Monthly Archives: April 2022

THE SPIRIT OF JESUS?

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THE SPIRIT OF JESUS?

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you recognise the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus has come in the flesh is from God but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world (1 John 4: 1-3).

John was aware, in the first century after Jesus, that there were already false teachings growing up around Him. It does not take long for unscrupulous people to twist the truth to suit their own ideas and very often their pockets. Those who have no inclination to follow Jesus and abide by His requirements for being His disciples, need to accommodate sin in all its subtle forms. Rather than match their lives with His, they change Him into someone who is less demanding so that they can water down His standards and carry on with their sin.

Unfortunately for them, what they teach does not change the truth of who He is, but it does disqualify them from having any part in the life He promised those who believe in Him. Even more tragic is that they drag others down with them in their unbelief.

How do we know that we are on the right track in the midst of the outpouring of false teaching all over the world? John gave us one test, but there are many others which will help us stay on course. How do we recognise the Spirit of God? By the testimony of Jesus.

Now I know that John wrote that people who cannot confess the name of Jesus or who deny that He was truly human are manifesting the spirit of antichrist. However, there are far more subtle forms of denial within the church which gullible believers swallow without giving it another thought.

We are aware of the cults which teach that Jesus was not true God or true man. But what about the preachers and teachers who add their own prescriptions to the simple invitation of Jesus, “Follow me”?

These imposters are not always easy to recognise because they masquerade as the ministers of Christ but they are even more dangerous than those who openly deny the truth of the word. Paul warned that anyone who adds to the finished work of Christ is under God’s curse (Gal. 1: 6-9). That’s pretty serious, isn’t it? Anathema – he said; cursed by God.

There are both blatant and subtle additions to the gospel of Christ in all streams of the church. What about the rituals and paraphernalia that have been added, for example? The elevation of certain people above others. When did Jesus ever tell His disciples that only certain “ordained” priests are permitted to administer the Lord’s Supper or baptise believers? It’s an imposition.

Jesus expressly declared that true leadership steps down to lift others up, while false leaders lord it over the laity. Whether people operate officially in the church as priests or whether they claim titles for themselves like Prophet So-and-so” or “Apostle So-and-so” that make them think they are superior to others, makes no difference. It is an imposition and not of the spirit of Jesus.

When did Jesus set up an elaborate religious system with candles, incense, a priestly hierarchy and special garments, and bowing to an altar? Imposition! How does any of this fit into “Follow me,” and, “Go and make disciples”? What about teachings like “born-again”, “Spirit-filled” and “tongues-speaking” Christians versus the rest? Did Jesus ever teach these things? Did he ever put people into categories and treat them accordingly? No, He did exactly the opposite. He affirmed those who were despised and marginalised by society – lepers, “sinners”, women, children, prostitutes, tax-collectors etc.

What about those “spiritual leaders” who milk their congregations through guilt to enrich themselves by pretending to have compassion on the poor? Among the genuine ones who create opportunities for us to channel our money into ministries all over the world which help needy people, are the imposters who teach the “prosperity gospel” from which they benefit handsomely.

And superstition abounds in the so-called “preaching” of the Word. The fear of punishment is a big one. Have you heard this one – that people’s prayers for healing, for example, are not answered because they do not have enough faith, or that their business failed or their marriage fell apart because they sinned? What about “It is finished”? Jesus paid sin’s debt once-for-all, didn’t He?

How can we recognise the spirit of antichrist which is rife in the world and in the church? Does it measure up to Jesus’ identity as the Son of God, His work that He died and rose again, and does it fall in line with His simple call, “Follow me, “ and “Go and make disciples”?

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

BELIEVE AND LOVE

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BELIEVE AND LOVE

And this is His command: to believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ and to love one another as He commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in Him, and He in them. And this is how we know that He lives in us. We know it by the Spirit He gave us (1 John 3:23-24).

