Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 John 5:4
For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, [even] our faith.
4. Reason why keeping even the difficult commandment of loving others rather than oneself is not a grievous burden. It is the world and its ways which makes the Divine commands grievous, and the new birth involved in faith gives us a new unworldly nature and a strength which conquers the world.
For whatsoever is born of God ] Or, Because whatsoever is begotten of God: see on 1Jn 5:1. The collective neuter, ‘ what soever’, gives the principle a wide sweep by stating it in its most abstract form: comp. Joh 6:37; Joh 17:2. Moreover, whereas the masculine would make the victorious person prominent, the neuter emphasizes rather the victorious power. It is not the man, but his birth from God, which conquers. In 1Jn 5:1 we had the masculine and in 1Jn 5:18 return to the masculine again. In all three cases we have the perfect, not the aorist, participle. It is not the mere fact of having received the Divine birth that is insisted on, but the permanent results of the birth. Comp. Joh 3:6; Joh 3:8, where we have the same tense and a similar change from neuter to masculine.
this is the victory that overcometh ] Better, the victory that overcame the world is this (see on 1Jn 1:5): aorist, of a victory won once for all. Faith, which is ‘the proof of things not seen’ (Heb 11:1) which ‘are eternal’ (2Co 4:18), has conquered the world which is visible and ‘is passing away’ (1Jn 2:17). Faith is both the victory and the victor. Under the influence of the Vulgate’s vincit, Wiclif, Luther, Tyndale and many others all have the present tense here. In the faith which has won a decisive victory the believer goes on conquering. ‘Victory’ ( ) occurs nowhere else in N.T.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world – The world, in its maxims, and precepts, and customs, does not rule him, but he is a freeman. The idea is, that there is a conflict between religion and the world, and that in the heart of every true Christian religion secures the victory, or triumphs. In Joh 16:33, the Saviour says, Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. See the notes at that verse. He obtained a complete triumph over him who rules the darkness of the world, and laid the foundation for a victory by his people over all vice, error, and sin. John makes this affirmation of all who are born of God. Whatsoever, or, as the Greek is, Everything which is begotten of God, ( pan to gegenemenon;) meaning to affirm, undoubtedly, that in every instance where one is truly regenerated, there is this victory over the world. See the Jam 4:4 note; 1Jo 2:15-16 note. It is one of the settled maxims of religion, that every man who is a true Christian gains a victory over the world; and consequently a maxim as settled, that where the spirit of the world reigns supremely in the heart, there is no true religion. But, if this be a true principle, how many professed Christians are there who are strangers to all claims of piety – for how many are there who are wholly governed by the spirit of this world!
And this is the victory – This is the source or means of the victory which is thus achieved.
Even our faith – Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, 1Jo 5:5. He overcame the world, Joh 16:33, and it is by that faith which makes us one with him, and that imbues us with his Spirit, that we are able to do it also.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
1Jn 5:4
For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world
The greatest character and the greatest conquest
I.
The greatest character. Born of God. This means a moral generation in men of a Divine character. It implies three things.
1. Filial devotion.
2. Moral resemblance. Like begets like, children are like their parents. He who is morally born of God resembles God in spirit and in character.
3. Glorious heirship. If a son, then an heir of God through Christ.
II. The greatest conquest. Overcometh the world. The world is here used to represent the mighty aggregation of evil. The conquest of the world includes the subordination–
1. Of matter to mind. The rendering of all material elements, circumstances, and influences, subservient to the elevating of the reason and the ennobling of the soul. It includes the subordination–
2. Of the mind to God. The devotion of the intellect to the study of God; of the heart to the love of God; of the conscience to the will of God. Sublime conquest this! The grand difference between a man Divinely born and others is this, that he conquers the world whilst others are conquered by it. (Homilist.)
Worldliness
I. The Christians life is a lengthened contest with the three enemies–sin, the world, the devil. What is the world, and what is worldliness? Can we find in the Scriptures any full lists of acts which are worldly? No. It is the genius of Christianity to give us principles, and not precise rules.
II. Is this wry liberty consists the strictness of the law. And owing to this, too, there is a difficulty in obeying it, far beyond that of obeying a law, To escape this difficulty various attempts have been made to lay down precise rules, and to define exactly what is and what is not the world and worldly. The most common of these tests is, as is well known, that of presence at social reunions and amusements of a particular class. It seems uncharitable to pronounce as necessarily irreligious those who, with every other token of sincere piety, are found nevertheless sometimes in places where others of us are never to be seen. If a person whose whole life and walk is that of a Christian says that he really before God has come to the conclusion that his spiritual growth is in no wise retarded by the enjoyment of some pleasure–not in itself sinful–and that his example is not likely to be injurious to others, it does seem monstrous to say to him, That is one of the things I have set down as belonging to the world; and as you see no harm in it, you are outside the covenant. To our own Master we each of us stand or fall. Moreover, the test is insufficient, and therefore deceptive. It is quite possible to bear it without a particle of religion, or without even any profession of religion. Another evil arising from this arbitrary and most inadequate test of worldliness is, that the persons who apply it are very liable to be deceived by it themselves. From habitually speaking of one kind of worldliness they lapse into the practical belief that there is none other; and, having clearly overcome that–sometimes after a long trial of physical rather than spiritual strength–they imagine that they have given up the world, and that their contest with that enemy, at all events, is at an end. If we do strip off our ornaments of gold and cast them into the fire, we must take heed lest we worship the calf into which they are molten. Another, and not a trifling danger of these false tests arises from the fact that very many of those who use them are among the best, the most pious, and the most truly unworldly persons on earth. Now, when such persons use as tests of victory over the world the forsaking of those two or three courses or habits, the impression conveyed to the thoughtless votary of dissipation is this–These amusements, then, are what I have to give up; on the subject of these is the main difference, between myself and those about whose piety there can be no doubt. Well, I shall give them up assuredly at some time, as many have done before me, and then I shall stand in their position. And, as time and change of circumstances will in many cases bring about this resemblance, they leave it to time to bring about, and make no effort to overcome a world which, as they have been accustomed to hear it described, will in all probability one day fly away of its own accord.
III. Precise rules upon matters intrinsically indifferent, but capable of being made occasions of fostering a worldly spirit, are to be avoided, because they give to those who at present want to be guided neither by the letter nor the spirit a false impression as to what that world is by the subjugation of which we are told the child of God is characterised. Before you come to be Christians you must bear far stricter tests than these. Especially in these cravings for excitement and gaiety, which are by your own admissions the forms in which the world is most alluring, and because they are so, you must be completely changed. But the contest does not end there or then. To you and all of us it ends on earth, and while we live, nowhere and never, For the world is not a time, or a place, or a class of persons, or a definable course of acts, or a definite set of amusements; it is a system pervading every, place, extending from age to age, tempting us in all our occupations, mixing itself with all our thoughts, insinuating itself under forms the most unsuspected, lurking in pursuits the most harmless–yea, in pursuits, without it, the most holy–checking aspirations the most noble, sullying affections the most pure. (J. C. Coghlan, D. D.)
The glory of a truly good man
I. He has the highest moral pedigree. In conventional society there are fools who pride themselves in their ancestry.
1. In him there is a moral resemblance to the greatest Being. As the human offspring partakes of the nature of his parent, so the good man partakes of the moral character of God, a character loving, pure, just.
2. Over him there is the tenderest care of the greatest Being. As a father pitieth his children, etc.
3. In him there is the most loyal devotion to the greatest Being. He loves the Most High supremely, constantly, practically.
II. He achieves the highest moral conquest. He overcomes the world. He conquers errors, lusts; he overcomes bad habits and reforms corrupt institutions. (Homilist.)
