Lying evil spirits, and society.

1 John 4.4-6.

In the previous passage I mentioned how evil spirits like to feed us false information to drive us away from God’s kingdom. And thus far, John points out, his audience has overcome these evil spirits, and overcome the fake prophets they encouraged to proclaim false things. His audience does know Jesus, and knows better than to fall for the false teachings of people who claim Jesus isn’t human, isn’t Messiah, isn’t Lord.

1 John 4.4-6 KWL

4Children, you’re² from God.

You overcame the fake prophets,

for the Lord among you² is greater

than anyone in the world.

5They’re from society;

this is why they speak of society

and society listens to them.

6You’re² from God.

Anyone who knows God, listens to us.

Whoever isn’t from God, doesn’t listen to us.

From this, we know the spirit of truth

and the spirit of error.

The second half of verse 4, which the KJV renders, “because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world,” gets quoted a lot. And commonly misinterpreted: Christians figure “he that is in you” is Jesus, who lives inside our hearts; and “he that is in the world” is of course the devil, who got thrown down to earth after it fought Michael and lost, Rv 12.9 and ever since has been harassing Christians. Rv 12.17

I translated it a little differently. There’s no “he” in these verses; there’s the determiner ὁ/o, which usually indicates a subject noun. But when there actually is no subject noun—like we have here—it becomes the subject noun, and now it means “the one.” Which one? Well, you gotta figure that part out from context. The writers of the KJV decided to not figure it out, and go with “he,” since o is after all a masculine-form word. And like I said, Christians figured “he” refers in the first instance to Jesus, and in the second to Satan.

I have to keep reminding Christians that the person of the trinity who actually does indwell us is the Holy Spirit. “I have Jesus in my heart” is a metaphor representing how Jesus has my allegiance, obedience, trust, and love, but Jesus isn’t physically in me; he’s at the right hand of the Father. Ac 2.33 Meanwhile the Spirit is actually within us, working on us; and we Christians are collectively his temple. But rather than pedantically insert “Holy Spirit” into verse 4, I figured “Lord”—because the Spirit is Lord, same as Jesus; they’re coequal with the Father—works too.

As for the devil being the other o, I don’t know that it is. Really the other o could be anybody in the world; any malevolent person, whether evil spirit or evil human. Does it matter? The Holy Spirit can overcome them all.

Test spirits. See whether they’re antichrists.

1 John 4.1-3.

Years ago, a pagan who believes in angels asked me, “Do you talk to your angels?”

I don’t, actually. I talk to the Holy Spirit. Nothing against my angels—assuming I have angels specifically assigned to me like Secret Service agents. The jury’s still out on whether the bible teaches such a thing, although Christians who believe in guardian angels seem to believe really hard in ’em. And some of ’em do pray to them. Michael and Gabriel probably get tons of prayers from Roman Catholics. But since they’re not infinite like God, I’m not sure how many of those prayers they hear.

Besides, I pointed out to the pagan, how do I know the angels I’m talking to, are even good angels? They might be evil.

She was kinda stunned by this idea. Evil angels?

Well yeah. A lot of pagans have a massive blindspot when it comes to evil spirits. Most assume, same as Plato and the ancient Greeks did, that if you’re pure spirit you’re beyond good and evil; that those things are either the inventions of our society, but these spirits live on a higher plane than mortal human society. Or that all our evils are tied to being material, and as spirits they’re not material, and any evil which used to be in ’em is gone now. So if the ghost of Klan founder Nathan Bedford Forrest appears to you and offers advice, don’t worry about him being a vile, treasonous domestic terrorist; he’s on a higher plane now! (Though I’m fairly sure he’s on a much, much lower one.)

But outside of Greco-Roman paganism, most religions recognized there were such things as evil spirits. Ancient Hebrews and Christians did too. The devil has some angels on its side. Mt 25.41, Rv 12.7, 9 Devil’s evil; its angels are evil. Angels are likely spirits, and evil spirits often come up in the bible; Jesus kept having to throw ’em out of people. Once a whole legion of them.

So I’m not gonna be so naïve as to presume any angel who appears to me, is gonna be one of the good ones. (Especially if it encourages me to start a new religion. That’s happened once or twice that we know of.)