John’s recurring refrain through this letter is “we know”. How different from the religions of the world which can only say in the end, when they have presented all their fanciful theories and ideas, “We don’t know.” How tragic to get to the end of life, to pass on and to discover that they were wrong all the time.

There are so many reasons why those who believe in Jesus can say with confidence, “We know.” I know that we have been accused of pride and arrogance, that we have no right to force our beliefs on other people, that we are intolerant and guilty of “hate speech” and many other accusations but why should we not be confident in what we believe when we have concrete evidence of its truth.

Take for example, the historicity of the person in whom we put our confidence. Did Jesus Christ really live? Was He an historical figure? Some have tried to disprove His existence but, apart from the testimony of the Bible (which is a historical document with more early manuscripts to verify the reliability of its records than any other ancient document in history), there is the evidence of secular documents from that period of history that Jesus really lived.

Not only was He a historical figure, but He also did what He said He would do. He was accused of blasphemy by the Jewish Sanhedrin, found guilty and referred to Pilate for sentencing. Pilate found Him not guilty of treason against Rome but sentenced Him to death by crucifixion as a concession to the Jews. He rose from the dead on the third day and appeared to more than five hundred people at different times.

His disciples were so convinced of His identity as the Son of God and His resurrection from the dead because they saw Him that they went everywhere preaching and passing on the good news of the kingdom of God. They were mercilessly persecuted as blasphemers and enemies of Rome because they refused to bow to Caesar as Lord, but they refused to recant. In spite of the threat to their lives, thousands of Gentiles turned from the idols to believe in Jesus and to worship the true and living God.

Was this whole interlude just a series of events which took place in history? God’s trump card as far as authenticity goes, is prophecy. Hundreds of details about God’s Messiah were written into the text of His holy book centuries before they happened and accurately fulfilled in one person, Jesus Christ. This is impossible unless God both planned the events and executed them exactly as He had predicted because He knew the whole scope of history before it happened.

What is even more amazing is that He was able to marry His will and human free will in such a way that He could never be accused of treating human beings like puppets. Peter captured this thought accurately on the Day of Pentecost when he said:

This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men put Him to death by nailing Him to a cross (Acts 2: 23).

Peter could also triumphantly declare:

But God raised Him from the dead, freeing Him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on Him (Acts 2: 24).

Jesus Himself prophesied that He would be arrested and put to death by the Jewish leaders, not because they had power over Him but because He willingly laid down His life for His sheep.

The reason my Father loves me is that I lay down my life – only to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord (John 10: 17-18a).

The rabble who came to arrest Him had no power to take Him until He handed Himself over to them (John 18:3-6). He had every opportunity to evade arrest but He approached them and willingly allowed Himself to be taken.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost sealed every word Jesus had spoken and every promise He had made. The disciples were transformed in an instant from frightened and cowering men to bold and confident apostles of Jesus, facing the wrath of the Jewish leaders with courage and refusing to back down on their message because they knew it was true.

We also, who believe in Jesus, have every right to say, “We know,” because we share the same Lord, the same message, the same Holy Spirit and the same experience of transformation from selfish rebels to submissive and obedient sons and daughters of the living God as they had.

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

NO CONDEMNATION

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 NO CONDEMNATION

This is how we know we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in His presence. If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us we have confidence before God and receive from Him anything we ask, because we keep His commands and do what pleases Him. And this is His command: to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ and to love one another as He commanded us (1 John 3: 19-23).

Can you hear Jesus speaking again? Almost in the words of Jesus, John sweeps aside all our man-made prerequisites for confidence in God and gets to the heart of it just as Jesus testified about Himself. This time John joined the root and the fruit in one sentence. There is no conflict between believing in Jesus and loving our brothers. The first is the root, the second the fruit of our faith in Him.

John knew about the conflict that goes on in our hearts at times. We have an enemy who delights to accuse. His name, Satan, means “accuser”. His purpose is to cast doubt on the trustworthiness of God. If he can cause us to mistrust the Father’s promises, he can inject any substitute for the truth and, in our confusion, we will take his lies for the conviction of sin which we think comes from the Holy Spirit.