Overcoming the world
I. The contest with the world. It is assumed to be universal. None can avoid it. If we follow Christ we must resist the world. The forms in which this warfare must be maintained are many and dangerous. The apostle had in his view the persecutions which believers were required to encounter in his day from the world. We have cause to be thankful that we are not exposed to the trials of those times. Even supposing, however, that our danger does not lie in this direction, it may still be great in another. The love of money may eat as a canker into the soul. It may tempt to practices of very doubtful propriety. It may harden the heart against the claims of others. Even the enlightened and Godly man finds the extreme danger of this subtle enemy. It is a principal hindrance to his growth in grace. It can be withstood only by a most determined resistance.
II. How this victory may be gained.
1. Regeneration. Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world. There is great force in the term whatsoever. It refers to the work of the Spirit in the soul. So far as that prevails there is a power and principle in direct antagonism to the world. And so far as the new man prevails, it overcometh the world. Paul reiterates the same sentiment (Rom 12:2). He takes for granted that unless there be this transformation of mind, there will be conformity to the world, but that such transformation will overcome it. How it does so may easily be shown.
(1) The mind is then enlightened. It sees the world in its true character.
(2) The conscience is quickened. There is the utmost jealousy lest the world should obtain the place of God.
(3) The heart is purified. Thus the taste is rendered pure and heavenly. The world, therefore, cannot please nor satisfy.
2. Faith. This is the victory, etc. Show how faith secures such a blessed issue.
(1) It does so by engaging the attention with Jesus Christ. This is prominent in the verse before us. He believeth that Jesus is the Son of God. His mind becomes thus occupied with the high themes of the person and work of Christ. In comparison with them, all other things fall into insignificance in his esteem.
(2) Again, the believer is much strengthened in these elevated views by observing that one design of Christs salvation is to secure a victory over the present world.
(3) Further, he is encouraged while he is warned by considering the example of Christ and of those who have been conformed to Him. They conquered, and so may he.
(4) Finally, his faith carries him into close and constant intercourse with eternity, and thus a mighty influence is brought to bear upon him, and deaden his attachments to the present world. It is of the very nature of faith to unveil the eternal world. (J. Morgan, D. D.)
The conflicts and conquest of the born of God
I. The subject principally spoken of, the born of God. This doctrine, however ridiculed by some, our Saviour preached with great plainness, as absolutely necessary. To be born of God is to have a supernatural principle of spiritual life implanted by God in the soul. Concerning this principle of grace, whereby a dead sinner is made alive, let it be observed that it is infused and not acquired. The first principle or spring of good actions may, with equal reason, be supposed to be infused into us as Christians, as it is undoubtedly true that the principle of reasoning is infused into us as men: none ever supposed that the natural power of reasoning may be acquired, though a greater facility or degree thereof is gradually attained. Again, as in nature the seed produces fruit, and in things moral the principle of action produces action, as the principle of reason produces acts of reason, so in things spiritual the principle of grace produces acts of grace. And this principle of grace, which is at least in the order of nature antecedent to any act of grace, is the immediate effect of the power of God. But the words here are not whosoever, in the masculine gender, but whatsoever, in the neuter; and so may with as much, or more propriety, be applied to things than persons. They seem to refer to the inward or spiritual embellishments peculiar to the man of God as a soldier of Christ. As the Christian is one born of God, all his graces are born so too. To instance in faith, hope, and love, the cardinal or principle and most leading of them. How little a matter soever some persons make of believing, as if they had faith at their command, or could believe at pleasure, the Apostle Paul says expressly that Faith is a fruit of the Spirit, so not the work of man. True Christian hope is also of Divine original. It is our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God, even our Father, who giveth us a good hope, through grace (2Th 2:16-17). And that love is a heaven-born grace nothing can be more clear than what this loving apostle says, Love is of God, and he that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and God in him (1Jn 4:7; 1Jn 4:16). So that He and His Spirit may properly be called the God, or Spirit of faith, hope, and love. These are a specimen of the rest; for as these, so in like manner the spiritual peace, joy, and consolation of saints, and all their other graces, are born of God; i.e., they receive their birth, rise, and first beginning from Him; and as their first life and all their motion is from Him, He only can put them into motion. Thus the soldier of Christ is girded of God Himself, and furnished by the Holy Spirit with every grace that is needful for his office and exercise.
II. To what is said or predicated of the subject of the words–the born of God. It refers to his honour, to overcome the world. Neither the gospel of grace nor the graces of the gospel are given in vain to any person or people. The world is the theatre of action, or field of battle.
1. No man, as a descendant of the first Adam, is born a Christian or a saint, but a sinner.
2. Christians are soldiers by their calling, and their life is a continued warfare.
3. It may animate Christians as soldiers of Christ, insomuch as all their armour and artillery is proved, and born of God. His Spirit has formed and fitted it for them.
4. We see here the excellency of spiritual grace.
5. To preserve their humility and heighten their thankfulness to God the Spirit, Christians should always remember that whatever advantages or conquests they gain over their spiritual enemies are not owing to their wisdom, power, and fortitude of mind, as men, but to the instrumentality of their graces.
III. How or whereby the Christians honour of victory is attained; and it is by his faith–And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. The gaieties, pleasures, and advantages of the present life are the arms with which the world has slain its thousands, and with which it still endeavours to delude and destroy mankind; but faith in Jesus Christ detects its fallacy and defeats its purpose on believers. If hope wavers, love chills and loses its wonted fervour, or patience; faith brings in new succours when it tells them, Yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry (Heb 10:37). In a word, faith is the enemys killing and the Christians conquering grace. (G. Braithwaite, M. A.)
The world overcome
1. The real Christian, in his way to heaven, has a conquest to make, a victory to win–he must overcome the world. Why is this? Because the world is fallen from God. Satan is its prince and ruler; and, therefore, at our very baptism we have vowed to renounce it. The devil finds in the world temptations suited to each one of us. One is tempted by riches to deny his God. The smile of the world and hope of its favour make many traitors to God; the fear of its frown, and still more of its sneers, keeps many from confessing Christ before men.
II. The true Christian doth gain the victory over all: for whosoever is born of God overcometh the world. Such a one hath that within him which is greater than the world, even the Spirit of God. The grace of God enables him to persevere; to get the better from day to day of his own evil desires; to resist the worlds temptations.
III. And by what means does the Christian gain the victory? This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Not as though there were any strength in ourselves; not as though there were any merit in our faith; but by crediting His testimony, and by daring to act upon it, we obtain knowledge, and strength, and motives which make us conquerors. Let me show this by a comparison. A report is brought that in a distant country labour is wanted and high wages may be gained; that all things are abundant and flourishing. One man who hears the report, though he is able to go, continues where he is, to struggle with poverty. Another, when he hears it, forthwith sells all he has, removes his family, crosses the deep, encounters trials, and at length reaches the promised land of plenty. Why did he go? Because he believed; he had faith in the report; and his strong belief made him overcome all obstacles. So it is with that far higher faith, that gospel faith which is the gift of God, which He works in the heart, and which receives His testimony as true. Let us see how it is that everyone who has a true faith in Christ will overcome the world.
1. It is because the believer is fully convinced that the world is evil, that therefore the Son of God came to redeem him from its power, and to bring him to heaven and to God.
2. Again, the believer knows that the Lord Jesus conquered the world, not for Himself but for His followers, and that they must study and strive to be sharers in His victory.
3. The Christian sees by the example of Jesus Christ, by His life of humiliation and self-denial, and yet more by His bitter sufferings and death, that the world is to be renounced. This is the lesson of His Cross.
