What was the point of Jesus dying to break the stranglehold of the devil over our world when it’s pretty obvious the devil is alive and well and still having huge influence on people? And if, as John 16:11 states, the devil “now stands condemned,” why hasn’t God stopped him having any further influence?

It’s because God created the devil for our benefit, which continued after Jesus defeated the devil too – as in 1 Corinthians 5:5, for example, when Paul told the Corinthians to “hand over the man charged with sexual immorality to Satan.” So Satan served a vital purpose in a man’s life – for a vital benefit too, “so that the sinful nature may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord.”  

And the same for Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:7, who “was given a thorn in my flesh a messenger of Satan, to torment me.” So Satan served a vital purpose in the life of an apostle, but again for a vital benefit, “so that Christ’s power may rest on me” (9), enabling him to “delight in weaknesses, for when I’m weak then I’m strong” (10). 

And the same for Jesus in Matthew 4:1 when he was “led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.” So Satan even served a vital purpose in Jesus’ life, also for a vital benefit, because “the devil left him” (11), proving that “serving God only” (10) puts the devil to flight. 

And it was only after “Satan entered Judas” in John 13:27, that Judas became “seized with remorse” for the first time in his life, on realizing he’d “betrayed innocent blood” (Matthew 27:3-4), because up ’til then Jesus had meant little to him.

But wasn’t it also risky creating the devil? And especially creating him “crafty” in Genesis 3:1, because the serpent could make a blatant lie believable and irresistible. He captivated Adam and Eve with the idea that “you will be like God” (5), with the power to decide good and evil for themselves. 

And it worked so easily that one cannot help wondering why God would create such an effective deceiver, who’s still “prowling around like a roaring lion looking for people to devour,” 1 Peter 5:8, while cleverly  “masquerading as an angel of light,” 2 Corinthian 11:14. But “Was the devil really God’s idea?”….(next blog)

In John 17:12, Jesus talks of guarding his disciples and “not one of them being lost – except, that is, the one who was doomed to destruction, to fulfill what Scripture had predicted.”

It sounds like Judas had no choice: Scripture said it – and he was the man doomed to fulfill it. But if it truly was Judas all along, what was the point of Jesus spending all that time with him, giving him the same power to heal and cast out demons as the other eleven disciples, trusting him to manage their money, and dropping several hints along the way that one of his disciples would betray him, giving Judas both fair warning and opportunity not to betray him? What could be more fair than that? 

The only thing Jesus didn’t do was name who would betray him, but even that was done out of love, to give Judas three years of listening to Jesus and seeing his miracles to make it blatantly obvious that Jesus was “the Holy One of God,” John 6:69, with “the words of eternal life” (68).

And never did Jesus treat Judas any differently to the other disciples, to the point that right up to the moment when Jesus said that one of his disciples was about to betray him, none of the disciples knew who it was. Jesus never stopped treating Judas as a much loved friend too. When identifying who his betrayer was by dipping a piece of bread into a dish and handing the bread to Judas, that too in the custom of the day was extending the hand of friendship. And Jesus’ last words to Judas in Matthew 26:50 were, “Friend, do what you came to do.” 

So right up to the last minute Jesus was being extremely merciful and loving to Judas. What excuse did Judas have, then, for seeking out the religious leaders and asking, “What will you pay me for giving Jesus to you?” (Matthew 26:15). And even if the Father hadn’t opened Judas’ mind to who Jesus was (John 6:65), what excuse did Judas have – as a normal, regular human with a conscience – for kissing Jesus like a friend but stabbing him in the back at the same time as he handed Jesus over to the Roman authorities? 

So was God being fair to Judas? Yes, because Judas was given every opportunity to repent, and in the end he did repent, when “seized with remorse,” Matthew 27:3, he cried out, “I have sinned for I have betrayed innocent blood” (4). But was it fair of God to let Satan get at Judas (Luke 22:3)? Wasn’t that risking Judas being lost forever? Or “Does the devil serve a vital purpose?”….(next blog)

It seems odd that Jesus would choose a treacherous man for a disciple. And “right from the beginning” Jesus knew that Judas would be the death of him, John 6:64. He also knew that under Judas’ respectable veneer was “a devil” (70), deceitful to the core, a sneaky thief who not only stole out of the disciples’ working funds (12:6), he would trade Jesus’ life in for money too (Matthew 26:14-16). 

And on top of that Judas was a virtue signalling hypocrite, who objected to money being spent on expensive perfume because it would be better spent “on care for the poor” (John 12:5-6). But what about the extra money he was secretly pocketing – did it go to the poor?  

But amazingly, Jesus made Judas the “keeper of the money bag” (6), the Treasurer of the group. And for three years Jesus walked, talked and spent hours with Judas. In Luke 9:1, he even gave Judas “the power and authority to drive out all demons and to cure diseases” – and to “preach the kingdom of God” too (2). 

