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Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. And this evening we consider a passage from
1 John, the epistle of 1 John chapter 4, verses 1 through 3. Now in order to fill out the context
a little bit, I’m going to start back at the end of chapter 3 in verse 23 and read through
chapter 4 verse 6. But again, our main focus will be on the first three verses of John chapter 4.
And again, you’ll find that on page 1212 in your pew Bibles. Again, beginning at chapter 3 verse
23. My friends, hear the Word of God. And this is His commandment that we believe in the name of His
Son Jesus Christ and love one another just as He has commanded us. Whoever keeps His commandments
abides in God and God in Him. And by this we know that He abides in us by the Spirit whom He has
given us. Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from
God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God.
Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit
that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the Spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard
was coming and now is in the world already. Little children, you are from God and have
overcome them. For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. They are from the
world. Therefore they speak from the world and the world listens to them. We are from God. 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. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God
endures forever. Let’s pray for the Lord to bless the preaching of His Word. Almighty God, Heavenly
Father, we pray that by Your Spirit, that Spirit that breathed out the Scriptures, that You would
by Your Spirit illuminate our minds to receive the God-breathed Word this evening. And we would ask,
O Lord, that You would give us wisdom and insight to know how this applies to our lives, to our
church, to our situation today. Again, Lord, we ask that You would set a guard over my lips,
that I might speak only that which is faithful and edifying and well-pleasing in Your sight.
We pray that You would be with us now and, Lord Jesus, be present in the proclamation of Your Word
by Your Spirit. In Your name we pray, and all of God’s people said, Amen. You may be seated.
The title of my sermon this evening is Corporeal Significance, Divine Incarnation.
And the children can be listening for three key words to my message this evening, the words
discernment, incarnation, and antichrist. Well, dear Christian, if someone were to ask you,
say, an unbeliever that you’re having a conversation with, if they were to ask you,
well, you’re a Christian, what is the heart of this gospel message that you believe in?
What is the heart of the good news about Christ? What would you say in answer to that question?
How would you answer such a question? Well, my hunch is that many Bible-reading Christians
would probably answer that question by pointing to Christ’s death and resurrection, pointing to
our Lord’s atonement for our sins on the cross of Calvary and His bodily resurrection from the dead.
And that would be a very good instinct. That would be, at least at one level and in one sense,
the correct answer. Based on passages like, for example, 1 Corinthians 15, verses 1 through 6,
where the apostle Paul summarizes the gospel message, this would seem to be, at one level,
the correct answer. In fact, let us go back there to review what Paul says about the gospel as he
summarizes it in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, verses 1 through 6. Paul writes this. He says,
now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel. Remember, gospel means good news. I would remind
you of the gospel I preach to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you
are being saved. Oh, the gospel is so important. It is that by which we are saved. If you hold fast
to the word that I preach to you, unless you believed in vain. And then he gives in a nutshell,
in summary form, the gospel that he preached. He says in verse 3, for I deliver to you as of
first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the
Scriptures, that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the
Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then he appeared to more than 500
brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep, and so forth. So
clearly, what does Paul gravitate towards as he summarizes the gospel? He talks about the fact
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised
on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. However, let me ask you this. While it is true that
the cross and resurrection of Jesus are absolutely central to the gospel message, the Holy Spirit
through Paul, for example, says so. While that is the case, at the same time, notice that in that
list of first importance gospel doctrines that Paul heads up that list with the truth, with the
statement that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. It’s true that
Christ died for our sins, that Christ rose from the dead, but it is Christ who died for our sins
in accordance with the Scriptures. What’s the point I’m trying to make here? Well, brothers and
sisters, in other words, the saving work of Christ, his death on the cross for our sins,
and his resurrection from the dead, cannot be separated from the person of the Savior.
You see, beloved, if Jesus is not the kind of person that the Bible says he is, if he was not
the eternal, divine Son of God incarnate, then his death and even his rising from the dead
would have absolutely no saving significance for a world of sinners like me and like you.
To put it in more theological terms, soteriology, which is the doctrine of salvation,
is inextricably intertwined with and grounded in Christology, which is the doctrine of the
person of Jesus Christ. And fundamental to a biblical and orthodox doctrine of the person
of Christ is the confession that John the Apostle highlights in our passage for this
Lord’s Day evening, namely the confession that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.