Just after John, in his first letter, told his audience 'we know God remains in us because he gave us his Spirit, 1Jn 3.24 he immediately points out we need to test those spirits which claim they’re from God. Certainly not all of ’em are!

1 John 4.1-3 KWL

1Beloved, don’t trust every spirit!

Instead test the spirits—

whether it’s from God.

For many fake prophets went out into the world.

2This is how you² know God’s spirit:

Every spirit which confesses

Christ Jesus came from God in the flesh.

3Every spirit which won’t confess Jesus—

which says he’s not from God—

this is a spirit of antichrist.

You² heard it’s coming,

and it’s in the world right now.

A legitimate spirit from God is gonna be orthodox in its theology. It’s gonna know God, and gonna correctly describe him. Whereas a phony spirit, an evil spirit, is gonna mess with our understanding of God, and lead us astray. Partly to drive us away from God, and render us as useless as possible to God’s kingdom… and partly because it’s such evil fun to mess with people.

Hence John’s really simple test. Is the spirit orthodox? Then it’s likely from God. Is it heretic? Then don’t trust it.

How do you follow God? Obey him.

1 John 3.22-24.

The previous passage was about how we know whether we’re following God. Today’s passage relates to that: How do we even follow God? Duh; we obey him. We do as he told us. The LORD gave a bunch of commands to Moses, and Jesus taught his students a bunch of things as well. Do that.

1 John 3.22-24 KWL

22Whatever we might ask,

we should receive from God,

for we keep his commands

and we do pleasing things before him.

23This is God’s command:

We should trust the name of Christ Jesus his son,

and we should love one another,

just as he gave the command to us.

24One who keeps God’s commands

remains in him,

and he in them.¹

This is how we know he remains in us:

By the Spirit whom he gives us.

Problem is, whenever Christians talk about God’s will for our lives, we nearly always don’t talk about God’s commands or Jesus’s teachings. Nor the prophets’ exhortations, nor the apostles’ instructions, nor the sages’ wisdom. We talk about “God’s special plan for my life.” We wanna know that. Phooey on all that other noise.

Which, once you’ve read the bible and think about that a bit, is insane. Noise? Didja read how important the prophets and apostles and Jesus and his Father considered those commands? Didja read how upset the LORD got when the Hebrews not only ignored the commands, but defied them? Even deliberately did the opposite of them, just to give the LORD the finger? Didja notice Jesus had to die a horrifying bloody death just so he could atone for all that sin, and restore our relationship with himself? God’s revealed will for humanity, in those commands, is not noise.

“But we’ve been freed from the burden of the Law!” True, but I don’t think the people who raise that objection, understand what the “burden” actually is. It’s not the burden of obeying it. It’s the burden of suffering the consequences when we don’t obey it. It’s the burden of having to pathetically attempt to atone for ourselves, through inadequate ritual sacrifices. It’s the burden of a fractured relationship with God because we’ve been taking him for granted and treating him as irrelevant—until we need something from him, and then we try to make deals, and promise to be good from now on, and usually break those promises same as (and about as fast as) our New Year resolutions.

Christians act as if the “burden of the Law” is the Law of Moses itself, and forget: Y’all wanted to know what God’s will is. Well, here it is. Right there in black, white, and red if you want Jesus’s spin on it. But the average Christian response is, “Eww, I don’t mean that. I mean what his plans are for me personally. Me specifically. What does he want me to do?”

Again, it’s already been revealed in the bible! But when they say, “What does he want me to do?” they’re not at all talking about a godly lifestyle to adopt. They want a walkthrough to life.

Gamers know what a walkthrough is: It’s how to work your way through a video game so you can win. When you’re wandering a deserted castle, don’t go into this room or that room, or some bad guy will smite or kill you. Instead, go into that room and this room, where you’ll find treasure and potions, and weapons so you can more easily defeat the unexpected bad guys in future rooms.

Aren’t walkthroughs a type of cheating? When you’ve not played the game before, and haven’t learned this stuff on your own, yes they absolutely are. But people who want walkthroughs don’t wanna play the game; they wanna win the game.

