Daily Devotional #37 (1 John 4:1-3)

 ¹Dear friends, 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. ²This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, ³but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. (1 John 4:1-3)

Faith is believing something that is true. It is not convincing yourself that something is true when you know it is not. In order to be a Christian you must be a believer, because from faith comes life, strength, peace, joy, and everything else that the Christian life offers. As the people of God, we are called to be believers.

In addition, we are also called to be unbelievers. There is a time when unbelief is the right thing. In order to live it is necessary both to inhale and to exhale. These are contradictory things: You cannot inhale and exhale at the same time, but both are absolutely necessary to maintain life. You cannot inhale unless you exhale, and you cannot exhale unless you have inhaled.

It is the same with this matter of belief and unbelief. You cannot believe truth without rejecting error. You cannot accept Christ without rejecting self.  This is what John is declaring here in 1 John 4:1-3.

Now, this section comes as a parenthesis in John's discourse on love. And, it is significant that this warning comes in the midst of John's discourse about love, because the false spirits make a great deal out of love. Every cult does what it does and teaches what it teaches in the name of love. The oldest trick in Satan's bag of tricks is to show a spirit of friendly concern and to appear to offer the fulfillment of love.

In the Garden he said, "if you take of this fruit you will become as gods. You will discover the thing you were made for, and which God is trying to keep you from. As your friend, I suggest you take of the fruit and eat". But the Scriptures warn us that the mark of childish immaturity is to be caught up and taken in by that kind of approach, "to be tossed about by every wind of doctrine" {Eph 4:14}, every new teaching that comes along.

The mark of spiritual maturity is unbelief in that which is false and believing in that which is true. Tomorrow, we will consider this proposition in a more deeper fashion.