Rescue Us from the evil one
Jesus came to destroy the works of the Devil. (1 John 3:8)
This is a comforting thought when we find ourselves suffering or in other ways opposed by the devil. We know that suffering is caused by the sin in the world—not our sin, but the sin in the world. Adam and Eve’s sin broke the world, and its brokenness results in suffering. The evil one—the devil—seeks to steal, kill, and destroy. Our suffering is a result of his scheming.
God is so creative and so powerful that He takes even the most evil, diabolical schemes of the devil and uses them as soil to grow something beautiful out of them. But in the middle of our crisis and suffering, what we notice most of all is our need for deliverance. Praying for this deliverance is right. Jesus directs us to pray this way in the Lord’s Prayer.
We should recognize that the devil is prowling like a lion, looking for someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8) Let it not be us! We ask God to deliver us not only from the suffering that satan would bring upon us, but also from temptation.
These two schemes of the enemy go together: suffering and temptation. When we are suffering, we can be more vulnerable to falling prey to temptation. Our guard can be down because we are weary or we are focused on other things. Paul exhorts us to not grow weary in doing good (Galatians 6:9) and Jesus says similarly, “the one who endures to the end will be saved.” (Matthew 24:13) The Bible teaches us that we should prioritize spiritual endurance, because our reward is coming. In Matthew 24, Jesus talks about salvation. in Galatians 6, Paul says, “At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up.” Either way, the message is that there is a reward for us not just for experiencing suffering, but for enduring.
It is therefore essential that we learn to pray this part of the Lord’s prayer, “Rescue us from the evil one.”
It is possible to spend too much energy focusing on what in particular the enemy’s schemes actually are. We are not in a sporting event where the other coach or team has tendencies that we should study. Our enemy is the father of lies. (John 8:44) It is unwise for us to engage with him at all. Instead, we fix our eyes on our Savior, Jesus, and allow Him to guide us along the path He has marked out for us.
That being said, it is also wise for us to remember that we do not arrive at the destination Jesus has prepared for us automatically. We have a personal enemy–the devil–who is trying to devour us. Jesus does not tell us to obsess over this fact, but He doesn’t tell us to ignore it either. Instead, He tells us to pray for deliverance, for rescue, from the evil one.
Notice that God does not expect us to stand up to the evil one on our own. Nowhere in the Bible is that taught. Instead, God says to us that we should run to Him and find shelter in His arms. We should bury our head in His chest. “Rescue us!” we cry out to Him: from our sin, from temptation, and from suffering.
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Knowing that there is an enemy out there who seeks to lead us into sin, but that God will rescue us from it should change the way we approach our lives. We should not be foolish enough to take sin lightly. 1 John 3:8 teaches us not only that Jesus came to destroy the devil and his works, but also that, “when people keep on sinning, it shows that they belong to the devil, who has been sinning since the beginning.” This is not to say that the true believers never sin again. We all sin, and we will continue to struggle with sin until we are made perfect in the presence of God and Christ Jesus in Heaven. John expands on what he means in the next verse, “Those who have been born into God’s family do not make a practice of sinning, because God’s life is in them. So they can’t keep on sinning, because they are children of God.” (1 John 3:9) John’s point is that the life of God inside us once we are saved compels us to reject sin and the sin nature that consumed us before we chose Jesus and were saved. We cannot make sin our lifestyle anymore. We will still struggle with sin, but we can no longer be content to keep on sinning. We can no longer say, “This is okay for me.” We reject sin. We struggle, even rage against it. This struggle is the mark of the believer.
When we know that we have a personal enemy seeking to devour us with temptation and sin, we realize that we are not only dealing with our old nature, but we are actually dealing with an outside force that is trying to get us to fail. Let’s get one thing clear: the One living in us, the Holy Spirit, is greater than the one in the world, the enemy. (1 John 4:4) However, the reality that we are being opposed should do two things: it should remind us to cry out to God for rescue, and it should remind us to take temptation seriously.
We need to remember that we cannot, and were never expected to, overcome temptation on our own. We have to cry out to God. There are not magic words for us to say, or special actions to do in order to overcome spiritual warfare or spiritual oppression in our lives. Instead, we just run to God. We run to Him in prayer. We run to Him emotionally. We run to Him like a child runs to his mom or dad in desperation. When we realize the opposition we are facing, we realize just how desperate our need for God is. When we realize God’s strength, we realize just how strong our position is. Because in our weakness, God is strong. (1 Corinthians 12:9, 1 Corinthians 12:10)
In addition to constantly running to God, which is essential, we should live our lives in such a way that we avoid temptation. If we are taking sin seriously, there are certain actions that we won’t do, because sin is serious. Unfortunately, we have made a habit of excusing sin in one way or another saying, “Well, I’m not perfect,” as if this is an excuse for our sinful actions. Other times we try to find fault with God’s word or His instructions or try to relegate His commands to a previous era in history. None of those strategies are appropriate. These are temptations, strategies of the evil one, our personal enemy, to distract and derail us from the good and perfect path that God has for us. It’s true that we aren’t perfect. It’s true that God asks us to do things that are hard. But when we see our imperfection, it should remind us to lean further into our relationship with God so that we can become more like Him. When we see how different His commands are from our instincts or from what the culture around us expects us to do, it should cause us to pray and seek Him and ask Him to rescue us from the temptation to turn away from His path. We don’t need excuses. We don’t need to dismiss Him or His Word. We need rescue.
There is so much that is acceptable in our culture that is sinful for the believer in Jesus. We shouldn’t be surprised by that. The world is following a different king than we are. Our enemy is always actively trying to lead us into temptation. When we realize this, we don’t try to fight on our own; we cry out to our personal savior, the savior of the world, God our Father and Jesus Christ, and we say, “Rescue us from the evil one.”