One of the most difficult tasks these days is to deny that evil exists and that people do evil things. Just open your favorite news site and you will see evil. You can see it in the beheadings and the mass kidnappings. You can see it in the greed that drives people of wealth to want even more. You can see it in the vitriolic rhetoric used against ideological opponents. You can see it in the slaughter of the innocent.
Evil seems so obvious. But some people want to make excuses for this kind of behavior. They blame society for not providing sufficient opportunities for employment or integration. They put blame on any and everyone except the one doing the evil deed. They would never blame the belief system of the individual. They try to disconnect belief from behavior. They say private beliefs don’t have anything to do with public behavior.
But John makes a very different assessment of evil beliefs and evil deeds. He tells us that they are connected. Those with evil beliefs end up doing evil deeds. This might sound a bit harsh, but this is John’s point. Those teachers who left their fellowship and started teaching some things that were in error, perhaps blasphemous errors, were doing something evil. They were following Satan’s lead. They were leading people back to hell with their teaching and actions.
And John wants to warn his readers, and us, that there are those out there who want to lead us astray. Their motives might not be pure. They at least know they are moving away from historic Christianity. They were turning away from what they had been taught from the earliest days. They are choosing to undo the work of Christ, because Jesus came to destroy evil. He came to clean up the world, one soul at a time.
We have a choice who we want to follow, whose example and whose life. When we follow Jesus, His life flows through us and changes our behavior. We know the choices He wants us to make and we join in with those choices. We choose righteous behavior because He has made us righteous in His sight. We change bosses. Sin and Satan used to be in charge whether we knew it or not. Now Jesus is in charge.
So when we obey Him, we are part of the process of defeating evil and by extension Satan himself. Evil is defeated in our lives through obedience that is prompted by the Holy Spirit’s work in our hearts. He works and we agree with His working by adding our will to His. We choose to do what He wants us to do. And He gives us the power in that moment to be obedient.
The Arnold Journey 