It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.

Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.

Thank you.

 

Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.

 

Welcome home in The Omnipresent

page: 1
1

log in

join
share:

posted on Jun, 21 2018 @ 02:35 AM
link   
1 John 4 King James Version (KJV)

4 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.

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

3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.

4 Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.

5 They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them.

6 We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.

7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.

8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

9 In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.

10 Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.

12 No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us.

13 Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.

14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world.

15 Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.

16 And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.

17 Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world.

18 There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

19 We love him, because he first loved us.

20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?

21 And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.



posted on Jun, 21 2018 @ 03:09 AM
link   
a reply to: Out6of9Balance
You have given us no explanation of these words, so perhaps I may add the comments found in my own thread on the chapter;
When John writes his first epistle, he is not, like Paul, addressing himself to a specific church under particular circumstances.
He writes, on behalf of himself and his fellow teachers, to anyone in the Christian body who will take his advice. Though his first readers were probably in Ephesus and that region of Asia Minor.
His purpose is to teach these Christians, or remind them, that they are dwelling in God, through Christ, and to show them how this knowledge should be affecting their conduct.

In the first two chapters, John was establishing the importance of this relationship, warning his readers about the factors which might disrupt our fellowship with God.
This then raised the question; how can we know that we are abiding in God?
So the third chapter talks about doing righteousness and loving the brethren, and adds this final observation;
“By this we may know that he abides in us, by the Spirit which he has given us” (ch3 v24)

This leads him, at the beginning of the fourth chapter, into a discussion of the two different kinds of spirit claiming our attention. For only the true Spirit will give us the right answer.

He tells them not to believe every spirit, but to test them to identify those that truly come from God (v1). This is necessary because of the many “false prophets” who have gone out into the world, presumably overlapping with the “many antichrists” described in ch2.

Paul speaks of the gift of “discernment of spirits”, which would have the same purpose (1 Corinthians ch12 v10). He also offers the criterion that only the true Spirit accepts Jesus as Lord;
“I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says ‘Jesus be accursed!’ and no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians ch12 v3).

John makes the distinction in a similar way.
Once again he brings out his regular formula; You may know “by this…”.
That is, the true spirit will be “confessing” Jesus in the sense of “confessing that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh”.
This confession will be denied by the spirit which is “not of God”.

In principle, there are two different ways of making this denial.
One may deny “has come”, or one may deny “in the flesh”.
In the first case, the spirit acknowledges that Jesus was really in the world, but denies that he “came from” anywhere else.
This is the most natural and obvious way of demurring to the teaching about Christ. It appears, by implication, in John’s gospel, when Jesus tells his opponents “You do not know whence I come” (John ch8 v14) and on other occasions.

In the second case, the spirit acknowledges the heavenly origin of Christ, but denies in some sense the reality of his fleshly presence in the world. This denial, now known as “Docetism” is found in some forms of later Gnostic belief. However, it may be premature to find it in this letter.
We should not neglect the obvious possibility that they were only talking down the status of the “merely” human Jesus.

The confession that Jesus Christ was not only “in the flesh” but “come in the flesh” amounts to the Christian teaching about the Incarnation, that Christ is both God and man. That is what John is affirming in the first chapter of his gospel.
So either version of the denial of this confession, whichever form was predominant, is a denial of the doctrine of the Incarnation.
In other words, it is the doctrine of the Incarnation that is being offered as the test to distinguish between those spirits which do and do not come from God.

Most translations say about this denial “This is the spirit of antichrist”.
But a more exact translation of the Greek text would say “This is the of antichrist”. The word “spirit” is not there. (At least the Authorised Version is honest enough to signal the insertion by its usual practice of italicising the extra word).
So the statement is not quite so specific as it is being made to appear. It might almost be translated as “This is antichrist’s thing”.
At any rate, there are no grounds for identifying one specific “spirit of antichrist” as the opponent of the Holy Spirit. There is a plurality of spirits which are not of God.
It is, rather, the general work of antichrist that is “in the world already”.