In other words, the confession of Christ’s incarnation. Children, what does that word
incarnation mean? It means Christ’s enfleshment. It means that the eternal Son of God took upon
himself our humanity, a human body and a human soul. Friends, in a very real sense, the truth
of Christ’s divine incarnation in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is the heart and center of the
gospel message, because without Christ’s incarnation, there would be no atonement for our sin,
and therefore there would be no good news for sinners like us. Now, why does John bring up
this matter in this particular passage of his first epistle? Well, in the epistle known to us
today as First John, the author, who again is most likely the Apostle John, although it is an
anonymous letter, but historically the Church has received this as being from the pen of the
Apostle John, and I see no good reason to reject that view. The Holy Spirit inspired this author,
John the Apostle, to write this epistle, to strengthen the believers under his apostolic
care in their faith, and also to warn these believers against a dangerous heresy that
threatened the Church, a heresy that was being propagated apparently by some who had been part
of the Johannine Church or group of churches. If we go back to chapter 2 and read verses 18 through
23, we see John explaining who these folks were. He says this, and this is kind of parallel to
our passage for this evening, back in First John chapter 2, beginning at verse 18, he says,
children, notice the tenderness in his address, by the way, children, it is the last hour, that’s
eschatological language he’s talking about, this is the last time, the last hour, we are in the final
days in this period of time between our Lord’s first and second advents, children, it is the
last hour, and as you have heard that Antichrist is coming, so now, he’s writing in the first century,
even now, many Antichrists have come, therefore we know that it is the last hour before the return
of our Lord, there would be the rising up of many Antichrists, and then, what does he say in verse
19, he says, they, these Antichrists, went out from us, but they were not of us, for if they had been
of us, they would have continued with us, but they went out, that it might become plain that they all
are not of us, but then he assures them, he says, but you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you
all have knowledge, they have saving knowledge, I write you, not because you do not know the truth,
but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth, who is the liar, notice chapter 2,
verse 22, who is the liar, but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ, in other words, the liar is
one who denies that the man Jesus is the divine Christ, this is the Antichrist, he who denies the
Father and the Son, no one who denies the Son has the Father, whoever confesses the Son has the
Father also, and this passage should serve as sort of the backdrop of our passage for this Lord’s Day
evening. Now, this heresy that John is confronting in his first epistle appears to have been an early
expression of what later came to be known as Gnosticism, Gnosticism deriving from the Greek
word gnosis, which means knowledge, and the Gnostics, they were really kind of weird and
crazy in their views, but there’s many things that could be said about Gnosticism, but
Gnosticism taught, among other things, that the material world, including the human body,
is evil, dirty, filthy, while the spirit is good, and so in Gnosticism, salvation means escaping
from the prison house of the body, they viewed the body as a prison that kept the soul down,
and that muddied and dirtied the soul. Now, the heresy that John confronts here in this first
epistle seems to have held to sort of an early form of this view, a proto-Gnostic view of the
material world and of the human body, which John describes as the flesh, and because of all of this,
these heretics rejected the truth of Christ’s incarnation. They rejected the confession that
Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, and therefore they also rejected Christ’s death on the cross as
an atonement for sin, so they rejected the incarnation and death and resurrection of Christ.
After all, in their view, why would the divine Christ, this the holy divine Christ, associate
with and even take to himself dirty, filthy humanity? Why would he do that? And so,
John is saying, this is what the spirit of Antichrist is, denying the literal incarnation of
Christ. And so, with all of this in mind, our passage for this Lord’s Day evening leads off
with a call to exercise spiritual discernment, and as we turn our attention to verse one,
we consider first the duty of spiritual discernment, the duty of spiritual discernment.
John writes, beloved, again notice his tender pastoral tone, he cares for these folks,
he cares for these brothers and sisters to whom he is writing, he wants to see them walking in the
truth, he wants to see them kept and guarded and protected from the evil one. Beloved, do not believe
every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God. We notice here, first of all,
our responsibility to test the spirits, but you say, well, pastor, how do you do that? What does
he mean by test the spirits? How do you test the spirits? Well, remember, in the previous chapter,
in the very last verse of chapter three, John had said, and by this we know that he abides in us
by the Spirit, meaning the Holy Spirit, whom he has given to us. But these false prophets,
these false teachers who were threatening the Johannine churches, they claim to be prophets
speaking by the Spirit of God. And so, what John means when he says test the spirits is to test
the teachings. In other words, to test the spirits means to test the teachings of those
who claim to be speaking by the Spirit of God, those who claim to be prophets. And this raises
the issue of how do we tell the difference between true prophets and false prophets?
