The Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of Error
Introduction: The War for the Dictionary
We live in an age that is drowning in information, yet starving for truth. Our culture is awash in voices, opinions, and spiritualities, all clamoring for our attention, all demanding to be heard. The modern world tells you to "follow your heart," to "speak your truth," as though truth were a personal accessory you could pick out to match your outfit for the day. But the apostle John, writing with the pastoral authority of a man who leaned on Jesus' breast, tells us something entirely different. He tells us that the spiritual realm is a war zone, and that we are required to be soldiers, not passive consumers. We are commanded to be discerning, not gullible.
The central issue in all of life, from the garden of Eden to the present moment, is a battle for the dictionary. Who gets to define reality? Who gets to say what is true, what is good, what is real? The serpent came to Eve and his first move was to question God's Word: "Hath God said?" That is the primordial lie, the foundational spirit of antichrist. It is the attempt to unhitch reality from the God who spoke it into existence. And that same spirit is abroad in the world today, more sophisticated perhaps, dressed up in academic gowns or therapeutic jargon, but it is the same ancient lie.
John is writing to a church that was being infiltrated by false teachers. These were the early Gnostics, the proto-postmodernists of their day. They were spiritual, they were enlightened, they had "deeper" knowledge. But their teaching had one fatal flaw, it denied the central, bedrock, non-negotiable fact of history: that the eternal Word became flesh and dwelt among us. They wanted a spiritual Christ without the scandal of a physical body, a divine idea without the gritty reality of blood, sweat, and tears. They wanted a God who did not get His hands dirty with matter.
And so John gives us a field sobriety test for spirits. He doesn't tell us to trust our feelings or to follow our intuition. He gives us a hard, objective, doctrinal standard. This is not a call for a critical, cynical spirit that tears everything down. It is a call for a discerning spirit that is fiercely protective of the truth because it is fiercely in love with the One who is the Truth. We are to be watchmen on the wall, and the first duty of a watchman is to be able to tell the difference between an approaching enemy and a returning friend.
The Text
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. You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world hears them. We are from God. The one who knows God hears us; the one who is not from God does not hear us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
(1 John 4:1-6 LSB)
The Divine Command to Discern (v. 1)
John begins with a tender address and a stark command.
"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 4:1)
He calls them "beloved," which reminds us that this command to test is rooted in love. Love is not sentimental mush; love protects. A father who truly loves his children does not let just anyone into the house. He checks who is at the door. Spiritual discernment is not optional for the Christian life; it is a fundamental aspect of our love for God and for one another. To be indiscriminate is not to be loving; it is to be lazy and irresponsible.
The command is twofold: a negative and a positive. "Do not believe every spirit." This is a direct assault on the modern ethos of open-mindedness, which is often just a euphemism for empty-headedness. The Bible does not commend gullibility. We are not to be spiritual sponges, soaking up every new fad or teaching that comes along. Then the positive command: "test the spirits." The word for "test" is dokimazo, a word used for assaying metals, for testing their purity and authenticity. It implies a standard. You cannot test something without an objective measuring rod.
And why is this necessary? "Because many false prophets have gone out into the world." Notice, they have "gone out." This implies they often come from within the visible church. They use our vocabulary, they sing our songs, but they have subtly changed the dictionary. They are not honest pagans who deny Christ from the outside; they are wolves in sheep's clothing who corrupt the faith from the inside. The world is the mission field for these false prophets, and their message is always popular because it caters to the spirit of the age.
The Objective Doctrinal Test (v. 2-3)
John does not leave us guessing about the standard. The test is not subjective, it is not a feeling in your gut. It is a clear, propositional, theological confession.
"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 4:2-3)
Here is the litmus test. It is the Incarnation. To confess that "Jesus Christ has come in the flesh" is to affirm the whole gospel in seed form. It means you believe in His full deity ("Christ," the anointed Messiah) and His full humanity ("in the flesh"). It means you believe that the infinite, eternal, transcendent God took on a true human nature, a real body, and entered into our fallen, broken world. This is the great scandal of the faith, and it is the hill upon which the church stands or falls.
Why is this the central test? Because the Incarnation is God's great "yes" to the material world He created. The Gnostic spirit, the spirit of antichrist, always wants to denigrate the physical. It wants a disembodied spirituality. It wants to escape the body, not see it redeemed. This is why the spirit of antichrist today manifests in a hatred for the givenness of creation, whether it is the unborn child in the womb, or the fixed reality of male and female. The spirit of antichrist hates anything made of molecules because God became a man of molecules. To deny the Incarnation is to deny that God has spoken definitively in history, in space and time, in a real body that could be seen and touched.
