Reading: 1 John 4:1-6
Back in the 15th Century, the mining of precious stone such as gold or silver depended upon the use of another stone. In order to establish the authenticity of gold and silver, the mineral needed to be rubbed or touched against a black quartz —the touchstone—to determine the purity of the mineral. The chemical reaction that would follow would indicate whether the specimen of ore that one held was real or fool’s gold.
In 1 John 4:1-6, John wants his readers to see that fool’s gold abounds in the form of false teaching. This false specimen has a special appeal because “the world listens,” thereby raising its apparent value in the market. However, John wants them to be alive to the fact that “this is the spirit of the antichrist.” This message, John writes, is propagated by “many false prophets” who, in a pseudo-incarnation, “have gone out into the world.” Yet, this should not be a cause of fear or anxiety for the “little children” that John writes to. They should not fear being overcome by this falsehood because they are from God and have, therefore, overcome in Christ.
Importantly, they have been armed with the ultimate touchstone to detect and reject falsehood, “By this you know the Spirit of God: every Spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” The incarnation is the basis for all Christian fellowship. It is the touchstone for all Christian doctrine. Indeed, the coming of Christ in the flesh is not a complex add-on to the Christian faith but its very starting point. This means that we, together with the saints over the last 2000 years, confess the incarnation and all that it entails: we confess that the Son of God took on human flesh in a virgin’s womb, he lived through the dependency of infancy and learnt the obedience of childhood. We confess that he hungered and thirsted. We confess that he ate and drank, slept and wept. Ultimately, we confess that he suffered a humiliating death at the hand of sinners, dying bodily, was buried and rose again on the third day. We confess, with hope and eager expectation, that he will bodily appear in glory on the last day to judge the living and the dead.
Our embrace of the incarnation and all it entails keeps us from error and unbelief. This is because all error depends to some degree on the denial of some fundamental aspect of the incarnation. For instance, the prosperity gospel denies the bodily suffering of Christ as the pattern for the Christian life.
Therefore, the incarnation provides us with ground for our salvation and the defense for that very salvation.