Well, put simply, a true prophet of God was God’s mouthpiece. If you were called to be a prophet of
God, you were given supernatural inspiration, the ability to speak by means of direct revelation
from the Lord. And so, therefore, we notice if you read and are familiar with the Old Testament
prophets, they often said things like, thus says the Lord, or God says this. They were able to say
that because they were God’s spokesmen. And the Lord literally told them what to say. They spoke
from the mouth of the Lord. On the other hand, false prophets were also moved by spirits,
but not by the Holy Spirit as they claimed. Instead, false prophets were in John’s day,
and false prophets are today moved and influenced not by the Holy Spirit, but by other spirits,
evil spirits, demonic spirits. And so, we are to test the spirits by testing the teachings
of those who claim to speak by the Spirit of Christ. And dear ones, let me just point out to
you, this command to test the spirits was not addressed just to pastors and elders,
not just to church officers, although pastors, elders, deacons, church officers have a special
responsibility to test the spirits and to be discerning. But friends, this command to test
the spirits does not merely apply to Bible scholars, pastors, and so forth.
The exercise of spiritual discernment is the responsibility of all God’s people,
from the simplest believer to the greatest theologian. The duty of exercising discernment
is your duty and mine. Beloved, what is the reason why we are called to exercise this discernment?
What reason does John give? Well, here in verse one, he says that we are to test the spirits,
why? For many, many false prophets have gone out into the world. Even in the first century,
even during the apostolic era, there were many false prophets, many moved by the Spirit of
Antichrist going out into the world and infiltrating and influencing the churches,
seeking to draw believers away from their faithfulness to the gospel.
Dear ones, it’s important to remember that God’s word at this particular point in redemptive
history, God’s word was still in the process of being written and revealed. And the canon of
scripture had not yet been closed when John penned these words. And so apparently there were still
in John’s day, real prophets serving in the church who spoke by direct divine revelation.
But sadly, even back then in the apostolic age, there were also many false prophets and false
teachings threatening the church of Jesus Christ. And what was true about false prophets in John’s
day is also true about false teachers today. But that raises the question, how do we tell the
difference between a true teacher of God’s word and a false one? Is it that a true teacher of God’s
word has a wonderful charismatic personality and is really friendly and winsome, but that
false prophets are kind of nasty individuals? Does it have to do with personality? No. It has to do
with something deeper than that. In verses two and three, John tells us one very important way
that we can tell whether a teaching is from the Holy Spirit or from evil spirits. And that leads
me to my next point. True prophets of God confess the reality of Christ’s incarnation,
the truth that the eternal divine Christ, the eternal Son of God took upon himself our humanity,
body and soul in the person of Jesus Christ. Again, as Paul says in verse two,
by this you know the Spirit of God. This is how you know. It’s very clear. This is how you know
the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from
God. Again, notice that the fundamental test for discerning the difference between a true prophet
and teacher of God’s word and a false teacher is a Christological test. It is a test having to do
with Christology, the doctrine of Christ. Namely, do they confess that Jesus Christ has come
in the flesh? Now, to confess Christ involves a number of different things. Confessing Christ
implies confessing, of course, his full deity. And there are many cults and false religions out
there that deny that Jesus is God and that they too are speaking from the Spirit of Antichrist.
They too deny the biblical teaching of Christ’s incarnation. But confessing Christ faithfully,
biblically also involves confessing his full incarnate humanity. I remember I’ve heard on,
I believe, a number of occasions, well-meaning Christians and even preachers, I think on the
radio, describing the incarnation is that, well, Jesus is God in a body. Jesus is God in a body?
Is that really correct? No, Jesus is not merely a God indwelt body. Jesus is the God-man. He has a
human body and a human soul. He is a divine nature and a human nature. He is true God and fully man.
