Read with Me
1 John 5:18-21 (HCSB)
We know that everyone who has been born of God does not sin, but the One who is born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him.
We know that we are of God, and the whole world is under the sway of the evil one.
And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know the true One. We are in the true One—that is, in His Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.
Little children, guard yourselves from idols.
Listen with Me
John finishes his letter with a bit of a summation designed to bring his main thesis home: being born again, born of God through faith in Jesus, changes everything. That new birth and new creation breaks the power of sin in a person’s life, and it enables them to live like Jesus in the present day.
So many in John’s day had bought into the gnostic teaching that people were doomed to sin as long as they were in a physical body, and that only death could come to their rescue and set them free. But John understood that that teaching was a vile corruption. It actually remakes death, which Paul calls the last enemy (1 Corinthians 15:26), into mankind’s greatest friend, and into something more powerful than Jesus, than even God Himself, since it can accomplish something that neither of them apparently could!
Instead, John restates his core truth: everyone who has been born of God does not sin, because Jesus, the One who is born of God, keeps him or her safe and out of the reach of the evil one. That clearly means that the reality of the cross has broken the power of sin, and that every man, woman, and child who chooses to live in Jesus actually can live a genuinely holy life here and now, even in the midst of a world that is still under the control of the evil one. Those who live in Jesus are a people set apart from that world.
Far from the pagan “gnosis” or “knowledge” that the Gnostics claimed to have, Jesus came to give true understanding to those who trust in Him. And that understanding of who He is and what He has accomplished makes a real relationship, an intimate knowledge of God, possible. And it is that relationship, not some theological or philosophical knowledge, that results in eternal life starting here and now.
John’s last line seems almost out of place, tacked on at the last minute. And it was. As John was looking over his letter one last time before he sealed it, he wanted to reemphasize to his readers that there were many things in the world that were vying for first place in their lives; many distractions that could easily pull their time and attention away from God. Those were idols, whether they look like the popular conception of an idol or not, and they were to be avoided at all costs, because they could cost a person their soul by dragging them out from under the protective shelter of Jesus, and out into the devil-controlled world again.
Pray with Me
Father, it is easy to build our theology on our life experience instead of on Your word. We claim to be a Christian, yet we have a lot of sin in our lives. So, we build a theology that says sin must be normal and okay, and then we search out Scriptures that seem to support that concept. At the same time, we place very clear Scriptures like these, and others in John’s letter, and indeed throughout the Bible, in the categories of “aspirational”, “someday”, “after we die and are in heaven”, or even “true for some rare individuals, saints, but not for normal people”. But John clearly doesn’t allow for that categorization. He presents these truths as true here and now and for all people who belong to Jesus. Lord, help me always to build my theology on Your clear word, and then allow You to shape my heart, my mind, and my life to Your truth, rather than twisting the Scriptures to support my “lived experience”, effectively negating what You have said and done in favor of what I choose to believe. Amen.