Children of the Devil

There are movies, books, and even video games that feature individuals who are “children of the devil” – either as a perverse imitation of the Incarnation or a variation on some ancient mythology.

In today’s first reading (1 John 3:7-10), St. John writes about “children of the devil” by way of contrast with the “children of God.” The primary difference between the two, St. John writes, is that children of the devil sin while children of God do not.

Whoever sins
belongs to the devil,
because the devil has sinned from the beginning.
Indeed, the Son of God was revealed
to destroy the works of the devil.
No one who is begotten by God commits sin,
because God's seed remains in him;
he cannot sin because he is begotten by God

This is not to set up a Manichean dualism – the sinless children of God on one side of the wall and the sinful children of the devil on the other – otherwise, none of St. John’s exhortations to do good and avoid sin would make sense.

The point is simple: when we sin, we act like children of the devil (“because the devil has sinned from the beginning”), but Christ came “to destroy the works of the devil,” to break the cycle and free us from sin.

God has given us in Christ the grace to avoid sin and also the grace of forgiveness when we fail

St. John made all of this clear in the previous chapter (2:1).

My children,
I am writing this to you
so that you may not commit sin.
But if anyone does sin,
we have an Advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ the righteous one.

No matter how good or bad we may be, even if we act or feel like “children of the devil,” the power of God’s grace in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is there to free us from sin, to set us on the right path and to make us all children of God.