And when the time came for Judas to betray Jesus in John 13:18, it was Psalm 41:9 that Jesus quoted from, which says, “Even my close friend, whom I trusted, he who shared my bread has lifted up his heel against me.” It “troubled Jesus greatly” in verse 21 then, that Judas would turn on him. Because even though Scripture had to be fulfilled, Jesus felt the loss of his close friend Judas deeply. 

Which tells us that Jesus chose Judas because he loved him, even knowing what Judas was like, and Scripture predicting what he would do. But that didn’t stop Jesus loving him, in the hope that Judas would respond to his love and his heart would soften. And only when it was obvious that Judas would finally go ahead and turn Jesus in, did Jesus accept he’d lost him, and that’s when “Satan entered into Judas” (27). 

Up to the point that Satan entered him, Judas was still free to choose. Why on earth, then, did he choose to betray Jesus who obviously loved him? As Jesus said in Matthew 26:24, “Better for Judas if he’d never been born,” because without Jesus’ love getting through to him, Judas’ life ended up a shambles. 

What a lesson, therefore, in our need for the Father to open our minds to Jesus’ love – that could love a man like Judas. In not opening his mind, then, “Was God being fair to Judas?”….(next blog)  

In John 17:11-12, Jesus prayed for the continued protection of his disciples, having successfully protected them from the devil while he was with them (Luke 22:31-32). It was just the evidence any disciple of Jesus needs that under Jesus’ care he is eternally secure. He cannot “lose his salvation.”

But Jesus then says at the end of John 17:12 that “None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction.” So a disciple was lost after all, but did “lost” mean Judas lost his salvation too?

Jesus offers a clue in answer to that in John 6:63 when he says to his disciples, “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life.” But, verse 64, “there are some of you who do not believe that,” and Jesus “knew from the beginning too who didn’t believe and who would betray him.” Jesus’ point being, verse 65, that “no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him.” 

So Judas not believing in Jesus “having the words of eternal life” (68), or that Jesus was “the Holy One of God” (69), shows the Father hadn’t given Judas that belief yet. So how could Judas “lose” his salvation when he had no idea who Jesus really was? 

Yes, Jesus had chosen him, verse 70, but he also knew that “one of you is a devil.” Jesus was well aware of Judas’ motives right from the beginning, as he did in everyone he met (John 2:24). And calling Judas a “devil” – a diabolos in Greek – revealed the deceitful, duplicitous nature of the man. On the surface he seemed fine. None of the other disciples suspected anything wrong either, even when Judas didn’t call Jesus “Lord” like they did, and only called him “Rabbi,” just a teacher. 

For three years, then, Judas managed to hide his thieving, self-interest motives in a cloak of noble moral superiority. Like the time he objected to Mary’s use of expensive perfume which, he said, “could’ve been sold and the money given to the poor” John 12:3-5. Or given to him, more likely, because he’d been stealing from their own funds all along (6).

So Judas was no example of a disciple losing his salvation, because he was never a believer in Jesus in the first place. In which case, “Why did Jesus choose Judas?” ….(next blog)

In John 17:12, when talking about his disciples to the Father, Jesus says, “While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me.” 

And by “safe,” Jesus meant safe from the devil, with a specific example in Luke 22:31, when he told his disciples, “Satan has tried his best to separate all of you from me, like separating chaff from wheat. So I prayed for you (32) that you’d never lose your faith in me.”  

And here in John 17 Jesus is praying for his disciples again, and for the same reason, when he says in verse 9, “I’m not praying for the world, but for those you (Father) have given to me, for they are yours.” And what did he pray to his Father on behalf of his disciples for? Verse 11: “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name – the name you gave me – so that they may be one as we are one.” 

And what better guarantee that the devil would never separate the disciples from God, than all of them being as one with God as the Father and Jesus are one? Their relationship with God was eternally secure. 

But there’s another guarantee of their eternal security tucked away in that verse too, because of “the name the Father had given to Jesus.” It was the Father’s own name – along with the “power” of the Father’s name too. And that was powerful stuff because it enabled Jesus to keep his disciples perfectly safe (12).

And in so doing he revealed the indestructible power of the Father, which he, Jesus, had now been given too. And with that power Jesus proved in the lives of his disciples that the devil had no power over them.

And isn’t that what the Father had sent Jesus to this planet for – to reveal through Jesus what he, the Father, was like (John 1:18)? Well, when it came to protecting his children he was invincible. The proof was right there in Jesus’ disciples; they were perfectly safe in Jesus’ care. And the Father being eternal, and Jesus too, meant the disciples were eternally secure as well; the devil would never be able to touch them. 

