A reflection 1 John 4:1-6.
John is writing to a church that is plagued with false teachers. People often say that we should have a childlike faith that is led more by the heart than by the mind. First of all, childlike faith does not mean we can’t ask questions. Spend some time with a child and see how many questions they ask. Secondly, the Bible repeatedly commands us to test the true and the false.
Just because something sounds spiritual does not mean it is true. I have attended worship services at churches that have sought revival. In their zeal for revival, they allowed false teachers to come in and speak. This is a mistake. False teaching is too high a price for revival.
John tells the church to test the spirits. How is this done? It is done according a christological standard. What do they say about Jesus? John tells the church to determine what the teachers are saying about the incarnation. Only an understanding of Jesus where he is both divine and human is from God. An error to either extreme is false doctrine.
This passage has the often quoted “he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” This is frequently interpreted as the devil not being able to hurt us because the Holy Spirit is in us. It does speak of the Spirit being in us but the original context is about maintaining the doctrinal purity of the church. We have the Spirit of church and as long as we obey the Spirit, we should be able to reject all false doctrine.
- 1 John
- False Doctrine
- John
- Theology
