Don’t trust every spirit, dear friends of mine, but test them to discover whether they come from God or not. For the world is full of false prophets. You can test them in this simple way: every spirit that acknowledges the fact that Jesus Christ actually became man, comes from God, but the spirit which denies this fact does not come from God. The latter comes from the anti-christ, which you were warned would come and which is already in the world.

1 John 4:1-3 (Phillips)

 

The Apostle John warns us that we can all be deceived by false teachings and forsake the truth of the gospel. This is why we must “test the spirit” of those who seek to teach us, comparing what they say to what God’s Word says.

False teachings are more than just different interpretations or understandings of scriptural texts. Careful, rigorous reflection on what God's Word says deepens and matures our faith. It broadens our perspective of God and how we relate to Him. False teachings, on the other hand, reduce God’s Word into mere set of rigid rules and strict disciplines. This, in turn, diminishes a relationship with God to drudgery, control and compliance rather than wonder, love and praise.

According to John, the spirit of antichrist actively opposes Christ’s finished work. It seeks to distort the gospel of God’s pure grace through an unbiblical overemphasis on acquiring “secret knowledge” as a means of salvation. This supposedly elitist “secret knowledge” is based on imaginary and deceptive beliefs rather than hard evidence of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection.

If we are not properly grounded in the reality of the gospel and following Jesus, we will easily fall for those who claim to speak on God's behalf. We cannot accept or compromise with any teaching that contradicts who Jesus is and what He has done for us. Rather, we work together with other mature believers to confront the threats of false teachings that are attempting to infiltrate and infect the body of Christ. This does not imply that we are to become theological police officers, but rather that we should encourage one another to remain true and faithful to the gospel.