July 2021

On the Epistles of John, Part 8: The Discerning of Spirits

At the end of our last presentation in this commentary on the epistles of John, which was titled Dichotomies, False and True, we presented the first few verses of 1 John chapter 4 where the apostle had explained one aspect of a true and quite significant dichotomy that existed in his time, and which is still found in our world today. That is the fact that not all spirits, or people, come from God, as John was referring to embodied spirits when he wrote that passage, and not to disembodied spirits. There he had professed that the embodied spirits which did not come from God are the source of many false prophets which had already “gone out into Society”, and that collectively, they are the antichrist which is “already now in Society.” So once again here we shall repeat that passage, which is found in the first three verses of 1 John chapter 4:

IV 1 Beloved, do not have trust in every spirit, but scrutinize whether the spirits are from of Yahweh, because many false prophets have gone out into Society.

For this same reason, in Galatians chapter 2 the apostle Paul had written of “4… false brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our liberty which we have in Christ Jesus, that they might bring us into bondage”. Evidently, they were false brethren because they did not belong in the first place. Likewise, in his one epistle Jude had warned of “4… certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men” and we see that having been condemned even before they “crept in unawares”, neither could they have been from of Yahweh. In his second epistle, Peter issued a similar warning.

On the Epistles of John, Part 7: Dichotomies, False and True

This may be an unusual title for a Bible commentary, but the world today is full of traps – prisons both intellectual and psychological – which keep men locked into false dichotomies, while the true dichotomies which actually define or govern our very existence as it is mandated by our Creator are virtually ignored. Then, by the grace of God, once we are able to recognize those true dichotomies, we are despised by the world. Yet the world often stands in contradiction of itself, as hypocrisy and the tendency to lie are qualities which are part of the Intrinsic Character of the enemies of God. Since “the whole world lies in the power of the Evil One”, as John had said in the closing verses of this epistle, we should expect the world to reflect those same qualities which the Devil innately possesses as a part of his own character. But of course, when I refer to the Devil I speak collectively of all of the enemies of God, and regardless of their professed religion.

On the Epistles of John, Part 6: Separating the Wheat

We began our last presentation in this commentary, The Authors of Sin, with a discussion of the Parable of the Wheat and the Tares which is found in chapter 13 of the Gospel of Matthew. That is because here in chapter 3 of the first epistle of John, the apostle teaches his readers in his own words how to separate the wheat from the tares, ostensibly from lessons that he himself had learned while hearing the teachings of Christ. By the time he wrote this epistle, John evidently had many decades of experience contemplating those words and putting them into practice. And although John did not use the same terms which are found in the parable, examining his words here we may notice that in keeping the commandments of Yahweh through the instruction of the Gospel of Christ, and loving one’s own brethren, Christians are afforded the ability both to separate the wheat and to discern the identity of the tares.