LOVE the brethren, TEST the spirits, 1Jn 4:1-3
Dear friends… We’ve seen how John uses the address, ‘dear children’, but he also speaks to his readers as, ‘dear friends’. It’s not just the message that the apostle John is sharing but the Spirit it’s coming from! John tells us that the world has the Cain nature, but we must love our brothers and sisters.
1Jn2:11 Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command, but an old one, which you have had from the beginning…
1Jn3:2,3 Dear friends, NOW we are children of God and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as He is pure(hope of the Lord’s appearance keeps us pure).
1Jn3:21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from Him anything we ask… because we do what pleases Him(live clean).
1Jn4:1 Dear friends(this is a friendly warning) do not believe every spirit, but TEST the spirits to see whether they are from God(here’s the reason), because many false prophets have gone out into the world. The language of false religion in the days ahead may well be something like, ‘Just love everyone , no matter what wickedness they’re involved in’. God wants us to love Him and not evil. Jesus never compromised with false religion and neither can we. The late brother Neville Johnson, saw a being of light before him, but it didn’t speak. He asked it, ‘if Jesus had come in the fleshV2, human form’, but still no answer. Then he asked if ‘Jesus had come in his flesh, Neville a minister of the Lord’ and it reacted violently. We can use the same questions, as 1Jn4:2 tells us to TEST the spirits.
Peter also uses the same form of address to believers; 1Peter 2:11, Dear friends, I urge you, AS ALIENS AND STRANGERS IN THE WORLD(that’s who we are, long or short time), to abstain from sinful desires, which war(strong word) against your soul.
Jude 3, Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and DENY JESUS CHRIST(the test for everything spiritual) our only Sovereign and Lord.
The Bottom Line is that we are called to Love like our Lord, but to test the spirits and never to embrace or align with anything that is not of Him.
God bless and keep you today.