Book of 1 John Chapter 4 Vs. 2

Test the Spirits

1 John 4:2 "Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:"

Hereby know ye... Every spirit inspiring any teacher to deny the incarnation, His passion, death, physical resurrection, and physical ascension to heaven is not of God, and is antichrist (1Jhn. 4:2-3; see, John 21:14). John gives a measuring stick to determine whether the propagator of the message is a demon spirit or the Holy Spirit.

Hereby (ἐν τούτῳ)

Lit., in this. Characteristic of John. See John 8:35; 15:8; 16:30; 1Jhn. 2:5; 3:24; 4:13; 5:2; 3:16; 3:19; 4:2. The expression points to what follows, “if we keep His commandments,” yet with a covert reference to that idea as generally implied in the previous words concerning fellowship with God and walking in the light. Ref. 1Jhn. 2:3.

know ye (γινῶσκετε)

Perceive. Literally, on account of the fact of His knowing. John describes the Lord's knowledge by two words which it is important to distinguish. Γινώσκειν, as here, implies acquired knowledge; knowledge which is the result of discernment and which may be enlarged. This knowledge may be drawn from external facts (John 5:6; 6:15) or from spiritual sympathy (John 10:14, 10:27; 17:25). Εἰδέναι (John 1:26) implies absolute knowledge: the knowledge of intuition and of satisfied conviction. Hence it is used of Christ's knowledge of divine things (John 3:11; 5:32; 7:29), Of the facts of His own being (John 6:6; 8:14; 13:1), and of external facts (John 6:61, 6:64; 13:11). In John 21:17 the two words appear together. Peter says to Jesus, appealing to His absolute knowledge, “Thou knowest οἶδας all things:” appealing to his discernment, “Thou knowest or perceivest γινώσκεις that I love Thee. See on John 2:24.

confesseth (ὁμολογεῖ)

The word which is used elsewhere of open confession of Christ before men (Mat. 10:32; Rom. 10:9); of John's public declaration that he was not the Christ (John 1:20); of Herod's promise to Salome in the presence of his guests (Mat. 14:7). Here, therefore, of Christ's open, public declaration as Judge of the world. “There is great authority in this saying,” remarks Bengel. Mat. 7:23.

Jesus Christ is... This is the first test of a true teacher: they acknowledge and proclaim that Jesus is God incarnate in human flesh. The Greek construction does not mean that they confessing Christ as having come to earth, but that they confess that He came in the flesh to the earth, i.e., His human body was physically real.

that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh (Ἱησοῦν Χριστὸν ἐν σαρκὶ ἐληλυθότα)

Lit., Jesus Christ having come, etc. The whole phrase forms the direct object of the verb confesseth.

Both the full humanity and full deity of Jesus must be equally maintained by the teacher who is to be considered genuinely of the Spirit. The Holy Spirit testifies to the true nature of the Son, while Satan and his forces distort and deny that true nature. John accentuates the crucial importance of sound doctrine expressed in God's Word as the only absolute and trustworthy standard (Isa. 8:20).

To confess Jesus as the Christ the Messiah, the Anointed One, is to have Him as your Savior. This, to me, is saying, we must believe that the Word of God took on the form of flesh and dwelt among us. He was not a man; He was just housed in the body of a man here on the earth.

Inside that flesh, dwelt the Spirit of God. He was Emmanuel God with us. Notice, also, that people like you and me are spirits, as well. The part of us that contains life is our spirit. God had made a clay doll in the beginning from the dust of the earth. We were mere vacant houses of flesh. God breathed the breath of life in us, and we were alive.

Of God

Wherefore I give you to understand, that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost. 1Cor. 12:3.

He then gave us the ability to choose good and evil when He made us living souls. We must know who Jesus is, before we can have faith in Him for salvation. Man's blood or an animal's blood cannot cleanse you from all unrighteousness. The blood of God cleanses us from our sins.

The blood of a child comes from the Father. God the Holy Spirit hovered over Mary, and she conceived of God. Mary furnished the body. It was not Mary's blood that flowed through that body, but God's. We must believe Jesus to be God manifest in the flesh to be saved.

Every spirit which acknowledges.

Yechiel Lichtenstein writes, "Yochanan did not say 'believes,' because a person cannot be recognized by his thoughts, only by his confession."

Yeshua the Messiah came as a human being.

One of the earliest heresies was that of the Docetists, who taught that the Messiah only appeared to be a human being. They considered human flesh on too low a plane for so exalted a figure as the Son of God. This heresy persists explicitly in theosophy and in sects based on Eastern religious teachings which speak of the Christ as a spiritual entity which, in effect, masqueraded as human but was actually a far higher being. It persists in a far more widespread fashion in the implicit popular theology of much of the Christian Church, which in emphasizing Yeshua's divinity practically ignores his humanity and portrays him as if he floated around the Holy Land several feet off the ground. For a Jew there may be difficulty in regarding the Messiah as divine, but none whatever in regarding him as human; quite the contrary, the idea of a Messiah who is not a human being is virtually meaningless within the thought-framework of Judaism.