1 John 4:4 - Exposition

Ye are of God. The ὑμεῖς is in emphatic opposition to the false teachers. They are on one side, and the apostle's readers on the other, and it is from this standpoint that they are to "prove the spirits." St. John knows nothing of any neutral position from which the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error can be criticized "with absolute impartiality." "He that is not with me is against me." This assumed neutral position is already within the domain of error. Ye have overcome them. "Them" means the false teachers; but in what sense have St. John's "little children" overcome them? He may be speaking by anticipation; confident of the victory, he writes of it as an accomplished fact (comp. John 16:33 ). But it is better to take the statement literally. By refusing to listen to the false teachers ( John 10:8 ) the sheep have conquered them: the seducers have "gone out" ( 1 John 2:19 ), unable to hold their own within the fold. Nor is this wonderful: the one side have God with them, the other Satan. ὁ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ here is equivalent to ὁ ἄρχων τοῦ κόσμου τούτου ( Luke 12:31 ). Just as God is in believers and they in God, so the world is in the evil one ( 1 John 5:19 ) and the evil one in it.