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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - 1 John 4:2 - 4:2
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Hereby - “Herein.”
know ... the Spirit of God - whether he be, or not, in those teachers professing to be moved by Him.
Every spirit - that is, Every teacher claiming inspiration by the HOLY SPIRIT.
confesseth - The truth is taken for granted as established. Man is required to confess it, that is, in his teaching to profess it openly.
Jesus Christ is come in the flesh - a twofold truth confessed, that Jesus is the Christ, and that He is come (the Greek perfect tense implies not a mere past historical fact, as the aorist would, but also the present continuance of the fact and its blessed effects) in the flesh (“clothed with flesh”: not with a mere seeming humanity, as the Docetae afterwards taught: He therefore was, previously, something far above flesh). His flesh implies His death for us, for only by assuming flesh could He die (for as God He could not), Heb 2:9, Heb 2:10, Heb 2:14, Heb 2:16; and His death implies His LOVE for us (Joh 15:13). To deny the reality of His flesh is to deny His love, and so cast away the root which produces all true love on the believer’s part (1Jo 4:9-11, 1Jo 4:19). Rome, by the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, denies Christ’s proper humanity.