4:1–6 God’s gift of His one Holy Spirit stands in contrast to the many lying spirits that drive false prophets into the world to spread opposition to Christ (2:18). Like Paul in 1 Cor. 12:3, John shows how to distinguish the Spirit of Truth from spirits of error: those who confess Jesus as the Messiah are from God, while those who will not confess Jesus are not. This confession is the great divide between those “from God” and those who are “from the world.”