4. Faith teaches the Christian that the Saviour is able to make all grace abound towards him.
5. And once more, it is by faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, in His exaltation to Heaven, and His constant intercession for us there, that we are begotten again unto a lively hope, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away. (E. Blencowe, M. A.)
This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith—
Faiths conquest of the world
I. What did St. John mean by the world? The old Greeks had employed the very word which St. John here uses, to describe the created universe, or this earth, in all its ordered beauty; and the word often occurs in this sense in Scripture (Rom 1:20; Act 17:24; 2Pe 3:6). But neither of these senses can belong to the word in the passage before us. This material world is not an enemy to be conquered; it is a friend to be reverently consulted, that we may know something of the Eternal Mind that framed it (Psa 19:1; Psa 24:1). Does St. John then mean by the world the entire human family–the whole world of men? We find the word, undoubtedly, used in this sense, also in the Bible (Mat 5:14; Mat 13:38; Mat 18:7; Joh 8:12; Joh 8:26; Joh 12:19; 1Co 4:13). This use of the word is popular as well as classical: it is found in Shakespeare and Milton; but it is not St. Johns meaning in the present passage. For this world, which thus comprises all human beings, included the Christian Church and St. John himself. Whereas the world of which St. John is speaking is plainly a world with which St. John has nothing to do; a world which is hostile to all that he has at heart; a world to be overcome by everyone that is born of God. In this passage, then, the world means human life and society, so far as it is alienated from God, through being centred on material objects and aims, and thus opposed to Gods Spirit and His kingdom. And this is the sense of the word in the majority of cases where it occurs in the writings of St. John (Joh 7:7; Joh 14:17; Joh 14:27; Joh 14:30; Joh 15:18-19; Joh 17:9; Joh 17:14; 1Jn 2:15-17; 1Jn 5:4; 1Jn 5:19). This world, according to St. Paul, has a spirit of its own, opposed to the Spirit of God; and there are things of the world opposed to the things of God; and rudiments and elements of the world which are not after Christ; and there is a sorrow of the world that worketh death, as contrasted with a godly sorrow unto repentance, not to be repented of; so that, gazing on the Cross of Christ, St. Paul says that by it the world is crucified to him, and he to the world–so utter is the moral separation between them. To the same purpose is St. Jamess definition of true religion and undefiled, before God and the Father; it consists not only in active philanthropy, but in a mans keeping himself unspotted from the world. And there is the even more solemn warning of the same apostle, that the friendship of the world is enmity with God.
II. This body of language shows that the conception of the world as human life, so far as it is alienated from God, is one of the most prominent and distinct truths brought before us in the new testament. The world is a living tradition of disloyalty and dislike to God and His kingdom, just as the Church is or was meant to be a living tradition of faith, hope, and charity; a mass of loyal, affectionate, energetic devotion to the cause of God. Of the millions and millions of human beings who have lived, nearly everyone probably has contributed something, his own little addition, to the great tradition of materialised life which St. John calls the world. The world of the apostolic age was the Roman society and empire, with the exception of the small Christian Church. When a Christian of that day named the world, his thoughts first rested on the vast array of wealth, prestige, and power, whose centre was at Rome. Both St. Peter in his first Epistle (1Pe 5:13), and St. John in the Revelation (Rev 18:2), salute pagan Rome as Babylon; as the typical centre of organised worldly power among the sons of men, at the very height of its alienation from Almighty God. The world, then, of the apostolic age was primarily a vast organisation. But it was not a world that could last (Rev 18:1-2; Rev 18:4-5). Alaric the Goth appeared before Rome; and the city of the Caesars became the prey of the barbarians. The event produced a sensation much more profound than would now be occasioned by the sack of London. The work of a thousand years, the greatest effort to organise human life permanently under a single system of government, the greatest civilisation that the world had known, at once so vicious and so magnificent, had perished from sight. It seemed to those who witnessed it as though life would be no longer endurable, and that the end had come. But before the occurrence of this catastrophe, another and a more remarkable change had been silently taking place. For nearly three hundred years the Church had been leavening the empire. And the empire, feeling and dreading the ever-advancing, ever-widening influence, had again and again endeavoured to extinguish it in a sea of blood. From the year of the crucifixion, A.D. 29, to the Edict of Toleration, A.D. 313, there were 284 years of almost uninterrupted growth, promoted by almost perpetual suffering; until at last, in St. Augustines language, the Cross passed from the scenes of public executions to the diadem of the Caesars. The world now to a great extent used Christian language, it accepted outwardly Christian rules. And in order to keep this world at bay, some Christians fled from the great highways and centres of life to lead the life of solitaires in the Egyptian deserts; while others even organised schisms, like that of the Donatists, which, if small and select, relatively to the great Catholic Church, should at least be unworldly. They forgot that our Lord had anticipated the new state of things by His parables of the net and of the tares; they forgot that whether the world presents itself as an organisation or as a temper, a Christians business is to encounter and to overcome it. The great question was and is, how to achieve this; and St. John gives us explicit instructions. This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
III. This is, I say, the question for us of today, no less than for our predecessors in the faith of Christ. For the world is not a piece of the furniture of bygone centuries, which had long since perished, except in the pages of our ancient and sacred books. It is here, around and among us; living and energetic, and true to the character which our Lord and His apostles gave it. It is here, in our business, in our homes, in our conversations, in our literature; it is here, awakening echoes loud and shrill within our hearts, if, indeed, it be not throned in them. Is the world temper to be overcome by mental cultivation? We live in days when language is used about education and literature, as if of themselves they had an elevating and transforming power in human life. In combination with other and higher influences mental cultivation does much for man. It softens his manners; it tames his natural ferocity. It refines and stimulates his understanding, his taste, his imagination. But it has no necessary power of purifying his affections, or of guiding or invigorating his will. In these respects it leaves him as it finds him. And, if he is bound heart and soul to the material aspects of this present life, it will not help him to break his bonds. Is the world, then, to be overcome by sorrow, by failure, by disappointment; in a word, by the rude teaching of experience? Sorrow and failure are no doubt to many men a revelation. They show that the material scene in which we pass our days is itself passing. They rouse into activity from the depths of our souls deep currents of feeling; and we may easily mistake feeling for something which it is not. Feeling is not faith; it sees nothing beyond the veil. Feeling is not practice; it may sweep the soul in gusts before it, yet commit us to nothing. Feeling deplores when it does not resist; it admires and approves of enterprises which it never attempts. Consequently, self-exhausted, in time it dies back; leaving the soul worse off than it would be, if it had never felt so strongly; worse off, because at once weaker and less sensitive than before. Certainly, if the world is to be overcome, it must be, as St. John tells us, by a power which lifts us above it, and such a power is faith. Faith does two things which are essential to success in this matter. It enables us to measure the world; to appraise it, not at its own, but at its real value. It does this by opening to our view that other and higher world of which Christ our Lord is King, and in which His saints and servants are at home; that world which, unlike this, will last forever. When the eyes of a mans understanding are thus enlightened that he may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance among the saints, faith enables him to take a second step. Faith is a hand whereby the soul lays actual hold on the unseen realities; and so learns to sit loosely to and detach itself from that which only belongs to time. (Canon Liddon.)
