1 John 5:18 --- We know [with confidence] that anyone born of God does not habitually sin; but He (Jesus) who was born of God [carefully] keeps and protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.
As our journey through 1 John nears the end of the road, we come upon another awesome and wondrous promise in God's Word. Like most everything though, if you try to read this out of context and apart from walking with Him, it's easy to mix some things up or get frustrated when it doesn't work the way we think it should.
Diving right in, most of this verse is clear, especially if you've genuinely walked through all of 1 John before this. By this point you either KNOW that you're a child of God and you have Jesus, or you know you need to get some things right. You also know Christians still mess up and sin, we are far from perfect, but we cannot be living in habitual, ongoing sin. If we are, then we need to start over in 1 John and realize we're deceived.
We've also established it's all about Jesus. If we are born of God, then we have all the resources and the freedom to live free of ongoing, habitual sin. Again, we aren't perfect, but we aren't trapped anymore, we've got The Way and the resources to be free. All of it in and through Jesus.
So, the part that is easy to mix up or misunderstand is when it says:
…but He [Jesus] who was born of God protects him [that's children of God], and the evil one does not touch him [children of God].
Well, that's a powerful thing that we are protected from being touched by the evil one! However, I'd imagine quite a few children of God start scratching their heads to try and understand then why this horrible thing happened, or that bad thing has happened to them then? I personally can go back over my life since accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior and clearly point out attacks from the evil one.
What gives? Aren't we protected by Jesus? Why is the evil one still messing with me?
It all comes down to digging deeper into the Greek and context! Those wonderful things I love to ramble on about each morning. LOL.
Touch defined by the Oxford English dictionary is: Come into or be in contact with; act of touching someone or something.
We read this verse and promise through that English definition and according to that I shouldn't have one single issue from the devil ever if he can't touch me.
However, in Greek the word for touch is haptō and means: to fasten to, adhere to; to set on fire.
Now, this is a quite different from our initial English thoughts of being untouchable. Now we're seeing the intention is Jesus protects us from the evil one grasping ahold of us, clinging to us, or setting us on fire! This speaks to no longer being in the grasp of sin or under the devil's hold. Also, if we look at the very next verse (v19), we see this for context:
1 John 5:19 --- We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.
So, there we have our context to help us place and understand this verse better. Now I shift from having the expectation of being untouchable by the devil, to understanding I'm still going to see some attacks in life, but as genuine believers and followers of Jesus Christ the devil can't have us back! We're beyond his grasp and hold! He cannot trap us or hold us in darkness or sin anymore! We're set apart now from the world. We still struggle, we still fall, but we aren't trapped, we've been freed from the chains of sin, to live in and through Him!
This has been such an amazing journey through John, especially this final chapter that has had some challenging terrain (verses) to travel over! Have a wonderful Friday! Be the Berean, get into your Bible and see what God tells you on all of this!!
Comments