The Gift of "discerning of spirits."

1 Corinthians 12:10 says this gift is the “discerning of spirits,” and 1 John 4:1 expounds on this where it says, “do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God.”

John Wesley’s commentary on this topic mentions that this gift allows the Spirit-led man to tell “whether men be of an upright spirit or not; whether they have natural or supernatural gifts for offices in the church; and whether they who profess to speak by inspiration speak from a divine, a natural, or a diabolical spirit.”

Another commentary says this gift is the “discerning between the operation of God's Spirit, and the evil spirit, or unaided human spirit (1Co 14:29; compare 1Ti 4:1; 1 Jo 4:1). Matthew Henry’s commentary mentions that this gift of discerning of spirits is the ability “to explain Scripture by a peculiar gift of the Spirit.”

Since 1 Corinthians 12:10 refers to “spirits,” with a little “s” and not a capital “S,” we should include the text surrounding the word or passage that come before and after that help explain its full meaning surrounding the topic. Because of this, we can safely conclude that 1 Corinthians 12:10 is using the word “spirit” in the general sense. In other words, when we compare 1 Corinthians 12:9 where is says, “to another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gifts of healing by the same Spirit,” which in this case “Spirit” is referring to the Holy Spirit because of its grammatical direction. Therefore, the “discerning of spirits” would simply be the identifying nature or quality that makes it what it is; thus, these “spirits” are attitudes, desires, motivations and words that determine or identify the “spirit” of truth or error.

A great way to make an assessment about these “spirits” are mentioned in 1 John 4:4-6 in which John writes to fellow believers saying, “you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world. Those people belong to this world, so they speak from the world’s viewpoint, and the world listens to them. But we belong to God, and those who know God listen to us. If they do not belong to God, they do not listen to us. That is how we know if someone has the Spirit of truth or the spirit of deception (NLT).” What is the spirit that lives in the world? It is the worldview of the world that is in contrast to Christ. It is the attitude of the world and they way they live, think and act; it is an anti-Christ way of life.

Why should we test the spirits? Why is it important to have members of the church with the gift to judge, distinguish, discern, understand, perceive, detect, be aware of, tell the difference, differentiate, determine, detect, recognize, know by sight and to be able to tell the difference between two or more things?

The answer is found in the second half of 1 John 4:1. The reason we should have people in the body of Christ with this special gift is “because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” This specific gift helped Peter realize how false prophets are known from true prophets in which Peter surpassed Philip in exposing Simon Magus in Act 8:20. It is “the power of reading hearts and determining whether men spoke by the divine spirit, or some other impulse.”