1 John 4 - What The World Needs Now is Love Sweet Love!

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A Warning against False Teaching

1Delightfully loved friends, don’t trust every spirit, but carefully examine what they say  to determine if they are of God, because many false prophets have mingled into the world. 2Here’s the test for those with the genuine Spirit of God: they will confess Jesus as the Christ who has come in the flesh.  3Everyone who does not acknowledge that Jesus is from God has the spirit of antichrist, which you heard was coming and is already active in the world.

As teachers come into the church or you listen to teachers from other churches, you should be careful and discerning and take note of their teaching.  The most important aspect of their message is what they teach about who Jesus is. Most importantly they must teach that Jesus is the Messiah. No one can confess Jesus is Lord apart from the Holy Spirit. 1 Corinthians 12:3. 

Jesus came in the flesh, meaning he became a human being. The gnostic heresy was the Jesus only appeared to be a man, but he really was just a "spirit-being". Or, that he was only human and not really God. This was the litmus test John gave to the church, and it is the same litmus today we use today for what it means to be Christian . For instance in the New Age movement the idea is that everyone can become a god if they connect with the spiritual world. 

True prophecy and true teaching will always present the true Jesus as 100% man and 100% God. In John’s day, the issue was about if Jesus had truly come in a real body of flesh and blood. Many Gnostic-influenced teachers said that Jesus, being God, could not have actually become a flesh and blood human being, because God could have no partnership with “impure” material stuff.

“This statement would be directed against some form of Docetism, the view that Christ was a spirit who only seemed to be a true man.” (Boice)

 Today, some groups deny that Jesus is really God (such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and Muslims). But way back in John’s day, in this time closest to the actual life and ministry of Jesus on this earth, people didn’t have a hard time believing Jesus was God. They had a hard time believing that he was a real man. This false teaching said Jesus was truly God (which is correct), but really a “make-believe” man.

Today, we are passionate about saying, “Jesus is God,” and we should be. But it is no less important to say, “Jesus is a man,” because both the deity and humanity of Jesus are essential to our salvation.

4Little children, you can be certain that you belong to God and have conquered them,  for the One who is living in you is far greater than the one who is in the world.  5They belong to this world and they articulate the spirit of this world, and the world listens to them. 6But we belong to God, and whoever truly knows God listens to us. Those who refuse to listen to us do not belong to God. That is how we can know the difference between the spirit of truth and the spirit of deceit. 

Verse 4 is a valuable verse as we think about our battle with the evil one. It says, "the One who is living in you is far greater than the one who is in the world."

We need to be wise and discerning about evil spirits, but never afraid. God did not appoint to us a spirit of timidity but one of power, love and self-control. When a Christian listens to a false prophet they know the false prophet is not speaking the truth by the Holy Spirit within us who helps us discern between truth and error. 

But people in the world will listen to a false prophet because they share the same spirit which is not of God. This is why for instance someone who has a worldly value of money and greed will listen to a false prophet who says if you believe God for "x", God will give you "y" amount of dollars. It is false teaching because it is not in the bible, but the person of the world doesn't know that but just wants to make more money. If they can justify it through God even better yet.

God’s Love and Ours

7 Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. 10 This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.

The only way we can know how to love others is to know God's love. The only way we can truly know and experience God's love is when we are born again and come to believe in Jesus as our Savior. God's showed us the full extent of His love when He sent His only Son into the world to save it and us. The ultimate expression of God's love was when His Son Jesus died for us on the cross. We didn't deserve it, we couldn't earn, but Jesus gave it away to us!

It is only as we experience and know God's unconditional love for us that we can truly love another person. When we love another person unconditionally through Jesus working through us in the power of the Holy Spirit. 

In some ways the Christian's life is quite easy. Accept the free gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Spend your life spreading the Good News about what Jesus has done for us and showing God's love in word and deed. The world can make many arguments against the Christian faith but it can never argue against love. As 1 Corinthians 13:6 tells us, "God's love never fails!" Human love can fail us but God's love will never fail us. 

When we express God's love to one another, John says God lives in us, and His love is made complete in us. When we love each others as God loves us, we become the people God created us to be. Many try to complete themselves with achievements, fame, the pleasures of the world, but these will never satisfy the most important desires of our heart and soul. We are completely fulfilled when we receive God's love and give it to someone else. 

What does the world need now? Love sweet love! It's the only thing that there's just too little of!