Test the Spirits (1 John 4:1-6)
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Verses 1 through 6, you can go ahead and flip there. There should be a Bible around you. You can go on the Blue Bibles to page 592. 1 John is in the back. We're working our way through 1 John, and we've got six more verses to get through this morning. So, when I was 17, I came to faith in Jesus.
And I was a part of a youth group that really was into this one particular popular preacher at the time, this kind of Christian figure whose name was Rob Bell. And we, like our youth group, we loved him. And I was a new Christian, and I was like, man, I like what this guy has to say. He had kind of a punk rock type of vibe. Like, he dressed a little edgy, said some edgy things. And at 17 years old, the stage of life I was in, I kind of dug it.
He wasn't like kind of a stodgy, boring, Baptist pastor. And I was like, all right, like I kind of am into this guy. So, I devoured his stuff, loved it for about a year and a half, and then I got to college. And my freshman year, stepped on campus. I met some people who were Christians, and I met this girl. And I was like, man, she's a Christian.
I'm going to try to impress her, kind of show some game here. And quote kind of something like Rob Bell, which kind of tells you the kind of guy I was in college. They're thinking that was how you impress girls, just to quote your favorite preacher. But whatever. So, I did. And she went, Rob Bell, that guy is sketchy.
And I was like, what? And we had this whole conversation. She started to point out all these things that she had heard from talking with her youth pastor. This guy, he said this, and he said this. And I was like, I'd never heard this before. I'd never realized that there was a different take on this guy.
But he did. He would push the envelope on things. He would say things like, you know, I believe in the virgin birth. But do we really need that in our faith? Do you really need the virgin birth to be a Christian? He's like, I'm not saying that I don't believe the virgin birth.
But we actually, do we need that? He would press in on things like that. Whereas a young believer, I didn't really think anything of it. I was like, oh, he's just being edgy. But as a more mature believer, I'm now, I'm like, that's crazy.
Like, the Bible clearly teaches this. The church has believed this for 2,000 years. This is something that is fundamental to our faith. Absolutely, it matters. And he would do things like this. And basically, the next four years got to be a little bit of a case study for me.
Because I watched this guy continue to push boundaries, continue to say things that were a little bit edgy, a little bit more crazy, a little bit more crazy. Until finally, my senior year of college, he released this book called Love Wins. And if you've ever seen the bumper stickers that say Love Wins, this is where it comes from. It comes from this book that kind of took on his own ideology. He wrote this book, Love Wins, and it was like, oh, man, he's gone. Like, he is out the door.
He is leaving the faith. And he did. He left his pastorate. He moved to L.A. And like, got on Team Oprah and became like this guru for Oprah. And he's gone.
Like, he's just, he's gone. And at the time, as a young believer, as he was saying these things early on, I didn't have discerning ears to be able to hear, wait a second, to have red flags go up and say, I don't think this is actually biblical. I don't think this is actually good. And that happens all the time. And Rob Bell, he's out the door. He's gone.
But like, it's whack-a-mole. One goes down, 15 pop up. I mean, there are absolutely all kinds of false teachers all across American Christianity. And that has always been. False teaching has prevailed for the last 2,000 years in different parts of the world. And we see it here in 1 John 4 as he's addressing this head on, trying to help them, prepare them to be a people that actually discern what is good.
We're going to see the phrase, test the spirits in a moment, to discern what is actually good and true and worth orienting your life around between the difference of something that is going to lead you towards death and destruction. So we're going to sit in this passage and hopefully it encourages us and hopefully it equips us to be a more discerning people. To not just believe everything that we hear, but to actually grow in discernment as we grow in testing the spirits. So let me pray for us and then we will walk through this together. Lord, we love you. And we thank you that you give us the word to be able to grow us and instruct us.
God, I pray that you would help us listen. That you help us grow in being a wise, discerning people. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so.
I'm going to pick up where we ended two weeks ago in verse 24 of chapter 3. And then we'll go into verse 1. So he says, And by this we know that he abides in us by the spirit whom he has given us. So we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. That passage is to help give us assurance. The assurance comes from God.
