The first 6 verses of 1 John 4 are organized in a roughly chiastic pattern:

A. Test spirits, v 1
B. Confession, vv 2-3
C. From God/the world, vv 3b-4a
D. We overcome them, v 4b
C’. From God/from world, vv 5-6a
B’. Hearing (AKOUO), v 6b
A’. Spirits, v 6c

A couple of notes on this structure.

First, the direct address to the readers as “little children” (v 4) reinforces the notion that this is the central theme of the passage. The confidence that John’s readers will overcome comes from the fact that they originate “from God.”

Second, the contrast of B and B’ is intriguing. The false prophets and lying spirits are known by what they confess, by their audience, and by their influences. Here is a test of false prophecy: Not only, What are they saying? but Who is listening to them? and To whom are they listening?

Third, though the text does fall out in this rough chiasm, the text itself is far more complex. There is a cascading spiral to the text that winds around the chiasm; the text is like Celtic marginal illuminations, twinings on twinings. For instance, thouh John focuses attention on listening in verse 6, the word is already used in verse 5, wrapping around the contrast of “from the world” (5a) and “from God” (6a). Verses 5-6 could thus be outlined as:

A. They are from the world
B. The world hears them
A’. We are from God
B’. Whoever knows God hears us

There are two melody lines going simultaneously, a chiastic return to the beginning and a cyclical line that twists and turns around the chiasm like ivy.

Finally, we can note the use of several key words here. The word “spirit” is used 7x in vv 1-6 (and hinted at once, in verse 3: literally, “the of the antichrist”). This is the great passage about the Spirit in 1 John (perhaps matching the Upper Room Discourse in the gospel?). Interestingly, only one of the uses (v. 2) is unambiguously a reference to the Holy Spirit. The first use of the word “spirit” in the book comes in 3:24, and between that use and the end of the letter John uses “spirit” 12x. These verses (4:1-6) also uses the word “world” 6x; but the 6-fold world will be overcome by the seven-fold Spirit.

The phrase “from God” is used 6x in vv 1-6, and a seventh time in v 7. These are the only uses of the phrase in 1 John. This is another example of the twisting cyclical rhetoric of John’s letter. Verse 7 begins a new section (“Beloved,” and the theme turns to love), but John still uses the phrase “from God” that he used repeatedly in verses 1-6. This perhaps binds together his exhortation to love (love being “from God”) with the references to spirits that are/are not “from God.” Love then becomes yet another test of the spirit of truth.