And that’s what these Christians want from God: They don’t want to go through life, depending on God day by day. They wanna win. They don’t see inheriting God’s kingdom as the win; they see wealth and success, as defined by the very society God doesn’t want us to love, as the win. A personal relationship with God isn’t the goal; wealth and success is. They don’t wanna be Christians; they wanna be Mammonists.

We gotta rebuke that self-seeking attitude, and steer ’em back to the proper goal: That relationship with God. And if you legitimately do wanna remain in God, and he in you… do as he said!

How do you know you’re following God? Use your brain.

1 John 3.19-22.

More than once, the apostles talk about how we gotta follow our personal convictions. “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind.” Ro 14.5 KJV Don’t just follow the crowd; or in the context of 1 John, don’t just follow the dictates of society; don’t just succumb to peer pressure. Decide for yourself.

Skeptical pagans like to claim that’s the very opposite of what Christians do. Unfortunately these pagans ain’t wrong. There is so much conformity in Christendom. It’s even encouraged.

Peer pressure, as I discovered back when I was teaching middle school, is such a useful way to get the kids to behave! Get the popular kids to do as you want, and most of the rest will fall in line, which is way easier than working on all of ’em individually. Thing is, are the kids who are doing as I want, doing the right thing? I certainly hoped and believed so… but I know I’m hardly infallible; I know better than to not second-guess myself. Other Christians never second-guess themselves. Too many Christians in leadership never second-guess themselves. They could be—and occasionally are—woefully wrong. But, like me, they’re trying to use peer pressure to make their flocks behave as they want, and the sheep are following right along.

And that’s actually not what God wants in his kingdom. He wants us to follow Jesus, not some wolf in sheep’s clothing who’s manipulating us for fun and profit. And how do we know they’re secretly wolves? Well, if you talk to your average Christian, they’re gonna know better because they “felt a check in my spirit”—their gut told them something was amiss, and they know to follow their gut. But if you talk to Jesus, he’s gonna tell us to use our brains, and look at their fruit.

Matthew 7.16-20 KJV

16Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? 17Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 18A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. 19Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. 20Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

Following your gut isn’t as effective as you imagine. Your gut usually consists of your emotions, and your emotions are easily manipulated. If an unscrupulous church leader realizes you’re getting wise to him, he’ll quickly pivot to things that’ll trigger your emotions. Fear, usually. Fear’s easy to invoke, and automatically shuts most people down, ’cause they’re too afraid to think, and run on instinct instead—either fight, flight, or freeze, and an unscrupulous leader prefers any of those things to an actual reckoning.

In any event, God didn’t give us our guts so we’d be led by them. He gave us an organ to actually think with. We know it as our brain, though in biblical times people believed it was the heart, which is why I sometimes gotta translate καρδία/kardía, “heart,” as “mind.” He expects us to use our minds—to be wise—and figure out whether something’s legitimately a God-thing, or isn’t. Is it fruitful? Then it’s probably God. Is it fleshly? Then it’s likely not. Does it feel good? Doesn’t matter; that’s your gut, and your gut’s part of your flesh, and stop following your flesh and pretending it’s your spirit. Or worse, the Holy Spirit—you realize that’s skirting blasphemy, right?

John advises likewise. Are you not sure you’re actually following God? Well, use your head. That is why God put a brain in your body. It’s not just to memorize pop songs.

1 John 3.19-22 KWL

19This is how we’ll know

we’re acting out of truth;

how we’ll be persuaded in our mind

before God:

20When the mind condemns us.

God is greater than our mind,

and knows everything.

21Beloved, when our mind doesn’t condemn us,

we should be bold for God.

22Whatever we might ask,

we should receive from God,

for we keep his commands

and we do pleasing things before him.

If you don’t love fellow Christians you’re a murderer.

1 John 3.13-18.

True, that’s a clickbaity kind of title. But it’s exactly what the apostle John wrote in his first letter. To quote the King James: “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.” 1Jn 3.15 KJV I also coulda titled this piece, “If you don’t love fellow Christians you’re going to hell.” Just as valid.

Now yes, the word I keep translating as “fellow Christians” is ἀδελφοί/adelfí, “brothers, siblings.” In context it means sister and brother Christians; fellow adoptive children of God; fellow Christians. John’s addressing Christians. And also addressing the way Christians behave towards fellow Christians—right after he told ’em to reject society because society’s rejected God. And if society encourages us to reject our fellow Christians, we should all the more reject society.

