We’ll get to spoofing in a minute, but let’s swim in a different direction first: toward a truism. Jesus was different. Just how different? Well, that is quite a subject, one which John seemed to figure was inexhaustible1.
If you opened the note after the word inexhaustible, then you saw the last verse of John’s gospel. Let’s now wind all the way back to the first verse of that same Jesus biography.
1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
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14 And the Word became 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.
So what is the deal here? Jesus came in the flesh. That is, Jesus was God first and then making Christmas he arrived! He was man second. God first, man second was revealed and recorded in the Bible just shy of 2,000 years ago.
John’s gospel is not the meat and potatoes of 1 John or this lesson. That is below:
2By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, (1 John 4:2–ESV)
Some religious spirits are false, that was the message of verse 1. Since these are out and about in the world seeking whom they may deceive John lays before his readers a false-spirit detector. Detection of error, falsity, relates intimately to the person of Jesus Christ.
The are many false spirits who will acknowledge various elements of Jesus making them all the more deceptive. Look again at verse 2 for the center-point of center-points. It relates to the origins of Jesus. Do you see what John writes about that? The first step in uncovering spiritual lies, damning untruths, is to ask something like this: Does this person, group, teaching acknowledge that Jesus was God from eternity past come to earth in the form of a man? That is why I have titled this entry in the manner I have: God first, man second.
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