Feeling “bad” over something we have said or done is not an indication that the Holy Spirit is speaking to our spirits. On the contrary, it is never the Holy Spirit’s role to condemn. Paul stated categorically that:

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1).

Why? On what grounds can we be sure that we are no longer condemned?

 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died – more than that, who was raised to life – is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us (Rom. 8: 33-34).

We have a solid reason for believing that we have been fully accepted by the Father. Even if we have inadvertently sinned again, we have a permanent representative before God, our advocate, Jesus Christ the Righteous. His blood guarantees our forgiveness and God’s favour towards us.

Why do we feel bad when we have sinned? We not only have an advocate who pleads our case before the Father, we also have an adversary, the accuser who accuses us night and day before the Father.

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: ‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of His Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down (Rev. 12: 10).

Accusation is never the role of the Holy Spirit. His role is not to convince us of sin but to convince the unbelieving world of sin, not to condemn, but to point them to the Saviour. He convinces the believer of righteousness – pointing us to the finished work of Jesus.

What must we do with the voice of accusation and condemnation that plagues us, even when we have not sinned? It is the devil who drags up our past and parades it before our conscience in the hopes that we will have constant doubts about the truthfulness of God.

John assures us that, when our hearts condemn us, that nagging voice of guilt and shame that refuses to be silenced, it is not the voice of God. God is greater than our hearts. It is not a voice to be believed. How do we silence it? Expose the identity of the speaker and the lies he is speaking. In this war against the evil one, we were not told to fight but to stand. Stand on the truth of God’s infallible word. What has He said? Is His word true? When we expose the devil’s lies, we have robbed him of his weapon and disempowered him to unsettle us.

Fear comes from believing his lies, but our confidence is in the truth of what God has promised. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. God’s word is greater than our hearts. When we choose to believe Him rather than the lies we are hearing, we have confidence that we are His children and we can trust Him to answer our prayers because our lives are based on what He wants of us, not on what the devil wants us to believe.

His word, not our feelings based on Satan’s lies, is to be the guiding light of our lives. Then we can have complete confidence in what He has said.

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

LOVE IS ACTION

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LOVE IS ACTION

Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him. This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth (1 John 3: 15-18).

As I read through John’s letter, I become aware that he is steeped in the teachings of Jesus.

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.’(Matt. 5: 21-22).

We know that these are the words of Jesus but what was He getting at? The act of murder begins far back in the mind of the perpetrator. John missed out all the in-between bits and went to the heart of the issue. Jesus taught His disciples that murder begins in the attitude of the murderer long before he commits the act.

There was something Jesus hated with a passion in the hearts of the Pharisees – contempt for another person. This is the heart of idolatry – “I am better than you.” Arrogance, according to 1 Sam. 15: 23 is idolatry.

For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.

When one person elevates himself above another, the despised person is in his way and becomes dispensable. Long before the actual act of murder, the “murderer” has done the deed in his heart. 

Once again John is identifying the root which produces the fruit. God’s love cannot exist side by side with hatred in the same person. Any ill will towards another is the fruit of selfishness which is in that has never been changed by the power of God.

What did John mean by laying down our lives for our brothers? Did he literally mean that we must die for one another? It could in the context of the vicious persecution that threatened the lives of the Christians in John’s day. Believers were the targets of both Roman and Jewish hatred. It would have been easy for believers to retaliate with hatred towards their persecutors.

However, John makes the issue of loving our brothers far more basic. During the reign of Domitian, who was nick-named “the beast”, only those who worshipped him and received a mark to identify them as worshippers, were permitted to buy and sell at the local market. That left believers who refused to worship him and had, therefore not received his mark, destitute. “Laying down their lives” for their fellow believers was as simple as sharing their meagre supply of food or goods with them.

