Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.

1 John 4:1 – 3

Theories were floating about, even among believers, to some extent, that the body of Jesus was an ephemeral body, not a real physical one like ours.  So Jesus was not like us because his body was not like ours.  His body could not sin according to this view.

As I see it, when John uses the term, “Jesus Christ has come in the flesh,” he is referring not to physical organs and all that, but what it takes to make a full human being – flesh and spirit, with a mother and a father, a Jew, male and all that we know about a human being.   So the atoning work of Jesus had to do with redeeming all things, even the body.  God loves the body. The Holy Spirit affirms the body as approved of God and as the recipient of Salvation won by Jesus Christ.

To say that Jesus’ body was not like ours is to not only belittle our bodies but to remove the body completely from the atoning work of Jesus.  In this case, the passions of the body have nothing to do with salvation.  In other words, the atoning work of Jesus is for the spirit only, not the body, so they claim.  Therefore, it is good to satisfy the body, no matter what that body demands.

John insists that this view is evil.  “Every spirit,” he wrote, “that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.” 

Salvation covers body and spirit, flesh and soul.  There is no dichotomy at all.  The same Blood of the Lamb saves and purifies our entire beings, including our flesh and blood, our bodies and our spirits, our hearts.  All belong to God and all are sanctified by God.

This heresy is alive and well today.  It claims that it matters little what happens in our bodies as long as the spirit is free.  The body, they assume, is outside the realm of redemption. So, in this view, go ahead, fulfill the lusts of the flesh, feed its selfish desires.  It matters not what the body, the ego, demands, feed it what it wants for the spirit is not involved in that area of life at all.  In a sense, bodies cannot be saved, spirits can be.

It is true, if we think about it at all, this view is “the spirit of the antichrist.”  To embrace it is to deny Christ.  John, again, simplifies the complicated!  May we join him.