This includes “Christian” society. Really, Christianist society—it pretends to be Christian, pretends to love Jesus, but it has its own set of values which have more to do with prestige and wealth and prejudices and nationalism—and way too often, white supremacy. It’ll encourage Christians to reject and shun and disavow their fellow Christians who are poor, who are “sinning” (whether they’re legitimately sinning or not), who have different politics, who do anything they might disapprove of for the pettiest of reasons. Christianists, like hypocrites, only care about how things look. Not about the sort of grace we need to extend to everybody—and fellow Christians especially.

In John’s day, in the Roman Empire, not helping out somebody who’s in a bind might have dire consequences. Results which might lead to their death. Your fellow Christian might be deathly ill, or starving and have no way to get food, or their debts were gonna get them sold into slavery and you never know what sort of slaveowners they’d get—and there’s a good chance they’d be awful people who worked their slaves to death. Little acts of compassion might save a life. Big acts would definitely save a life. But apathy? It’s still true that apathy kills.

So nope, it’s not hyperbole when John says hating your fellow Christian makes you a murderer. And it’s totally valid to wonder whether Christians who lack compassion are even Christian, are even destined for eternal life. That lack of grace in ’em? That suggests they never accepted the grace of God. They’ve nothing to pay forward.

1 John 3.13-18 KWL

13Fellow Christians, don’t be amazed

if society hates you².

14We knew we passed over from death to life,

for we love our fellow Christians.

One who doesn’t love fellow Christians

remains in death.

15Everyone who hates their¹ fellow Christian

is a murderer,

and you² knew no murderer has life in the age to come

remaining within them.¹

16This is how we knew love:

That man Jesus laid down his soul for us.

So we’re obliged to lay down our souls

for our fellow Christians.

17Whenever one might have a life in society,

and might see one’s fellow Christian having need,

and might shut off one’s compassion towards them:¹

How does God’s love remain in that person?

18Children, we ought not love in word nor speech,

but in work and truth.

Pentecost.

Our word Pentecost comes from the Greek τὴν ἡμέραν τῆς πεντηκοστῆς/tin iméran tis pentikostís, “the 50th day” Ac 2.1 —the Greek term for שָׁבֻעֹת֙/Šavuót, which falls 50 days after Passover. It’s also called the Feast of Weeks; it’s when the ancient Hebrews harvested their wheat. Ex 34.22 On 6 Sivan in the Hebrew calendar, they were expected to come to temple and present a grain offering to the LORD. Dt 16.9-12 Oh, and tithe a tenth of it to celebrate with—and every third year, put that tithe in the community granary.

Why do Christians celebrate a Hebrew harvest festival? (And have separate “harvest parties” in October?) Well we don’t celebrate it Hebrew-style: We consider it the last day of Easter, and we celebrate it for a whole other reason. In the year 33—the year Jesus died, rose, and was raptured—the Holy Spirit descended upon Jesus’s new church on Pentecost. Happened like so:

Acts 2.1-4 NRSVue

1When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

The speaking-in-tongues part is why the 20th century Christian movement which has a lot of tongues-speaking in it, is called Pentecostalism. Weirdly, a lot of us Pentecostals never bother to keep track of when Pentecost rolls around. I don’t get it. I blame anti-Catholicism a little. Anyway, Luke goes on:

Acts 2.5-13 NRSVue

5Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” 12All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” 13But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

Christians like to call this “the first Pentecost.” Obviously it wasn’t; the first Pentecost, or Šavuót, or Feast of Weeks, was after the Exodus. It’s when every devout Jew on earth was bringing their grain offerings to temple on that very day, 25 May 33. And suddenly a house full of Galileans broke out in every language they knew—spoken to as if to them personally.

Got their attention.

Satan’s excuses precede lawless Christians.

1 John 3.7-12.

Many of the verses from today’s passage tend to be yanked out of context.

