Overcoming The World
And This is The Victory That Overcometh The World, Even Our Faith (1 John
5:4).
We are subjected to an inevitable conflict. It cannot be avoided by flight,
by surrender, or by refusing to resist. It is a conflict, not for house
and home, nor for liberty or security, but of life and death; not of the
body, but of the soul; not temporal, but eternal.
What is Meant by The World?
Not just the earth and all in it.
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The world is often a collective term for the things seen and temporal.
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It is often a collective term for mankind.
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The enemy is sometimes designated as Satan and the powers of darkness,
sometimes as the world, and sometimes as our own evil hearts, or ourselves.
These all constitute one. They are different powers of the kingdom of darkness.
Satan is the god of this world. The world is subject to him, and constitutes
one large corps of his army; and the flesh, i.e., our fallen nature, is
his ally.
God or The World
The question is, which is to govern the soul?
We are under the strongest possible temptation to allow our convictions
to be determined by the apparent, by nature, by what is visible, or by
the authority of men.
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Our convictions, both as to what is true and as to what is right, are,
in a multitude of cases, controlled by what we see, (we cannot believe
in the invisible and eternal), or by the opinions of the community to which
we belong.
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We are controlled by the latter in our judgments.
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Matthew 6:26-34
What is it to Overcome The World?
The world, and God; the visible, and the invisible; the present, and the
eternal.
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The former address our senses, our constitutional principles.
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They are ever present.
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They operate upon us without cessation.
The consequence is, that with the vast majority of men the visible is everything.
It is obvious that what determines our convictions, and engrosses our
affections will control our actions.
Our energies will be directed to the objects which have this influence,
and our whole outward life will have reference to them.
What Will Enable us to Overcome The World?
What will enable us to have our intellect, affections, and outward life
filled with the thoughts of God, and of divine things?
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Not any power in ourselves.
Zechariah 4:6
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Not by seclusion from the world, and trying to get into a stream which
runs in a contrary direction.
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The Church cannot save us.
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The apostle tells us that faith is the victory.
This includes two very different things.
First
Faith as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen, is a new principle and power introduced into our nature. It is a
divine, supernatural gift. It overcomes the world:
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Because it brings eternal things to view.
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Truth is not the only object of faith.
It discerns the excellence of the things believed, and, therefore, fills
the heart with love and longing.
It displaces the world from the heart by introducing a new and infinitely
higher affection.
Second
All this is true; but it is not the truth which John meant to teach. The
faith of which he speaks has Christ for its object.
Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is
the Son of God? 1 John 5:5
To believe that Jesus is the Christ is to believe,
1. That he is the eternal Son of God.
2. That he is God manifest in our nature.
3. That he is the Messiah.
4. That all that the Scriptures predicted as the work of the Messiah has
been, is and shall be accomplished in him.
How Does This Overcome The World?
1. Because it reconciles us to God and delivers us from the kingdom of
Satan.
2. Because it secures for us the gift of the Holy Ghost as a new principle
of life.
3. Because it supplies us with a new object of affections.
It becomes Christ for us to live.
