2:14 “I write to you, little children, because you have known the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you have known the From-The-Beginning One. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God is staying in you and you have conquered the evil one.”
Drawing from my intro in v.12, this second section is written from the perspective of the reader and from the perspective of an authoritative apostle. Here the key is that his little children know the Father, whereas the key to the first section was that they were forgiven. God’s forgiveness enables us to know Him and to conquer satan. Our knowledge of the Father strengthens our faith and our ability to conquer sin (Westcott 60).
Why does John basically repeat his reasons in the second section? The address to the “fathers” is exactly the same. Dana (37) says this is because “John’s concern for them matches their own concerns. John wants to reassure these fathers and young men–especially stirring up a renewed sense of victory in the young men.”
The basic idea of this whole passage, says Westcott (60) is that “it is a lead-in to an appeal in the following section based on the privileges of God’s fatherhood and forgiveness and the qualities of the wisdom of the old and the strength of the young… ‘I write, yea, I have written you because you have had experience in the faith.'”
God, I praise You that I know You as my Father in heaven! I don’t know whether my 30 years of age–all of which have been abiding in the faith–would classify me as a father or a young man. The addresses to the fathers are more meaningful to me, but perhaps that is because I don’t understand what John means when he says that the young men have conquered the evil one. It doesn’t seem like the relationship we have with the evil one is such that we have conquered him in the past and that he is no longer a concern, as this passage seems to indicate.
The battle with sin is a daily struggle for me. Perhaps the fact that it is “the evil one” and not “evil” which the young men have conquered points to our transfer from the kingdom of satan to the kingdom of God, meaning that satan is defeated and is no longer our master, although we still sin and do evil sometimes.
The reasoning that John gives to the fact that the young men have conquered the evil one in v.14 seems odd to me too: they “are strong and the word of God is living/staying/abiding/remaining/sticking with” them. What does physical strength have to do with beating the devil?
Perhaps John is just looking to compliment them to build their confidence, but the more likely meaning is that their faith is strong and unshakable, and that’s why they are internalizing God’s Word. There is a direct link between knowing God’s word and overcoming satan in the Gospel account of the temptation of Jesus. Jesus defeated satan by quoting scripture and obeying that scripture.
By Nate Wilson.
