Today I was translating 1 John 5:18 and looking at some of the English translations to try and make sense of it. The English translations just didn’t make sense when I was reading them.

What I read in the Greek text didn’t come out in the English translations I was checking. Here is what I was struggling with.

Here is the ESV:
1 John 5:18 “We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God [here is the difficult two word phrase] protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.”

The problem is who is “protecting whom”? He who was born of God is protecting “him.” Who is in mind? Who is protecting the Christian? It is unclear. Read the verse out loud and you will hear how unclear it is.

It is much simpler to get at the meaning, it seems, just by following the Greek text.

Here is my translation:

“The one who is born from God keeps (or perhaps, “protects”) himself.”

The word in Greek is “auton” the personal pronoun, “him.” Here used in a reflexive sense, “himself.”

From the same paragraph we know that a Christian doesn’t continue to sin (the verb “sin” there is 3rd person, present, indicative, active). Here the verb “to keep” is also 3rd person, present, indicative, active. The verbs are lining up in tense and voice.

It would appear that the paragraph is referring to the Christian who doesn’t keep sinning, and who keeps on protecting himself from evil.

The paragraph ends with the restriction upon the Evil One (Satan) who, we learn, cannot touch the one whom God has made alive.

The paragraph ends:

“and the Evil One cannot touch him.”

The lesson for us is that God brings us new life (we are “born of God”) and then we are responsible to “keep ourselves” (in God’s love, and away from sin).

God makes us alive and then we keep ourselves (safe) by the power of God. It is a wonderful verse that has been lost in translation.