We Know Not What Manner of Spirit We Are Of
A reminder to those of us who follow Christ to obey the Master's commandments, despise division and dissension, and crucify even our own opinions so that Christ and His will come first, always.
I was chilly. This particular Sunday morning was colder than usual.
Colder than the third-warmest April on record had any right to feel . I was chilly, but not because of the frigid, rain-moist wind on that Sunday morning; rather, a deep, essential part of my identity had just been brutally murdered. The weapon of choice? Words—sharpened into a knife and driven straight into the pillars of my heart.
I grew up the younger child of a devout family—we often gathered to sing praises and read Scripture during the week—with a legion of prayer warriors before me, from my father’s mother to my own mother and relatives on both sides. I was also dedicated to God in the womb by my mother, and have since sought to consecrate myself to the utmost for my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, purely because I find no greater joy than being in His Presence, and I will do everything in my ability—and, by His grace, far more—to be as like my Master as possible.
Naturally, I consider myself a Christian—wouldn’t you?
Well, that’s not the case, according to some of my fellow believers.
Yes, I left one detail out. I was raised Catholic.
A dangerous spirit has secreted itself in the Church#
“When the days drew near for Him to be taken up, He set His face to go to Jerusalem. And He sent messengers ahead of Him, who went and entered a village of the Samaritans, to make preparations for Him. But the people did not receive Him, because His face was set toward Jerusalem. And when His disciples James and John saw it, they said, “Lord, do you want us to tell fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” But He turned and rebuked them. And they went on to another village.”
The rebuke should not surprise us. Previously, Jesus said to them:
“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,”
So this wasn’t some abstract correction from a moral norm—the sons of thunder were directly disobeying the commandment the Teacher had previously given them.
Some manuscripts add : “And he said, ‘You do not know what manner of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man came not to destroy people’s lives but to save them’”
And then, the same instinct reappears when John tries to stop a man from casting out demons in Jesus’s name:
John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” But Jesus said, “Do not stop him, for no one who does a mighty work in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. For the one who is not against us is for us.”
In this, Jesus ratified the ministry of the one who believed in Him but did not follow the recognized circle of disciples.
It’s tempting to overlook the significance of these stories—but they were written down for our benefit. Two-thirds of the apostolic inner circle had to be corrected with this rebuke. When Paul said our enemies were the , he wasn’t kidding—even Jesus’s closest disciples were susceptible to this evil spirit, the thief that breaks into the House of the Lord “to steal and kill and destroy.”
Jesus warned us to be on watch for it. He said,
“…if the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have left his house to be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”
The standard readings of this verse understand that readiness relates to the hour of the Son of Man’s return—that much is stated explicitly—but they do not probe deeply enough into what readiness entails.
Even the Master of the House does not know the hour:
“But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”
The Master watches with the servants because in His incarnate nature He, too, awaits the Father’s timing. Remember that He suffered and was tempted —and is now . The call to watchfulness is not an optional discipline; it is the very posture of the Master Himself in His human ministry. That is why He rebuked His disciples so sternly when the spiritual enemy surfaced among them—not only in Judas, , but even in Peter, whom Jesus answered with,
In watching, we are not looking for the day or hour—we are doing what He is doing, because, It is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher, and the servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household.”
See how the image of the Master of the House moves across Jesus’s teaching—the one watching for the thief in , the one whose disciples and servants imitate Him in , and the one whom the Pharisees called Beelzebul in . Our Perfect Teacher had much to say and little time; the Spirit He sent reveals what He compressed into these .
So yes, the Master of the House is watching and waiting—watching both for the thief who breaks in, and the servant who sleeps while the thief plunders the House around him. And we know, of those dwelling in the Master’s House, it is written, “blessed are those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes.”
This is why He warned us to be ready. We must stay awake and watch, not by trying to calculate the Master’s hour, but by guarding the House from the thief. The House is the Church, built upon Jesus, .
Beloved, the Master will come, and of that He has given us . On that day He will and the mountains will quake and . He has called you by name, He will not leave you as .
Let us be faithful servants until the Master returns—like the servant who stays awake and does not let the thief plunder the House. What then must the good and faithful servant watch for?
Many people are watching the news—we are in dark and dangerous times: earthquakes and volcanoes , wars , rumors of wars , and great signs in the heavens . But of this, Jesus tells us:
Now when these things begin to take place, straighten up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
We raise our heads in anticipation of the fulfillment of the hope within us, but we also straighten up—we keep the House in order so that the Master is pleased when He comes. Therefore, we must be vigilant against the thief— who does everything to get in and make a mess of the Master’s House.
This is the spirit who whispered to the disciples that they should summon fire on the unbelievers and stop a man from casting out demons in Jesus’s name. This is the spirit who carves flesh from the body of Christ and dresses the wound in a veneer of righteousness, trapping this pitifully wounded member in the spirit of division and exclusionism—so that it forgets that the purpose of the good news was to give it to all who would receive, to all who would believe, .
This is the same spirit that makes a believer look at Catholics gathered in Christ’s name and confess, not what the Lord said— “where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them” —but instead, “Those two aren’t Christians.”
A violent thing is being done to the heart of the Church#
The defamation the Pharisees aimed at the Master of the House—“He casts out demons by the prince of demons”—was Jesus’s own example of , because they were attributing the Spirit’s work to Satan. And Jesus tells us that those of His household will receive the same slander.
The spirit that put Beelzebul in the Pharisees’ mouths is the same spirit that whispers “they aren’t Christians” into ours.
