Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 John · About this commentary
The Whole World Lies in the Evil One
1 John 5:18-19
18 We know that whoever is born of God doesn’t sin, but he who was born of God keeps himself, and the evil one doesn’t touch him. · WEB
Two certainties are set side by side, and the second is bleaker than anything else in the letter.
Verses 18, 19 and 20 each begin the same way: we know. Three certainties in three sentences, at the close of a letter written to people who had stopped being sure of anything.
The first restates what the letter said earlier 1 John 3:9 — whoever is born of God does not go on sinning — and then adds a protection not mentioned before. He who was born of God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him. The letter's own phrasing distinguishes the one born of God from the one who was born of God and does the keeping, and the distinction goes no further than the sentence takes it. What the verse plainly claims is that the keeping is done by another and that the evil one is held off.
The second certainty is the one that gives the passage its weight. We are of God, and the whole world lies in the evil one. No qualification is offered. The letter has said the world is passing away 1 John 2:17 and that its hatred is to be expected 1 John 3:13; here it states the condition underneath both.
The two halves have to be held together. A reader is told in one breath that he is untouchable and that everything around him is in hostile hands. That is not a contradiction but the letter's whole picture: the safety is real, and it is not the same thing as the danger being absent.
held with reason What this mark means