The spirit in us helps us know that we are in Christ. That gives us assurance. That gives us confidence. That comes from him. And then he moves into chapter 4 to see where this confidence should lead us as we grow in this type of discernment. In verse 1 he says, Alright, so.
There's a case change in how he uses spirits. So he has capital S spirit. That is the Holy Spirit. And then he's got lowercase s spirits. So what is he getting at when he says lowercase s spirits?
A very just direct application of what he's saying there. As he's talking about don't trust everybody. Spirits there is just generally people. Right? So what he's drawing from is that each of us have a body and we have a spirit.
Right? We have a spirit. And that is either influenced by, empowered by the Holy Spirit. Or it's influenced and empowered by, we talk about this quite a bit in our church, kind of these three different influences in our life. Which is our flesh, our sinful nature. The world.
Which is the culture of the world around us. And the devil. The evil one. Satan. So you're either empowered by in your spiritual life the Holy Spirit or these three domains.
It's one or the other. And he's using spiritual language here to say don't trust what anyone says. Just don't, don't, don't just, just blindly trust. You have to test the spirits. And that's general good advice. Period.
Right? Just don't, don't be gullible. Don't believe everything you hear. All right? Because if you ever have a friend or a family member that, that shares something on Facebook that is obviously false. It's like, oh honey, no.
No. Don't, don't, don't do that. No. Like that, that is obviously not true. And it's just like, don't, don't be gullible. Don't fall for anything that you see, that you read.
Test everything that you hear. Test, discern whether it's from God or it's from the evil one. It's from the world. It's from your flesh. Test everything. John is commanding them.
Don't believe every spirit. Don't believe every spirit. Test. Because there are, are false prophets who have gone out into the world that are deceiving people. You need to know this. Test the spirits.
And, and, and we saw this in John early on. That there was some false teaching that was sweeping through the church. So much so that there were people that were in the church that looked like Christians that ended up leaving the church. That's why in 219 he says, they went out from us, but they were not of us. For they had been of us. They would have continued with us.
There are people that came through with false teaching that deceive people. And they end up leaving the faith all together. Discern. So he says, test the spirits. Discern. And then he gets specific on how they are to do it in verse 2.
He says, by this, by this you know the spirit of God. All right? So here's the test. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. And every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.
So the test is a doctrinal test. It's what are you confessing? Do these people who are around you, do they confess that Jesus came in the flesh or not? Do they believe he was a real, literal person or not? And as we saw early on in 1 John, what looks like the false teaching that had swept through the churches that John was writing to is some form of Gnosticism. And there's a lot of things that Gnosticism taught.
But some of the key teachings of Gnosticism is that Jesus did not come in the flesh. That he came in spirit only. That he didn't literally suffer on the cross or literally bleed or literally die or literally rise. That's why in the very first verse of the entire letter he says, That which was from the beginning, referencing Christ, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands. He's trying to help them see Jesus is real. Like he literally came.
So when you hear of people that are saying he didn't come in the flesh, red flags should go up. Immediately, you should wait a second. This is not true teaching. This is actually false teaching. So he gives this doctrinal test to see are they in the faith or not?
Are they claiming that Jesus came in the flesh or not? Because if they are claiming that he did not come in the flesh, well, what they're being influenced by is quite insidious. It's quite evil. He says, this is the spirit of the Antichrist. What you heard was coming and now is in the world already. So we talked about the Antichrist in chapter 2 as we were walking through this, that in the New Testament, there's, I mean, consistently this teaching throughout the New Testament, that there are false teachers.
Jesus comes on the scene and talks about in Matthew 7 that there are going to be wolves in sheep's clothing who are amongst you. They look like the children of God. They look like a sheep, but they're actually a ravenous wolf who will destroy you. Paul gives multiple warnings against false teachers. Peter in 2 Peter 2 gives a warning about destructive heresies that will sweep through the church. So that's taught consistently throughout the New Testament.
But then there's this concept that shows up that there's actually like a false teacher of all false teachers, like the false prophet of all false prophets. And Paul in 1 Thessalonians calls him, he calls him the man of lawlessness, calls him the son of destruction. The book of Revelation talks about this figure as a figure who will rise up and kind of deceive the nations. And oftentimes that figure is called the Antichrist. That's what we most commonly know it as, the Antichrist. But as we saw in chapter 2, that Antichrist actually isn't the word that, that word doesn't show up in the book of Revelation, doesn't show up in 1 Thessalonians.
