Discerning of Spirits
Everything within the realm of knowledge facts, events, purpose, motive, origin, destiny; human, divine, or satanic; natural or supernatural; past, present, or future comes within the focal range of the three revelation gifts, i.e., word of knowledge, word of wisdom, and discerning of spirits. In their comprehensive scope, they include all that God knows. There is no knowledge that falls outside the range of these gifts or knowledge that may not be made known to man as the Spirit wills. The purpose of the gifts is to give men fragments of His knowledge for His specific purposes.
Discerning of spirits is not the gift of discernment or some kind of spiritual mind reading. Nor is it psychological insight into the motives of people. Psychology has nothing to do with the gift because the gift is supernatural in origin. One way to describe this gift is that it is the opening of one or more of the physical senses to the spiritual world. One example is found in the account of Jesus and the madman of Gadera. In Mark 5, Jesus encounters the man who is demon-possessed. In verse 9, the man responds to Jesus’s question of how many demons there are with the answer, we are many. In verse 12, it says that all the devils besought him. Verse 12 is a demonstration of the discerning of spirits. It is recorded that all the devils besought Jesus which means that He heard all of them at once.
Another example of the gift of discerning of spirits is Acts 16:16-18. In those verses, Paul and Silas were followed for days by a girl who continually cried out saying, “These men are the servants of the most high God, which shew unto us the way of salvation.” On the surface, it did not appear that there was anything wrong with the girl. But, when the gift of discerning of spirits was manifested, Paul became aware that the girl was possessed and controlled by a demon. He spoke not to the girl, but to the spirit, and commanded it to leave. Discerning of spirits not only involves evil spirits, but any kind of spiritual being, such as angels, cherubim, seraphim, and even God Himself. In the book of Revelation, John’s vision(s) were a function of the gift as he saw into the spirit world and all of these beings, even the form of God on the throne.
As stated, the gift involves insight into the spiritual realm. It does not involve “discernment” of people. There is no gift of mind reading or motive reading. Those who engage in such things open themselves to delusion and demonic influence.