Category: Satan
Protect Them from the Evil One
The following excerpt is taken from What Every Christian Should Know About Satan. Order your copy in print, Kindle, or Audible versions here.
In Jesus’ high-priestly prayer, he tells the Father: “I am not praying that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one” (John 17:5).
John 17 features the longest-recorded prayer of Jesus in the Gospels. This comes after Jesus delivers final instructions to his disciples and before he is betrayed, arrested, and crucified. First, Jesus prays for himself (vv. 1-5), then for his disciples (vv. 6-19), and finally for all believers (vv. 20-26). This intercessory prayer is best known as Jesus’ high priestly prayer.
Jesus confirms he has finished his heaven-sent task with the disciples. He has revealed the Father’s name – that is, the very presence of God – to them (v. 6; cf. John 14:9). He has spoken to them the Father’s words (v. 8). And he has ensured that they received the words, understood them, and believed the Father sent Jesus (v. 8).
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Children of the Evil One
The following excerpt is taken from What Every Christian Should Know About Satan. Order your copy in print, Kindle, or Audible versions here.
In Jesus’ explanation of the parable of the wheat and weeds, he refers to unbelievers as “children of the evil one.”
Matthew 13:38
“… the field is the world; and the good seed — these are the children of the kingdom. The weeds are the children of the evil one …”
Here, Jesus reveals the spiritual truths behind the parable of the wheat and weeds (Matt. 13:24-30). As in the parable of the sower, the Lord presents a farmer who has sown good seed in his field. But an enemy invades at night and plants weeds among the wheat. When the wheat matures and begins sprouting heads of grain, the weeds appear as well.
The hired hands report their discovery to the farmer and ask whether they should pull out the weeds, but the farmer tells them:
Continue reading“No. When you pull up the weeds, you might also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At harvest time I’ll tell the reapers: Gather the weeds first and tie them in bundles to burn them, but collect the wheat in my barn” (Matt. 13:29-30).
Deliver Us from the Evil One
The following excerpt is taken from What Every Christian Should Know About Satan. Order your copy in print, Kindle, or Audible versions here.
In two sayings of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew, we learn more about Satan as the evil one.
Matthew 6:13
“And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
This request comes at the close of the Lord’s Prayer, perhaps better called the Disciples’ Prayer. Several English translations render the final phrase “deliver us from evil” rather than “deliver us from the evil one.”6The Greek could mean either. While it’s possible that deliverance from evil in general is Jesus’ primary meaning, protection from the author of evil is a suitable request for disciples learning to pray.
“Do not bring us into temptation” does not imply “don’t bring us to the place of temptation,” or even “don’t allow us to be tempted.” Jesus already endured temptation at the hands of the evil one after the Holy Spirit drove him into the wilderness following his baptism (Matt. 4:1). It cannot mean “don’t tempt us,” either, for God does not tempt us with evil (Jas. 1:13).
Continue reading Satan: The Evil One
The following excerpt is taken from What Every Christian Should Know About Satan. Order your copy in print, Kindle, or Audible versions here.
In this post and others to follow, we’re going to consider several New Testament passages that depict Satan as the evil one.
Matthew 5:37
“But let your ‘yes’ mean ‘yes,’ and your ‘no’ mean ‘no.’ Anything more than this is from the evil one.”
In this part of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses the issue of oath-taking, which plays a significant role in first-century Judaism. Jesus begins with an Old Testament reference: “Again, you have heard that it was said to our ancestors, You must not break your oath, but you must keep your oaths to the Lord” (Matt. 5:33; cf. Lev. 19:12; Num. 30:2; Deut. 23:21-23).
Then, Jesus follows with: “But I tell you, don’t take an oath at all: either by heaven, because it is God’s throne; or by the earth, because it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great King. Do not swear by your head, because you cannot make a single hair white or black” (Matt. 5:34-36).
Jesus does not forbid the taking of an oath in a court of law or a similar setting. In fact, he offers a response when the high priest puts him under oath (Matt. 26:63-64). But taking oaths has become so commonplace in Jesus’ day as to become meaningless. People have come to think that a lie between two individuals doesn’t concern God unless they invoke the divine name. In this case, they risk perjury for false statements, not to mention undermining God’s dignity.
Continue reading What Is Evil?
The following excerpt is taken from What Every Christian Should Know About Satan. Order your copy in print, Kindle, or Audible versions here.
We may be hard-pressed to come up with a universally accepted definition of evil, but most of us know evil when we see it – or at least we think we do. For example, most (but not all) would say the gas chambers of Auschwitz were evil, as were the U.S. institution of chattel slavery, the serial murders of Ted Bundy, the packaged explosives of “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski, and the domestic terror of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.
God has placed in every human heart a conscience, which not only helps us discern right from wrong but universally testifies of a divine moral law giver (Rom. 2:14-16). And so, we know intuitively what evil is, and therefore we know who ultimately judges us for it. Or we should. The problem is, sin has knocked every human being’s moral compass off magnetic north.
Evil is not so much the opposite of good as it is the absence of good, or the perversion of good. Just as darkness may only be described in contrast to light, evil is only understood in relation to good. And that’s the rub, because all human beings, though made in the image of God, are evil. We all sin, and our sin separates us from an eternally and unequivocally good creator (Rom. 3:10, 23; 6:23).
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