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.