1 John 5:3-5 For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome.
For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith.
Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
Several years after the end of the America Civil War, there was a war veteran who was very poor. He would essentially go from place to place, begging, usually mumbling things about ‘my friend Abraham Lincoln.’ Most people wrote him off as a crank and a misfit, but he managed to scrape together enough from what people gave him out of pity.
On one occasion, as he was going on about his friend Lincoln, a man challenged him. “Stop talking about Abraham Lincoln as if you knew him personally!” The poor man reached into his coat and pulled out a folded and tattered piece of paper. He handed it to the man. He said, “Now, I’m not one for reading, but my friend Lincoln gave me this letter.” The other man read the letter and his eyes went wide. Written in Abraham Lincoln’s own handwriting was a promise of a full presidential pension for this war veteran once the war was over. “Do you know what you have in your hands?” the man asked. “You’ve been living in poverty when the president has already granted you a generous pension!”
That man had been living in poverty because he was ignorant of what was in that letter. The resources were already there for him to live differently. He just hadn’t accessed them.
That’s a lot like some professing Christians. Their lives are often characterised by what appears to be defeat and despair. They speak sometimes of their friend Jesus, but on first glance, the life seems rather defeated. They seem burdened, as if the commandments of God are burdensome, and life itself is crushing them.
This passage, in essence, gives us the letter which that man had in his pocket. It says what has been willed to a Christian, and how a Christian accesses that.
John is continuing to give us the marks of a Christian. He’s told us that true Christians know and believe the love God has for them. He’s told us that true Christians love God truly. And He told us that real love for God begins with the new birth, and is expressed in love for God’s family and towards God’s commandments. John told us that God’s commands are not burdensome.
Now John is going to take the opposite of this idea of being weighed down and talk about the victorious kind of living that belongs to Christians.
God’s people are not a people weighed down like heavy trucks spinning their wheels in the mud. God’s people are not defeated by the commands of God. Instead, God’s people overcome. They emerge victorious.
One of the marks of eternal life that God wants us to know is how His children fare in the game of life. In the Olympics of life and existence, how do athletes, with God’s genes in them, end up doing? God is giving us another sign of life. Take His children and put them on one side of the field, and on the other side put the world, their own flesh and Satan, and who wins?
The logic of this passage is this: since God is not defeated by anyone and anything, the mark of those who are God’s children is that they overcome, they conquer, and they defeat the things that oppose them. That’s what John wants to tell us here, as part of another distinguishing mark of a Christian, he is going to give us truths about the victorious Christian life.
What does that mean exactly? Is John a 1st century motivational speaker? Was John a proponent of positive thinking? Was he going around saying things like “There’s no such thing as can’t? You are a winner! Quitters never win and winners never quit!” Was John trying to get us hyped up on pure optimism? No, because that kind of stuff is not truth. It is not truthful to tell people that the only problems are problems of your own perspective and if you just think you’ll win you will. If you just think you’ve conquered it, you already have. That is deadly thinking. That is encouraging people to step off cliffs with smiles on their faces, believing in their own belief, and trusting in their own trust. That’s deadly, but go into the average book-store, and you’ll find it’s enormously popular. Mind power; the power of a positive attitude. By the way, I’m all for positive attitudes, but positive attitudes need to rest on truth, not on themselves.
When we think about our lives, we see a lot of obstacles. We see and experience many things that tempt us to be discouraged. We experience roadblocks and detours that we didn’t ask for. It doesn’t always feel like victory. So what John wants to do here is explain what the victory is, so our expectations are biblical. Does it mean problem-free living? Does it mean mastering my own destiny? Does it mean health, wealth and prosperity?
What is the victory that belongs to believers? John is also going to explain how believers experience that victory.
I. The Identity of the Victors and their Enemy
For whatever is born of God overcomes the world
John very clearly identifies the people who overcome, who defeat the world – whatever is born of God. Literally, everything born of God overcomes the world. There is no such thing as one born of God who does not overcome the world. Everyone in this category has this outcome. All mammals breathe, all plants grow, all God’s children overcome.
We’ve already seen John tell us that when God begets, His children have His nature. That means they are going to be one way and not another.
1 John 3:9 Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.
1 John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
1 John 5:18 We know that whoever is born of God does not sin; but he who has been born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him.
Christians born of God overcome the world.
This word for ‘overcome’ is a very strong word. It was the name of the Greek god of victory. It meant to overwhelmingly conquer. It had the idea of being genuinely superior to your enemy so that you vanquish them, you have overwhelming success.
