Try the spirits

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God; because 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 of God, - 1 John 4v1-2

1 John has a lot of information about how to know the difference between true believers and false confessors. Up until know it has mostly been about how we can examine our own lives the see whether or not we are really ‘of God.’ The test we applied to ourselves is whether or not we love God, keep His commandments, and love each other.

Now we are told that we can’t just simply believer everything we hear. We must test the spirits to see if they are really of God. This next section deals with testing teachers and others around us who profess to be of to see if they really are before we just accept what they believe. Teachers give tests to see what their students know. We have tests to see if we can trust others who claim to be of Christ.

The first test is one that should go without saying. If one does not teach that Jesus has actually come in the flesh they are not of God. That would should be obvious, but there are other tests coming that we need to keep in mind when we encaounter those who claim they are of God.