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Bible Notes - Tabernacle Commentaries
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1 John 3:8
Comments
Just as the practice of righteousness is an infallible marker of the true disciple, so the practice of sin marks out the devil’s followers. Satan is the prototype sinner, the first to launch out on this terrible path to destruction. By linking human sin to the devil’s sin, John shows that man is led to do evil and does nothing original. Though men and women are responsible for their sins, the devil manipulates them in his long campaign against God. He created what he believed was a situation from which God could not recover, and would be forced to destroy man who was made in his image. But the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ has outwitted the devil and, because it is so alien to his nature, it has done what he could never have imagined. The devil’s works will utterly fail because he will achieve none of his aims: the elect will be snatched from his grasp and given eternal life, and the reprobate will be destroyed forever as a demonstration of God’s justice, and Satan takes his part in God’s drama in which the foolishness of sin is exposed.
Application
Satan will be forced to admit that he has infinitely misjudged God. He underestimated the forethought of God who anticipated even this act of evil and provided for it. Such is the reward of pride.
Satan’s lie that his service is preferable to the service of God is destroyed in the righteous when they reject their former master as a tyrant, and his service as unprofitable. They show that they would rather lose their lives than return to him again. Thus the devil’s servants disown him in full recognition of what he is.
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