Growing up, I would often hear preaching about the victorious Christian life. And I think it is good to speak about the victorious Christian life – the life of appropriating all the spiritual blessings that are ours in Christ. But sometimes it seemed to me as if the preachers I heard believed that most Christians lived the defeated Christian life, as if defeat was the normal, default state, and that victory was a special blessing to be sought.
But this passage teaches something quite different, and quite encouraging. Just as it is normal for those with God’s life in them to love, to obey, and to confess their sins, so it is normal for those with God’s life within to defeat the things that oppose their Christian lives. And just as it is true of all Christians that they will love God and one another and the truth, so it is true of all Christians that they will, at some point, and in differing degrees, overcome.
God has put this in His Word because He wants us to know what our birthrights are. He wants to show us that the normal Christian life is not one of defeat. He wants that knowledge to comfort us, and give us confidence that we are saved, and confidence in Christ. He wants us to be convicted over when defeat is a pattern in our lives.
Christians are overcomers. When Jesus spoke to the seven churches in the book of Revelation, he ends his address to each one by saying, “To Him who overcomes, I will grant.” He is not speaking to some super-class of Christians. Overcomers are not the crack squadron of spiritual troops, the Christian triathlon champions. No, Christians are overcomers. All Christians are overcomers.
So that leads us to the question: what is it that Christians overcome? What do they defeat? What is this victory that they win?
For whatever is born of God overcomes the world
Who or what do Christians overwhelmingly conquer? Answer: the world. What does John mean by the world? He does not mean the planet. He does not mean the human race. He means the system of thinking and acting, the attitudes and beliefs that leads men to oppose God, to love what He hates and hate what He loves.
1 John 2:15-16 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world — the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life — is not of the Father but is of the world.
According to this book, there are two other groups that Christians have overcome.
Satan:
1 John 2:13 I write to you, fathers, Because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, Because you have overcome the wicked one. I write to you, little children, Because you have known the Father.
I have written to you, fathers, Because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, Because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, And you have overcome the wicked one.
False teachers:
1 John 4:4 You are of God, little children, and have overcome them, because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
So let’s add these up. Christians overcome the world system set against God. They overcome Satan, God’s enemy. They overcome false teachers who seek to preach a false gospel. What do all these things have in common? These things are aimed at destroying the faith of God’s people.
Satan works to have people deny the Lord, or to turn their back on their faith. The world makes sin seem normal and faith in God seem strange. False teachers seek to subvert and twist the faith.
These are enemies of the gospel, enemies of salvation and therefore enemies of the soul.
The ultimate goal of Satan, the world system and false teachers is to lead a soul into hell. What would it look like if Satan, the world, or false teachers overcame a professing Christian?
Satan and his lies would triumph. You would believe him and forsake the faith. The world and its pleasures would draw you away from Christ. You would change your mind about the gospel and believe a false gospel, another Jesus, another Spirit. Your light would be snuffed out. Your testimony would die. In short, your faith would fail.
That is what it would mean for a Christian to be overcome – for your faith to die.
On the night before Jesus was crucified, he said to Simon Peter:
Luke 22:31-32 And the Lord said, “Simon, Simon! Indeed, Satan has asked for you, that he may sift you as wheat.
“But I have prayed for you, that your faith should not fail; and when you have returned to Me, strengthen your brethren.”
For Peter to pass the test would be that he would not ultimately and finally stop believing and trusting.
If you haven’t noticed, this world is no friend to faith. The media, the entertainment, the materialism, the lust for position, and possessions, and leisure, and status, all make faith seem strange, vague, invisible, and even foolish. It is like Vanity Fair in Pilgrim’s Progress, a big market place of temporal things which seeks to get pilgrims to stay, instead of travel to the Celestial City.
To overcome your enemies means that whatever Satan, the world and false teacher throw at you, your faith in Jesus Christ remains. Your faith is fire-proof, water-proof, scratch-resistant, magnetically shielded and reinforced. People who are born-again have the divine nature. They have a God-given faith. It is a faith that cannot be snuffed out, or drowned, or starved, or intimidated, or frightened off, or in any other way removed.
Christians overcome because nothing overcomes their faith. A few weeks ago we looked at the truth that perfect love casts out fear. There we saw that if your soul is safe, if you are safe as far as the day of judgement goes, then nothing can ultimately harm you. They might hurt your body; they might slander you, ridicule you, steal from you, or even kill you. But only what harms you ultimately is what harms you.
And in the same way, the only thing that defeats you ultimately is the thing which causes you to turn from Christ permanently. If you are truly born again, then your current discouragement over your spiritual growth is just a temporary setback. Your sense of failure in overcoming that sin in your life is a temporary defeat. Your feeling that you have not achieved what you wanted to achieve, your confusion over certain events in your life, your genuine doubts over certain matters of the faith – these are pauses, halts, detours, temporary setbacks in a campaign that will not be lost.
