Prove All Things Is an Instruction, and It Was Given to Everybody

He learned not to ask by watching what happened to somebody who did.

It was not dramatic. Nobody was thrown out. A man asked a question at a meeting, a fair question, and the room went a particular temperature for about four seconds, and the question got answered in a way that was technically an answer, and the man never asked another one.

He was nineteen and he watched that happen and he understood the lesson immediately and completely, and he has never asked one either.

What has come of it is not that he believes wrong things, necessarily. He may believe entirely right things. What has come of it is that he has no idea, and that everything he holds he holds at the same weight, and that the weight is somebody else's confidence rather than his own examination.

There is a three word instruction in a short list of instructions that puts testing on the other side of the ledger entirely.

Three words

Here it is, in the King James Version:

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

Prove all things.

Prove there means test, in the sense of assaying a metal: putting a thing under something to find out what it is made of.

It is an imperative. It is not a permission and it is not a concession made to difficult people. It sits in a list with things like rejoice evermore and pray without ceasing, which nobody has ever read as optional.

And it is addressed to a whole congregation, not to leadership. The letter is written to the church at Thessalonica and this is one of about fifteen short commands at the end of it, fired off in a row to everybody.

Hold fast that which is good.

And there is the second half, and it tells you what the expectation is. The purpose of testing is to keep what survives, which means the writer expects most of it to survive.

That is not the posture of suspicion. A suspicious man tests in order to discard. This instruction tests in order to hold.

You are obeying rather than offending when you test and you were never being difficult by wanting to know. 1 Thessalonians 5:21 puts prove all things in the imperative alongside rejoice and pray, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than a combative streak who makes testing an act of faith.

What comes immediately before it

And two verses earlier there is a command that explains why the testing one had to be given.

Quench not the Spirit. Despise not prophesyings. Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thessalonians 5:19-21)

Quench not the Spirit. Despise not prophesyings.

Those two come first, and they are guarding the opposite error. A congregation that hears something and shuts it down has quenched something.

So Paul is holding two things at once: do not shut it down, and do not swallow it whole. Test it, and keep what is good.

Which means the instruction is not aimed at making people harder. It is aimed at making them able to receive, because a man who cannot test cannot safely receive anything, and a man who cannot safely receive anything eventually stops receiving.

That is worth having. The reason a man in this position becomes closed is not stubbornness. It is that he has no instrument, and a man with no instrument protects himself by taking nothing in.

You have an instrument you were meant to use and you were never going to receive safely without one. 1 Thessalonians 5:19 forbids quenching in the same breath as 5:21 commands testing, and it is His Spirit who is named in that verse as the one not to be quenched.

Who else is told to do it

This is not one verse standing alone. John says the same thing to ordinary people:

Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. (1 John 4:1)

Try the spirits. Written to a general readership, not to an office.

And Luke describes a whole town doing it and calls them noble for it:

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. (Acts 17:11)

That verse is about the same city Paul wrote prove all things to, which is a detail worth noticing: the men he is instructing had already been compared unfavorably to a town that checked.

And Paul prays for a church that this capacity would grow:

And this I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; That ye may approve things that are excellent. (Philippians 1:9-10)

That ye may approve things that are excellent. Approving is a weighing word, and he prays for it as something that grows out of love rather than out of suspicion.

You have this commanded in three letters and you were never doing something unusual by wanting to weigh. 1 John 4:1 says try the spirits and Philippians 1:9 makes discernment something prayed for, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes weighing an exercise of love rather than of distrust.

How the capacity develops

And the sentence about where the ability comes from, which is not from being clever.

But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. (Hebrews 5:14)

By reason of use.

Not by reason of training. Not by reason of temperament. Use.

The verb is exercised, which is what happens to a muscle, and the implication is uncomfortable and freeing at the same time: a man who has never used it does not have it, and a man who starts using it will get it.

Which explains something that would otherwise be discouraging. A man who begins doing this at fifty will be bad at it for a while. He will over-weigh some things and under-weigh others. That is not evidence he should stop; it is what an unused faculty does when it starts being used.

You have a faculty that develops by use and you were never going to get it any other way. Hebrews 5:14 says the senses are exercised by reason of use, and it is His Spirit who is described throughout these letters as the one who does the leading while a man practices.