1 John 4:1-3

Testing the Spirits

Every person claiming to teach God's law is not from God (Matthew 7:15-20). Moses told the children of Israel they could test a prophet by whether or not his words came to pass (Deuteronomy 18:22). If the prophet's words came to pass and he tried to get the people to follow other gods, one could also know he was not from God (Deuteronomy 13:1-5). Coffman notes the literal meaning in 1 John 4:1 is "stop believing every spirit", which may indicate they were very gullible. As the latter part of this verse shows, the spirits John is speaking of are false prophets. Woods says the word "test" means "run an assay on them as a metallurgist does his metals and determine whether they were of God." Our testing today must be done by aligning their teachings with the word of God (2 Timothy 3:15-17; Galatians 1:6-9; Judges 1:3; Acts 17:10-12).

Central to Christianity is the doctrine that Jesus Christ is the Son of God (John 20:30-31; Matthew 16:13-20; 1 Corinthians 12:3). Any man affirming such clearly identified himself as God's prophet. To deny Jesus was God's Son come in the flesh was to identify oneself as one who partook of the spirit of the anti-Christ (1 John 4:2-3).