Discernment (1 John 4-5)

I am a day behind, but I do want to post some thoughts on 1 John 4 because I think it is a verse that the church in America needs to hear again.

1 John 4:1-3 says: "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already" (ESV).

We need to learn more discernment. It is amazing what is uncritically accepted as Biblical truth these days. Evangelical media is full of messengers and messages that claim to be Biblical but are not. Many (but certainly not all) evangelical bestsellers are more heresy than truth. How have we come to this state of affairs? We have not "tested the spirits." Perhaps in the name of Christian charity, we have not been critical enough, substituting social and cultural markers of orthodoxy for theological ones. Or perhaps we have been lazy. Maybe we have trusted Christian publishers and radio stations to be discerning for us. If it is on STAR 99.1 or WFME, it must be good. Zondervan wouldn't publish bad teaching, would they?

What should be the main focus in discerning who teaches the truth and who does not? John points to the person and work of Christ. John was living in the days of a "proto-Gnostic" heresy. It seems that some were denying that Jesus came in the flesh, probably because they felt the flesh was inherently evil. If flesh was evil, Jesus could not have been flesh and blood. 1 John is written to warn Christians against these heretics. One part of the warning is this: not matter how good the teaching may seem, reject it if it doesn't get Jesus right.

Evangelicals would do well to remember that today. No matter how entertaining or culturally savvy a teacher may be, his words are meaningless if he doesn't get Jesus right. May God's church have a spirit of discernment.