Now John picks up on this word “world”.
Antichrist may be in the world, but God is greater. Therefore those “little children” who are “of God” have already overcome the spirits which follow it.
These spirits, and the teachers they inspire, belong to the world.
Therefore their teaching belongs to the world, and the reception of their teaching is among those who belong to the world.
In contrast “we” (that is, “we teachers of Christ”) belong to God, and are heard by those who know God.
This leads into one more “by this”. “By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error” (v6)
John seems to be saying that one can tell the difference between these teachers and their spirits merely by looking at the kind of people who listen to them.
There we will find the warning signs to protect us from the forms of teaching which undermine our knowledge of Christ.



posted on Jun, 21 2018 @ 03:13 AM
link   
In the first two chapters, John was establishing the importance of this relationship, warning his readers about the factors which might disrupt our fellowship with God.
This then raised the question; how can we know that we are abiding in God?
One of the answers provided in the third chapter is that those who love their brothers in Christ show themselves to be abiding in God, manifesting the love which God provides.

Then John begins an exhortation based on this conclusion.
“Beloved, let us love one another” (ch4 v7).
Why should we love? Because God is love and love is “of God”.
Therefor it follows that one who loves knows God and has been born of God.
Conversely, of course, one who does not love shows that he does not know God (v8).

God’s love has been made manifest towards us, and also through us (“EN HEMIN” can be taken either way).
It has been made manifest “by this”; namely, that he has sent his Son into the world that we might live through his agency (v9).
The next verse is the same thought rephrased. Love is defined by the fact that he sent his Son “to be the expiation for our sins”.
The word “expiation” simply means “something is done to deal with the fault of sin” (as discussed in a previous thread). This translation for HILASMOS has replaced the old word “propitiation”, which has picked up the wrong overtones in popular usage.

Taking the two verses together, we find that we live through the Son because he has succeeded in dealing with sin.
Our own ability to love follows on from God’s love.

The moral consequence is that if God loves us to this degree, we should love one another in the same way (v11).
This brings us back to the question of how we may know that we know God. We cannot know God by direct sight, because no man has ever seen him, or is capable of seeing him in any real sense.
But we know, from the previous arguments, that God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us, if we love one another.
Thus we return to the point which concluded the previous chapter; another way of describing the indicator of “love” is that “He has given us of his own Spirit”. So the presence of his love in our own hearts is also the sign of the presence of his holy Spirit (vv12-13).

Then John begins to recap and sum up the course of the argument in this epistle.
The Father sent the Son as the saviour of the world. This is what “we” (the Apostles) have seen and are able to testify.
If anyone confesses to this belief, that Jesus is the Son of God, then God abides in him and he in God.
If we know and believe that God sent the Son (to deal with our sin), then we know and believe the kind of love which God has for us.
Which leads to another restatement of the conclusion which has already been declared; since God is love, anyone who abides in love is also abiding in God, and God abides in him (vv14-16).

Apart from our love towards one another, another practical effect of knowing God’s love is confidence.
If God’s love is perfected in us, then we know that God loves us; we know (as already mentioned) that God sent his Son to remove the obstacle of Sin which stood between us.
Therefore we may know that we have nothing to fear on the day of judgement.
We know that “we are as he is”; that is, we have been detached from “this world” in the same way that he is detached, and we are therefore not subject to the judgement which the world must face.
Fear is the expectation of judgement and the punishment which comes with it.
Therefore anyone who fears this judgement is not yet perfected in love.
For anyone who is perfected in love knows that God has taken away the cause of this fear.
“Perfect love casts out fear”; that is, very specifically, the fear of judgement.
All this is possible because God first loved us (vv17-19).

Returning to the theme of loving the brethren; anyone who says God and hates his brother is also lacking in truth, the other major characteristic of God.
Anyone who loves God should be able to love his brethren, because loving the visible and obvious brother is in fact the easier task.
And apart from that, it is also a specific command given to everyone who loves God (vv20-21).

For all these reasons, loving the brethren is re-affirmed as an essential condition for knowing that we dwell in God.



posted on Jun, 21 2018 @ 10:54 AM
link   
a reply to: Out6of9Balance

"loveth" and "knoweth" sound like a gay person talking with a lisp. Why does scripture use weird English words. Why not just use "love" and "know".



posted on Jun, 21 2018 @ 12:01 PM
link   
a reply to: dfnj2015
That was normal speech in the time that translation was made.
Shakespeare probably thinks the way you talk is just as weird.




edit on 21-6-2018 by DISRAELI because: (no reason given)



posted on Jun, 22 2018 @ 07:53 AM
link   
a reply to: DISRAELI

It's wonderful how you explained that for us common folk.

I find 1John to be beautifully written and elegant in its' simplicity.




top topics
 
1

log in

join