What is Look at the Book?

You look at a Bible text on the screen. You listen to John Piper. You watch his pen “draw out” meaning. You see for yourself whether the meaning is really there. And (we pray!) all that God is for you in Christ explodes with faith, and joy, and love.

For a certain kind of Christian, assurance of salvation can feel as fickle as a winter sun. Here and there, the sky shines blue and bright, filling the soul with light. Far more often, however, the days are mostly cloudy, the sun shadowed with uncertainty. And then sometimes, the sky goes gray for weeks on end, and the heart walks heavily under the darkness of doubt.

From the outside, such Christians may seem to bear much spiritual fruit: friends may mark the grace in their lives, accountability partners may encourage them, pastors may find no reason to question their faith. But for those under the clouds, even healthy fruit can look pale and sick. So even as they read their Bible, pray, gather with God’s people, witness, and confess their sins, they usually find some reason to wonder if they really belong to Christ.

How does assurance sink into the heart and psyche of those prone to second-guess? The Holy Spirit has many ways of nourishing confidence in his people — not least by teaching us to recognize the fruit he bears. But for the overly scrupulous among us, for whom personal holiness always seems uncertain, the Spirit also does more: he lifts our eyes above the clouds to show us God’s unchanging character.

Among the divine qualities he uses to nurture our assurance, we may find one surprising: God’s infinite commitment to his glory.

For the Sake of His Name

At first, God’s commitment to his glory may seem to weaken, not strengthen, a doubting Christian’s assurance. If God does everything “to the praise of his glory” (Ephesians 1:14), for the fame of his name, what hope do we have — we who daily fall short of that glory, who often dishonor that name? We would need to find assurance elsewhere, it would seem.

Yet those who pay attention will find God’s zeal for his name running like a silver thread of hope through all the Scriptures. When Israel’s army fell before Ai, “What will you do for your great name?” was Joshua’s cry (Joshua 7:9). When the nation sinned by demanding a human king, Samuel assured the fearful, “The Lord will not forsake his people, for his great name’s sake” (1 Samuel 12:22). When, later, Israel teetered on the brink of exile, Jeremiah pleaded, “Do not spurn us, for your name’s sake” (Jeremiah 14:21). And when the nation languished in Babylon, Daniel grounded his bold prayers on “your name” (Daniel 9:19).

Again and again, the guilty people of God appeal not only to God’s mercy, but to his unflinching allegiance to his glory. Save us, restore us, keep us, defend us — and do it for the sake of your name! So what did they know about God’s name that we may not?

His People, Their God

First, they knew that God, in unspeakable mercy, had condescended to put his name upon his people (Numbers 6:27). By making a covenant with Israel — taking them as his people, pledging himself as their God — he wrapped up his glory with their good; he wove his fame together with their future.

The surrounding nations knew, as Daniel prayed, that “your city and your people are called by your name” (Daniel 9:19). And so, when God lifted up his people, he lifted up his name; when God helped his people, he hallowed his name. Through Israel’s welfare, he trumpeted his own worth, showing himself as the only living God in a world of lifeless idols.

No doubt, God’s name proved useless to those who presumed upon it, who chanted “The Lord! The Lord!” so they could keep sinning in safety (Jeremiah 7:8–15). When Israel’s unrepentant ran to God’s name for refuge, they found the door locked. But for the humble repentant, God’s name stood like the strongest tower (Proverbs 18:10). They might be sinful and unworthy in themselves, but God had given them his name — and for the sake of that name they found mercy, forgiveness, safety, and help.

“The name of God is the hand of God reaching down to helpless sinners, bidding them to grab on and not let go.”

John Owen writes, “God in a covenant gives those holy properties of his nature unto his creature, as his hand or arm for him to lay hold upon, and by them to plead and argue with him” (Works, 6:471). The name of God is the hand of God reaching down to helpless sinners, bidding them to grab on and not let go.

The Lord, the Lord

Second, these saints knew something about God’s name that would have been too wonderful to believe if God himself had not revealed it: at the heart of God’s name is not only the glory of greatness, but the glory of grace.

When the Lord himself “proclaimed the name of the Lord” to Moses (Exodus 34:5), here is what he said:

The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty. (Exodus 34:6–7)

To be sure, God is zealous to display the glory of his greatness — his holiness, his power, his authority, his eternity. When he raised up Pharaoh, for example, “so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth” (Exodus 9:16), he wanted all nations to tremble before the plague-sending, tyrant-crushing, slave-freeing God of Israel. He is “the great, the mighty, and the awesome God” (Deuteronomy 10:17).

