“Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”
Who is he who overcomes the world,
We get our English word “Nike” from the Greek word “overcomes.” Nike was the goddess of victory. Each Christian will overcome the world when he enters heaven’s gates but the issue here is overcoming the world while we live on earth.
but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
No one can overcome the world system unless he believes in the deity of Christ. The person that believes in the deity of Christ overcomes the world. Victory results from faith in Him. This is not simply a rhetorical question but an appeal to fact.
Gal. 1:4-5, “…who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.”
Everything depends on who and what we believe. Jesus and His work is the content of our trust. The importance of the cross is who died on it.
Jn 20:31, “…but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.”
PRINCIPLE: Faith in
the incarnate Christ brings power to every Christian to overcome the world system.
APPLICATION:
Faith in the incarnate Christ brings power to overcome sin and the world system. This is not a glib statement but a pronouncement of profound principle. Christians can live lives of victory in the face of powerful, daily pressures from the world system. They march to a different drummer. They have enough conviction not to be swayed by the world system. Spiritual Christians have a different and independent system of evaluation of life.
Ro 8:37, “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”
2 Co 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.”
Re 2:7, 11, 17 26, 7 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God…. 11 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes shall not be hurt by the second death…. 17 “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To him who overcomes I will give some of the hidden manna to eat. And I will give him a white stone, and on the stone a new name written which no one knows except him who receives it…. 26 “And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations—….
Re 3:5, 12, 21, 5 “He who overcomes shall be clothed in white garments, and I will not blot out his name from the Book of Life; but I will confess his name before My Father and before His angels…. 12 “He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God, and he shall go out no more. And I will write on him the name of My God and the name of the city of My God, the New Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God. And I will write on him My new name…. 21 “To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.”
We overcome the unbelief inherent in the world system, totally devoid of true trust in the eternal Son of God in all the fullness of His deity. There is something in our new life in Christ that allows us to respond to God’s system of values and reject Satan’s system of values. When we own God’s values and live our lives in harmony with those values, we overcome the world. If we do not live in harmony with those values, discord comes to our spiritual lives.
True faith does not believe despite the facts, but it believes in spite of the cost. It acts on what God says as true. This is not the faith of years ago when we first came to Christ only. It is the faith of moment-by-moment trust in God’s counter principles for life.
The Word of God has a revelatory function in our spirituality. It shows the power of sin and the power of Christ to counteract sin. Faith in God’s provisions in the Word of God provides the power to overcome sin issues.
