Just as in ancient Israel there were some prophets who spoke the word of God and others who did not, so also, as soon as the apostles appeared, speaking in Christ and having the Holy Spirit whom the Lord had given to them, many false apostles were sent by the devil to counterfeit the teaching of the gospel. It is essential to have that gift of the Holy Spirit which is called the discernment of spirits in order to have the ability to test the spirits, to see which ones are to be believed and which ones are to be rejected.

First we must scrutinize thoroughly anything that appears in our hearts, as well as anything that is said to us. Has it come purified by the divine and heavenly fire of the Holy Spirit? Or does it lean toward Jewish superstition? Is its surface piety something which has come down from bloated worldly philosophy? We must examine all this most carefully, doing as the apostle bids us.

Who is it who tests the spirits, and how they can be tested? Our Lord shows this in the Gospels, where he predicted that evil spirits of the kind of which John had experienced would come. Jesus said: Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?^[1] These therefore are the fruits by which the evil spirits who speak by false prophets can be discerned: the thorns of schisms and the terrible thistles of heresy which sting all those who go anywhere near them.

Everyone who shall not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is antichrist. Whoever shall not confess the testimony of the cross is of the devil. Whoever shall pervert the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts and say that there is neither resurrection or judgment, that man is the firstborn of Satan. So let us forsake the vanity of many and their false teachings, and turn to the word which was delivered to us from the beginning.

A spirit which comes from God will confess that Jesus Christ, although he was in the form of God, took upon himself the form of a servant and came in the flesh.

The Manichaean denies that Christ has come in the flesh. There is no need to labor the point or to persuade you any further that this error is not from God.

It is characteristic of the antichrist, who is coming into the world and has indeed already come, to deny Christ through false prophets and spirits by saying that he never came in the flesh. There are many different heretics, but on this point they all speak with the same voice. To confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh does not just mean that he has come in his own flesh but that he enters my flesh as well.

It is to be understood that the word confesses here includes not merely the profession of an orthodox faith but also the practice of the good works which ought to accompany faith. If it were not so, then there would be some heretics, many schismatics and many pseudo-orthodox who would confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh but who would deny that confession by their behavior, for they have no love. For it was the love of God toward us which induced his Son to come in the flesh. God showed his love to us not in words but in deeds, not by talking but by loving.

The confession that the Lord has come is not made in words but in deeds. Paul said: Always bearing about in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus might also appear in our body.^[1] Therefore whoever has Jesus at work inside him and is dead to the world, and who no longer lives for it but for Christ, and who carries him about in his body—this person is of God.

If a spirit dissolves the divine-human unity of Christ and thinks that the pure Word of God is outside all flesh, and cannot really be a man, and states that everything done in his incarnation is a fantasy, then that spirit is not from God. But someone will say that there are many heretics who do accept the incarnation, the Montanists for instance. The answer to them is that just as no one says that Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit, so the Montanists do not accept all the implications of incarnational belief. For those who say that Jesus is Lord but who do not follow his commandments do not have the Holy Spirit. Although they honor him with their lips, their hearts are far from him.

John is talking here about people who deny the divinity of Christ or who say that he did not have a human soul or did not take on human flesh. But the person who misinterprets the commands and sayings of Jesus in a perverse way also denies him. So, too, does the person who upsets the unity of the church, which Jesus came to gather to himself. . . . The antichrist will come on the eve of the day of judgment. He will be a man born in the world but much more wicked than others, in fact the very son of iniquity. He is already in the world, dwelling in the minds of those who have rejected Christ either in word or in deed, to the point that there is no longer any hope for them.

Paul said, For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving like ordinary men?^[1] Whoever walks in an ordinary human way does not have the Spirit of Christ and does not live according to his teaching, so clearly he is not of Christ.

The antichrist will be a man who bears Satan inside him and who exalts himself above everything which is called God or which is worshiped. For that reason he will spurn idolatry and demand that people worship him instead.

God’s power to save is always much greater than the devil’s power to do harm.

The one who is in you is God the Father, through the Son and the Paraclete. The one in the world is Satan, for world here refers to evil people.

By believing that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh you have already overcome the antichrist. For greater love has no man than this, that a man should lay down his life for his friends.^[1] But how could the Son of God have laid down his life for us if he had not taken on human flesh, which made it possible for him to die? Anyone who violates the law of love denies by the way he lives that Christ has come in the flesh, whatever his tongue might say, and this person is the antichrist.

