1 John 4

     4:1.  Test the spirits; in the context here of weighing the words of those who claim to know the mind of God (i.e., prophets), John is saying measure the words by the word you know comes from God (“the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints,” Jude 3).  Cf. 1 Cor. 2:11-16, where Paul makes the spirit of a man in him virtually the equivalent of his thoughts, or “mind”.  Then he concludes, “But we [apostles] have the mind of Christ.”

     So we distinguish the spirits by the word of God.  But interpreting the word of God correctly is not always easy, as the Ethiopian eunuch confessed to Philip (Acts 8:30 f.).  The devil tested the man Jesus by quoting the word of God, but out of context, and wrongly applied (much as false prophets today do the same with v.8, using God’s love to cancel God’s holiness, justice, and truth).  But Jesus, filled with the Spirit of God, resisted Satan with God’s word rightly applied (Mt. 4:1-11; cf. Jer. 14:14; 2 Pet. 2:1-3).

     4:2-6.  The spirit that is in the world often pays lip service to Jesus, while denying him in some way (“Indeed, has God said…?”  Gen. 3:1).  The spirit of antichrist always denies Jesus Christ in some way.  But those who are God’s children hear the message of God given to those whom he has sent, and believe it (6).  We discern the truth by God’s Spirit whom he has given us (3:24).

     4:7-14.  The love the children of God have for one another is a distinguishing mark.  Where it is lacking, our relationship to the Father is brought into question.  We were once not from God, but from the world (4-5); children of wrath (Eph. 2:3).  But God in Christ loved us, even to the extreme that he sent his Son to be the propitiation [the removal of wrath] for our sins (9-10).  (See notes on propitiation, and world, at 2:2.)

     4:12, 14.  Though we have not beheld God, nor can we see his heavenly glory (12), the Son whom he sent has been seen and borne witness to as Savior (14).  He has made the grace and truth of the Father known (cf. John 1:17, 18).

     4:15-21.  Our assurance rests on the love God has borne to us in Christ.  If we love him who first loved us (when we were altogether unlovely) surely we should love our brothers, those others for whom the love of God sent his Son to die.  It is his commandment to us (21).  Let us be just as he is in this world (dead to sin, but alive to God, Ro. 6:11), that we may have confidence in the Day of Judgment (17).