Lukas 22:31-32

22:31 “Simon, ¹  Simon, pay attention! ²  Satan has demanded to have you all, ³  to sift you like wheat, ⁴  22:32 but I have prayed for you, Simon, ⁵  that your faith may not fail. ⁶  When ⁷  you have turned back, ⁸  strengthen ⁹  your brothers.”

Efesus 6:16

6:16 and in all of this, ¹⁰  by taking up the shield ¹¹  of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one.

1 Yohanes 5:4-5

5:4 because ¹²  everyone ¹³  who has been fathered by God ¹⁴  conquers ¹⁵  the world. ¹⁶ 

Testimony About the Son

This ¹⁷  is the conquering power ¹⁸  that has conquered ¹⁹  the world: our faith. 5:5 Now who is the person who has conquered the world except the one who believes that ²⁰  Jesus is the Son of God?

[22:31]  ¹ tc The majority of mss (א A D W Θ Ψ Ë^1,13 Ï as well as several versional witnesses) begin this verse with an introductory comment, “and the Lord said,” indicating a change in the subject of discussion. But this is apparently a reading motivated by the need for clarity. Some of the best witnesses, along with a few others (Ì⁷⁵ B L T 1241 2542^c sy^s co), do not contain these words. The abrupt shift is the more difficult reading and thus more likely to be original.

[22:31]  ² tn Grk “behold” (for “pay attention” see L&N 91.13).

[22:31]  ³ sn This pronoun is plural in the Greek text, so it refers to all the disciples of which Peter is the representative.

[22:31]  ⁴ sn Satan has demanded permission to put them to the test. The idiom “sift (someone) like wheat” is similar to the English idiom “to pick (someone) apart.” The pronoun you is implied.

[22:32]  ⁵ sn Here and in the remainder of the verse the second person pronouns are singular, so only Peter is in view. The name “Simon” has been supplied as a form of direct address to make this clear in English.

[22:32]  ⁶ sn That your faith may not fail. Note that Peter’s denials are pictured here as lapses, not as a total absence of faith.

[22:32]  ⁷ tn Grk “And when.” Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[22:32]  ⁸ tn Or “turned around.”

[22:32]  ⁹ sn Strengthen your brothers refers to Peter helping to strengthen their faith. Jesus quite graciously restores Peter “in advance,” even with the knowledge of his approaching denials.

[6:16]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “in everything.”

[6:16]  ¹¹ sn The Greek word translated shield (θυρεός, qureos) refers to the Roman soldier’s large rectangular wooden shield, called in Latin scutum, about 4 ft (1.2 m) high, covered with leather on the outside. Before a battle in which flaming arrows might be shot at them, the soldiers wet the leather covering with water to extinguish the arrows. The Roman legionaries could close ranks with these shields, the first row holding theirs edge to edge in front, and the rows behind holding the shields above their heads. In this formation they were practically invulnerable to arrows, rocks, and even spears.

[5:4]  ¹² tn The explicit reason the commandments of God are not burdensome to the believer is given by the ὅτι (Joti) clause at the beginning of 5:4. It is because “everyone who is begotten by God conquers the world.”

[5:4]  ¹³ tn The masculine might have been expected here rather than the neuter πᾶν τὸ γεγεννημένον ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ (pan to gegennhmenon ek tou qeou) to refer to the person who is fathered by God. However, BDF §138.1 explains that “the neuter is sometimes used with respect to persons if it is not the individuals but a generic quality that is to be emphasized”; this seems to be the case here, where a collective aspect is in view: As a group, all those who have been begotten by God, that is, all true believers, overcome the world.

[5:4]  ¹⁴ sn The author is once more looking at the situation antithetically (in ‘either/or’ terms) as he sees the readers on the one hand as true believers (everyone who is fathered by God) who have overcome the world through their faith, and the opponents on the other as those who have claimed to have a relationship with God but really do not; they belong to the world in spite of their claims.

[5:4]  ¹⁵ tn Or “overcomes.”

[5:4]  ¹⁶ sn Conquers the world. Once again, the author’s language is far from clear at this point, and so is his meaning, but the author has used the verb conquers (νικάω, nikaw) previously to describe the believer’s victory over the enemy, the evil one himself, in 2:13-14, and over the secessionist opponents, described as “false prophets” in 4:4. This suggests that what the author has in mind here is a victory over the opponents, who now belong to the world and speak its language (cf. 4:5). In the face of the opponents’ attempts through their false teaching to confuse the readers (true believers) about who it is they are supposed to love, the author assures the readers that loving God and keeping his commandments assures us that we really do love God’s children, and because we have already achieved victory over the world through our faith, keeping God’s commandments is not a difficult matter.

[5:4]  ¹⁷ tn Grk “And this.”

[5:4]  ¹⁸ tn The standard English translation for ἡ νίκη (Jh nikh) is “victory” (BDAG 673 s.v.) but this does not preserve the relationship with the cognate verb νικάω (nikaw; used in 2:13,14 and present in this context in participial form in 5:4b and 5:5). One alternative would be “conquest,” although R. E. Brown (Epistles of John [AB], 570) suggests “conquering power” as a translation for ἡ νίκη since here it is a metonymy for the means of victory or the power that gives victory, referring to believers’ faith.

[5:4]  ¹⁹ tn The use of the aorist participle (ἡ νικήσασα, Jh nikhsasa) to refer to faith as the conquering power that “has conquered the world” in 5:4b is problematic. Debate here centers over the temporal value of the aorist participle: (1) It may indicate an action contemporaneous with the (present tense) main verb, in which case the alternation between aorist participle in 5:4b and present participle in 5:5 is one more example of the author’s love of stylistic variation with no difference in meaning. (2) Nevertheless, an aorist participle with a present tense main verb would normally indicate an action antecedent to that of the main verb, so that the aorist participle would describe a past action. That is the most probable here. Thus the aorist participle stresses that the conquest of the world is something that has already been accomplished.

[5:5]  ²⁰ tn After a verb of perception (the participle ὁ πιστεύων [Jo pisteuwn]) the ὅτι (Joti) in 5:5 introduces indirect discourse, a declarative or recitative clause giving the content of what the person named by the participle (ὁ πιστεύων) believes: “that Jesus is the Son of God.” As in 4:15, such a confession constitutes a problem for the author’s opponents but not for his readers who are genuine believers.