Because you will emerge from all that, dear saint, with a faith in Jesus Christ that is God-given and part of what it means to be a Christian.
1 Peter 1:5-7 who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials,
that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ,
This is why we do not believe in the category of the permanently backslidden Christian. We have created this unbiblical category of a person who supposedly confesses Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour, and then at some point, turns away from Christ, goes back into the world and serves it and himself, with not another look back in Christ’s direction. Then we hear people saying, “Let’s pray for so-and-so, he’s backslidden and needs to come back to the Lord.” And what are we saying when we say that? We are saying the world overcame him. Satan conquered his faith. The Bible has no category for that.
If a person is truly born again, his faith is exactly what does not fail. He might have dips, valleys, falls, mishaps, messes, accidents – but he does not disown the Lord, he does not turn from the faith, he never completely releases his hold on Christ.
II. The Basis of the Victory: Faith in Jesus
And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith.
Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
What is the victory? It is not financial prosperity. It is not perfect health and freedom from sickness. It is not your best life now. The victory is in fact the faith that does not fail. Notice, John does not say that faith achieves the victory. He says faith is the victory.
Why would that be so? What does it mean that faith itself is the victory?
We’ve seen one of the answers. When everything is thrown at the Christian, and everything is taken from you – the one thing which cannot be taken from you and will outlast all the assaults of the world – is your faith. It is like a diamond in the mud.
That’s been what has come out of people when they have been put to death for their faith. John Hus was a believer who preached the gospel during the dark times of the medieval church. After being tricked into going to Rome, where he was unfairly tried, he was condemned to death. They stripped him of his robes and put a paper miter on his head, on which was painted devils, with this inscription, “A ringleader of heretics.” Which, when he saw, he said: “My Lord Jesus Christ, for my sake, did wear a crown of thorns; why should not I then, for His sake, again wear this light crown, be it ever so ignominious? Truly I will do it, and that willingly.”
When it was set upon his head, the bishop said: “Now we commit thy soul unto the devil.”
“But I,” said John Huss, lifting his eyes towards the heaven, “do commend into Thy hands, O Lord Jesus Christ, my spirit which Thou has redeemed.”
When the chain was put about him at the stake, he said, with a smiling countenance, “My Lord Jesus Christ was bound with a harder chain than this for my sake, and why then should I be ashamed of this rusty one?”
He was placed at the stake with wood piled up to his neck, and was asked to recant. “No,” (said Huss;) I never preached any doctrine of an evil tendency; and what I taught with my lips I now seal with my blood.”
The flames were now applied to the fagots, when our martyr sung a hymn with so loud and cheerful a voice that he was heard through all the cracklings of the combustibles, and the noise of the multitude. At length his voice was interrupted by the severity of the flames, which soon closed his existence. (Adapted from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs)
Revelation 12:11 “And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives to the death.”
It is the nature of faith to overcome this world like air bubbles that rise in water, so God-given faith will not sink in this world. God wants you to know that this faith you have is the most precious thing you possess. It is more precious than the Cullinan diamond. More precious than if you had a slab of pure platinum – is your faith in Jesus Christ.
The second reason why faith is the victory has to do with the content of our faith.
According to verse 5, who is our faith in?
Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
Our faith is in Jesus Christ Himself. Our faith is like a wire that connects us to the power station. Our faith is the towbar that connects our trailer to the truck ahead. Our faith is the umbilical cord that connects child and mother. But that wire, that towbar, that umbilical cord are only good because of what they are connected to! The only reason why faith overcomes the world, Satan and all other opposition, is because Jesus Christ has done so.
Faith is the connection between you and Christ. Faith appropriates His victory. Faith connects the circuit and you experience the overcoming victory that is Christ. To be connected to Christ is to overwhelmingly conquer.
How victorious is Christ?