And in order to be fully man, he had to have both a human body and a human soul united in one divine
person. The apostle John elsewhere in his writings highlights these truths. For example,
that very familiar prologue of his gospel, John chapter 1. Let me just read John 1 verses 1 to 3
says this, and you’re familiar with this, but I’m going to review this. In the beginning,
where have you heard those words before? Genesis 1, 1, in the beginning. So this points to eternity,
the eternity of the living word, Jesus. In the beginning was the word and the word was with God.
So there’s a distinction between Jesus, the living word, and God, the Father. And the word was God.
Everything that the Father was, Jesus was. Jesus is, Christ is true God. He was in the beginning
with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made.
But then the prologue doesn’t stop there affirming the deity of Christ, the eternal living word.
If you skip down to verse 14, we come to this amazing statement.
And the word became what? Flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory,
glory as of the only son from the Father, full of grace and truth. And the apostle John in
the opening section of his first epistle uses similar language. In 1 John 1, beginning at verse
1, it says that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we, we apostles,
have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the
word of life. In other words, we saw him, we heard him. The life was made manifest and we have seen
it and testified to it and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was
made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you so that you also may
have fellowship with us. And indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his son, Jesus Christ.
Now a couple of takeaways from this, this part of our passage for this evening.
Beloved, I hope you get, get this truth. And that is that Christ’s incarnation, which we reflect
upon and celebrate historically and traditionally this time of year, this Advent season and on
Christmas, we celebrate the incarnation and birth of the Savior. The church historically has done so
at this time of year. Christ’s incarnation is absolutely essential for our eternal salvation.
If Jesus is not God the Son incarnate, in other words, if he is not God in the flesh,
then all hope is gone and we are still in our sins. If Christ had not taken upon himself our
humanity, including a human body, then he would not have been able to represent us as the second
Adam and he would not have been able to die on the cross for our sins. But I think another important
ramification or implication of our passage for this evening, Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.
Obviously, the flesh is not evil or bad in and of itself. God created us body and soul.
And the body is a good thing. Of course, sin has corrupted our bodies just as it has corrupted our
souls. And that’s why our bodies get sick. That’s why ultimately we grow old and die.
But nevertheless, the body and its functions and the different aspects of it, the body is good.
God made us very good. And Christ’s incarnation, Christ coming in the flesh underscores
the creational significance and importance of the human body.
God did not create us like he made the angels. See, the angels are bodiless spirit beings. They
are holy spirit beings. They don’t have corporeal existence, bodily existence like we do. Instead,
he created us as embodied souls with corporeal significance. This is implied
all the way back in the creation account in Genesis 1 verse 27, where God through Moses says,
so God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, but not just his soul.
It goes on to say male and female, he created them. That speaks to bodily existence.
And friends, that is why our Savior Jesus Christ came to us in the flesh as an embodied soul with
respect to his human nature. And that is why the ultimate hope of the gospel is not the salvation
of our souls. Some think that the gospel means I get to go to heaven when I die. Now,
don’t get me wrong. That’s part of the gospel. But that’s not the most exciting part of the
gospel. The most exciting, glorious part of the gospel. Yes, to be absent from the body is to be
present from the Lord. But to be absent from the body is also to be absent from the body.
And you were not created to be absent from the body. You were created as a body soul.
And what happens at physical death is your soul, which is inextricably united to your body,
gets torn away from the body. And the body goes to the grave and the soul,
if you are a believer, goes to be with the Lord. And of course, the souls of our departed loved
ones are with Jesus in perfect joy, perfect harmony, perfect love. But in a sense, they’re
incomplete because they’re disembodied. Our ultimate hope is not merely the salvation of our souls,
but the resurrection of the body. Since this is the case, let us be good stewards of our bodies
and seek to glorify God in our bodies. For the body is good. Christ came in the flesh.
And that leads us to consider the final point for this evening based on verse three,
as we consider the denial of the antichrist spirit. The spirit of Christ affirms and
confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh, but the antichrist denies that Jesus Christ
has come in the flesh. Look at verse three. It says this, and every spirit that does not
confess Jesus is not from God. And notice John implies or says very plainly to confess Jesus
means to confess the incarnation that God the Son became a man in the person of Jesus.
Every spirit, every teaching that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit
of the antichrist. Where do you find the spirit of the antichrist? Wherever the incarnation of
Jesus is denied. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard was coming
and now is in the world already. Even in the first century, the spirit of antichrist was
present through heretics and false prophets, such as the ones that John is dealing with
in our passage for today. In John’s day, these false prophets who were of the spirit of antichrist
denied the heart and center of the gospel. Namely, they denied the truth that Jesus Christ has come
in the flesh. The Holy Spirit here speaking through John is very clear about the one who denies
our Lord’s literal incarnation. His judgment is this is the spirit of the antichrist.
