Jesus "Fleshed Out" the Truth

What Did Jesus Do?

Test the spirits to see whether they are from God,
for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
1 John 4:1

Well, it’s a Presidential Election year, and that means we will be deluged by a sea of campaign ads, bumper stickers and buttons, debates and denials, platforms and platitudes, stump speeches, and probably a scandal or two. And we can of course count on it all being absolutely, scrupulously true. Okay, you can stop laughing. I don’t know what is more disturbing, that we all know we are going to hear a lot of lies during the upcoming campaign, or the sad fact that so few Americans are in anyway equipped to actually sift out the truth and separate it from all the deceiving that will be going on. Of course, we are not the first people to have trouble separating truth from lies. Even though God is truth eternal, and even though he gave his Word to his people Israel, very few were able to grasp and hold onto the truth of the Word, or recognize when someone was corrupting it and twisting it into falsehoods. Knowing this, the Father sent the Son, Jesus, to “flesh out” the truth of his Word by making the Word, well, flesh.

Having personally heard, seen, and touched the Father’s word of life made manifest in the Son (1 John 1:1-2), the Apostle John faithfully proclaimed to his “little children” (the Church) so that they should share in the fellowship of all believers with the Father and the Son, and receive eternal life (1 John 1:3; 2:24-25). But, with the Son returned to the Father in Heaven, there was no longer any opportunity to “see, hear, and touch” Jesus in the flesh, but only in the Spirit. So John charged the Church with testing the spirits, and then supplied the means for testing spirits, so that the Spirit of Truth might be rightly separated from all false spirits. The test itself was, and is, simple: What do people believe and say about the incarnation? Was Jesus the Son of God come down to become one of us? Did Jesus really put on flesh and walk among us “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14), or was the Lord more like a really good hologram, a very good likeness of a man, but in actuality no more than appearing to have come in the flesh. Any spirit not confessing Christ’s coming in the flesh is not from God, is in fact the spirit of the antichrist (1 John 4:3). So, the first thing we must do is listen carefully to what is being said about Jesus. If we hear any denial of Christ’s coming in the flesh, or of his being the divine Son of God, we should quickly turn a deaf ear to what is being said.

But the spirit testing John exhorts us to do involves more than just listening, John also wants us to look. Look at behavior, as well as listen to teaching, because behavior betrays teaching (Or, if there is consonance between one’s words and one’s actions, then behavior confirms belief). False prophets and lying spirits will always, sooner or later, be exposed by their actions, even if their words have a ring of truth. The great gulf separating the true from the false is all about the one’s origin. All who originate in God, who is eternal truth, are true. All who originate in the world, which is corrupt, full of deceit, and passing away, are and will always be revealed as false (1 John 4:4-5).

There is a third, final, aspect to the testing of spirits. We listen and we look for the truth, but it is also essential for us to speak the truth. We can discern who is of God and who isn’t by how they react when we proclaim his Word, his Truth. John put it plainly enough, “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 4:6)

The Father sent Jesus so that the truth could be heard, seen, touched (1:1-2). The truth of Jesus Christ which we receive via the testimony of the Spirit of Truth in us, give us ears to hear truth, eyes to see truth, and a tongue to proclaim truth. It is not enough to know truth when we hear it and see it, we must live it and proclaim it, we must flesh out the truth, even as Jesus did. If we do not, we are not being true to the Lord, and it is very likely that the Spirit of Truth is not in us.

S.D.G.

Jim
www.jimwilkenministries.org
Marion, NC
PS 37.4