1 John 4:2,3

1 John 4:2-3. Hereby ye know the Spirit of God: that is, the voice of the one Holy Ghost in the various ‘spirits' proclaiming a confession. The personal faith must have its outward avowal; every teacher or ‘spirit' must teach on the basis of a confession of Jesus. In chap. 2 the test of antichrist was the refusal to believe that ‘Jesus was the Christ' or ‘the Father and the Son:' the divinity and Messiahship of our Lord. Here the true faith is that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh: not into the world simply, not simply into the flesh, which might connote its fallen condition, but ‘in flesh' that is, in a true humanity He appeared who existed before as the Son of God, and so ‘came' that it may be said as of an abiding presence, He ‘is come.' The true reading of the antithesis, every spirit that confesseth not Jesus is not of God, is most forcible in its simplicity: the name of Jesus is enough, for the confession of a man as come from God means nothing. With the next words, this is that of antichrist, that ‘matter' or that ‘spirit' of antichrist refers back to chap. 2; though ye have heard indicates a well-known doctrine. A remarkable reading of the Vulgate, ‘which annulleth' or ‘dissolveth Jesus,' points to the severance of Jesus from the Christ, a Gnostic notion, or the separation of Jesus into two persons, a Nestorian error; but this reading is not confirmed. It can hardly be denied, however, that this confession alluded to the Docetic heresy which denied the reality of the Lord's human nature; though that was only a temporary form of opposition to an eternal truth, the sum and standard of all truth.