‘Test the spirits to see whether they are from God,’ says the apostle John. In our modern way of thinking such a remark is not fitting! We must learn to respect every person and to take him seriously. But I wonder if we do take others seriously that way.
John is called ‘the apostle of love’. Let us not forget that true love can be very strict. But we have no reason to be strict whatsoever, if we ourselves cannot distinguish anymore between good and evil. How could we test the spirits to see whether they are from God, if we ourselves are not born out of Gods Spirit?
It strikes me as remarkable that Christians, who have difficulty in believing that Jesus Christ was a man of flesh and blood (Hebrews 2:14) and at the same time the perfect Son of God, that these same Christians are so broadly-minded where other ways of believing are concerned. ‘Surely, each point of view has its own truth, has it not?’ ‘But every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus, is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist…’ says John.
Many people think this is not a Christian way of thinking…
When Christ has not yet come to live in us through His Spirit, we are - indeed - no different from other people, like Muslims, Hindus, Christians, freethinkers, you name them. The Spirit of God goes all over the world and proves the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment (John 16:8).
A conceited Christian will be much harder to convince by the Spirit of God, than a freethinker who is seeking for truth. For he too will feel the appeal of John’s words: ‘We are from God, and whoever knows God, listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us.’