You have overcome the false prophets because the God who is in you is greater than the one by whom the false prophets have chosen to live. There is another sign of false prophets, which is that they make simple believers sad. There must be many who react very badly when they see the so-called prophets being given the highest honors while they themselves are treated with disrespect by the world.

Those who speak for the world, you must observe, speak against love.

Who are these but the heretics and Manichaeans? For they blaspheme, speaking evil words out of their evil minds.

The antichrists are of the world, that is, they belong to those who are familiar with worldly things, who look for the lowest of the low and who turn their backs on heavenly realities. Therefore they talk like men of the world, using human reason to oppose the Christian faith, saying for example that the Son of God cannot be coeternal with the Father; that a virgin cannot give birth; that flesh cannot rise again from the dust, immortal; that a man born of the earth cannot inherit a heavenly home; that a newborn baby cannot be tainted with the guilt of original sin. . . . The world listens to them because they are unable to win spiritually minded hearts away from the simplicity of their faith and call them back to carnal desires. ON1 JOHN.

Those who teach what the world wants to hear will always find followers in it, for the perverted love each other. We on the other hand will never be accepted by them.

If we take the word hear literally, it is clear that this cannot be true, since everybody can pick up the sounds of the words. It is therefore clear that the word means something more than that—it means that we should do what we hear. If someone does not know that he is supposed to act, he has not really heard.

The carnal man does not accept the things which are of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. Therefore, those who do not want to listen to the preachers of love are soon recognized as not knowing God or coming from him, because they have done nothing to imitate the love which God has toward us.

Just as the person who does not choose what he ought to choose has done wrong and does not love what he ought to love, so those who love only those who are worthy of love receive only that level of praise due to them.

To practice righteousness and judgment means to live virtuously, and to live virtuously means to obey God’s law, the purpose of which is to help us to base our lives on the principle of love. This is the love which comes from God, as John says.

Love is from God, as have declared those whom he has made not only his great lovers but also his great preachers.

What does it mean to say that love is from God? Surely this refers to the man who came from God, who was revealed according to the image and likeness of the one who made him? For when this man appeared, he was revealed as the beloved and as worthy of being loved. Now since this Savior has been sent into the world because of the Father’s great love for the things which he has made, those who have received this blessing and who are thus beloved ought to love one another. For each of us is loved and is called to love, having the command that we should love our neighbor.

John often praised love, which he said came from God, which is why we read that he who loves is born of God. What more need be said? God is love, and therefore to go against love is to go against God.

What kind of love are we talking about here? It is the true love and not simply what people use this word to mean. It comes from our attitude and knowledge and must proceed from a pure heart. For there is also a love of evil things. Robbers love other robbers, and murderers love each other too, not out of love which comes from a good conscience but from a bad one.

If God is love, it follows that the more companions and partners in the faith whom we see being born, in addition to ourselves, the more effusive will be the love in which we rejoice, since it is the possession of this love which is being set before us.

Love is so much the gift of God that it is called God.

Although your course of action is different from ours, our common love has made both courses necessary for the salvation of our brother, for one God has done it all, and God is love.

God is love. Wherefore, the man who lives in love reaps the fruit of life from God, and while yet in this world, he even now breathes the air of the resurrection.

Let no one say that when he sins he sins against other people but not against God, for how can you not be sinning against God when you are sinning against love?

Christ proved his love for us by dying for us. Thus it follows that the Father’s love for us is also proved in this way, because it was he who sent his Son to die for us.

God is love because he sent his only-begotten Son to die for us.

The perfect love with which God first loved us will come into our hearts, for our faith tells us that this prayer of our Savior will not be in vain.

We come to God not by our own merits but by the be-stowal of his grace alone, as John bears witness when he says that we did not love God but rather he loved us.

This is the greatest sign of God’s love for us: when we were not yet able to seek him because of our many sins, he sent his Son to us, so that he might grant forgiveness to all who believe in him and call us back into the fellowship of his fatherly glory.

This is precisely what the apostle Paul meant when he wrote: Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.^[1]

The love we show to one another ought to be like the love which God has shown to us. I mean by that it should be sincere and pure, without ulterior motives or other hidden thoughts of the kind we normally associate with robbers and other evildoers.