The victory of faith
I. The Christians enemy, the world.
1. The tyranny of the present. Worldliness is the attractive power of something present, in opposition to something to come. In this respect, worldliness is the spirit of childhood carried on into manhood. The child lives in the present hour–today to him is everything. Natural in the child, and therefore pardonable, this spirit, when carried on into manhood, is coarse–is worldliness. The most distinct illustration given us of this, is the case of Esau. In this worldliness, moreover, is to be remarked the gamesters desperate play. There is a gambling spirit in human nature. Esau distinctly expresses this: Behold I am at the point to die, and what shall my birthright profit me? He might never live to enjoy his birthright; but the pottage was before him, present, certain, there. Now, observe the utter powerlessness of mere preaching to cope with this tyrannical power of the present.
2. The tyranny of the sensual. I call it tyranny, because the evidences of the senses are all powerful, in spite of the protestations of the reason. The man who died yesterday, and whom the world called a successful man–for what did he live? He lived for this world–he gained this world. Houses, lands, name, position in society–all that earth could give of enjoyments–he had. We hear men complain of the sordid love of gold, but gold is merely a medium of exchange for other things: gold is land, titles, name, comfort–all that the world can give.
3. The spirit of society. The spirit of the world is forever altering–impalpable; forever eluding, in fresh forms, your attempts to seize it. In the days of Noah the spirit of the world was violence. In Elijahs day it was idolatry. In the day of Christ it was power concentrated and condensed in the government of Rome. In ours, perhaps, it is the love of money. It enters in different proportions into different bosoms; it is found in a different form in contiguous towns; in the fashionable watering place, and in the commercial city: it is this thing at Athens, and another in Corinth. This is the spirit of the world–a thing in my heart and sours; to be struggled against not so much in the case of others, as in the silent battle to be done within our own souls.
II. The victory of faith. Faith is a theological expression; yet it is the commonest principle of mans daily life, called in that region prudence, enterprise, or some such name. It is in effect the principle on which alone any human superiority can be gained. Faith, in religion, is the same principle as faith in worldly matters, differing only in its object. The difference between the faith of the Christian and that of the man of the world, or the mere ordinary religionist, is not a difference in mental operation, but in the object of the faith–to believe that Jesus is the Christ is the peculiarity of Christian faith. Do you think that the temperate man has overcome the world, who, instead of the short-lived rapture of intoxication, chooses regular employment, health, and prosperity? Is it not the world in another form, which has his homage? Or do you suppose that the so called religious man is really the worlds conqueror by being content to give up seventy years of enjoyment in order to win innumerable ages of the very same species of enjoyment? Has he not only made earth a hell, in order that earthly things may be his heaven forever? Thus the victory of faith proceeds from stage to stage; the first victory is, when the present is conquered by the future; the last, when the visible and eternal is despised in comparison of the invisible and eternal. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)
The victory of faith
I. First, the text speaks of a great victory–the victory of victories the greatest of all. A tough battle, I warrant you; not one which carpet knights might win; no easy skirmish; not one he shall gain, who, but a raw recruit today, put on his regimentals, and foolishly imagines that one week of service will ensure a crown of glory. Nay, it is a life long war–a fight needing the power of a strong heart.
1. He overcomes the world when it sets up itself as a legislator, wishing to teach him customs. Men usually swim with the stream like a dead fish; it is only the living fish that goes against it. It is only the Christian who despises customs, who does not care for conventionalisms, who only asks himself the question, Is it right or is it wrong? If it is right, I will be singular. If there is not another man in this world who will do it, I will do it. I care not what others do; I shall not be weighed by other men; to my own Master I stand or fall. Thus I conquer and overcome the customs of the world.
2. The rebel against the worlds customs. And if we do so, what is the conduct of our enemy? She changes her aspect. That man is a heretic; that man is a fanatic; he is a cant, he is a hypocrite, says the world directly. She lets no stone be unturned whereby she may injure him.
3. Well, saith the world, I will try another style, and this, believe me, is the most dangerous of all. A smiling world is worse than a frowning one. It is not in the cold wintry wind that I take off my coat of righteousness and throw it away; it is when the sun comes, when the weather is warm and the air balmy, that I unguardedly strip off my robes and become naked. Some men cannot live without a large amount of praise; and if they have no more than they deserve, let them have it.
4. Sometimes, again, the world turns jailer to a Christian. Many a man has had the chance of being rich in an hour, affluent in a moment, if he would but clutch something which he dare not look at, because God within him said, No. The world said, Be rich, be rich; but the Holy Spirit said, No! be honest; serve thy God. Oh, the stern contest and the manly combat carried on within the heart!
II. But my text speaks of a great birth. Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world. This new birth is the mysterious point in all religion. To be born again is to undergo a change so mysterious that human words cannot speak of it. As we cannot describe our first birth, so it is impossible for us to describe the second. At the time of the new birth the soul is in great agony–often drowned in seas of tears. It is a new heart and a right spirit; a mysterious but yet an actual and real change! Let me tell you, moreover, that this change is a supernatural one. It is not one that a man performs upon himself. It is a new principle infused which works in the heart, enters the very soul and moves the entire man.
III. There is a great grace. Persons who are born again really do overcome the world. Who are the men that do anything in the world? Are they not always men of faith? Take it even as natural faith. Who wins the battle? Why, the man who knows he will win it, and vows that he will be victor. Never was a marvel done upon the earth, but it had sprung of faith; nothing noble, generous, or great, but faith was the root of the achievement; nothing comely, nothing famous, but its praise is faith. Leonidas fought in human faith as Joshua in Divine. Xenophon trusted to his skill, and the sons of Matthias to their cause. Faith is mightiest of the mighty. Faith makes you almost as omnipotent as God by the borrowed might of its divinity. Give us faith and we can do all things. I want to tell you how it is that faith helps Christians to overcome the world. It always does it homeopathically. You say, That is a singular idea. So it may be. The principle is that like cures like. So does faith overcome the world by curing like with like. How does faith trample upon the fear of the world? By the fear of God. How does faith overthrow the worlds hopes? There, says the world, I will give thee this, I will give thee that, if thou wilt be my disciple. There is a hope for you; you shall be rich, you shall be great. But faith says, I have a hope laid up in heaven; a hope which fadeth not away, and the hope of glory overcomes all the hopes of the world. Ah! says the world, why not follow the example of your fellows? Because, says faith, I will follow the example of Christ. Well, says the world, since thou wilt not be conquered by all this, come, I will love thee; thou shalt be my friend. Faith says, He that is the friend of this world cannot be the friend of God. God loves me. So he puts love against love, fear against fear, hope against hope, dread against dread, and so faith overcomes the world by like curing like. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The true hero
I. The Christians powerful foe. The god of this world seeks to blind mens eyes, and He does this with the man born of God, chiefly by presenting to him the worlds purest good, and tempting him to centre his affections upon that. The constant and bitter struggle is with that which is lawful and right, in its attempts to assume an unlawful and a wrong position; the most arduous contest is with earthly good in its attempts to win back his warmest affections.
II. The Christians powerful weapon. The faith spoken of in the text has its foundation in the belief of the Divine testimony respecting the Son of God. It is the being habitually influenced by that which is spiritual. It is the Cross ever present and trusted in; heaven ever visible and longed for. The world points below, faith above. The world influences us to live to ourselves; faith, to live to Christ. The world would confine our thoughts to time; faith would fix them on eternity.
III. The Christians peculiar triumph. That faith which is the gift of God, in its feeblest influence, will impart to the soul higher hopes, nobler pursuits, and warmer affections than can belong to this world. But whilst the Christian thus triumphs over the world, his triumph is peculiar. Who is he that over cometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? None but the Christian places himself in opposition to the world. The battle of life indeed rages everywhere around. Interest clashes with interest, and passion strives with passion; but it is not against the world, but for it. And not only is the Christian the only man who is contending against the influence of the world, but he alone possesses the means for such a contest. (J. C. Rook.)
