Lenten Midweek I

Lenten Midweek I: “Test the Spirits”

March 12, 2025

Text: 1 John 4:1-6

            Discernment.  That is the spiritual gift St. John says you have, and must needs exercise.  Do not believe every spirit.  Test the spirits.  Test the teaching.  The first thing to say about this is that this means there are spirits behind the things that are taught.  The Holy Spirit, and good spirits (angels) are behind teaching that is right and true.  Evil spirits are behind false teaching.  Doctrine matters.  We are often tempted to say (and perhaps even have said) that differences in doctrine aren’t important, because we are saved by grace anyway, not by having everything just right.  And I absolutely agree that we are saved by grace, and grace alone, and not, thank God, by having everything just right.  But doctrine still matters.  It’s still important.  And when we understand that a doctrinal assertion must either be true or false, right or wrong (there is no neutral, in-between), and that this is a major arena of the spiritual battle, such that the Holy Spirit and good spirits are wielding the true and right, and the devil and the evil spirits are wielding the false and wrong, then we know that we must not minimize doctrine’s importance.  And we know that we must always seek the true doctrine, to hear the voice of our Savior, Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of our Father.  And we must not listen to the voices of evil spirits. 

            The second thing to say is that there is a way to hone and exercise this gift.  You received the spiritual gift of discernment at your Baptism into Christ, because you received the Holy Spirit at your Baptism into Christ.  Much like you were born with the gift of muscles, you were spiritually born from above with the gift of discernment.  But now, whether we’re speaking of muscles, or discernment (or the use of any other gift), some people are stronger, and some people are weaker.  And some of that is innate.  God gives the gift in a measure He knows best.  But this difference has especially to do with the use or misuse of the gift, the stewardship of the gift, the exercise of the gift.  And with the gift of discernment, the only way to hone the gift is to be continually in the Holy Scriptures.  St. John says, “Whoever knows God listens to us,” that is, the Apostles, the Apostolic Scriptures, the Apostolic doctrine; “whoever is not from God does not listen to us.  By this we know the Spirit of truth,” capital S, “and the spirit of error,” small s (1 John 4:6; ESV).  You can only discern the spirits, test the spirits, test the teaching, if you are constantly hearing, reading, marking, learning, and inwardly digesting the precious Word of God.

            There are many false prophets in the world, John warns us.  Some of them are frauds.  Many of them, though, are well-intentioned.  They may be sincere, but remember, you can be sincerely wrong.  We have to know how to identify them, though, because what they never do is introduce themselves as a false prophet (“Hi, I’m Pastor Schmidt, and I’m going to teach you some demonic doctrines I hope you’ll believe.”)  They may not even know they are a false prophet.  And whether they know, or don’t know, we should pray for them, for their conversion to the truth, for their conversion to the Holy Spirit’s teaching, over against the teachings of demons.  And we should love them… Love them enough to tell them the truth.  Love them enough to yearn for their salvation.

            There is false teaching that does not disqualify a person from salvation.  We are saved by grace alone, as we said, through Christ alone.  Faith is that alone by which we receive Christ’s salvation.  If a person has Christ, that person has everlasting life.  Very true.  That doesn’t make the false teaching any less serious.  Once a person knows they have been believing and teaching a false doctrine, they should repent.  They should change their mind.  But it is to say, we know that there are false teachings in Christian denominations, and when we criticize the false teaching, identify it as false (as we should and must, on the basis of the Holy Scriptures), understand, we are not de-churching the brothers and sisters who hold that teaching, or denying that they will go to heaven.  We’re simply calling them to be more faithful to the Word of our one Lord Jesus Christ, the Savior of us all.  And, by the way, we should do that in humility, not arrogance, always walking circumspectly, always examining where we may hold a false opinion.  And when we find that we are holding a false opinion, we should repent.  We should reject that false opinion as from an evil spirit (because it is from an evil spirit).  We should change our mind.  We are not better than anybody else.  We are not immune from this danger.  Where we are right, we are right by grace, not because we are superior.  Where we are wrong, repent.  God grant us repentance. 

            But tonight, St. John identifies THE false teaching that does disqualify a person from salvation, one that results in eternal death.  And it all comes down to this: “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” (vv. 2-3).  It all comes down to the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.  God in our flesh.  Conceived by the Holy Spirit.  Born of the Virgin Mary.  Suffered, bodily, under Pontius Pilate.  Crucified, bodily, dead and buried.  Raised again on the Third Day, bodily.  Ascended, bodily.  Reigning, bodily.  Giving Himself to His Church, bodily.  Present for and with us, bodily.  Coming again, bodily, to raise our bodies, to live forever with Him, bodily.  That teaching is from the Holy Spirit and His angels.  And it gives life.  And any teaching contrary to that is, John says, antichrist.

            Now, we could spend a whole sermon on antichrist, and the fact that there are many antichrists in the world, and how it appears that a singular “man of lawlessness” (2 Thess. 2:3), or antichrist, has or will appear in the Last Days, and who our Lutheran Confessions identify as that man, that antichrist.  Maybe we’d do well to deal with that in a Bible Study.  But here, I think, John is using the word antichrist more generally.  Antichrist means “in place of Christ.”  And what he is saying to us (and don’t miss just how serious this is) is that any teaching of any other Christ than the one I just described is a false substitute.  A false christ.  A lie.  It’s demonic. 

            John was pretty serious about this.  There was this guy in Ephesus, where John was bishop, named Cerinthus, a real burr in John’s saddle.  Cerinthus taught, among other demonic things, that there is a difference between Christ, who is God, and Jesus, who is a man.  Christ, he said, descended upon Jesus at His Baptism (Christ is the dove, Cerinthus maintained), and then guided Jesus throughout His ministry.  But then, of course, Christ left Jesus at His crucifixion, because that would be beneath Christ.  And Jesus, the man, is still dead, perhaps to be raised on the Last Day (though there is some debate about exactly what Cerinthus taught on this).  Well, John, the Apostle of Love, was lovingly ticked off about this.  We think John wrote his epistles primarily to warn his flock against this guy.  John’s student, Polycarp, tells the story that one time John was in the Ephesian bathhouse, when Cerinthus came in.  John got up and ran out the building, yelling something like, “Watch out!  We’d better get out of here before God knocks the whole place down on Cerinthus’ head!” 

            John wasn’t being mean.  We think telling someone what they believe is wrong, and incurs judgement, is mean.  But that just shows that we’ve all been culturally conditioned to tolerate and affirm whatever anyone wants to think or do.  We’ve all been culturally conditioned to be relativists, that is, to deny objective truth.  Look for that in yourself.  Repent of it.  You know the world doesn’t dance to our tune, as Jesus says in our Holy Gospel (Matt. 11:7-19).  Think about this, though.  What is more loving?  To say, “Believe whatever you want, even if that means going to hell,” or to say, “Believe in Christ, come in the flesh, for you, and have eternal life.  Don’t believe any other christ, because any other christ is demonic, is antichrist”?

            In fact, this is love: “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).  “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).  “In this is love,” as we’ll hear next week (and as is the overarching theme of our midweek meditations), “not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10).  Love begins and ends and lives in God’s Love incarnate, enfleshed, in Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Christ, the eternal Son of God.  We are in Him.  He is in us.  And St. John tells us that He who is in us is greater than he who is in the world.  That is, Jesus is greater than the spirit that gives the world’s doctrine, the devil.  So listen to the Apostles.  Be in the Scriptures.  Immerse yourself in the things of God, which is to be immersed in God’s Love incarnate, in Christ.  Confess Him faithfully.  Discern.  Test the spirits.  Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.  That was true then.  It is true right now.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.