The word Antichrist only shows up in 1 and 2 John. This is the word that he uses only. And he's talking not about necessarily a person here, but actually a spirit of the Antichrist, a spirit of rebellion. Now, he's referencing that, yeah, there is someone who is coming, which you heard was coming, referencing this figure. But what's more concerning at the moment is the spirit of the Antichrist that is at work.
And I feel like that's something that we should absorb because there's a lot of people that get really excited about this kind of stuff. They get really excited about the book of Revelation, have like charts and stuff, and have seen all the movies and read all the books. Like, is the Antichrist coming? Is he here? Is he the president? Is he this actor?
Is he amongst us? And it's like, just breathe. All right? More pertinent question. All right?
How is the spirit of the Antichrist already at work in your life right now? How are you believing false teachings that are all over the American church right now? That's a more pressing and concerning question to ask because the spirit of the Antichrist is already at work. That's what he's trying to help him see. It's already at work now. And it's continued over the next 2,000 years to continue to be at work in the church.
So, he goes hard after any false gospel that claims that Jesus did not come in the flesh because the implication is huge. Like, if you don't believe that Jesus didn't come, if you don't believe that he came in the flesh, I mean, you've lost everything. You've lost the literal life that he lived to fulfill the law. You've lost the literal death that he bled for us, that he suffocated on the cross. You've lost his literal death, his bodily resurrection. Like, our faith hinges upon that hope.
Our faith is built upon that truth. And when you remove the offense of the cross that he died for sin, if you remove the fact that he was raised from the grave to free us from slavery to sin, if you remove the offense of that by removing his literal life, you've lost everything. And what happens with heresy is when you lose this essential truth that our faith is built upon, you replace it with something that is lesser. You replace it with a false gospel. He's trying to help them see the importance of that here. And the importance of that has not changed in 2,000 years.
It's continued to be important. Because there are false teachings that even are prevalent throughout the American church today and show up in many different forms. I talked about this a couple of weeks ago. A couple of weeks ago, probably the most prevalent false teaching in our time is the prosperity gospel. It's the idea that minimizes the offense of the cross, that minimizes the literal death of Jesus and focusing on that. And what it does is it actually focuses on faith equaling blessing in this life.
Faith as an exchange for being blessed and happy in this life, being prosperous in this life now. And Jesus in this teaching becomes a genie. And if you believe in him, if you trust in him, then you'll get the prosperity that you want in this life now. And it doesn't look at the literal life, death, and resurrection as our only hope. But it looks at things as our only hope.
And in a twisted spin, the things that Jesus died to save us from, which is the love of money, it actually replaces that as our hope. And what happens, I've seen this in our generation. So if you're under the age of 40, you're like, I wouldn't fall for that. Because when you think of prosperity preachers, kind of the stereotypical thing that comes to mind is the 80s and the 90s, when you had some guy in a nice Armani suit, on TV, on a channel like TBN, which is just kind of a garbage channel. They put people up there that don't even believe the Trinity. You got somebody on TV, it's got a 1-800 number at the bottom, and it's like, we wouldn't fall for that, that's so obvious.
He's peddling lies, he's peddling foolishness. And like any generation, at any time, there's always this arrogance of looking at those who went before you to say, I wouldn't fall for that. I wouldn't be like this. But no, we don't fall for that. We fall for a guy on Instagram who has $1,000 sneakers, who's just, you know, taking selfies of himself in the gym and talks about himself a lot and preaches the same message, repurposed and repackaged in different ways. That's exactly what we fall for.
And we fall for this, and we go after what they present as the good life. It's sick, and it shows up in so many different forms. There's another one that's a really close cousin of the prosperity gospel. It's really this man-centered gospel that's really come to life in the age of social media. But it does the same thing.
It takes the focus off of Jesus as our only hope. Like the literal crucified Christ as our only hope, and it replaces it with a mirror. And it says, you're your only hope. And that shows, I mean, there are so many people that have grabbed hold of social media who have done this, who have podcasts and blogs and books. You've got social media influencers that go and write books like, girl, wash your face, which I picked up that book and read the intro and the first chapter and went, oh my goodness. You're the hero of your story?