The faith that over cometh
I. It is a matter of some consequence for a soldier to be aware of the enemy with whom he is called upon to contend, his resources, and the plans which he is likely to resort to in order to overcome him. There is less danger in fighting with an enemy who can be seen, however powerful and determined he may be, than with one who hides himself in a forest and lurks in inaccessible regions. This is a harassing kind of warfare, which is always intended to weary out and exhaust those against whom it is employed. The soldiers of the Cross have little ground of complaint on this head, because they have been told of the enemy who is before and around them, of his character, and of the artifices to which he is certain to resort.
II. The victory which is promised to those who fight so as to overcome. The victory of faith over the world differs from all other conquests, which individuals or armies of men obtain over each other. When men quarrel, and resort to the tribunals of the country to have their differences settled, the litigant who gains the cause triumphs over his opponent and inflicts upon him serious loss either in his character or in his means, or both. When nations have recourse to war to settle their disputes, disasters, losses, physical suffering, and many evils always follow in the train even of victory. Such are the victories of armies over each other, but such is not the character of the victory of faith which the children of God achieve over the world. No treasure is wasted, no lives are lost, and no suffering is inflicted upon the vanquished enemy. The world is external to the Christian combatant, so that the warfare in its main features is essentially defensive, the valour of faith being employed to repel attacks and to defeat spiritual aggression. Temptation must be met and overcome by peculiar tactics, so that every successful act of resistance is so much gained toward the final victory, with no loss to the vanquished and with every gain to the victor. Victories over enemies are always followed by great rejoicings, which drown the cry of suffering and cause the people to forget their previous distresses in the exultation of the moment. The high song of eternity can only be chanted by the saints who have overcome the world, proved their valour on the battlefield of spiritual conflict, and received the guerdon of victory from the hands of the Arbiter of the destinies of the living and the dead.
III. The instrument by which this great victory is to be obtained. This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Faith is one of the simplest of principles, because it is nothing more than a confidence in another, which never wavers or hesitates, but it is at the same time one of the mightiest which can enter into the soul. The power which is ascribed to it in Scripture is almost surpassing belief. Faith never stops to estimate the nature of a difficulty, but goes straight forward to its object without turning aside to the right hand or to the left. Faith laughs to scorn the power of the world. (J. B. Courtenay, M. A.)
Faiths victory
I. The Christian, by faith, overcomes the temptations of the world.
II. The unkindness of the world a Christian overcomes by faith. Under this head I include persecution, reproach, calumny, treachery, and misrepresentation. All men are exposed to these more or less–Christians not excepted. Nothing so sours the temper and breaks the spirit, throws men off their guard, so provokes them to revenge, as unkind, unjust, and cruel treatment. Men of the world are overcome by it. They cannot brook an insult–their honour is touched, their pride wounded. Faith makes a Christian conquer here–faith in such exhortations as these (Rom 12:14; Rom 12:17-21; 1Pe 2:20-23).
III. The calamities of the world a Christian overcomes by faith. Adversity and misfortune, as it is called, will overtake us in some shape or other. Men destitute of religion, who have no faith, sink beneath the weight of the burden, are driven to despair, break forth into loud complaints of Providence.
1. Let those persons who are the friends of the world remember they are the enemies of God, .and dying so, will be condemned with it at last.
2. Let the Christian be of good cheer. Christ has overcome the world for him, and through faith in Him he shall overcome it too. (Essex Remembrancer.)
The Christians victory
I. The persons to whom this victory belongs. He assigns it to those who are born of God, and are believers in Jesus Christ. Both descriptions apply to the same individuals.
1. Regeneration introduces us into the new world of grace–the Christian state. While such is the Christians state, his distinguishing character is that of a believer in Jesus Christ.
2. Regeneration allies us more especially to the Father; faith to the Saviour.
3. Regeneration is the pledge of our victory over the world, and faith is the instrument of ejecting that victory.
II. Consider the victory itself.
1. Christians overcome the influence of the world as an example. The same passion which impels us to seek the society of others, impels us to adopt their habits and pursuits. And the same depravity which leads one class of men to set an evil example, leads another to copy and follow it. God, however, requires our imitation of others to cease whenever, by advancing, it would resist His will.
2. Christians overcome the spirit of the world as a guide. Now, they say, we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, by which we may know the things which are freely given to us of God.
3. Christians overcome the love of the world as a portion. Both their judgment and their taste respecting it are completely changed by regeneration and faith.
4. Christians overcome the fear of the world as an adversary. Born of God, they are under His special paternal protection; believing in Christ, they are strong in Him, and in the power of His might; hence the world has no more terrors than it has claims in their view.
5. Christians overcome the hope of the world as a recompense and a rest. Reducing to holy and habitual practice their belief of the shortness and uncertainty of life, and knowing that they have in heaven a better and more enduring substance, they preserve a constant anticipation of death and eternity, and say, I am ready to be offered, when the time of my departure is come. (H. Lacey.)
Faiths victory over the world
The conquest of the world may be considered the highest object of human ambition. But we cannot renounce the world as a portion without incurring its displeasure.
I. The circumstances of this spiritual warfare vary exceedingly with the condition of the world and of each individual. Sometimes the battle is fierce and dreadful; while, at other times, there is the appearance of a truce. This, however, is always a deceitful appearance. On the part of the enemy there never is any real cessation of hostility; and on the part of the Christian there should be none. The opposition of the world is of two kinds; or it assumes two aspects, of a very opposite nature. The first is an aspect of terror. It endeavours to alarm him, by holding out the prospect of losses to be sustained of things naturally desirable, of pains to be endured which are abhorrent to our nature, and does not merely threaten these evils, but actually inflicts them, in a very terrific form. There is another aspect which the world assumes in regard to religion. It does not always frown, but sometimes insidiously smiles. These are the temptations which are more dangerous than fires and gibbets. And the danger is greater because it does not appear to be danger. No apprehensions are awakened. Prosperity and indulgence are naturally agreeable to everyone. At this point, the world is powerful, and the best of men, left to themselves, are weak. Indeed, few who have set their faces Zionward, have escaped unhurt in passing over this enchanted ground.
II. Having shown how the world opposes the Christian, we come next to explain how the Christian gains the victory. And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. None achieve this great victory but souls born of God; for none beside possess a true faith. Genuine faith is a conviction, or full persuasion of the truth, produced by the illumination of the Holy Spirit. The evidence on which this faith is founded, being the beauty and excellence of the truth perceived, cannot but be operative; for it is impossible that the rational mind should see an object to be lovely, and not love it. Such a faith must, therefore, work by love and purify the heart, and be fruitful of good works. It will only be necessary to bring to view two principles, to account for the power of faith, by which it achieves this great victory. The first is, that our estimation of the value of objects is always comparative. The child knows nothing which it esteems more valuable than its toys; but when this child rises to maturity, and the interesting objects of real life are presented to it, the trifling baubles which engaged the affections in childhood are now utterly disregarded, and considered unworthy of a moments thought. The other principle to which I alluded is this. The true method of expelling from the soul one set of affections is to introduce others of a different nature and of greater strength. When faith comes into operation, and love to God becomes the predominant affection, there is not only a great change, but a moral transformation of the soul, from the sinful love of the creature, to the holy love of the Creator. Now the world is conquered. Faith working by love has achieved the victory. (A. Alexander, D. D.)
Faiths victory
I. Who is the great conqueror of the world? It is not he who out of a restless ambition and insatiable thirst for glory and empire carries his victorious arms to the remotest parts of the earth, but the man under this two-fold character:
1. Who hath subdued his inclinations and appetites to all things here below, and moderated his affections and passions about them.
