Diabolos

With reference to John 6:70—But diaballo has secondary and ternary significations. It signifies to traduce, to attack character, to slander, to libel; and thirdly, to deceive, mislead, impose upon. Hence, diabolos will also signify a traducer, slanderer, deceiver, impostor. In this sense, Judas is styled a diabolos (John 6:70). So also the pious scribes and Pharisees, priests and rulers, who, though as priests officially holy, were as Jesus said, "of father the Diabolos, and the lusts of their father (the flesh) they would do. The same was a man-killer from the beginning, and stood not in the truth, because truth is not in him. When he speaks a lie he speaks of his own things, for he is a liar, and the father of it" (John 8:44). And "he that committeth sin is of the Diabolos, for the diabolos sinneth from the beginning" (1 John 3:8). All this is perfectly intelligible when understood of Sin's flesh, in which dwells no good thing, and which of itself can neither do right nor think aright. Man's ability to do either is derived from a higher source -- from the truth indoctrinated into him. When this is declared and reasoned into him, and he comes to understand it, to believe it, and to love it, a power is set up within him called "the law of the Spirit of life," which is counteractive of "the law of sin and death," and brings the man to "the obedience of faith," by which he is manifested to the skilful in the word as a son of God. The disobedient are all of father Diabolos; and his spirit, which is the spirit of the flesh, works in them. Hence the clergy, Jewish and Gentile, are all of what they call "the Devil," being ignorant, and consequently disobedient of the gospel of the kingdom.