But, same verse, John 17:12, didn’t Jesus lose Judas? So can some disciples slip through the net after all? Dare we ask, then: “Can we lose our salvation?”….(next blog) 

In 1 John 5:18, “anyone born of God does not continue to sin.” Not that we suddenly become sinless, because it’s obvious we still sin. Since we can still sin, then, what’s to stop the devil taking control of us again? 

John’s answer to that in verse 18 is: “the One who was born of God (Jesus) keeps us safe, and the evil one does not touch us.” 

Here’s our answer, then, as to how we can live free of the devil while we still sin. It’s because Jesus keeps us safe from the devil “touching” us – the Greek haptomai (hap-toe-my)meaning “fastening on.” Jesus, therefore, prevents the devil getting us back into his grasp again. 

Jesus promised he’d keep the devil from snatching us back again too, in John 10:28, when he said of those who “follow” him (27), that “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand.” 

The devil cannot kidnap a child of God, or snatch him back. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:7-9, “our Lord Jesus Christ (7) will keep you strong to the end (8),” because in “God calling us into fellowship with his Son (9), he is faithful.” He will never let the devil snatch us back into his grubby hands again. 

We can “live free of the devil,” then, in the sense that we never need worry about the devil getting total control over us like he did before. And Paul made that clear again in Romans 8:38, when he wrote, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons….will be able (39) to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” 

So Jesus is committed to hanging onto us and never letting go. And he said so in John 6:37-39, that “Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and once that person is with me, I will never push them away. I’m here to do my Father’s will, and he gave me strict orders that I not lose any of those he’s given me.” The devil can’t fasten onto us anymore, then, because Jesus has already fastened us, haptomai, onto him. 

But is it possible for us to break that bond, when by choice we turn our backs on Jesus, or lose our trust in him? Is there reason, therefore, to doubt that we have such a thing as “Eternal security”?….(next blog)

In 1 John 5:18, “We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the one who was born of God (Jesus) keeps him safe, and the evil one does not touch him.” 

According to John, then, a person “born of God” doesn’t sin. But of course “No one born of God continues to sin,” 1 John 3:9, “because God’s seed remains in him.” Or as another translation phrases it: “When a person is begotten of God, God’s nature is in him for good, and such a heredity is incapable of sin.” 

To be conceived or fathered by God, then, means becoming seeded with God’s own heart and mind. It means inheriting his nature, a “new nature just like his” (Ephesians 4:24) that’s incapable of sinning. We’ve been given a new non-sinning self that’s the total opposite to “our old self corrupted by its deceitful desires” (22).

But what if – after we’re born of God with his non-sinning nature – we find we’re still being “corrupted by deceitful desires”? Does it mean we’re not born of God after all, or that we’re no longer his child? Jesus offers a clue in answer to that in John 3:6, when he says, “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” 

According to Jesus, then, there are two births we can experience in our lives. We all go through the first one, the “flesh” or physical one, when we’re conceived and birthed by physical parents as a physical baby to give life to our physical self. In the second birth, described by Jesus in verse 7 as being “born again,” this time we’re conceived and birthed by the Spirit (8) to give life to our spirit self.

The difference between the two births is important, because it explains how we can still sin when we’re supposed to be incapable of sin. It’s because we now have two selfs, the physical self we were born with, and the spirit self the Holy Spirit conceived and birthed in us. And what dies when we sin is our physical self, not our spirit self. 

As Paul phrased it in Romans 8:10, “your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.” Sin has already killed off the old self we were born with, but not the righteousness, or righteous nature of God in our new self that the Spirit birthed in us. That self cannot die. And it won’t die either, because in the last part of 1 John 5:18, “Jesus keeps us safe”….(next blog)

According to John 16:7-8, the Holy Spirit was sent by Jesus to get the point across that “the prince of this world now stands condemned” (11), offering our world the chance to experience what it’s like “living free of the devil.”

As to how the Spirit gets that point across, it’s in the lives of those who believe that “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work,” 1 John 3:8, and that “anyone born of God….the evil one does not touch him,” 1 John 5:18. It would be seen for real in these people’s lives, therefore, that “living free of the devil” is not only possible, it also brings about some amazing differences in them too. 

Can we know for certain what those differences are, then? Fortunately, John, being a practical chap, lists several differences in 1 John 5, the first of which he describes in verse 18 when he writes, “We know” – meaning we’ll know for certain all right – “that anyone born of God does not continue to sin.” In Greek it’s the present continuous tense, meaning “anyone born of God cannot continue on in sin,” or simply “cannot go on sinning.” 

That’s a stunning difference, especially when compared to the life “we used to live,” Ephesians 2:2, where we just “drifted along on the stream of this world’s ideas like everyone else, unknowingly obeying the devil, the commander of the unseen world, instead of obeying God.” 