Yet, as God reveals to Moses, he is not content merely to show the glory of his greatness; he also exalts the glory of his grace — his kindness, his patience, his abounding love and faithfulness. Unlike so many gods of the nations, mercy, and not only might, sits on the throne of his glory. Well then might we say with Micah, “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression” (Micah 7:18) — and who glorifies his name by showing grace?

But we can say even more. For in the fullness of time, God lifted up his name in a way wholly unexpected, altogether glorious: by lifting up his Son.

Assurance in Every Syllable

When God sent his Son into the world, he sent him with a name — with many names, in fact. And in his mercy, God was pleased to inscribe assurance in nearly every syllable.

Some of Jesus’s names do speak directly of his greatness, calling forth fearful awe. He is the Lord who commands creation, the King who rules the nations, the Judge who sifts men’s hearts, the Holy One who terrifies demons. But in line with the revelation of God’s name to Moses, so many of Jesus’s names testify to the glory of his grace.

For how will he get glory as Savior unless he saves the utterly lost to the uttermost? How will he get glory as servant unless he bends to wash our filthy feet? Or how will he get glory as redeemer unless he sets the captives free?

As Lamb of God, his glory rests on cleansing the worst sins with his most-worthy blood. As bridegroom, his glory shines in the forgiven splendor of his bride. And as the way, his glory leads lost sinners home.

Now, as heavenly advocate, he glories to bear our names in his scars. As head of the body, he gloriously nourishes and cherishes his members below. And as founder and perfecter, his glory redounds when he finishes the faith he begins.

“This Jesus will not lose one jewel in his crown of names.”

We could go on, showing how the glory in the names propitiation, bread of life, light of the world, and more is a glory made for sinners’ good. This Jesus will not lose one jewel in his crown of names. He will not let his glory as mediator be diminished by one lost case, or his glory as shepherd be tarnished by one devoured sheep, or his glory as high priest be brought low by one needy, trusting sinner left without help.

Such names shine like so many suns in the sky above, each a burning assurance meant to chase away our clouds.

His Glorious Grace

Now, knowing that God saves sinners for his name’s sake may not resolve all our doubts. After lifting our eyes to such unclouded skies, we may lower them again upon a world of gray, wondering if God is saving us for his name’s sake. So how might this sight of God’s character help the hesitating soul?

First, simply fixing our gaze on God rather than self may do much to nurture spiritual health. If we often live in the cellar of the soul, trying to judge our spiritual fruit in the dim light of scrupulous introspection, long and regular looks at God may lift us into sun-lit skies, where for a few wonderful moments we forget ourselves, and then perhaps dare to believe that the light of this God can swallow any darkness, even ours.

Second, meditating on God’s grace-filled commitment to his name may remove the deep, subconscious suspicion that God’s glory and our salvation are somehow at odds. We may begin to feel, and not only say, that this shepherd would rejoice to carry us home upon his shoulders, that this father would run to see our silhouette on the horizon.

If you want a deeper sense of assurance, then, by all means keep killing your sin and pursuing the holiness “without which no one will see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14). But also labor to travel often above the clouds, where you remember that God created this world not only “to the praise of his glory,” but “to the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:6, 14). And therefore, all of God’s zeal for his glory, all of God’s love for his name, stands behind the sinner who casts his soul on Christ.

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. 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. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. (1 John 4:1–6)

The message of this text can be opened for us to understand and embrace under three headings:

The threat, namely, the false prophets and false prophecy
The victory, namely, apostolic truth and divine power
The urgency, namely, antichrist.

Before we open each of these in turn, just a brief word about their relevance. This text is as relevant today in 2023 as it was in the first century. False prophecy abounds. Think locally and think globally. Think of the false prophets that once pastored large evangelical churches but now reject the authority of Scripture and spread their falsehoods in podcasts. Think of those who are still in large churches leading thousands astray.

Think of indigenous false prophets throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Think of the false prophecy of Islam, rejecting the incarnate Son of God, Jesus Christ. Think of the false prophecy of Hinduism, without the divine-human Mediator. Think of false prophecies of Buddhism, Shintoism, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism. Think of the false prophecies of Messiah-rejecting Judaism.