Since God is invisible, nobody has ever seen him, since bodily sight cannot see things which have no bodies. But there are some heretics who say that the Old Testament speaks of a visible God, because occasionally people are said to have seen him, whereas the New Testament makes him completely invisible. So we have to ask what substance he is supposed to have which would make him visible. They would have to answer, unless they are out of their minds, that God is a body, even though it is not made of any perceivable substance. If that is what they think, they ought to consider how incongruous and full of ungodliness their beliefs are. For how can there be a body if there is no way of defining what it is?

Why does John say so much about loving our brothers, but nothing at all about loving our enemies? Reaching out to our enemies does not exclude loving our brothers. Our love, like a fire, must first take hold of what is nearest and then spread to what is further off.

This is how God’s love works. God comes to dwell in us, though no one has ever seen him.

This verse causes a problem when we remember that the Lord promises that those who are pure in heart will see God and tells the saints that their angels are constantly gazing at the face of God in heaven. John repeats this phrase in his Gospel, where he adds that the only-begotten Son has seen the Father and has made him known to us.^[1] Our blessed father Ambrose expounded this as follows: No one has ever seen God because no one has ever comprehended the fullness of the divinity which dwells in him, either with his mind or with his eye. For the verb see implies both physical and mental perception. It is therefore clear that here we are not talking about physical sight so much as about mental perception, and our minds are incapable of ever grasping the fullness of God’s being.

Examine your own heart and you will know whether or not God has given his Spirit to you, for if you are full of love, you have the Spirit of God.

Many things which are invisible in themselves we discover by the way in which they work inside us. Just as nobody has ever seen a soul, but we know it from the way it behaves in us, so we detect God’s love from the fact that it is at work and bears fruit in us.

Let no one despair of being saved. For if the diseases of wickedness which oppress us are great, there is an almighty doctor coming who can deliver us. But all of us should remember that the same Son of God who comes in meekness to save us will come again in severity to judge us.

Therefore since we have fellowship with him in pure love, it is also by love that we who saw him in the flesh have acknowledged him and bear witness that the Father sent him to be the Savior of the world. But above and beyond our testimony he has also taught us about this, leading us thereby to a more perfect understanding of him, as when he said: I went out from the Father and came into the world.^[1]

This needs to be properly understood. God will not dwell in anyone who does not obey his commandments, however much he may confess him with his lips. Some people are confused by the various names of Jesus, because they do not interpret the Scriptures correctly. They think that because he came out of the womb of Mary according to the flesh and was given the name Jesus at that time, he is not to be identified with the eternal Son of God, who did not think it robbery to be considered equal with God. They restrict themselves to the human form which the Word of God assumed, even though the being of the Word was never changed into humanity. To confess the one Lord Jesus Christ is to confess him as God and man, not as a man only.

John says that the perfect confession of the heart is one which cannot be corrupted by the wicked persuasion of the heretics. It cannot be overcome by the tortures inflicted by pagans in persecution or slacken under the pressure of the example of worldly brothers or the weakness of our own frailty.

Those who have refused to be of one mind in the church of God cannot abide with God.

If God is love, as John says, then it must be that the devil is hatred. As he who has love has God, so he who has hatred has the devil dwelling in him.

The Holy Spirit is commonly shared in some way between the Father and the Son. But this communion is itself consubstantial and coeternal. If it can appropriately be described as friendship, let it be so called—but it is better to call it love. It is a substance, because God is a substance, and God is love.

When we come to the subject of love, which is what God is called in Scripture, the Trinity begins to dawn a little, for there is the Lover, the Beloved and Love.

Why is it that theologians sometimes refer to God as Yearning or Love and sometimes as the Yearned-for or the Beloved? On the one hand, he causes, produces and generates what is being referred to, and on the other hand, he is the thing itself.

We know that Jesus is the Son of God and that the Father has sent him to be the Savior of the world. And we believe in the love which God has for us, the same love which he has for his only-begotten Son, because God did not want his Son to be an only child. He wanted him to have brothers and sisters, and so he adopted us in order that we might share his eternal life. ^[1] SEEK ONE WHO IS LOVE. ISHO‘DAD OF MERV: There is no Scripture which calls God only love,^[1] but John says this in order that we might seek him who is love, from whom the commandment to show mercy came. COMMENTARIES.^[2]

This is how everyone ought to test the progress of love in himself, or rather his own progress in love, for if love is God there can be no progress or regress, and love is only said to make progress in you inasmuch as you make progress in love.