But that old life came to an abrupt end when we found ourselves thinking, “I can’t live like that anymore. I can’t continue just allowing whatever my body and mind selfishly crave to rule my life” (3). And especially when it dawns of us that so much of what we see going on around us, and all over the world too, is being driven by that same spirit of helpless selfishness, resulting in so many people just living and dying without a thought as to what God created us for – or what he might think of the lives we’re living. 

So we began a new life with a total change of attitude, of never wanting to disobey God again. In other words, a life of “I cannot go on sinning,” which is a great start to “living free of the devil,” because the devil is only “at work in those who are disobedient”(2).

So what brings about this remarkable change in a person’s life? John again gives us a clue back in 1 John 5:18 – it’s being “Born of God”….(next blog)

In John 16:11, the Holy Spirit was sent by Jesus to “convict the world of guilt (8) in regard to judgment.” Which sounds like a final sentencing on humanity, that having rejected and dismissed Jesus in verses 9 and 10, the world must now pay its penalty. 

But it’s not that. A sentence is being announced in court, yes, but – verse 11 – it’s “because the prince of this world now stands condemned.” It’s the devil who’s on the receiving end of being judged and sentenced. And Jesus made that clear back in John 12:31 when he said, “Now is the time for judgment on this world.” And what was that judgment? “Now the prince of this world will be driven out.” 

The judgment Jesus was talking about in John 16:11, therefore, was on the devil. And the sentence pronounced on the devil was the undoing and dissolving of his rule on this planet (1 John 3:8). For the devil it was the worst news possible, because he’d managed to get “the whole world under his control” (1 John 5:19), but he couldn’t control Jesus. Not only did Jesus defeat the devil’s attempts to control him in Matthew 4:1-11, it was his death on the cross that broke the devil’s stranglehold over humanity (Colossians 2:15). And from that point on, Jesus said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matthew 28:18).  

But why the need in John 16:11 “to convict the world of guilt in regard to that judgment” on the devil? What guilt can the world be charged with when it’s the devil who “stands condemned”? 

Well, it’s guilt in two parts. Guilt, first of all, that it took the death of Jesus to break the control of the devil over us, because we’ve always been too weak and pathetic to resist and defeat the devil ourselves. If it wasn’t for Jesus we’d all still be dead fish drifting downstream, reduced to living our lives out with no great purpose and then disappearing into nothingness when we died (Ephesians 2:2-3). And secondly, it’s also the guilt of not living what Jesus rescued us from the devil for. 

It’s the Holy Spirit’s purpose, then, to make this guilt real to people, which he does through Jesus’ disciples who do believe that in Jesus’ death “the evil one does not touch us” (1 John 5:18) and the change that makes in their lives. But in reality, what changes in a person’s life does “Living free of the devil” make?….(next blog)

When Jesus says in John 16:10 that the Holy Spirit will “convict the world of guilt (8) in regard to righteousness,“ there’s a suggestion of triumph in his tone, “because,” he adds, “I am going to the Father.” 

The same Father, that is, who’d sent him to show the world what righteousness is, which Jesus did to perfection. Every word he said, and all that he did, perfectly reflected his Father (14:10 and 24). How obvious it was, therefore, in Acts 10:38, that “God had anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.”

So people got to see in sharp focus what righteousness looked like. It was beautiful. There was forgiveness, mercy, healing, care for the weak and marginalized, and power over the cruelty and dehumanizing of evil. Thousands of people followed Jesus, startled at his wisdom and obvious authority behind what he said and did – unlike anything they’d witnessed in their lifetimes so far.  

But, verse 39, “They killed him by hanging him on a tree.” And with that done and dusted, the powers that be really thought they’d managed to get rid of him – “but,” verse 40, “God raised him from the dead on the third day and caused him to be seen.” 

No wonder Jesus sounded triumphant back in John 16:10 when he said “I’m going to the Father,” as if to say, “So, you thought you could get rid of me, eh? Well, guess what, the Father will bring me back to life again and make things even worse for you, piling the guilt on you for trying to wipe me off the map, because he had witnesses in waiting” – witnesses, Acts 10:41, “who ate and drank with Jesus after he rose from the dead,” who would then speak openly and boldly that Jesus “is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead,” and “everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (42-43).

“In regard to righteousness,” then, John 16:10, the guilt at getting rid ofJesus would become even worse as righteousness spread even further and greater than before through Jesus’ disciples. “So more fool you,” is the justified charge in court to the world for rejecting Jesus.

There’s one more charge the Spirit has to make in John 16:11, and a fitting summary too perhaps, because this time it’s “In regard to judgment”….(next blog)