How Do We Know It’s God’s Spirit?

One of the really important things we have to do as Christians is figure out if it is God speaking to us, or if we are hearing some other message.

God is speaking. To assume that He will not speaking is to miss the answer from the beginning. As Dallas Willard says, “the God Who hears is also one who speaks.” (The Divine Conspiracy p. 33)

But there are other voices speaking. Some of them mean us no harm–at least on the surface. Those voices of distraction are a topic for another time.

There are other voices, which John is concerned with in 1 John 4, which are actually the “Spirit of the Antichrist” (1 John 4:3). I’m using the term ‘voices’ loosely here. They don’t actually have to be physical voices. They are influences in and around our lives. Sometimes they are the voices or the writings of human beings–and that seems to be what John is primarily talking about.

John says, in effect, ‘there is a lot of teaching out there, but not all of it is good or helpful or even true. Some of it is even completely against Jesus. We may remember Paul writing to the Philippian church, “For I have often told you, and now say again with tears, that many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.” (Philippians 3:18) John writes about these enemies of the cross of Christ calling their message, “the spirit of the Antichrist.”

If this message is so opposed to the truth of Jesus, it is essential that we are aware of how to recognize it. John answers this, and he does it surprisingly simply: “every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.” (1 John 4:3)

What does it mean to confess Jesus? We know from the context of 1 John even as recently as 1 John 4:2 that to “confess Jesus” means at least to confess “that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.” I see at least three parts to this confession.

First, the true spirit of God will confess that Jesus is the Christ. He is the Chosen One of God. It’s worth noting that the demons were able to do this as well at various points in the Gospel (Luke 4:34 for example) so we don’t want to get too fixated on this confession by itself, or claim that this declaration is sufficient to prove someone’s surrender to Jesus. In other words, acknowledging that Jesus is God’s Chosen and Anointed One is not enough to declare that someone is speaking by God’s Spirit. John doesn’t claim it’s enough. We shouldn’t either. But it is an essential ingredient–no one speaking by the Spirit of God will fail to acknowledge or agree with the truth that Jesus is the Christ.

Second, John says that Jesus “has come in the flesh” (emphasis mine).  We’ll talk about the “in the flesh” portion next, and for the record, that seems to have been the emphasis of John’s statement–probably (there’s no way to know for sure) due to the nature of the controversy in the church or churches to which John was writing.  But before we get to that point, we should consider: where did John and the rest of the true confessors think Jesus came from? It certainly doesn’t make sense to say He came from the flesh to the flesh. What John seems to be saying–and this is certainly in line with the rest of the New Testament, including Jesus’s Own statements about Himself–is that the Spirit of Truth will testify that Jesus is Divine. He came from God. We’ll talk about His humanity in a minute, and that is important, even vitally important to John, but in our day, we don’t want to miss the fact that Jesus was and always is God. The Spirit of Truth will affirm this. Any Spirit that says Jesus was not or is not divine is not from God. It is the Spirit of the Antichrist.

Third, John says that the Spirit of truth confesses that Jesus has come “in the flesh.” Evidently there were some who did not believe in the physical manifestation of Jesus. Either they believed He never had a body or that His Spirit was never fully unified with it or some related heresy. Whatever the case, John said we must fully reject it. Jesus was the God man. He came. He was a man. We say ‘amen’ even if we don’t understand how. Any spirit that speaks any other message isn’t from God: it’s the spirit of the Antichrist.

So should we be afraid of this? This spirit that is to come has already sent out many false prophets John says (1 John 4:1). But John tells us we do not need to be afraid. Because as Paul says in Ephesians 6:12, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood,” but instead, the spirits are at war, and as John will go on to say, “the One Who is in [us] is greater than the one who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)

It can be intimidating when the spirit of the antichrist amasses followers. It can be humiliating when the world rejects the truth we are trying to teach. But John reminds us that the teachers of the world are teaching the world’s message, so they are naturally going to listen to them. On the other hand the teachers of Jesus’s message are teaching a message that is different–it’s not the message of the spirit of the world or the antichrist. It’s the message of the apostles, and the Bible, and Lord God Almighty, and Jesus Christ Himself, Who came down from Heaven as the fully God fully man Anointed One Who loved us so much that He would die for our sins.

We proclaim Him. When we do it faithfully (may we all do it faithfully!) we can say with John “We are from God. Anyone who knows God listens to us; anyone who is not from God does not listen to us.”

So what do we do with this? 

Whose message are you proclaiming? All of us are proclaiming someone or something. Are you proclaiming Jesus–God’s Anointed One, The God Man, Who came in the Flesh? Or are you believing and speaking something less than that, that John calls the spirit of the antichrist?

Whose message are you listening to? Many antichrists and many false prophets are speaking in the world, but John has given us the tools to recognize them. Are the voices you are listening to and allowing to influence your life the voices that proclaim the real Jesus as John describes Him? Or are you listening to some other message? Who we allow to influence us matters. We should use wisdom in choosing our teachers.