"A Command to Test" (1 John 4:1a)

 

EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/4/2025 3:18 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                                            Focus:  “A Command to Test”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                          Reference:  1 John 4:1a

 

            Message of the verse:  “Beloved, do not believe every spirit,”

 

            I thought that I would do something different before I begin to talk about this verse and that is to look at what Dr. Warren Wiersbe has to say from his commentary.  He entitles the eight chapter of his commentary from 1 John “Getting To The Bottom of Love,” and this pretty much goes along with what John MacArthur had to say in the sermon that I was listening to this morning on my walk.  Dr. Wiersbe writes in introduction to verses 1-16 of chapter four:  “For the third time, we are considering the subject of love!

 

            “This does not mean John has run out of ideas and has to repeat himself.  It means that the Holy Spirit, who inspired John, presents the subject once more, from a deeper point of view.

 

            “First, love for the brethren has been shown as proof of fellowship with God (1 John 2:7-11); then it has been presented as proof of sonship (1 John 3:10-14).  In the earlier passage, love for the brethren is a matter of light or darkness; in the second it is a matter of life or death.

 

            “But in John 4:7-16, we get down to the very foundation of the matter.  Here we discover why love is such an important part of the life that is real.  Love is a valid test of our fellowship and our sonship because ‘God is love.’  Love is part of the very being and nature of God.  If we are united to God through faith in Christ, we share His nature.  And since His nature is love, love is the test of the reality of our spiritual life.

 

            “A navigator depends on a compass to help him determine his course.  But why a compass?  Because it shows him his directions.  And why does the compass point north?  Because it is so constituted that it responds to the magnetic field that is part of the earth’s makeup.  The compass is responsive to the nature of the earth.

 

            “So with Christian love.  The nature of God is love.  And a person who knows God and has been born of God will respond to God’s nature.  As a compass naturally points north, a believer will naturally practice love because love is the nature of God.  This love will not be a forced response; it will be a natural response.  A believer’s love for the brethren will be proof of his sonship and fellowship.

 

            Three times, in this section, John encourages us to love one another (1 John 4:7, 11, 12).  He supports these admonitions by giving us three foundational facts about God.”

 

            I just really life how Warren Wiersbe handles the Scriptures as he has written what he calls “Be” books on all of the different books of the Bible, sometimes combining different books together. 

 

            John MacArthur writes the following on 1 John 4:1a “Having just discussed the abiding work of the Holy Spirit in true believers (3:24), John makes the transition to the work of unholy spirits in false teachers and their false teachings.  Because these ancient, supernatural spirits are experts in deception, Christians must be careful to closely examine every spiritual message they encounter (cf. Matt. 10:16; 1 Thess. 5:21-22).

 

            “The imperative form of the verb believe, with the negative participle not, could literally be translated ‘stop believing.’  John’s phrase indicates the forbidding of an action already underway.  If any of his readers were uncritically accepting the message of false teachers, they were to stop doing so immediately.  They needed to exercise biblical discernment, like the Bereans of whom Luke wrote, ‘Now these were more noble-minded than those in Thessalonica, for they received the word with great eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were son’ (Acts. 17:11).

 

            “Unbelievers, ‘being darkened in their understanding’ (Eph. 4:18), have no basis on which to evaluate various teachings that claim divine origin (1 Cor. 2:14).  Consequently they are highly susceptible to aberrant doctrine and can easily be led astray into error.  But believers, who have the Word of truth and the Spirit of truth, must test what they hear with what they know to be true, as revealed in the Scriptures (1 Thess. 5:21-22).

 

2/4/2025 4:19 PM