Well, you're the one who used it as a supporting verse for your response to my comment on fruit-bearing, so you should be the one explaining why the passage is about fruit-bearing, rather than me explaining why it is not.
First, I was clearly talking about how we inspect
ourselves, not others.
1 John 4:1-6 deals with an outward identification.
Second, John is telling us how to distinguish the spirit of error from the spirit of truth (
vs 6). Truth and error in this context refer to spoken content (
vs 3-5), not fruitfulness.
Although a correlation often exists between deception and bad fruit, a passage (such as
1 john 4:1-6) may talk about one aspect and not the other.
In case you don't already know,
Chapters 6-8 concerns sanctification. In
Chapter 7 there is a context break between
vs 13 and
14.
1. The believer and the Law (
7:1–6) Paul uses
past tense verbs
2. The Law and sin (
7:7–13)
3. The believer and sin (
7:14–25) Paul uses
present tense verbs
Vs 14-25 Describes Paul's
current experience.
"I am flesh"
"I am doing the very thing I hate"
"I agree with the Law"
Some may argue this was before rather than after justification. But the Holy Spirit anticipates these conjectures, so He inspires contextual details like...
“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the one hand, I myself with my mind
am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.” (Romans 7:25)
It's a simultaneous phenomenon.
Chapter 8 will go on to practically deal with this tension believers face in the quest for holy living through the power of the Spirit.