2. Who, as a consequence of this, will not, either to gain the world or to keep it, do a base and unworthy action; whom all the glories of the world cannot tempt into a wicked enterprise, nor all its oppositions hinder from pursuing virtuous ones.
II. What that faith is that overcomes the world. Now of faith there are several kinds: there is a faith grounded on probable reason, upon likely and promising arguments, which yet are not evident nor certain, but may possibly prove false, though they seem to be true; and this is rather opinion than faith. Again, there is a faith grounded on evident and certain reason, wherein if a mans faculties themselves are to be trusted, he cannot be mistaken; and this is rather knowledge than faith. But then there is a faith grounded on Divine revelation, the Word of God; and this is properly called faith, and that faith that overcomes the world: to wit, an hearty belief of all those things that God heretofore by His prophets, and in this last age by his Son, hath made known to the world.
III. What are the strengths and forces of faith by which it obtains this victory?
1. The Christian faith affords many excellent precepts to this purpose (1Jn 2:15; Mat 6:19; Col 3:2; Rom 12:2; 1Co 7:31; Jam 1:27). Precepts of that direct use and tendency to the ease and tranquillity, to the honour and perfection of human nature, that, were they not enforced by Divine authority, would yet be sufficiently recommended by their own intrinsic worth and excellency.
2. The Christian faith sets before us a most powerful example, that of our blessed Saviour, who voluntarily deprived Himself of the riches, honours, and pleasures of this world.
3. The Christian faith assures us of supernatural assistances, those of the Holy Spirit.
4. The Christian faith assures us of most glorious rewards after the conquest–rewards so far surmounting all that this world can pretend to, that they exceed them a whole infinity, and will outlive them an eternity.
5. The Christian faith represents to us the dismal effects and consequences of being overcome by the world; no less than the loss of the soul, and all that is glorious and happy, together with an endless state of insupportable torments.
IV. If the forces of faith are so strong and numerous, how comes it to pass, that notwithstanding them, faith is so often overcome by the world?
1. Because our faith is many times weak, either through the shallowness of the root it has taken, or for want of being excited by due consideration.
2. Because it is many times corrupted; and at this door also are we to lay in a great measure the many shameful overthrows the Christian receives from the world, his corrupt opinions and doctrines; the false glosses and expositions, the forgeries and inventions of men have usually the same fatal influence on faith, as sickness and diseases have on the body; they soon enfeeble and dispirit it, by degrees taint the whole mass, and so alter its very constitution, that it becomes another faith, and administers to other purposes. The conclusion of all is this: that since it is faith that overcomes the world, and it is, through the weakness and corruption of it, that it so often miscarries, that we should use our utmost diligence to keep our faith strong and vigorous, pure and undefiled. (S. A. Freeman, D. D.)
The victory of faith
1. In the world all seems full of chance and change. One man rises, and another falls, one hardly knows why: they hardly know themselves. A very slight accident may turn the future of a mans whole life, perhaps of a whole nation. What, then, will help us to overcome the fear of chances and accidents? Where shall we find something abiding and eternal, a refuge sure and steadfast, in which we may trust, amid all the chances and changes of this mortal life? In that within you which is born of God.
2. In the world so much seems to go by fixed law and rule. Then comes the awful question, Are we at the mercy of these laws? Is the world a great machine, which goes grinding on its own way without any mercy to us or to anything; and are we each of us parts of the machine, and forced of necessity to do all we do? Where shall we find something to trust in, something to give us confidence and hope that we can mend ourselves, that self-improvement is of use, that working is of use, that prudence is of use, for God will reward every man according to his work? In that within you which is born of God.
3. In the world how much seems to go by selfishness! But is it really to be so? Are we to thrive only by thinking of ourselves? No. Something in our hearts tells us that this would be a very miserable world if every man shifted for himself; and that even if we got this worlds good things by selfishness, they would not be worth having after all, if we had no one but ourselves to enjoy them with. What is that? St. John answers, That in you which is born of God.
4. In the world how much seems to go by mere custom and fashion! But there is something in each of us which tells us that that is not right; that each man should act according to his own conscience, and not blindly follow his neighbour, not knowing whither, like sheep over a hedge; that a man is directly responsible at first for his own conduct to God, and that my neighbours did so will be no excuse in Gods sight. What is it which tells us this? That in you which is born of God; and it, if you will listen to it, will enable you to overcome the worlds deceit, and its vain fashions, and foolish hearsays, and blind party cries; and not to follow after a multitude to do evil. What, then, is this thing? St. John tells us that it is born of God; and that it is our faith. We shall overcome by believing. Have you ever thought of all that those great words mean, Jesus is the Son of God?–That He who died on the cross, and rose again for us, now sits at Gods right hand, having all power given to Him in heaven and earth? For, think, if we really believed that, what power it would give us to overcome the world.
1. Those chances and changes of mortal life of which I spoke first. We should not be afraid of them, then, if they came. For we should believe that they were not chances and changes at all, but the loving providence of our Lord and Saviour.
2. Those stern laws and tales by which the world moves, and will move as long as it lasts–we should not be afraid of them either, as if we were mere parts of a machine forced by fate to do this thing and that, without a will of our own. For we should believe that these laws were the laws of the Lord Jesus Christ.
3. If we believed really that Jesus was the Son of God, we should never believe that selfishness was to be the rule of our lives. One sight of Christ upon His cross would tell us that not selfishness, but love, was the likeness of God, the path to honour and glory, happiness and peace.
4. If we really believed this, we should never believe that custom and fashion ought to rule us. For we should live by the example of some one else: but by the example of only one–of Jesus Himself. (C. Kingsley, M. A.)
Victory over the world
I. The world, in Holy Scripture, is the creature as opposed to the Creator; what is fleeting, as opposed to Him who alone is abiding; what is weak, as opposed to Him who alone hath might; what is dead, as opposed to Him who alone hath life; what is sinful, as separate from Him who alone is holy. The world is everything short of God, when made a rival to God. Since, then, God is the life of everything which liveth, in whatever degree anything be without God, separate from God, it is without life; it is death and not life. The world, then, is everything regarded as distinct from God, beside God; it matters not whether they be the things of the sense or the things of the mind.
II. What is victory over the world? Plainly, not victory over the one or other thing, while in others people are led captive; not soundness in one part, while another is diseased; not to cultivate one or other grace which may be easier to us, leaving undone or imperfect what to us may be more difficult. It is to cut off, as far as we may, every hold which everything out of God has over us. And this struggle must be not for a time only, but perseveringly; not in one way, but in all ways; not in one sort of trials, but in all: whatever temptations God permits Satan to prepare for us, whatever trials He Himself bring upon us. It avails not to be patient in sorrow or sickness, if we become careless when it is withdrawn; to be humble to men, if we become self-satisfied with our humility; to overcome indolence, if we forget God in our activity. God be thanked, we are not left to ourselves, to perish. Greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world; we are not only the frail creatures which we seem, flesh and blood, but we are spirit, through the indwelling Spirit; we have been born, not only of the earth, but from above, by a heavenly birth, of God; and so, since born of God, we are stronger than the world.
