John makes this statement – about overcoming the evil one – to “young men,” 1 John 2:14. Which is truly amazing, because John is saying it’s possible for even young people to have power over the devil’s world, and at the most vulnerable time of their lives too, when their emotions are all over the place, and they don’t have the benefit of experience yet either.
It’s also amazing, because the devil’s world of money and greed feeds off young people. The young are its best clients, because they’re so easily sucked in by the three ‘baddies’: “lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” (16). Those three are the bad part of the world, in which the evil one takes what are normal and natural, God-given desires in us, and twists them instead into all-consuming selfish addictions to whatever my body wants, what my eyes like to look at, and what makes me look great. And the world feeds on that, broadcasting to the young on every frequency available, that to “eat, drink and be merry” – feeding what self wants – is the best and only goal worth chasing in this life now.
So how on earth do young people break free of that, or never fall for it in the first place?
Did it have anything to do with the “fathers” John was also writing to in verse 13? The “fathers” were the first in line to hear what John was teaching, and the first to learn from John the importance of obeying what Jesus taught (2:3). These older folks, then, had “known Jesus from the beginning” (2:13, 14), which had given them a lifetime of experience and stories they could tell of the power we humans have over the devil’s world that the teachings of Jesus provide.
Was it then in “fellowship” with these veterans of Christianity, who’d been through the mill, been hit from all angles by the devil and his tricks, and come through them all into a kind of peace and calm about life where very little rattles them, that was now inspiring these younger folks, or younger Christians, to “overcome the evil one” too (2:14)?
John seems to think so, because it’s fellowship with God and each other that he’s focusing on, and the gifts the Holy Spirit has given to each group to help the others. With one other great gift the older folk have to offer as they age, the realization that “The world and its desires pass away”….(next blog)
