Overcoming the evil one

In 1 John 2:14, John has one more thing to say to the “young men” – he’s writing to them “because you have overcome the evil one.” So when John writes earlier in the verse that these young men are “strong,” he means this kind of strong, that they’ve stood their ground against the wiles and power of the devil.

And they are “young men” too – young in age or young in their growth as Christians – either way or both, they haven’t caved in to evil. Which is amazing, because they’ve managed to do what Adam and Eve didn’t do, and what the Israelites in the Old Testament never did either, so something since must have changed to enable people – still in the developing stage of their humanity and their Christianity – to fight off the devil. 

Well, we know now what that “something” was: it was the most gigantic moment in our human history, when “the Son of God appeared” on this planet in human form and “destroyed the devil’s work,” 1 John 3:8. He did what Adam and Eve and the Israelites didn’t and couldn’t do: he resisted the evil one in a face to face battle in Matthew 4 and sent him packing. How? By using the one weapon God gave us humans from the beginning: HIM. 

He’s always been there for us, with his wisdom and his strength. He was there in person for Adam and Eve, and if only they’d listened to him and let him guide them. And the same with the Israelites. He was always there for them too, again with his wisdom and guidance on hand at all times, but they wouldn’t listen to him either.

But Jesus did. He lived on “every word that comes from the mouth of God,” Matthew 4:4. That was his weapon that overcame the evil one. And the same for those “young men” John was writing to. The means by which they were able to overcome the evil one was “the word of God living in them” too, 1 John 2:14.

But how did that happen? Why were they able to do what Jesus did, and not do what Adam and Eve and the Israelites did? Well, we know that too now, that it was the second most gigantic moment in human history, when Jesus ascended to his Father after being victorious over the evil one and asked his Father to “send the Holy Spirit to live with us and in us,” John 14:16-17. And “The effect of the Holy Spirit” was amazing….(next blog)