III. This is the victory which overcometh the world, our faith, which realiseth things invisible, looks beyond the world. So that we must beware not only that we are in earnest striving, but striving with the right faith, that is, with the faith in which we were baptized, the faith in the Holy and Undivided Trinity. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
Faith conquering the world
I. What is the true notion of conquering the world? Where did John learn the expression? It comes from that never-to-be-forgotten night in that upper room, where, with His lifes purpose apparently crushed into nothing, and the world just ready to exercise its last power over Him by killing Him, Jesus Christ breaks out into such a strange strain of triumph, and in the midst of apparent defeat lifts up that clarion note of victory:–I have overcome the world! He had not made much of it according to usual standards, had He? His life had been the life of a poor man. Neither fame nor influence, nor what people call success had He won, judged from the ordinary points of view, and at three-and-thirty is about to be murdered; and yet He says, I have beaten it all, and here I stand a conqueror! That threw a flood of light for John, and for all that had listened to Christ, on the whole conditions of human life, and on what victory and defeat, success and failure in this world mean. Following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ Himself, the poor man, the beaten man, the unsuccessful man may yet say, I have overcome the world. What does that mean? Well, it is built upon this,–the world, meaning thereby the sum total of outward things, considered as apart from God–the world and God we take to be antagonists to one another. And the world woos me to trust to it, to love it; crowds in upon nay eye and shuts out the greater things beyond; absorbs my attention, so that if I let it have its own way I have no leisure to think about anything but itself. And the world conquers me when it succeeds in hindering me from seeing, loving, holding communion with and serving my Father, God. On the other hand, I conquer it when I lay my hand upon it and force it to help me to get nearer Him, to get like Him, to think more often of Him, to do His will more gladly and more constantly. The one victory over the world is to bend it to serve me in the highest things–the attainment of a clearer vision of the Divine nature, the attainment of a deeper love to God Himself, and of a more glad consecration and service to Him. That is the victory–when you can make the world a ladder to lift you to God.
II. The method by which this victory over the world is to be accomplished. We find, according to Johns fashion, a three-fold statement in this context upon this matter, each member of which corresponds to and heightens the preceding. There are, speaking roughly, these three statements, that the true victory over the world is won by a new life, born of and kindred with God; that that life is kindled in mens souls through their faith; that the faith which kindles that supernatural life, the victorious antagonist of the world, is the definite, specific faith in Jesus as the Son of God. The first consideration suggested by these statements is that the one victorious antagonist of all the powers of the world which seek to draw us away from God, is a life in our hearts kindred with God, and derived from God. Gods nature is breathed into the spirits of men that will trust Him; and if you will put your confidence in that dear Lord, and live near Him, into your weakness will come an energy born of the Divine, and you will be able to do all things in the might of the Christ that strengthens you from within, and is the life of your life, and the soul of your soul. And then there is the other way of looking at this same thing, viz., you can conquer the world if you will trust in Jesus Christ, because such trust will bring you into constant, living, loving contact with the Great Conqueror. He conquered once for all, and the very remembrance of His conquest by faith will make me strong–will teach my hands to war and my fingers to fight. He conquered once for all, and His victory will pass with electric power into my life if I trust Him. And then there is the last thought which, though it be not directly expressed in the words before us, is yet closely connected with them. You can conquer the world if you will trust Jesus Christ, because your faith will bring into the midst of your lives the grandest and most solemn and blessed realities. If a man goes to Italy, and lives in the presence of the pictures there, it is marvellous what daubs the works of art, that he used to admire, look when he comes back to England again. And if he has been in communion with Jesus Christ, and has found out what real sweetness is, he will not be over tempted by the coarse dainties that people eat here. Children spoil their appetites for wholesome food by sweetmeats; we very often do the same in regard to the bread of God, but if we have once really tasted it, we shall not care very much for the vulgar dainties on the worlds stall. So, two questions:–Does your faith do anything like that for you? If it does not, what do you think is the worth of it? Does it deaden the worlds delights? Does it lift you above them? Does it make you conqueror? If it does not, do you think it is worth calling faith? And the other question is: Do you want to beat, or to be beaten? When you consult your true self, does your conscience not tell you that it were better for you to keep Gods commandments than to obey the world? (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The victory of faith
Among the many figures to which life is likened in the Bible none commends itself more to the average human experience than that of a battle. Life goes always from a playground to a battleground–from playing soldiers when we are children to being soldiers when we are men and women. We may be having easy times as the world regards us, but as we regard ourselves we are conscious of more or less fighting. Ah! the life battle is a thing deeper than that old, old question of What shall I eat and drink, and wherewithal shall I be clothed? This is a very stupid world. Thousands of years have been impressing on us the real significance of life, disclosing the real conflict; and still men measure by these most superficial estimates and call us victorious or defeated in proportion as we get or fail to get fat lands and fair houses. I think we might define the word world, as the Scriptures use it, by these three words–self, sin, and death. Those words stand for the three divisions of the world army. That is the kingdom of this world. Over against it is the kingdom of heaven. Against self is God; against sin is holiness; against death is life. You see how the ranks of this battle are worldwide. No condition escapes it. No soul without a hindering self, without sin, without the shadow of death. What, now, is the victory? I said self was the first of the three divisions of the world. What is a victory over self? There is and has always been a negative Christianity which thinks the way to overcome the world is to crush it–the way to overcome self or selfishness is to crush self. It is a barren victory. You have left only a wreck–as in ancient warfare they made a desert by killing the people and called it victory! Such victories defeated Xerxes. Rome was wiser: she conquered people, then incorporated them into her own life, and so had their strength and their service. And the only way to win a useful victory over human selfishness is to get self to be an ally of the kingdom of heaven; not to crush self–that is both easy and useless; but to win it over from the service of this world to the service of God. The second division of what is called the world is sin, sin as an inner experience and condition, and sin as an outward seduction and force. The second branch of the victory, then, is to overcome sin. Here, again, we may say a true and lasting victory over sin is not accomplished by repressive measures, by tying it down and crucifying it, by casting it out and leaving the house empty. Not thus is the devil cast out. You can cast him out in the passion of some moral struggle, you can drive him away; but if you stop there, there are seven others ready to come back with him. The intemperate man renounces his cups, but takes no partner in to fill the vacant place, and the old enemy comes back. It is not a victory; it was only a truce. The only way to conquer sin is by filling the heart with the love of God. Again, we need a victory over death; not for the last hour–that spasm is soon over. The fear of dying is seldom a fear that is realised. But that bondage of which the apostle speaks, when people through fear of death are all their life long in slavery. Oh, for a sure victory over that dreary part of this world! The shadow of our mortality we cannot escape. It is constantly flung across our path. Nature writes it before us in flaming colours every autumn day. Here, once more, we cannot win a victory by repression, by saying, Death is common, or by cultivating stolidity. The only battalion you can effectively set opposite the grim spectre on lifes battlefield is the battalion of a new life. Death will have no dominion then. He will be only a porter to open for us a gate to the enjoyment of our life. Now, if I could give you a weapon to win this kind of a victory would it not be worth while?–a victory that would give new power to your selfhood, that would hold your manhood against sin, and that would banish death in glory as sunlight transfigures a cloud! For just such a victory the apostle provides; the weapon is faith. Faith is making a real connection between the soul and God; it is like connecting poles in a battery, our negative brought to Gods positive. Some people speak of faith as if there were some magic potency in it. They trouble themselves for fear their faith is not the right kind. But it is not the quality of the faith that gains the battle; it is dropping into Gods hand that does that. (C. L. Thompson, D. D.)