Doesn’t matter how nice or winsome they are. If they deny Jesus, they are of the spirit of
the antichrist. But is this spirit of antichrist still present today? I wish I could say no,
but sadly the answer is yes. The spirit of antichrist is present wherever the truth of
our Lord’s incarnation is denied. And I would suggest to you beloved that by extension,
the spirit of antichrist shows its influence in any theology or teaching or philosophy or ideology
which denies or de-emphasizes or downplays not only Christ’s incarnation specifically,
like most theological modernists do, for example, but the significance of the human body in general.
Let me give you one example. One such contemporary ideology that has the effect of denying the
significance of the body to our human identity is the ideology of transgenderism. Transgenderism
is not merely an innocent error or something grounded in merely political differences. It is
actually, I believe, a theological heresy, a theological heresy that is deeply
gnostic in its orientation, for it denies the significance of the body to one’s personal identity.
What do you mean by that? Well, according to this neo-gnostic heresy of transgenderism,
it is possible for your body to be misaligned with your actual true inner self, your true
inner essence. And so, for example, you may have a biologically male body, but in your true
inner essence, you may actually be a female, a woman sadly trapped in the prison house of a male
body or vice versa. What the transgender heresy implies is that it is possible for biological
reality to be divorced from one’s true personal identity. But God’s word teaches otherwise.
God’s word teaches that God created humanity as sex specific, as male and female in his image.
This implies that biological maleness and femaleness is part and parcel of our true personal
identity as human beings created in the image of God. And you may say, well, Pastor, this passage
is not about transgenderism, and you would be correct. John is not speaking directly to this
contemporary cultural issue. But nevertheless, and you may be wondering, what does this have
to do with our confession that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh or with what John is teaching
here about the spirit of Antichrist denying our Lord’s incarnation? Well, think about it. Think
about it, friends. In his incarnate humanity, our Lord Jesus Christ as the second Adam,
he represented and redeemed both elect men and elect women. Jesus in his humanity represented
and redeemed both fallen men and fallen women. But consider, friends, that in his incarnate humanity,
our Lord was not born as an androgynous or sexless being. He was born sex specific as a
biological male. And while our Lord in his humanity lived a single celibate lifestyle,
his biological sex as male was part and parcel of his human identity. And it was as a man that our
Lord could serve as the second or last Adam. Just as the first Adam represented both men and women,
including his wife Eve, as the original covenant head and representative of humanity in the
covenant of works, so our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ as the second or last Adam
represented both elect men and elect women as their new covenant head and representative
in the covenant of grace. Now, I admit there is great mystery here and we could
delve into many theological tributaries from this stream. But nevertheless,
does this not imply that our sex specific creation as male and female is a good thing,
a good thing that is part of our true identity? So affirming that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh
has many implications, not only with respect to our view of Jesus, but also our view of creation
and our view of the body in general. In closing, friends, let us beware of any teachings or
philosophies that deny or downplay the reality of our Lord’s incarnation or which deny or downplay
the corporeal significance of the human body as created by God. Instead, let us resist the
spirit of Antichrist by confessing to a lost and dying world that Jesus Christ has indeed come
in the flesh and let us invite sinners far and wide, men and women, boys and girls,
to find their identity in Christ, the Word made flesh, Emmanuel, God with us,
and all of God’s people said, amen. Let’s pray. Our Lord and Father in heaven, we thank you
that you created us as embodied souls. We thank you for the goodness of your creation
and we thank you Lord that though creation has been marred and spoiled by sin, including the
human body, and we look forward to our resurrection bodies, our glorified and resurrected bodies and
souls that will live forever in the new heavens and the new earth wherein righteousness dwells.
We would ask Heavenly Father that you would give us grace to be good stewards of our lives,
including our bodies, for your glory and give us grace, Lord, to confess that Jesus Christ
has come in the flesh. In his name we pray and all of God’s people said amen.
Amen. Let’s respond to what we’ve heard preached by rising and we’ll sing him 292,
let all mortal flesh keep silence, 292.