Walking With Christ

1 John 4:1-6 (1)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. (2)By this you know the Spirit of God:  every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, (3)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. (4)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. (5)They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. (6)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.(ESV)

Testing something requires more than questioning it. It requires a standard.

We can claim that we examined a decision, a belief, or a teaching, but if we only compared it against our preferences, then we didn’t truly test it. We merely asked whether we liked it, whether it made sense to us, or whether it supported what we already wanted to believe.

John warned believers not to accept every spiritual claim simply because someone said it came from God. The claim itself wasn’t allowed to define the test. It had to be measured against truth that God had already revealed.

That distinction matters far beyond false teachers.

We often judge our decisions by the results we wanted. We decide that something was right because it worked, because it felt peaceful, because others approved, or because we can’t bear to admit that we were wrong. But effectiveness isn’t the same as goodness. Comfort isn’t the same as truth. Agreement isn’t the same as confirmation.

A test that can’t produce an answer we dislike isn’t a test.

Honest examination must allow our assumptions to fail. It must permit our preferred conclusion to be rejected. It must place Scripture, truth, and the character of God above our own reasoning.

That doesn’t mean we abandon reason. It means reason isn’t permitted to become its own highest authority.

The question isn’t merely, “Does this seem right to me?”

The better question is, “By what standard have I called it right?”

Without a standard outside ourselves, we will almost always find a way to approve what we already wanted. Real testing begins when we’re willing to let truth correct us.