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Wednesday Feb 12, 2024

The Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of Error

“All we redeemed humans recognize, when our eyes have been opened by grace, that we were sinners, were under the power of Satan, did his works, were his children. But do we realize that we actually were he, in the sense that humans are always manifesting the deity who expresses himself by us? Did any of us know, while unsaved, that we were Satan walking about in our human forms, or that the redeemed are Christ walking about in their human forms? We should know it now, for we are plainly told this.

I remember the surprise when I first read in 1 John 4:4, ‘Greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world.’ I knew that ‘He in me’ was the Holy Spirit, but I suddenly woke up to the fact that there was equally ‘he in the world’ in fallen humans, just as much as the Holy Spirit is in us when redeemed. And two verses later John is saying, ‘Hereby know we the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.’ That began to open my eyes, and I began to relate it to the symbol of the fruit of the garden.

Then I became alerted to Jesus’ words as He confronted those opposing him, as recorded in John 8:38-44. ‘I speak what I have seen with Mr Father: and you do what you have seen with your father,’ stated Jesus. As religious Jews they resented that, and indignantly responded, ‘We’re not born of fornication. We have one Father, God.’ Jesus answered, ‘If God were your Father, you would love Me.’ Then He broke the truth wide open and declared outright, ‘You are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father you will do.’ When I read that, my eyes were opened to the second phrase as well as the first. The first says that we humans–all of us who have not yet become children of God by faith in Jesus Christ–have Satan, not God as our father. But the second phrase especially struck me: ‘…the lusts of your father you will do.’ Not that we are doing our own lusts, but the lusts of our father. Then all we are doing as humans is not a product of some supposed human fallen nature, but actually Satan himself expressing his own lusting nature by us! All we are, therefore, is merely the outer expression of this spirit of error, this god of this world, living his own Satan-form of life by our humanity. This was revolutionary.”

Taken from: Yes, I Am

By Norman Grubb

Pages 51-52