The Spirit of GOD

"Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God." -I John 4:2 [KJV]

“You study too much, it will kill you,” says one and another. What! the study of Christ, Who is the life, health, and joy of the soul, kill one? Precious death, to die in such sweet exercise. It is only to fall asleep in Jesus, and awake with Him in glory. I am sure, (through grace) this delightful study will kill the life of sense, the power of sin, and the delusion of Satan. Christ help us to study Him more and more. The apostle here warns us against false spirits, which are not of God. He bids us believe not every spirit, but try (-test) them. For many false prophets are gone out under a spirit of delusion. 

We are in danger of being deceived by them. Here is a fixed rule to know whether they are of God or not. (1st.) Know ye the Spirit of God. Many pretend to have received Him: to preach by His inspiration: to glory in ecstasies of comfort and revelations from the Spirit. Look at them with a godly jealousy. Be not hastily carried away by them. Do not condemn your own state, because you feel yourself a burdened sinner, groan under your burden, and though from day to day you are looking unto Jesus, yet have not these ecstasies and transports they pretend to. 

(2d.) Know the Spirit of God hereby, “every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God.” This is the true testimony of the Spirit of God. Keep your eye steadily on this. What is implied in it? 1. That God and man in one Christ, is come to save us. 2. The end of His so coming was “to finish the transgression, to make an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness” (Daniel 9:24.) Christ hath perfectly and everlastingly done all this in human flesh, for our souls. Therefore, 

(3d.) If the whole of this is not confessed, if any part of this is denied, then the “vision and prophecy is not allowed to be sealed up and finished.” And if comforts and joys arise not from the firm belief of Christ’s finished work for us, but from what we have done, or can do towards our own salvation, such comfort and joy flow not from the Spirit of God, but from another spirit the spirit of pride, delusion, and antichrist. 

For it is against confessing that Christ is the Alpha and Omega—the first and the last—the all in all of a sinner’s salvation. O beware of that spirit, which bears witness of any thing in you for righteousness to justify you before God, or as the ground of your acceptance in His sight. Away with it all as filth and dung. Reject such spirit and his testimony. Know ye the Spirit of God beareth witness, because the Spirit is Truth (I John 5:6.)

-preacher William Mason (1724-1797 A.D.)

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