“The wicked one”, ho poneros, can refer to ordinary human beings. The phrase doesn’t have to refer to a supernatural being. Consider how the Lord Jesus uses it in the Sermon on the Mount. He warns that men will do evil against us (Matthew 5:11). And He goes on to warn in Matthew 5:39: “Resist not the evil one (Gk. τω πονηρω, to ponero); but whoever smites you on the one cheek, turn to him the other”. The “evil one” simply referred there to an individual who did evil. God makes the sun rise upon ‘the evil ones’ as well as the good (Matthew 5:45—the same Greek phrase is used, although in the plural). He even refers to some in the audience hearing the Sermon on the Mount as being in that category: “You, being evil [Gk. ‘wicked ones’]” (Matthew 7:11). Yet within the Sermon, we find Jesus advising us to pray “Deliver us from the evil one” (Matthew 6:13). The evil ones, in the context of the Lord’s Sermon, were the human beings whom He foresaw would persecuted His followers. The context gives no hint that the Lord had in view any supernatural being. His later teaching suggests that He saw the ‘wicked ones’ in the first context as being the Jews who persecuted His earliest followers. He called them ‘evil ones’ (Matthew 12:34), and He traces the root of their ‘evil’ to the wicked heart of man [the Biblical ‘satan’] being allowed to function without opposition: “An evil man [s.w. “wicked one”] out of the evil treasure [of the heart] brings forth evil things” (Matthew 12:35). And so the Jews of the first century were an evil or wicked generation (Matthew 12:39,45; 16:4; Luke 11:29; John 7:7). The ‘evil ones’ were the Jews who were in opposition to the work of Jesus and the preaching of His message; we find the same phrase used about the Jews who opposed Paul’s preaching in Acts 17:5. The AV translates the phrase as “certain lewd fellows”, but again, poneros is used—‘evil ones’ would be a fair translation. This is all the background for the Lord’s teaching that there would be an ‘evil one’ who would sabotage His preaching of the Gospel, sowing weeds amongst the wheat (Matthew 13:19,38,49). John’s Gospel tends to speak of “the world” with specific reference to the Jewish world of the first century. The Lord parallels that “world” with “the evil one” in John 17:15: “I pray not that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one (Gk. του πονηρου, tou ponerou)”.
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Author: Duncan Heaster
Keywords: Evil one, wicked one
Bible reference(s): Matthew 5:39, Matthew 6:13, John 17:15, Acts 17:5, 1 John 5:18-19
Source: “The Real Devil A Biblical Exploration.”
Page indexed by: inWORD Bible Software.