• “Let no one deceive you” 1Jn 3.7 —used to refer to anything which might trick or mislead Christians, from heresy to the latest internet conspiracy theories.
• “The Son of God came to destroy the works of the devil” 1Jn 3.8 —treated as though it’s the only reason Jesus came to earth, so certain dark Christians use it to justify their fixation on demonology instead of good news.
• “Everyone borne of God doesn’t sin” 1Jn 3.9 —used to condemn Christians who do sin, instead of encouraging them (really, all of us) to go back into the light.
• And of course those folks who wanna interpret the Cain and Abel story to make Cain an irredeemably evil person… instead of recognizing the LORD and Cain had a conversational relationship, Ge 4.9-15 and God obviously wanted to redeem Cain, not destroy him. (Otherwise he’d have destroyed him!)

All right, best I jump into the text before unpacking it.

1 John 3.7-12 KWL

7Children, let no one deceive you:²

Doing what’s proper is right,

just like Christ is right.

8Doing sin is of the devil,

because the devil sins from the very start.

This is why God’s Son appeared:

To undo the devil’s works.

9Everyone reborn by God doesn’t do sin,

for God’s seed remains in them.¹

They¹ can’t sin,

because they’ve¹ been reborn by God.

10This is how God’s children

and the devil’s children are identified:

Everyone who doesn’t act properly,

who doesn’t love their fellow Christian, isn’t of God.

11This is the message you² heard from the beginning:

We should love one another.

12Not like Cain,

who murdered his brother Abel out of evil.

Why did Cain murder him?

Because Cain’s works were evil.

The works of his brother Abel were proper.

John wrote this right after he defined sin as violating the Law. Parts of the Law are still totally valid. (The ritual sacrifice and ritual cleanliness parts are redundant, and the rules for native Israelis and Israel’s descendants don’t apply to nonresidents and gentiles.) Following those valid parts is still what God expects of a saved people: Now that we belong to Jesus, be like Jesus. He didn’t sin; we shouldn’t sin.

So John went on to say his readers shouldn’t let themselves get tricked into thinking otherwise. ’Cause plenty of us have been deceiving ourselves for years. Like the Christians who are anti-Law, who think Jesus nullified God’s Old Testament commands and therefore nothing’s a sin anymore. John cuts right through this rubbish: If you don’t resist sin, if you don’t behave as God’s children ought, you’re not one of his children. “Everyone reborn by God doesn’t do sin.” 1Jn 3.9 He doesn’t, so we shouldn’t.

No, this doesn’t mean Christians never ever sin. Of course we do. Hence grace. The proper idea, reflected in some translations, is N.T. Wright’s “Everyone who is fathered by God does not go on sinning.” 1Jn 3.8 NTE We don’t continue in a lifestyle of sin; we don’t wanna live that way. We want to follow Jesus!

And people who legitimately wanna follow Jesus, crack open their bibles and find out what Jesus taught so we can follow him. What they’ll invariably find is Jesus took the Law, expounded upon it, and closed all the Pharisee loopholes. We’re not to follow the letter of the Law, like any lawyer, politician, or activist judge; we don’t twist it till it suits us. We’re to follow the original intent of the Law, “the spirit of the Law,” the will of the One who gave it. How does Jesus interpret it? ’Cause we do that.

Those who don’t really wanna follow Jesus, but only look like they do: They prefer loopholes. The bigger the better. They like to quote “Christ is the end of the Law,” Ro 10.4 but they don’t mean, as Paul does, that Christ expresses it better than the Law does itself; they mean Christ ended it. Or “He taketh away the first [Law], that he may establish the second [Law],” He 10.9 not just updating the old covenant with the new, but abolishing it altogether, so that breaking the Law is no longer sin, 1 John 3.4—

1 John 3.4 KWL

Everyone who commits sin also violates the Law.

Sin’s against the Law.

—notwithstanding.

No, this passage isn’t about perfectionism either. John isn’t claiming Christians don’t sin anymore. He already objected to that idea in chapter 1. What he’s stating, is real Christians try not to sin. We no longer consider a lifestyle of sin to be acceptable. “Not perfect, just forgiven” simply isn’t good enough! We have God’s seed in us, the Holy Spirit within us, leading us away from sin and selfishness, and towards Jesus. If we’re following him, we recognize sin is the opposite direction. We don’t make excuses for it any longer!

And if we do make excuses for it… well we’re not God’s children. Really we’re Satan’s.