Transcript

I have mentioned in the past that there are people in the financial world who have received special training in detecting counterfeit currency. Much of the training involves handling genuine currency in order to more quickly detect the counterfeit.[1]

One individual told me this training included a session when the lights were turned out and the trainees handled money in complete darkness, learning to detect counterfeit money simply by its texture.

Detecting and avoiding counterfeit teachers is a major theme throughout John the apostle’s first letter. And as we sail into chapter 4 of 1 John, he is going to raise the issue again. This is clear from the first verse:

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.

The word for “test” here was commonly used in John’s generation for testing the genuineness of coins.[2]

There was evidently counterfeit money in the first century—probably in every century for that matter. And there are certainly counterfeit teachers as well. When you were in school, you listened to your teachers, and then they gave you tests to take. Of these teachers John says, “No, no. You test the teacher first, and then listen to him. Put your teacher to the test!”

He even gives us the test for them in verse 2: 

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.

In other words, what does that Bible teacher, that prophet, that spiritual guide, say about Jesus? John effectively says, “Be specific. Do they confess that “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, from God?”

Christ (christos) was the term for the coming anointed Messiah from heaven—the one literally dispatched by God the Father to come in the flesh.

Jesus’ existence did not begin at Bethlehem. Bethlehem was simply where He first appeared in human flesh. He existed from eternity past, was miraculously, invisibly conceived in a virgin by the overshadowing presence of the Holy Spirit, and joined the human race.[3] At a point in time, at Bethlehem, He was born in the flesh, but prior to that, He was—and ever will be—the eternal second member of the Godhead.

By the way, this loaded phrase from John provides the critical defense against Gnosticism, Liberalism, Judaism, Mormonism, Islam, and, frankly, every other religious system that does not confess that Jesus Christ is eternally preexistent deity—one of the three persons of the Trinity—and yet also fully human.

And notice that John does not let false teachers off the hook by suggesting they are harmless in their mistaken doctrine. He writes, “This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already” (verse 3).

In contrast, he writes in verse 6, “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us.”

When John writes of listening to “us,” he is referring to the apostles as God’s messengers, along with the Old Testament prophets, who were God’s spokesmen. This is another way of saying, “Listen to the Old Testament and to the New Testament.” Do not let anyone lead you away from the Bible or try to add to it!

John then returns to the theme of love, which is another way you can discern a true believer from a deceiver. Love is one characteristic that is impossible to fake—and it is John’s theme through the rest of chapter 4.

In these verses, John gives us four statements about genuine love. First, love is who God is. He begins in verses 7-8:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.

Everyone who has been born again by faith in Christ has been given the capacity to reflect the character of God, who is love.

Now part of our problem is we use the word love for a lot of things in life. We say we love pasta or football; we use the word love in reference to our pet animals and our spouses—hopefully not in the same sentence.

The focus of that kind of “love” is often on how the objects of our love make us feel—what they do for us. When the apostle John talks about love here, he uses the Greek word agapē, which never focuses on what we get out of love but on what we give to others through love.

Agapē is the word used for loving the unlovely; loving the unlikeable. Agapē is a self-sacrificing commitment to another person’s highest good. Emotions and affections and compatibilities do not determine agapē love; they flow from it.

And John writes in verse 8 that God is agapē. He does not love us because we are attractive or because we make Him happy—and aren’t you glad for that? His love is a self-sacrificing commitment to our redemption.

And that is John’s second point. Not only is love who the Lord is, but love is why the Lord died. Here is how John puts it:

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son . . . to be the propitiation for our sins. (verses 9-10)

Jesus satisfied the demands of divine justice out of love for His redeemed.

And why would God the Son do that for you and me? That is John’s third point: love is what God does. Here is what he writes:

No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us . . . So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. (verses 12, 16)

God has said this to us, God has done something for us, and now God wants to do something through us.

Since no one has seen God the Father, and since Jesus Christ is no longer visible—for the time being—people are not going to be able to see God’s love unless you and I demonstrate it.

When John says in verse 12 that God’s love is “perfected” in us, he doesn’t mean we are perfect. He means God’s love is made real and tangible when we imitate Him and practice love for one another—and the rest of the world.

You cannot see God, but you can see the effects of His presence. It is called agapē—love.

Finally, love is what God demands. We see this in verses 19-20:

We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

God has set the pattern for agapē. Now it is up to us as Christians to duplicate the pattern in loving one another. This is not a suggestion of something to do when we feel like it; this is a command to obey because God said it.

And this is also how our world today can discern that we are the genuine item, a true Christian. Why? Because the characteristic of agapē/love cannot be found in counterfeit Christians or false teachers. Eventually they will be revealed to simply be in love with themselves.

John recorded Jesus saying it this way in John 13:35: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  Let us demonstrate agapē love today.