And that book's not unique. There's 50 of those books that get dropped every year in the Christian publishing industry. It's all over the place that you are your only hope. Like you should have red flags go up. For anyone that says they're Christian, that's on Instagram, that talks a lot about themselves, even if they do it in a self-deprecating way, right? Because that's kind of a popular thing to do now, is kind of make fun of yourself.
But if they talk about themselves, and they don't talk about Christ as our only hope, they push this, it's narcissism on steroids. And ultimately, what they peddle is these solutions that become man-centered. These strategies that are focusing on your works to get yourself to a place of happiness for your life. And it happens over and over and over again. I mean, these things pop up, and there are pastors and pastors who use the church of Jesus Christ as a platform for their own personal brand. There are worship ministries that craft this personal worship experience.
It's all about you and your feelings. I mean, it's just, it's everywhere. It's everywhere. It's all over the American church. And you have to have ears to hear, to listen, to be discerning, to see who is replacing the hope that we have in Christ for lesser things. That's the spirit of the Antichrist that is at work.
It has been at work, and it's going to continue to be at work. It is opposed to Jesus as our only hope, and it has infected churches for 2,000 years. So we have to have ears to hear, to receive the advice that he is giving, the commands he's giving to this church, and apply it to our days so that we might not fall for similar things. And then in verse 4, he pauses for a moment to give some encouragement. It says, Little children, you are from God and have overcome them. For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
And I love that, that moment of encouragement that he gives here. It's not just that, like he said a couple of weeks when we walked through it, it's not just that our conscience, that we have the spirit in us, that our conscience doesn't condemn us. He's like, Jesus isn't just greater than your self-indicting conscience, which we saw a couple of years ago. He is greater than the one who is at work in this world. And he's referencing Satan there. He is greater than Satan.
He's greater than the spirit of the Antichrist. And you roll with him. You will overcome him. You will prevail. He gives this moment of just encouragement that reminds us of how this ends. Then he jumps into verse 5 and he says, They, talking about false prophets, they are from the world.
Therefore, they speak from the world and the world listens to them. We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. Whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. False prophets are from the world.
They speak in the language of the world. And language taps into identity. And that's true just in general. Like if you, you get around people that, like for instance, if you get around a couple of guys that are from the same branch of the military and they both realize it, like, Oh, you're army? Oh, I'm army too. The language changes immediately.
It just does. They start speaking in acronyms. And like, as a civilian, I'm like, I, it's hard to follow. Yeah, my, my CEO used to be an MP. He was in the DMZ back in 03. And it's like, what?
CEO, commanding officer, military police, demilitarized zone, Iraq. Got it. 2003. And they just keep going. It's just like, yeah, I got some R&R, little TLC, watching MTV. And it's just like, you're just making up stuff now.
But it is, you see their face light up and they start, they speak in a lingo that taps into an identity that I, that I'm not a part of. It taps into this identity of being in the military. Language taps into identity. And false prophets know the world. Like they know the language of the world. They know how to bring out worldliness in you by speaking in a way that appeals to the flesh, that appeals to the fallenness in us, so that we might be captivated and enslaved to the things of the world.
He's like, you gotta be mindful of this. You gotta be mindful of the language that they use. And he ultimately says, don't listen to them. Verse six, he says, we are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us. That we there, there's a progression built into we.
When he's talking about we, he's referencing, first the apostles who received the teaching of Jesus, who received the word from the word who became flesh, and then preached that message to the church of Jesus Christ. And then we came to encompass the whole church as a whole. But there's a progression that is built into that when he says, we, we includes the teachings of Jesus that they received from the beginning. So that you, whoever is not from God, does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. That receiving this from the apostles, receiving the teachings of Christ helps us discern what is true from what is error.
What is good from what is evil. He's arguing for discernment. That we need discernment and the foundation for discernment. The foundation. If you want to grow in foundational discernment, you need the word of God. You need the teachings of Christ that show up in his word.
