinking that if we could just know enough accurate information that we could extricate ourselves with God's help from the deceptions of Satan's lies. But this is yet another decoy built into the labyrinth to keep us wandering around in circles caught in the darkness of deception. We do indeed need a knowledge to enter into true salvation, but the kind of knowledge that we must have is a very different kind of knowledge than that proposed in the name of this tree.

Jesus repeatedly told us that we do need a 'knowledge' to escape the trap of sin. But the kind of knowledge that will save us is not so much informational knowledge but is rather a heart-based, relational, experiential knowledge of coming to really know God personally and intimately. Only in knowing God and being empowered to respond positively to His agape love at the heart level can we ever hope to be salvaged and experience restoration from the damage that Satan's lies have caused in our psyche and our perceptions of reality. And while good information is certainly helpful in coming to know God, it can never a substitute for humbling ourselves to embrace the reality of the transforming power of grace and the real truth about God's character of pure love.

This is where Satan has set up his greatest deceptions to keep us from entering into this saving relationship with God. Satan has filled our hearts and the whole world with lies about God designed to make us afraid of Him in every way possible in order to prevent us from allowing Him to speak His truth into our souls that can heal our minds and hearts. As long as we believe false assertions about God we will remain infected and inhibited by fears that are unfounded but that tend to block us from allowing God to heal us and save us. Thus we can begin to see that fear itself is one of the most diabolical tools of the enemy of our souls that keeps us from entering into the salvation that God wants for us to experience.

Notice how closely fear is linked with the idea of punishment in this verse. Because we have believed that God is in the punishing business and we too often refuse to challenge that assumption, we block our own way to perceiving and appreciating many things about God that would unlock access to a far deeper intimacy with Him that would heal our minds and hearts. Fear is always involved in perpetuating lies about both God and punishment. When we insist on embracing Satan's assertions that God is waiting to punish all those who resist His love, we in turn experience the natural consequences of pain and actually create a false reality within our own thinking where we interpret the suffering we experience as being imposed on us by an offended God.

The human mind has the amazing ability to construct false realities and then interpret everything that happens in such a way as to reinforce the assumptions within that counterfeit reality. For an example, consider the terrified cries of the lost in Revelation 6:16 where they fully believe that Jesus is a lamb full of wrath. Such absurdity can only be understood when one begins to grasp the powerful effect that believing such lies about God has on the human heart. When we insist on believing in and promoting a God who is supposedly both agape love while at the same time engaged in using violence, force and fear like His archenemy claims is necessary, our perceptions of reality remain so warped that total nonsense becomes the standard by which we perceive and experience life.

What really got my attention this morning however, was the insight that the torture that we assume is punishment from God is actually inherent in the very fears about God that we choose to cling to in our false assumptions about Him. Fear itself contains all the seeds of pain and suffering that results in the torments of the lost and even in much of the suffering we now experience. The lies about God that are believed so pervert the perception of reality that we too often are completely convinced that it is God who is the source of torture, not realizing that the torment is all coming from the inside.

Paul alludes to this truth in Romans. But, according to thy hardness and impenitent heart, treasurest up to thyself wrath, in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. (Romans 2:5 Darby) What I have come to realize is that the wrath anyone will experience, either on the final day of judgment when the real truth about God is finally revealed, and even much of the suffering we experience now that we attribute to God's punishing us, all comes from false ideas about God that we cling to inside of us. As we interpret life through the filters of these lies that God is intending to use violence against us at some point, the very seeds of that pain of torture are being stored away inside our hearts and minds that will spring up to bear the fruit of self torture. But that torture is all based on what is inside of us and in no way comes from the God of agape love.

When we experience torture or pain or discomfort in the presence of God's holiness, it is never because God desires for us to suffer that pain. The problem is always that whenever sin – lies about God and the resulting distrust that it produces in the heart – encounters increased revelations about God's true character of love and goodness, otherwise known as His righteousness, the dissonance created between our perceptions of Him and the real truth about Him results in resistance. And any electronics person will tell you that when a resistor experiences too much power that it results in overheating and eventual self-destruction. The very same is true of our resistance to the truth about God's agape love. That is why Paul says in this last verse that wrath is experienced when God's righteous judgment is revealed.

Again, I must remind us that judgment is yet another word that has largely been distorted and misunderstood. The way God uses the word has nothing to do with condemnation, for John 3:17 makes it explicitly clear that God is not in the condemning business. Rather, condemnation is a reaction of the human mind to dissonance when two opposing ideas cannot be reconciled inside our heads. Thus when we insist on clinging to lies about God's love and then come face to face with the truth of God's love, the dissonance between these two opposing forces creates immense pain and suffering and in the end will be the cause of eternal death for all those who are lost.

This truth is not only radical but is sadly rejected outright by the vast majority of people, both Christian or otherwise. But it still remains truth even if only a small minority choose to embrace it. It is a life-transformational truth that will alter the way we perceive reality and has the potential to open up our own hearts to experience God at much deeper levels than was possible previously. The more we choose to embrace the truth about God's singular character of agape love, the more we come into alignment with Him and are healed and saved by the revelation of that love to our hearts, particularly in contemplating the life and death of His Son Jesus Christ.

As John so clearly stated in the surrounding verses to the one we started with, God is love. He also stated categorically that the core message of the gospel – the good news about God – is the truth about what God is really like.

This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5)

The implications of this verse is still opening up my perceptions in more and more areas of my own beliefs about God. As I come to see that many things that I still assume about God must be challenged in the light of emerging revelations about Him from His Word, the more my heart is beginning to open up to experience His presence and healing in my own soul. I am coming to realize that much of what I still believe about God has been derived from the wrong source – the tree that our first parents ate from and that perverted their whole perception of reality and what God was like. Ever since then we have lived under the delusions of Satan's lies about God, and only through the direct intervention of the Son of God can we come to be restored into the life-receiving relationship that we must have in order to live in the eternal life that He wants for us to enjoy in Him.

Years ago I began to realize through personal intense experience that my greatest enemy was fear itself. I wasted much of my life fighting against the things, the people or the situations that made me afraid until I began to realize that it was my own fear itself that was torturing and sucking the life out of me, not the things or people that made me afraid. Becoming aware of this I began to turn my attention toward focusing on God and the real truth about His character during the times when I was most tormented by fear and I found to my amazement that the fear could not remain in the presence of such power. I had begun to tap into the real power of agape love, a love that is unconditional and cannot be diluted in the slightest by anything we do. That was the whole point of what happened at the cross. Jesus demonstrated that nothing humans or demons could do to hurt Him could dampen His love and forgiveness even for a moment. And this truth will in the last days be the liberating revelation that will enlighten the whole world with the glory of God before the end finally comes. (see Revelation 18:1)

And we have come to know and to believe the love that God has in us. God is love, and the one who resides in love resides in God, and God resides in him. By this love is perfected with us, so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment, because just as Jesus is, so also are we in this world. (1 John 4:16-17 NET)