Well consider for a moment when Jesus and Satan went one-on-one recorded for us in Matthew 4 and Luke 4. Satan came to Jesus and tempted Him. He tried to get Jesus to fall just like Adam had. He used the same tactics. But if you compare the temptation of Adam to the temptation on Jesus, you can see that Jesus overwhelmingly conquered.
| THE TEMPTATION OF ADAM | THE TEMPTATION OF CHRIST |
|---|---|
| The devil challenged Adam; it was Satan who took the initiative. | Christ challenged the devil; the Spirit led Christ into the wilderness, and there the devil was compelled to tempt Him to sin. |
| Adam had every possible advantage (paradise, food, companionship, every need met). | Christ was at the most serious disadvantage, wanting every human comfort and need (hungry, alone). |
| The devil emerged victorious. (That is, victory was won for a time by Satan; it was not established as secure or permanent.) | Christ emerged finally and fully victorious; victory was established as ultimately secure, though not yet entirely won. |
| Adam responded to human desire, refused to depend upon the truthfulness of God’s words, fell into sin. | Christ trusted in the Word of God, stood true to God, resisted sin. |
| Adam stood at the head of the race of men; that race fell into sin with him. | Christ stood as the Head of all those who believe and lifted that number to forgiveness and life. |
(Source: Douglas Bookman, Life of Christ course notes).
And if that weren’t enough, Jesus walked into the Devil’s prison – death, and being a freeman, and not under the curse of sin, He walked through that prison, single-handedly breaking every lock in the dungeon. When He rose from the dead, Satan had been routed, plundered and thoroughly, utterly vanquished.
Hebrews 2:14 Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil,
Colossians 2:15 Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.
John 12:31 “Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be cast out.
Jesus overcame Satan, and Jesus overcame the world.
John 16:33 “These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
Even the enemy within – our flesh is overcome by Jesus
Romans 7:24-25
O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
I thank God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!
What is faith? Faith is grasping all that Christ is – Lord, Saviour, King, Shepherd. I lay hold on Him and His work and His promises.
Faith is what connects us to Christ and His victory. In other words, to be connected to Christ is to be victorious over Satan, the world, the flesh.
Faith does not produce new power or victory, faith simply connects you to the power that was there all along. To put it another way – faith is normal living for a believer; unbelief is abnormal. This is why we are usually so troubled when we fall into unbelief.
2 Corinthians 2:14
Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.
1 Corinthians 15:57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
You might live right next door to a power substation, but be living in darkness if your house or flat is not connected to it, so all Christ’s victories might remain foreign to you unless you are connected to Him by faith.
And there are two kinds of faith: There is the initial faith which connects you to Him. The first day that you believe Jesus is the Son of God – he is the anointed One, the Saviour appointed to reconcile us to the Father – that day you are born again, and all the victory that is Christ’s becomes yours. In fact, that’s why the end of verse 4 has the victory in the past tense – this is the victory that has overcome the world. Christ has already won. The initial faith that connects you to Christ, in one sense means you have already overcome all that Christ has overcome.
But then there is an ongoing kind of faith. The word for ‘believes’ here is in the present tense. The overcomer continues to believe. The overcomer does not stop believing.
This is why Scripture has what looks to us to be a contradiction, but it isn’t. On the one hand, it says – if you have already been born of God, you have already overcome the world. On the other hand, it gives promises to people that overcome, as if overcoming is something they must still achieve.
Revelation 21:7 “He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be My son.
The reason for this is simple: God wants us to know that true faith – the faith that causes us to be born again, is faith that endures. It is a faith that perseveres.
Colossians 1:21-23 And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled
in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight —
if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.
God is saying to us: if you are mine, the one thing that you will never lose is your faith. So, guess what you are to hold onto at all costs? Your faith.
The promise that our faith will not be snuffed out does not make us passive, it makes us active. We fight above all to keep our grasp on Jesus Christ.
1 Timothy 6:12
Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, to which you were also called and have confessed the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.
You do not have to fight for the victory – that has been done. You must fight for your faith.
To overcome, and to be revealed as a truly born-again believer is to believe to the very end. So what kinds of things would you be interested in doing if you wanted to see your faith endure to the very end? Well, since faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God, you’d want to have a steady and healthy intake of the Word of God.
Since faith is grown by prayer and answered prayer, you’d want to have a regular and planned prayer life.
Since faith is grown by exposure to people of faith, you’d want to make sure you do not forsake the assembling of believers, to gather for worship and fellowship. You’d want to be disciplined by believers older than you.
Since faith is grown by obedience, you’d want to take the commandments of God, and put them into practice.
Since faith is grown by suffering, you’d accept what God gives you as an opportunity to grow in faith.
There are many other things we could say, but the bottom line is, if faith is the victory, then nothing should occupy my attention more than fighting for my faith and love for Jesus Christ to hold and grow.
If I gave you a plastic card, and told you that there is a coming economic crash, and this card will be your means of survival during that time, how would you treat that card? You would do everything in your power to hang on to that card.
In the same way – your faith in Jesus Christ is your most precious possession. It is what overcomes. If you are a true believer, you will never stop believing. Nothing will overcome your faith. So with that promise, act on it. Do not be passive, but actively fight for your faith.