Test Them

Dear friends, do not believe everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit. You must test them to see if the spirit they have comes from God. For there are many false prophets in the world. This is how we know if they have the Spirit of God: If a person claiming to be a prophet acknowledges that Jesus Christ came in a real body, that person has the Spirit of God. 1 John 4:1-2

THE APOSTLE JOHN was committed to confronting heretical beliefs that were being taught in his day, namely that Jesus only appeared to have a body. So he defined the truth about who Jesus is —that Jesus existed in eternity past as the Son of God, and that when he came as the Christ, he took on a bodily existence common to humanity.

John was not content for his spiritual children to have a vague or squishy understanding of the person and work of Jesus. What they believed about Jesus mattered. John wanted them to be careful to whom they listened, because not “everyone who claims to speak by the Spirit” can be trusted. He warned about following voices that were in vogue, telling them to stick with what had been taught and written about Jesus by the apostles.

Even in our day, some people who talk about Jesus sound very spiritual, but they diminish or distort who he is and what he came to accomplish. There is the Jesus who gets prayed to before a singing competition and thanked at award shows and athletic championships. Along with this pop-culture Jesus, there is the social-activist Jesus, the great-teacher Jesus, the pacifist Jesus, the rebel Jesus, and many more.

Part of parenting our kids toward knowing and loving Jesus is keeping a close watch on the orthodoxy of those who are speaking into their lives about the person and work of Christ. John writes about people who “belong to this world, so they speak from the world’s viewpoint, and the world listens to them.” He continues, “But we belong to God, and those who know God listen to us” (1 John 4:5-6). Who is “us”? The apostles. In other words, the way we know someone is speaking the truth about Jesus is that their teaching conforms to what the apostles wrote and taught about him in Scripture.

Lord, I need greater clarity on who you are so that I’ll be equipped to recognize error when it is being taught. Help me to know when I should be concerned about the voices ________ is listening to, and give me wisdom about how to challenge those voices and point ________ to the truth in the Scriptures.