Think of the false prophecies of the Western secular religion of expressive individualism or moralistic therapeutic deism. Or, perhaps most similar to John’s immediate concern, think of the gnostic tendencies of modern theological liberalism that cannot accept the union of God with man in a virgin conception or walking on water or rising from the dead. It must all be demythologized to keep God at a safe distance from physical realities like sexuality and healing and crucifixion.

First John 4:1–6 is an absolutely crucial text for our time — and our school. When we say that here at Bethlehem College & Seminary we aim to build into our students the habits of mind and heart called observation, understanding, evaluation, feeling, application, and expression, we’re talking about the realities in this text. “Test the spirits” (1 John 4:1). Observe them. Do you see them? Understand them (no straw men). Evaluate them. That’s what John is focusing on. Feel their seriousness; feel the urgency; feel the glorious reality that “he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). Apply this to what you watch on your streaming service. Apply this to where you will spend your life so as not to waste it. Give expression to what you see so that others are protected and helped on their way to Christ, to significance, to heaven.

So, let’s turn to our three headings and see the threat, the victory, and the urgency.

The Threat

“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” (verse 1). Then they are described again in verse 5: “They [the false prophets] are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.”

The threat is false prophecy through false prophets — people who claim to speak God’s truth but don’t. “Many false prophets have gone out into the world” (verse 1) — many. So, my list earlier was not an exaggeration.

Now, notice that the false prophets seem to speak from two sources — one supernatural (above the world) and one natural (in the world).

“Do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits” (verse 1). Evil spirits never look at Christ-belittling error with indifference. Where Christ-distorting ideas are forming in your mind, demonic spirits have either put them there or are eager to get behind them and make them as plausible and prominent as possible. So, there is a supernatural source of false prophecy.

But verse 5 traces the false prophecies back to the world. “They [the false prophets] are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.” They speak from the world. Here’s a glimpse of what John has in mind by “the world”: “All that is in the world — the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life — is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 John 2:16). The world is a system of forces that marginalize or oppose God and substitute creature-pleasure for God-pleasure, creature-treasure for God-treasure. So, these false prophets are speaking “from the world.”

But we must not think that these two sources of falsehood — the spirits and the world — are separate and distinct. They aren’t. In 1 John 5:19, John says, “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (see also Ephesians 2:2). The world shapes false prophecy because Satan shapes the world.

So, since there are so many false prophets, and since the world in which we live is shot through with Satan-shaped error, and since false prophets speak with supernatural influence, how shall we get victory over these influences so that our faith is not destroyed, and so that we stand in the truth and in love?

The Victory

We turn now from the threat to the victory — namely, apostolic truth and divine power.

Apostolic Truth

John assumes that if we recognize the false prophets as false, we will renounce their falsehood and get victory over their influence. So, the first thing he does in this text, with his apostolic authority, is give a specific doctrinal truth with which to measure the teachings of the false prophets. “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” (1 John 4:2–3).

At first, this looks simple and straightforward. If you deny that the eternal, divine Son of God was sent by the Father into the world, becoming the God-man, the incarnate Christ — if you deny that, you are a false prophet. Your teaching cannot be trusted. As verse 3 says, you are “not from God” — that is, not born of God and not representing God.

But there’s a problem to be solved. Demons (unclean spirits) know and profess that Jesus Christ is the holy Son of God and has come in the flesh. Mark 1:23–24 states, “There was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, ‘What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? . . . I know who you are — the Holy One of God.’” And then ten verses later it says Jesus “would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him” (Mark 1:34).

What, then, are we to make of verse 2, “Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God”? I think John would answer my query like this: “When I say that a spirit confesses that Jesus has come in the flesh, I don’t mean demon-like confession. I mean confession with the whole heart and mind and soul that embraces the truth of the incarnation, trusts the truth of Christ incarnate, exults in the truth of Christ incarnate, treasures the truth of Christ incarnate, and loves the Christ himself who is incarnate.”

In fact, the literal wording of verse 2 is, “Every spirit that confesses Jesus Christ come in the flesh is from God” — just as Paul says, “We preach Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23), not “We preach that Christ is crucified.” It’s the same grammatical construction. As verse 3 makes plain, “Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God.” The confession is a heartfelt “Yes!” to the incarnate Christ. And essential to that personal, confessional embrace of Jesus as true and precious is the doctrine of the incarnation.