In this world we must do our best to be generous, godly, merciful and patient, imitating God as closely as we can.

Jesus said: The ruler of this world is coming, and he shall find nothing in me.^[1] We ought to be the same, so that nothing of this world may be found in us either.

John tells us how we can know where we stand in God’s eyes. Everyone who has assurance on the day of judgment has perfect love in him. What does it mean to have assurance? It means that we are not afraid of the coming of judgment. When someone is newly converted, he starts by being afraid of the day of judgment, because he thinks that when the righteous Judge appears, he will be condemned as unrighteous. But as he grows in the faith and his life starts to change, he learns not to be afraid anymore but to look forward eagerly for the coming of the One who is the desire of the nations, hoping that on the strength of his good life he will be crowned among the saints.

The perfection of a faithful man is love.

What John said is true. So if you do not want to have any fear, first of all see whether you have that perfect love which turns fear out of the door. But if fear is pushed out before such perfection is achieved, it is a matter of pride puffing up, not of charity building up.

The apostles had to ensure that no other truth would creep in and that no other doctrine would be taught. To do this, it was necessary to increase the capacity of those who were being taught and to multiply the constancy of that love which drives out all fear, not dreading the rage of persecutors.

The love of God is such that it makes it possible to imitate God’s goodness to the point where we start to do good toward our enemies and even to love them. The fear which love casts out is that spoken of in the psalm: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.^[1] The new convert is afraid that the strictness of the righteous Judge will condemn him, but love casts this kind of fear out and gives him assurance on the day of judgment.

By God’s grace we love him who first loved us, in order to believe in him, and by loving him we perform good works, but we have not performed the good works in order to love him.

God loves us so much that even the hairs of our head are numbered, as it says in the Gospels.^[1] It is not that God goes around numbering hairs but rather that he has exact understanding and complete foreknowledge of everything to do with us.

From where would we get the power to love God if he had not loved us first of all? Jesus says in the Gospel: You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you.^[1] We shall therefore be perfect in love if, following his example, we love him for no other reason than that he first loved us and gave himself for us.

He who does not love his brother is not in love, and he who is not in love is not in God, for God is love.

Why does a man not see God? Because he has not love. He has not love because he does not love his brother, and it follows that the reason for his not seeing God is that he does not love. The heart’s eye must be continually cleansed and strengthened by love, in order to see that changeless being in whose presence the lover may always delight and enjoy it in the company of the angels for all eternity.

Anyone who loves God must love his brother also, for the simple reason that loving God means loving those whom God loves.

The person who loves God keeps his commandments, and loving one’s brother is the fulfillment of those commandments. The person who does not love his brother has not kept the commandments and by not keeping them has not loved God. The one who says he loves but does not do so is a liar.

How can you love someone if you hate what he asks you to do? Who is there who would say that he loves the emperor but cannot abide his laws? The true lover of God is one who loves his commandments also, as Psalm 119 makes perfectly clear.

[Anthony told his monks:] When, therefore, [demons] come by night to you and wish to tell the future, or say “We are the angels,” give no heed, for they lie. . . . But if they shamelessly stand their ground, capering, and change their forms of appearance, fear them not, nor shrink, nor heed them as though they were good spirits. For the presence of good or evil can easily be distinguished with the help of God. The vision of the holy ones is not fraught with distraction, “For they will not strive, nor cry, nor shall anyone hear their voice” [Mt 12:19; see also Is 42:2]. But they come quietly and gently so that an immediate joy, gladness, and courage arise in the soul. For the Lord who is our joy is with them, and the power of God the Father.

For whoever does not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is Antichrist [1 Jn 4:3], and whoever does not confess the testimony of the cross is of the devil; and whosoever perverts the oracles of the Lord to his own lusts, and says that there is neither a resurrection nor a judgment, he is the firstborn of Satan.

If [the heretics] desire peace, let them lay aside their arms. If they make atonement, why do they threaten? Or if they threaten, let them know that they are not feared by God’s priests. For even Antichrist, when he comes, will not enter into the Church [even though] he threatens; neither shall we yield to his arms and violence, [though] he declares that he will destroy us if we resist.