Like you, if you want to grow in testing the spirits, John argues, you, you need the word of God. That is foundational discernment right there. You need the Bible to be able to discern what is error from what is true. because there are a lot of false teachings out there. Now, for the last 2,000 years, there are tons of them. But it would be foolish to try to focus on all of those first.
Right? Like if you, if you start at a brand new Job and you get your employment packet and you show up day one, you could make a list of all the ways you could get fired. Right? You could make a list and say, ah, don't open up an email from a spam because that might cause ransomware. We might lose all our company data. Don't run over my supervisor's foot with a forklift.
Don't insult the boss's wife. Like you could go down the list of all the ways that ends poorly for you. Or, more wisely, just focus on what you're supposed to do and do that well. Focus on the little things well and then as you grow in that, then you'll actually grow to be able to know the things that can take you out. So as a Christian, we focus on the word of God.
That's foundational discernment. You don't have to know every single false teaching from 1st century to 5th century to the Reformation to today. Just focus on the word of God. And when you know the word of God so well that when you hear something that's outside of the word of God, you get a red flag. Wait a second. I don't know about that.
You've got to grow in foundational discernment as you follow Christ. As you get serious about your faith, get rooted in the word. Read your Bibles. That is the best defense that is the best defense from falling to false teaching. And we talk about this all the time. We talk about gospel fluency in our church.
That you would be, as you're fluent in a language where you think in that language, where you process in that language, like you'd be fluent in the gospel, so fluent in it that you would know it so well that you would think in it, that you would process in it so that when false teaching creeps in, you go, no, no, no, no, not about that. I'm going to have to test that and see if that holds up against the word of God. That's why I'm in our Bible verse for the month is, our memory verse for the month is Isaiah 48, which is the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of God will stand forever. And it's true.
The word of God stands forever and we need that long-standing foundation so that we can test the spirits. We need that foundation because here's the truth of the matter. Here's the reality. You are probably never, ever, ever going to hear anyone that stands in this pulpit and pushes false teaching. It's just, you will have to take the pulpit out of my cold, dead hands before anybody stands up here. Same with Chet.
And Chet's bigger than me and stronger than me. Okay? Like, no one's coming up here to teach false teaching, but the difference between us and the early church is they didn't have the internet. And we do. And it is so easy for you to pick up your phone, to surf through Instagram and find somebody who says nice things, who looks nice, who can quote a Bible verse. Y'all, just because someone can quote a Bible verse doesn't mean they're legit at all.
I mean, Satan quoted the Bible. Like, when he's tempting Jesus in Matthew 4, he quotes Psalm 91. I mean, I mean, he, I don't, the Bible, I don't know this for a fact, but it seems logical. Satan probably knows more scripture than any of us in this room. He knows the Bible. Just because someone quotes scripture doesn't mean they're good, doesn't mean they're legit.
You should test everything. You should test what we say as preachers. Like, test what I say against the Word of God. Definitely test what Chet says against the Word of God. Test everything through the Word of God and ask questions, y'all. Ask questions as you're listening to people talk.
Ask questions like, do they make much of Christ or do they make much of themselves? Because if they talk a lot about themselves, there should be a red flag that goes up. Do they shy away from subjects like the blood of Christ? They don't talk about the blood. They don't talk about His sacrifice on the cross. And it's like, man, there should be a red flag that goes up.
Some people are like, yeah, I just don't want to be so negative and focus on the negative things of the Bible. And it's like, oh, I don't think you should focus. I think you should just stop talking. Like, no. Shut it down. Unfollow.
Don't listen. Not at all. Do, are they afraid to talk about sin? That's another thing in this whole positive, oh, let's just be happy, positive things. Like, never talk about sin. It's like, man, if they don't talk about sin, Jesus talked a lot about sin, so much that He died for it.
I mean, do they talk, are they afraid to talk about sin? Do they believe the Bible is true? If you're listening or reading anything of anyone that questions the validity of the Scriptures, the truthfulness of the Scriptures, you should be running for the door. Red flags should go up. Is the solution that they give for your problems found in your work and what you can do are found in Christ? Because there's a lot of things you can find on the internet that says, here's the strategies for you to be the best version of you and figure this out.
You're going to be great, man. It's like, no, no, no, our hope is Christ. We build it off of that. I'll give you one more. Do they talk about happiness more than they talk about holiness? If they're so concerned with you being happy that they never talk about growing to be more like Christ, there should be red flags that go out.