So, the key to victory over false prophets in verses 2 and 3 is the apostolic truth of the incarnation as a litmus test for genuine prophecy and faithful teaching. But there is one more thing to say about apostolic truth as a means of victory over the threat of false teaching. In verse 6, John says, “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.” In verse 4, he said, “Little children, you are from God.” And here in verse 6, he says, “We are from God.”

I think by “we” he means the same “we” as 4:14: “We have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.” This is the “we” of eyewitnesses, just like in 1:1: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life . . .”

So, I think verse 6 is John’s way of saying, “It’s not just the apostolic doctrine of the incarnation that divides the true and false prophets. It’s the whole body of what we eyewitnesses teach.” “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us [in all we teach]; whoever is not from God does not listen to us [in all we teach]. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error” (verse 6). In other words, the key to victory over the spirit of error and the false prophets is apostolic teaching in general, not just one doctrine.

So, when we speak of observation and understanding and evaluation here at Bethlehem College & Seminary, this is the touchstone for evaluation. Does any claim to truth fit with apostolic teaching? Does it fit with Scripture?

What, then, is the victory over error and false prophets in this text? The first answer is apostolic truth. By this we detect the spirit of truth and the spirit of error, and are not deceived.

Divine Power

But there is a second key to victory over the false prophets — namely, divine power. This is found in verse 4: “Little children, you are from God and have overcome [gotten victory over] them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.”

The “them” here is the false prophets. The overcoming, or the victory, over these false prophets is the successful resistance against their deceptions, deceptions that seek to destroy our faith by destroying our hold on the truth.

And that successful resistance is owing to God’s divine power. “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” The one in you is God. First John 4:12–13 says, “If we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.” And the one who is in the world is the devil: “The whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). You have victory over the destructive effects of false prophets and false teaching because the Spirit of God in you is greater than the spirit of the world. He is more powerful than Satan, the great deceiver.

Our final hope at this school to be faithful over the long haul will be the power of God in our lives. The Spirit of God keeps the children of God from destructive error by causing us to observe and understand and evaluate and cherish the word of God. No hope without apostolic truth and divine power.

The Urgency

This brings us finally to the third heading, the urgency — namely, the antichrist. “Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already” (verse 3). And add to this 1 John 2:18: “Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour.”

John did not have to bring up the antichrist. But he does — twice (chapter 2 and chapter 4). And the effect in both cases is to intensify the urgency of not being deceived by the false prophets, because Jesus put the false prophets and the false christs together in Matthew 24:24: “False christs and false prophets will arise and perform great signs and wonders, so as to lead astray, if possible, even the elect.”

So, John is saying that when there are many false prophets, especially in the church (2 Thessalonians 2:3), this is the kind of intensification of evil that precedes the coming of Christ. And that coming, he says, will be preceded at the end by the arrival of antichrist. Both 1 John 2:18 and 4:3 describe the coming of a single antichrist preceded by forerunners who are like the antichrist. First John 2:18 says, “Antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.” First John 4:3 says, “You heard [the spirit of antichrist] was coming and now is in the world already.”

This is virtually the same way Paul describes the coming of the end-time man of lawlessness. He is coming, and his spirit is already at work. When he finally comes, the Lord Jesus will destroy him at his second coming. Second Thessalonians 2:3, 7–8:

That day [the day of the Lord] will not come, unless the [apostasy] comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction. . . . The mystery of lawlessness is already at work. . . . [When] the lawless one [is] revealed . . . the Lord Jesus will kill [him] with the breath of his mouth and bring [him] to nothing by the appearance of his coming.

Both Paul and John taught that we — between the first and second coming of Christ — are in the “last days” (2 Timothy 3:1–5; “last hour” in 1 John 2:18). In this time, the antichrist is coming, and already many antichrists have come. The man of lawlessness is coming, and already the mystery of lawlessness has come. The point of these connections, and John’s reason for mentioning the antichrist, is to make us alert but not alarmed (2 Thessalonians 2:2; Matthew 24:6; 1 John 2:28) — that is, to make us spiritually awake with a sense of urgency to the threat of false prophets, the antichrists, but not fearful, because he who is in us is greater than he who is in the world.

In summary, the threat all around us, then and now, locally and globally, is false prophets who are anti-Christ. The victory over this threat is the infallible apostolic truth before us and the supreme power of God within us. And the urgency of this situation is that antichrist is coming, and his spirit is already at work. So, be of good cheer, trust Jesus, love one another (1 John 3:23), because “he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).