Review of 1John 4

by Pastor Ayo Sparks

THE FUNCTIONS OF THE UNCTION

1 John 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The Holy Spirit is one; same as the Spirit of God and of Christ but functions and manifests in diverse form. In this context, according to John, the Holy Spirit (referred to as the unction 1 John 2:20&27) is the greater one in you. The Holy Spirit in us is the God and the Christ in us. He’s the UNCTION that we carry. In His function, He’s the Spirit of discernment. Through the Holy Spirit, we are able to spot that which merely looks like the truth but not the truth. The unction in us functions to help us discern the spirit behind what we hear or see if it’s the spirit of truth or the spirit of error.

John confidently assure us that, by the function of the unction which we have received, we cannot be deceived by the lies been pervaded by the spirit of the Antichrist.

1 John 4:4 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.

The “them” in the above verse are false teachers and false prophets which he told us are already in the world. As she shine the light of God in us on what we see or hear, we are able to decode and discern if it’s the truth or of the spirit of error. That’s why, most of the mistakes we have ever made as believers were clear to us as mistakes even as we moved headlong! The ability to disregard “lies” and embrace the truth is in us. That’s part of the functions of the unction in us. That’s the more reason that the believer in Christ does not make a practice of sin, though he might miss it some couple of times before attaining to maturity.

In Christianity, we identity with Jesus in His resurrection but not in denial of His incarnation (when He identifies with us). To deny that Christ came in the flesh is be an antichrist. Gnosticism therefore promotes the doctrine of the Antichrist – that Christ didn’t become a man nor came as a man to our world!

For us, we have heard and we believe, and we thus confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh and by that, we know we are of God. Glory!

GOD IS LOVE!

1 John 4:

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

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

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.

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

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

The heartbeat of John which is one of his core message is that we live as children of God that we are, in deeds and not just in words. It is to the glory of the Father that we live in this polluted word manifesting His nature and character. One key point John keeps emphasizing upon in his Epistle is Love. We are to love one another as God (Who is Love) does loves us. That cannot be overemphasized.

Hatred and jealousy are ingrained in the nature of the fallen man. That is what instigates and catalyzes into forms of wickedness and witchcraft practices. But, we are a different species; a new breed in Christ Jesus! The nature and the disposition of God to all is love. That’s why Jesus came for all as an expression of the Father’s) love for all. We are also expected to have the same disposition towards all mankind, as children of God.

Now that we have become partakers of His nature, love one another should be as natural as nature! Otherwise, our sonship will remain questionable. However, it must sink into us that, though in the spirit we are already made to be like Him, His character is experientially made manifest through us as we grow in the knowledge of His Person. The more we see Him in His word, the more we become like Him in practical reality. The more we grow in the knowledge of Christ the more we grow in love. The more we grow in love the more mature we are indeed becoming!