This is a grave matter, for we are grieving the Spirit.
Paul said:
Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking in the Spirit of God ever says “Jesus is accursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except in the Holy Spirit.
This is the framework. The foundation that all else rests upon—Jesus Christ, the Risen King. When someone confesses Jesus as Lord, receives baptism in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and bears Christian fruit, we should tremble and rejoice, rather than declare that person outside Christ.
This does not mean doctrine is weightless. The apostles corrected errors. Jesus Himself rebuked false teaching as we have seen. But correction belongs to love, truth, patience, and the fear of God. Even Jesus deferred what was good to what was given before—only the Spirit knows , and there is only . Now, He and the Father are ; but He said this on our account, to give us an example of true righteousness, so that we may follow Him. He does not deny His own goodness—He directs us back to God as the only measure of goodness. We must cling to His instruction lest we . Paul’s principle is universal—and treating theology like a legalistic checklist is dangerous specifically because we are imperfect and we possess
The moment correction becomes contempt, the moment discernment becomes accusation, the moment we look at those who confess Jesus Christ as Lord and eagerly deny the Spirit’s work among them for the sake of legitimizing ourselves—we have crossed from guarding the House into helping the thief tear it apart. In this, we follow the spirit of the Pharisees and decry the holiness of the servants of the Master who confess , and who are made holy not by themselves, but by the working of the Spirit in them.
We must not do this. It approaches holy things with the mouth of the accuser.
”Therefore I tell you, every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven people, but the blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. And whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.”
For He knew that the world would hate His servants as it hated Him. This is why He was so severe—He loves them, and He will not suffer the righteous to be moved.
But thanks be to God, for He has given us an example that we may not lose heart. The man who did exactly this—who attacked the Spirit’s work to the point of death—became the apostle of love. The same Spirit who renewed him is not being grieved passively, like some powerless victim. He is the Spirit who restrains the evil one and still works within us to renew our minds.
The example was written down for us#
”I thank Him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because He judged me faithful, appointing me to His service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in Him for eternal life.”
Paul became the living proof that we can return from blasphemy. Grace is not an exception—it is the heart of God, manifest even from the cross, while those to whom it was offered refused it:
And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments.
But for those of us who have received it, our answer should be love. It is not a new commandment, but the same commandment. I do not even call it radical love, because it is a mere fraction of the love that truly .
In this, we can be imitators of Paul—as he imitated Christ. We love in the love that gives, “no offense… to the church of God,” but rather tries in all we do, because:
just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
And it is God who arranged the members in this way.
Therefore, just as Paul was struck blind and, through the renewing of the Spirit, came to see , so too, if you now see, say no more of the dissensions of before—move in love.
This is what the Pharisees rejected:
Some of the Pharisees near him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would have no guilt; but now that you say, ‘We see,’ your guilt remains.”
But Jesus died to be the propitiation for even these sins—and He is alive again, forevermore. Unlike those who rejected Him, we have received Him. So love one another, as your Lord, Jesus Christ, has loved you.
This is no foreign work, for His Spirit is within you.
Love, then, like this#
”Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Note the call to bear all things and believe all things and hope all things and endure all things.
If Marian devotion—especially the title Theotokos, Mother of God—is hard for you to bear, then you know where love must begin its work. Will you bless your pastor, but not the woman whom God chose to bear His Son?
If you are willing, this belief affirms the Incarnation—Mary bore God incarnate, fully God and fully man. It is not Marian elevation. Mother of God is a Christological claim, not a Marian one. A blessing does not change that. But we know that it is by the Holy Spirit that the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven have been revealed to us, and through whom we can indeed say, “Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”
Jesus gave us the test for true discipleship—it was not merely theology, but .
It is especially tempting for those who are on the receiving end of slander to centralize themselves and bolster their ministry with claims of the “true Gospel,” masking the very same exclusionism that the spirit of division levies against them.
No!
Resist the spirit of division, . For what benefit is it to us if we stumble in our words and give the enemy one more reason to accuse us? Rather, if people gather into a different ministry because they hate us, we consider ourselves blessed to have received the double portion!
For indeed, what more could we desire of our ministry than that people gather together with us and against us, all in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? We should all aspire to be , putting Christ first, accepting any hardship as evidence of fruit. Jesus even incentivized this when He said:
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”
But for those who would rather seek their own glory—who think that a strong argument is superior to humility and sacrifice—He says:
Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters
The warning is severe because the issue is not whether we are correct, but whether we are gathering with Christ, the Humble and Faithful Son of God, or scattering what He gathers.
To every pastor and apostle: tell your congregation not to utter any form of blasphemy against the body of Christ. It is not just they who bear the guilt for their error—.
To all who, like me, are beloved in Christ Jesus: flee from the impulse to malign another believer. Even if you must say “blessed are you,” and “blessed is Mary the mother of God,” say it until your heart means it. For it is better to be wrong for doing good , than to give the enemy any reason to accuse you when the Master comes and catches the enemy in the act.
Finally, in all things, ask yourself this before you speak: what manner of spirit am I of? And choose, always: the Spirit who saves, rather than the spirit that destroys; the Spirit who gathers, rather than the spirit that scatters; and the Spirit who recognizes Jesus Christ in the brothers and sisters before us, rather than the accuser who teaches us to despise them.
May you continue to be blessed by the Spirit of Truth, to the glory of God the Father, and our Lord, Jesus Christ.
To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.