Day 9 - 1 John 4:1-6 - Overcome

1 Dear 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. 2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but 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.

4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

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There are two prevalent spirits in our world today.  One denies the authority and identity of Jesus and the other denies our ability to overcome evil. 

First things first.  Fewer and fewer people see Jesus as the one and only Son of God, the final authority on all things spiritual.  John certainly knew better.  He saw Man-Jesus and God-Jesus.  Read his gospel for his recollections of this God-Man.   Jesus taught like no other; Jesus performed miracles like no other; Jesus loved like no other; Jesus made claims like no other; and Jesus verified these claims by resurrecting from the grave.  Case closed for John.  So anyone who denies Jesus’ unique position is the anti-Christ, and there are plenty of those in our world today.  It is our responsibility to carefully examine any teaching or philosophy and evaluate it in light of the reality of Jesus as the Son of God.

On to the second spirit – the spirit of fatalism.  What I mean by that is the thought that we have little if any power to control who we are and what we do.   Especially in light of the evil world that we live in, too many people succumb to the thought that given my predisposition to sin and the rottenness around me I am doomed to spiritual failure.  Too often we underestimate ourselves and overestimate evil and find ourselves powerless to make the right choices.  John will hear nothing of the sort.  He saw too many lives changed by the power of an encounter with Jesus (it’s in the gospel of John we read about the Samaritan woman, the woman caught in adultery, Nicodemus, and others who rose above both their inclinations and their environment).  When we consider human personality we often think it is a combination of nature (our genetic predispositions) and nurture (the influences we are exposed to) but John introduces another force, certainly more powerful than either – the Spirit of God!  And he declares that the spitit who lives in us is greater than the spirit of the world!

Actually, these spirits are two sides of the same coin.  If you deny that Christ is who he is then we are indeed left in a pickle.  If Jesus is just a mere man then he really has no power to transform me.  He’s only another self-help guru.  But if he is indeed the Son of God, then I have a capable ally that can help me overcome.  John urges us to always maintain our belief in the uniqueness of Jesus and in that faith we will find a power that can overcome the world!