Verse 6: We are from God; he who knows God listens to us; he who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
This verse concludes John’s analysis of the first six verses of chapter 4. John declares our position, restates the spiritual battle lines, emphasizing the participants’ origins, and finishing with the benefit of our attentiveness to his teaching.
We Are From God
We refers to John’s readers as well as to himself. Make no mistake, John is not writing to unbelievers in order to advise them on how to live the Christian life. That would be absurd, since the unbeliever “does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him” (1 Corinthians 2:14). The purpose of Scripture is entirely for the “man of God” as the apostle Paul stated:
All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16–17)
The only statements that apply to the unbeliever are regarding their need for salvation. For example: “You must be born again” (John 3:7b) and “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).
In this opening statement, John reaffirms the eternal reality that our spiritual origin is from God, having been born of Him (2:29; cf. John 3:6–7). Thus, we have the assurance that nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38–39).
Spiritual Divisions
It is important to understand the demarcation which John is setting up here: he who truly knows the God of the universe, who believes in the One who has been revealed by His creation (Romans 1:20) and by His Son (Hebrews 1:2); in contrast to “he who is not from God.” The character of these two groups is distinct: one of them consists of those whom John stated know the father...who has been from the beginning (2:13-14), the other is identified with the world (4:1, 5).1 However, the missing word know is the determining factor that they are not from God—they are unbelievers. And not being spiritually born of Him they have no factual knowledge of God and may possess an erroneous understanding of even His existence.
By John’s use of the word know, he returns to the core issue that was confronting the Church in the 1st Century: the Gnostic heresy. The adherents of Gnosticism implied that they possessed a superior knowledge of God which was hidden from others. “It makes a distinction between the select few who have this higher gift, and the vulgar many who are without it.”2
Today, the 21st Century Church is confronted with a similar heresy, the divergent belief that a person can know God by subjective thinking or feelings as opposed to the objective revelation of God through His Word. Many fail to embrace the Christian way of life, which entails being thoroughly engaged in Jesus Christ and the reliance upon the empowerment of the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 3:16–19). They may consider being a Christian as merely a Sunday activity, or worse, a dress-up day for Easter and/or Christmas—instead of Christ being the center of their daily moment-by-moment life.
The Missing Element
John states that these two groups which he has presented have obvious differences: one listens to us; while the other does not listen to us. The word listen incorporates the idea of hearing attentively and as a result to follow and obey what is said. For some, hearing has the tendency to ineffectively go into one ear and out the other. Specifically, the latter group do not listen to is the gospel of salvation—the appeal for them to believe in Jesus Christ as Savior. The cause of this missing element is their unwillingness to listen to us who possess the objective truth of God’s Word. Their reluctance to listen may be the result of their own wrong thinking as the apostle Paul observed:
For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18)
And if this were the case, then they left themselves open to the wiles of the evil one, Satan, the god of this world (John 12:31; 17:15; 1 John 5:19). Again, the apostle Paul explains:
And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Corinthians 4:3–4)
R.C.H. Lenski concludes:
In order to know and thus to hear with blessed results one must “be from God,” born of him, must have “the eyes of your understanding enlightened,” Ephesians 1:18. Only thus are the speakers appreciated.3
Our Resulting Benefit
By this refers to the aforementioned fact, that there are two groups that inhabit the world: those who listen to our message of the gospel and those who refuse and/or reject our plea that they hear and believe in Jesus Christ. So, by this we are now able to distinguish (know) the difference between truth and error. The use of the word spirit here does not refer to something supernatural. Instead it refers to one of its more basic meanings: a frame of mind, disposition, influence,4 with the implication of the essence, substance or evidence of the idea presented. This usage is not uncommon in Scripture (cf. Luke 1:17; Romans 8:15; 1 Corinthians 4:21; Galatians 6:1; Ephesians 2:2; 2 Timothy 1:7).
What we can know, on the one hand, is the spirit of truth, the very essence of the absolute standard of truth contained in Scripture. Our Lord affirmed this when He declared to the Father that “Your Word is truth” (John 17:17), and that the Holy Spirit “will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13)—God’s absolute truth. This is “true truth” as distinguished by Dr. Francis Schaeffer, reasoning that “People today live in a generation that no longer believes in the hope of truth as truth.”5 For indeed, our culture rejects God’s truth; instead they are obsessed with arbitrary “truth,” embracing whatever appeals to their personal desires and objectives. God’s Word contains His absolute truth—His Divine viewpoint which is universal, unilaterally superseding and overruling any and all opposing human viewpoint.
While on the other hand, we can also know the spirit of error; it permeates everywhere in our culture, even sometimes right within our churches. It is evidenced by anything that is contrary to His absolute truth. Christians can discern the difference between truth and error, but only if they avail themselves to an intense study of God’s Word. Therefore, believers without a biblical frame of reference and fail to accept and implement His truth are at a disadvantage, being unable to identify the errors communicated by false teachers.[1] Alford, Henry (1877). The Greek Testament, Boston, MA: Lee and Shepard Publishers, 4.487.
[2] Lightfoot, Joseph B. (1999). St. Paul’s Epistle to the Colossians and Philemon. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, p. 77.
[3] Lenski, R.C.H. (2001). Commentary on the New Testament, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 11.491-492.
[4] Abbott-Smith, G. (n/d). A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament. New York, NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, p. 367
[5] Schaeffer, Francis A. (1985). The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1.312-313.
© 2025 David M. Rossi
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