Spirits?

Don’t believe every spirit … test the spirits … every spirit that acknowledges Jesus … every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God … this is how we recognize the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood (1 John 4:1-6).

Happy Monday, and off we go into this next week of our series The Holy Spirit: Presence, Power and Purpose.  We want to better understand what it means to live by the Spirit, walk in the Spirit, keep in step with the Spirit, and this week we’re looking at 1 John 4:1-6.  Please take a few minutes to read this passage now …

Let’s start with the word spirit, which John uses over and over again in this passage.  In both Hebrew and Greek, the word our Bibles translate as spirit means breath or wind … or spirit.  In John’s usage, spirit means something like the animating force or power behind an idea or attitude or behavior.  Think of team spirit (or teen spirit!) or the spirit of a great city, or the spirit of the age.

All of us are subject to “winds” that blow through our culture, to attitudes and ideas that “breathe into” or “inspire” a religious, political, cultural or social movement.

John warns us: not every spirit comes from God.  To be “spiritual but not religious” does not automatically put you on safe ground. Therefore, learn to “test” the spirits, become discerning about the behind-the-scenes voices and influences that are always working to get our attention and gain our allegiance and loyalty.

John gives us two ways to “test the spirits”: first, look at where they are pointing.  Second, look at their source, where they’re “coming from.”

The Holy Spirit will always point us to Jesus.  God the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us, forms Jesus in us, expresses Jesus through us.  The Spirit leads and guides us into all the truth, and Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.  The Holy Spirit is always at work to help us know Jesus more deeply, obey him more faithfully, love him more fully.

Other spirits point us elsewhere.  They seduce us into believing that life, forgiveness, shalom, reconciliation and righteousness can be found or achieved some other way.  Maybe it’s Jesus-plus-something-else; maybe it’s do-your-own-thing, you-do-you; maybe it’s some other “king,” some other “lord.”

Second is source, where the animating spirit comes from.  “You are from God,” John writes, “they are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world” (verses 4 and 5).  When John uses the word world, he’s not talking about the physical planet Earth.  Instead, he means something like “all of life organized as if God doesn’t exist, doesn’t matter, doesn’t really mean anything important.”  Worldly people may dismiss or ignore Jesus altogether, or try to fit him into their agendas.  For Spirit-of-God people, Jesus is the starting point, the ending point, the source of everything and the goal of everything.

Remember: churchfolk are as vulnerable to these “other spirits” as anyone.  John doesn’t call us to be suspicious or paranoid; he does show us how to be discerning: “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them (all those false-leading, mis-directing spirits), because the one who is in you (God the Holy Spirit!) is greater than the one who is in the world” (verse 4).

As you read and reflect on 1 John 4:1-6, do you sense that you may have been captured in some ways by “other spirits”?  A consumeristic-spirit, a me-first spirit of independence, a spirit of fear, a spirit that keeps Jesus at the edges and margins of your life and something else at the center?  If so, invite the Holy Spirit in, into your life, mind, heart, calendar, checkbook and all the rest of you.  Here’s one way to pray: “Come, Holy Spirit; come into me and all of my life and fill me with your presence, your power and your purposes.  Come, Holy Spirit!”

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