And every spirit that does not confess this is "not from God." It is that black and white. There is no middle ground. This is the "spirit of the antichrist." John says they had heard it was coming, but it is "already in the world." The final, ultimate Antichrist is yet to come, but his spirit, his animating principle of rebellion against the enfleshed Son of God, is the operating system of the fallen world. It is the spirit that seeks to de-Christianize the world by denying the Lordship of the historical, resurrected Jesus Christ over every square inch of it.
The Believer's Victorious Position (v. 4)
After laying out the stark reality of this spiritual conflict, John gives a word of profound assurance.
"You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world." (1 John 4:4)
Our identity is the foundation of our victory. "You are from God." We have been born from above. Our source code is divine. And because of this, we "have overcome them." Notice the past tense. In Christ, the victory is already secured. We are not fighting for victory; we are fighting from victory. The outcome of the war has been decided at the cross and the empty tomb. We are now simply engaged in mop-up operations.
And what is the basis of this confidence? It is not our own cleverness or spiritual strength. It is this: "because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world." The Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity, indwells every true believer. The devil, "he who is in the world," is a powerful, created being. But he is still just a creature. The Spirit of God within us is the uncreated, infinite, omnipotent Creator. The contest is not even close. It is like pitting a hurricane against a child's pinwheel. Our task is not to generate our own power, but to walk in the reality of the power that already resides within us.
The Great Antithesis (v. 5-6)
John concludes by drawing the battle lines with absolute clarity. There are two sources, two messages, and two audiences. There are only two teams.
"They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world hears them. We are from God. The one who knows God hears us; the one who is not from God does not hear us. From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error." (1 John 4:5-6)
First, the false prophets. Their origin is "the world," which in John's vocabulary means the fallen human system in rebellion against God. Because their source is the world, their message is worldly. It resonates with the world's lusts, pride, and rebellion. "Therefore... the world hears them." A false teacher's popularity is not a sign of God's blessing; it is a sign that he is scratching the world's itching ears. If your message is celebrated and affirmed by the New York Times, Hollywood, and the secular academy, you are almost certainly on the wrong track.
In stark contrast, "We are from God." The apostles and those who hold to their doctrine have a divine origin. Their message is not their own; it is a received word. And the audience is different. "The one who knows God hears us." The Word of God resonates with the Spirit of God in the child of God. The sheep know the Shepherd's voice. Conversely, "the one who is not from God does not hear us." They may hear the audible sounds, but they cannot receive the truth. It is foolishness to them. This is the great antithesis, the fundamental divide that runs through all of human history.
John's conclusion is breathtaking in its simplicity and authority. "From this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error." The test is apostolic doctrine. Do you listen to the apostles' teaching about Jesus Christ come in the flesh? If you do, you are of the truth. If you do not, you are of error. There is no third way. John is not setting himself up as an authority; he is pointing to the authority of the divine revelation entrusted to him. To hear the apostles is to hear Christ.
Conclusion: Stand Your Ground
So what does this mean for us, living in the twenty-first century? It means that the fundamental battle has not changed. The spirit of antichrist is still at work, seeking to deny the Incarnation, not necessarily by denying that Jesus existed, but by denying the implications of His coming in the flesh. It denies His Lordship over politics, over education, over art, over our bodies, over our sexuality. It seeks to confine Jesus to a "spiritual" realm that has no bearing on the real world of dirt and molecules.
Our task is to be faithful watchmen. We must test the spirits. When a new teaching arises, whether from a pulpit or a podcast, we must bring it to the apostolic standard. Does it confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh? Does it affirm His full deity and His true humanity? Does it submit to His Lordship over all of life? Or does it subtly unhitch us from the historical, biblical Christ in favor of a more palatable, modern, spiritual idea?
We must not be intimidated by the world's applause for its false prophets. Their success is a sign of their falsehood. And we must not be discouraged by the world's rejection of our message. Their deafness is a sign that we are speaking the truth. We are from God. We have already overcome. And the Spirit who dwells within us is infinitely greater than the spirit that animates the dying world around us. So take up the apostolic test, stand your ground, and refuse to believe any spirit that will not confess the glory of our God in human flesh.