SPIRITUALISTIC HUMBUGGERY!

I’ll explain the title in a moment.

Several years ago I read The DaVinci Code, an extremely well-written book that created quite a stir. I love fast-paced novels that move from one crisis to another; perhaps this book could be described as “Robert Ludlum goes to church.” I decided to read the book so I could at least be aware of what the buzz in the Christian community was all about.

As I started into the novel, I found myself mentally going to 1 John 4:1-4:

“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. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (ESV). 

At first my attention was drawn primarily to verse four—“For He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world”— but then I realized the tremendous value of what this full passage conveys and I began to give attention to the reason why the apostle John had written this. He was writing to protect the church in Asia Minor from the infiltration of heresy.

Since the birth of the church, the enemy has attempted to kill it. He has attacked the church from the outside by sending persecution. Persecution against the church is currently happening throughout the world in Iran, Egypt, Kenya, China, Nigeria, and this will continue until Jesus returns. Persecution in John’s day was very intense and would result in his being exiled to the Island of Patmos—and what happened there is another story for another day.

More difficult to handle are the attacks on the fundamentals of the Christian faith that come in the form of false prophets or from those with seemingly impeccable academic credentials. These attacks sometimes come from within the church and sometimes through the media. The DaVinci Code was simply another well-crafted attack on our faith.

This passage in 1 John helps us know how to separate, as it were, the sheep from the goats, the good from the bad, the right from the wrong.

Verse one is quite straightforward. The instruction here is that we are not to believe something simply because the “message carrier” announces that he is from God or that he has a new revelation. We are to test and see if the “message carrier” is of God or not. It is of special importance that we be cautious of those with whose life and ministry we are not really familiar.

Verses two and three tell us how to discern if the message or the messenger is truly “of God.” Not everybody who tells you they believe that Jesus is the Son of God is “of God” and, consequently, neither is their message. The apostle James says that even devils recognize who Jesus is (James 2:19). Verse two says that we can tell if the message or messenger are “of God” if they confess that Jesus has come in the flesh. What the writer was saying here was that when a person confesses that Jesus is the Son of God and has come in the flesh, he is not just verbally saying this but he is confessing (coming into agreement with) that Jesus is the Son of God. He is confessing faith in Christ and he is confessing that he is living his life in submission to Christ’s sovereignty.

I have heard those with an antichrist spirit (verse 3) say that Jesus is the Son of God. But when confronted, they would not confess (come into agreement with) that He was the Son of God, that He had come in the flesh, that they had repented of their sin and embraced by faith His death, burial and resurrection. The antichrist spirit will not confess Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Savior.

Verse four says, “You are from God.” The writer says this to contrast the believer with the false teacher who is of the world and speaks of the world system. Verse four goes on to say, “. . . and have overcome them.” The group that John was writing to was not being taken in by the false teaching that was prevalent in their day. They had gained a complete victory over these false teachers and their heresies because “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” 

A.T. Robertson in his classic book Word Pictures in the New Testament, writing about this passage, says, “Some believers fall easy victims to the latest fads in spiritualistic humbuggery.” I have no idea what that last word means but I love the way it rolls off my tongue.