John was adamant that true love for God was measured, not in believing the right things but in doing the right things. How tragic that there are thousands of students in Bible Schools and universities across the world who are diligently studying theology and filling their heads with knowledge about God in the abstract so that they, in turn can pass on that knowledge to congregants in thousands of churches around the world while the hungry are still hungry and the poor are still poor. I know because I was one of them! Not once in the three-and-a-half years that I was in Bible College, was I taught that my ministry was to meet the needs of others at my expense.

Of Josiah, king of Judah, God said, through the prophet Jeremiah,

‘He defended the cause of the poor and needy, and so all went well. Is that not what it means to know me?’ declares the Lord (Jer. 22: 16).

Paul wrote to the Roman church that the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. If we are truly born of God, the love of God is in us, but it is up to us to express that love by giving it away to others in need. Hatred comes from the root of selfishness. Love is the fruit of a life that has been captivated by the love of God. The fruit displays the nature of the root.

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

WHAT IS THE ACID TEST?

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WHAT IS THE ACID TEST?

For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death (1 John 3: 11-14).

Hey, John! Haven’t you got it wrong? I thought that to have eternal life means to believe in Jesus. Isn’t that what He said?

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).

The whole world knows that verse! So how can you say that loving my brother and sister is the way to eternal life? Aren’t you mistaken?

Let’s look at it this way. It’s easy to answer an altar call or sign a decision card in a moment of emotion when the music is playing softly and the preacher’s words are persuasive. But what about tomorrow when you are faced with the same irritating people at the office or the same nagging wife at home. The same disobedient children live in your house. The same teenagers who hog the bathroom when you are already late for work, still show you no respect or consideration. How do you react to them now? Has anything changed?

Believing in Jesus is much more than a religious exercise or a decision made in an emotion- charged moment. It is a decision and a choice to accept by faith God’s offer of forgiveness for all your sin. That’s the first step. The second is to surrender the control of your life to the Holy Spirit who has pledged to take up residence in you and to put you back on the path of obedience to God’s way of living. The good news is that He also enables you to do what you could not do before.

It’s actually a two-way commitment. God only responds to your decision when He knows that you really mean it and are committed to seeing it through to the end of your days. It’s a life-changing transaction. His part is powerful and supernatural. He rescues you from the clutches of the devil and his influence and transfers you to the kingdom of God where He calls the shots. His rule is underpinned by love, not selfishness, which the Holy Spirit generates in your heart. He washes you clean of all the stains of your past and puts His own nature in you, a disposition of loving obedience and trust in Him.

How do we know that this transaction has taken place? How do you know what kind of fruit tree is growing in your garden? By its fruit. It’s as simple as that! Jesus said that the fruit will identify the tree. How do you know that the confession of your lips is true? Has the change taken place in your life or are you the same person you were yesterday? Do you have the same reaction to those who annoy you as you did before you made your “decision” to follow Jesus?

Of course, that does not mean that you have suddenly become perfect. You still have your old sinful nature to contend with, but somehow things are different if Jesus has responded to your sincere faith in Him. There’s a stirring in your heart towards the person whom you disliked yesterday. You are beginning to see him through different eyes. You recognise that he has his own issues which make him difficult to get on with. You find that can let go of the things that irritated you about him now.

There are the beginnings of new fruit in your life. God’s nature is starting to grow in you. You find yourself strangely moved by other people’s suffering where you were once disinterested and indifferent. You open your heart and your purse to someone in need instead of turning your back and walking away. What’s going on?

It’s the life of Jesus in you, not just a religious experience but an actual change that has happened in your heart. God is becoming real to you, not just a name that you utter when you are exasperated or surprised. You cringe when others thoughtlessly call His name. The emptiness and restlessness in your heart have been inexplicably removed and replaced with a peace that makes no sense but is very real.

How do you know that you have eternal life? Not because you signed a card or went up to the front for prayer, but because a real transformation has happened to you. You know you have eternal life because love has begun to grow in your heart.     

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.