We are not called to mindlessly accept what anyone says no matter how nice they say it, no matter how many verses they know. Discern everything through the word of God. Everything. And then go back to verse 4 and be encouraged where he says, little children, you are from God and I've overcome them. For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. We need that.
In the midst of a tough call to discern and test the spirits, we need that type of encouragement. I'm going to give you two reasons. One is the lesser reason. We'll get to the bigger one in a moment. But I think the lesser one is more specific to our church family.
So here's the first reason. We need that encouragement. We are discerning. We're called to discern between those who have the spirit of God in them and those who have the spirit of the Antichrist. It's a pretty wide gap. Pretty black and white difference there. spirit.
Okay? Here's why that's important. That calling is not filled with fear. That is not a fearful calling because there are people that are fearful that the church, the American church is going to be taken over by heresy and these people make a living, have a hobby of just dunking on weaker theology because it's fun. And these things are, this is broadly called discernment ministry. And it's more, it's more of a problem for churches that love good theology.
We talk about theology a lot and one of the dangers of being a church that talks about theology a lot is you can get, go down the rabbit hole of some of their whole YouTube channels and blogs and Instagram pages, feeds, whatever they're called, that are devoted to this right here, to discernment ministry. And discernment ministries drive me insane. They are so annoying because it's like they read this passage and don't read verse 4. They're like paralyzed by fear. It's like they don't read the rest of the Bible. And here's the problem with these discernment ministries that are always pointing out, always going after, always going after weaker theology.
Here is the, here's the problem with this. They don't differentiate between those who are false teachers, who don't have the Holy Spirit and those who are genuine brothers and sisters in Christ who just got it wrong on a few things. Who just agree to disagree on a few things. Like there are secondary, tertiary, and lesser issues in theology that are not, not worth just going after with other people. It's not worth hammering them for. And for discernment ministries, everything's a nail.
If it's not, everything's a nail and they're a hammer and they go after everything. And the problem with this is it's foolish arrogance. And Jesus in Matthew 5 says, whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council. Whoever says you fool will be liable to the hell of fire. And woe to the person that insults other Christians. Woe to the person that belittles other Christians.
I'm not against being impolite. I will call out the Joel Osteens of the world because they are false teachers and they deserve to be called out. But woe to the person that goes after other Christians who you don't agree with. And that is a problem that can creep up in churches like ours that love good theology. Don't go down that rabbit hole. Seek wise Christians, not those who make a living off of these type of things.
Alright, that's the lesser one. This is not as big a deal. Here's the bigger reason. We need this reminder of verse 4 because we need to remember how this ends. Like, remember how this ultimately shakes out. Because what can happen is you can start to look at, like you can look at the Christian publishing industry and look at all the books that get pushed out and go, oh my goodness.
You can see all the popular preachers and go, oh my goodness. You can start to freak out. And you forget how this thing ends. Like, if you've ever watched something that you've seen ever and ever again, like an epic, like Harry Potter, like Lord of the Rings or whatever, you've seen it over and over and over and over again and you watch it and you're like, there's a moment where there's a tension where it's like, oh, is he going to win? Like, is he going to win the battle? And you're like, no, I've seen this ten times.
I've read this book over and over again. I know he wins. You have to step out of yourself. And that's what, you've got to step out of yourself and remember, little children, you are from God and have overcome them for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. And that is good news because you roll with God. You are with him and the spirit of the Antichrist is always going to be at work in this world.
It is always going to be at work and you're going to see it, you're going to pop up with every new following in American Christianity. It's going to keep happening. But the power of the risen, literal Christ is greater and he will build his church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it and the kingdom of light will pierce through the darkness. Little children, we are from God and have overcome it and will continue to overcome. We need that truth and until then, we do what we're supposed to do. We read our Bibles, we preach the gospel, we contend with lies because we ultimately overcome and Jesus wins.
So let's be a church that tests the spirits, that discerns everything, that boldly and winsomely proclaims truth in the midst of opposition and let's do that with a confidence that comes from him, not from a spirit of fear, but from a spirit of absolute victory that we have in Christ.