The victory over the world
We do not live long before we come to understand that it has pleased God so to order things in this life, that no worthy end can be attained without an effort–without encountering and overcoming opposition. It is difficult to do anything that is good; and the Christian life is in keeping with all things around it. If we would live the Christian life, if we would reach the Christians home–there is no other course–we must overcome the world! And, first, this world is an obstacle, needing to be overcome–it exerts, that is, an influence which we must every day be resisting and praying against–just in this: that it looks so solid and so real, that in comparison with it, the eternal world and its interests look to most men as though they had but a shadowy and unsubstantial existence. The supreme importance of the life to come is the doctrine on which all religion rests: but though we often hear and repeat the words, that all on earth is shadow, all beyond is substance–how fast this world of sense grows and greatens upon us again–while the unseen world and all its concerns seem to recede into distance, to melt into air, to fade into nothing! And what is there that shall overcome this materialising influence of a present world: what is there that shall give us the victory over it;–but Faith–Faith which believes what it cannot see, with all the vividness of sight? It is too much, perhaps, to expect that the day should ever come when, for more than short seasons of special elevation, we shall be able to realise the unseen and eternal as plainly as we do the seen and temporal: we cannot look to be always so raised above worldly interests, as to feel that not what we grasp, but what we believe, is the true reality: it will be enough if we carry with us such a conviction as shall constrain us to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and if we ever do so, this must be the victory which shall overcome the world, even our faith. Next we remark that the world is an obstacle in our Christian course, because its cares, business, interests, tend strongly and directly to choke the good seed of religion in the heart–to fill up our minds so completely as that they shall have no room for thoughts of eternity and salvation. How many a time have you knelt down in your closet to say your evening prayer; and in a little while found that some worldly anxiety or trouble was coming between you and your God. Only the faith that overcometh the world can save from this. Only that child-like confidence in our Saviours love and wisdom and power, which trusts everything to Him–which casts all our care upon Him–and so feels the crushing burden lifted from our own weak hearts! Give us that faith; and we have overcome the world: it is our tyrant, and we are its slaves, no more! Give us that faith, not for isolated moments of rapture only, but to be the daily mood and temper of our hearts: and then we shall engage without fever in the business of this world, as feeling that in a few short years it will matter nothing whether w, met disappointment or success. There is yet another sense in which the world is an obstacle to our Christian life, needing to be overcome by faith. As you know, the phrase the world is sometimes used in contrast with the Church. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Taken in this way, the world means all human beings who are without the Christian fold: who are devoid of Christian faith, and of Christian ways of thinking and feeling. And you know well that on the most important subjects there is an absolute contrariety between the doctrines of the Church and of the world: and many a believer has found the worlds frown or the worlds sneer something which it needs much faith to resist and to overcome. How cheaply and lightly will that man hold ridicule and mockery of him and his religion, who realises to his heart that the all-wise and Almighty God thinks upon that subject as he does: who realises that God approves the course he follows, whether man does or no. (A. K. H. Boyd, D. D.)
The true confession of faith
I. How the victory is gained. Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world. Beware of mere outside enlargement. Accretion is not increase. But where there is true life, you have growth and increase. The victory of vitality is onward, upward, skyward, heavenward. Look at this tree–a poor puny twig, you put it in the ground. Yet it is a victor, a conqueror proud and unbending; the very earth that keeps it up is thrust below it in triumph. One of the mighty forces of the universe next comes meddling with it, to coerce it downward, to overthrow it. Gravitation, from its march among the mazes of stellar light, from the holding up in its great hand of the swinging suns in yon far off abyss, now attacks this little newcomer. But theres life in the attacked, and the merest cell of protoplasm is greater than a whole universe of Jupiters and Saturns and stars and suns. The treeling conquers. Watch it rearing its tufted little head, upward stretching, upward reaching, upward growing, upward in spite of the steady downward pull of that blind nigh infinite force, upward. Its a marvel, a conquest, a triumph, an overcoming indeed. This shrublet lives, and because of life born of God it conquers and overcomes. Take another view point, for I wish to lead you up to all that is implied in the phrase born of God. The born of man: what is that? Intellect, idea, mind, soul, thought. Is there not the march of a conqueror here? No! says the opposing Firth of Forth to the beseeching request of man for permission to cross, and it stretches out the broad arm of waves and waters to prevent and protest. No? but the born of man says Yes, and Inchgarvie bares its rocky back for the giant piles, and the great Bridge in levers and cantilevers springs in mocking triumph from shore to shore, and the roll of ordinary traffic now heralds the conquest in a daily song. Ay, wherever you look, whatsoever is born of man overcometh, rocks rend, valleys rise, and the great seas bosom is beaten by revolving paddles and screws into the very kings highway. This is the victory, born of man, born of God, life! At conversion the spiritual principle of the new creation starts its onward programme of evolution to the full stature of the perfect man in a glorified Christ. The new man lives, the old man dies and disappears. What is involved must be evolved, and the Creator has pledged Himself to it. Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world. The world is no friend to grace. It threatens and frightens, annoys, vexes, and checks. It may deform and deface, but kill? Never. The Mugho pine tree shaken by the headlong winds, just thrusts its roots more deeply into the crevices of the rock; the threatening vibrations but make it embrace the cliff and imbed itself in the strong Alpine heart all the more firmly; its the better for all the blaud and bluster of the storm. So if your soul has got life, the merest atom, the minutest cell, the feeblest flicker, the faintest breath, it will grow the higher and higher for these assaults of Satan, for all the downward pulling of the gravitation of the pit.
II. The certainty of the victory. The Calvary is over, the great battle in the darkness is by, the devil is defeated, but it is yours now to pursue and to keep him in the glorious confusion of flight. It is yours, Christians, to be after the fleeing foe. This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. The faith here referred to by the apostle is not so much an attribute of our poor tired bankrupt hearts, but it is an objective outside thing, in fact, just an outward Creed or Confession. It is the fides quae and not the fides qua, the faith believed and not the faith believing. In the present ebb and flow of religious opinion or non-opinion, a creed is as necessary to the Church as the vertebral column to the human body. In the storm everything else may go by the board; the whole cargo may be jettisoned on the surf, but one thing is never flung over the gunwale to lighten the ship, and that is the compass. The binnacle sticks to the deck, and the faithful needle points on through the dash of the storm to the haven of safety and rest. (John Robertson.)
Victory over the world
I. Victory or overcoming is a subjugation or bringing under an opposing party to the power and will of another. And this victory is of two kinds, complete and perfect, or incomplete or imperfect.
1. The notion of a complete victory is when either the opposing party is totally destroyed, or at least when despoiled of any possibility of future resistance. Thus the Son of God, the captain of our salvation, overcame the world (Joh 16:33),
2. There is a victory, but incomplete, such as the victory of the Children of Israel over the Canaanites. And this is the condition of the Christian militant in this world.
II. The person exercising this act of victory and conquest, he that is born of God.
III. The thing upon which this victory is obtained and conquest made is the world, which comprehends in its latitude a double world; the world within us and the world without us.
1. The world that is within us taketh in the two great faculties or powers, viz.,
(1) The passions of the soul; and
(2) the sensual appetite; both these are in their own nature good, placed in us by the wise God of Nature, for most excellent ends and uses. Our business therefore is to keep them in subjection.
2. The world without us is of three kinds.
(1) The natural world, which is the work of Almighty God, is most certainly in itself good; and only evil accidentally by mans abuse of himself or it.
(2) The malignant and evil world, the world of evil angels, and of evil men.
(3) The accidental, or more truly, the providential world in relation to man and his condition in this world, and is commonly of two kinds, viz., prosperous or adverse.
IV. The faith which thus overcometh the world is nothing else but a deep, real, full persuasion of and assent unto those great truths revealed in the Scriptures of God.
1. What are those Divine truths which being really and soundly believed, doth enable the victory over the world?
(1) There is one most powerful, wise, gracious, bountiful, just, and all-seeing God, the author of all being, that is present in all places, knows our thoughts, our wants, our sins, our desires, and is ready to supply us with all things that are good and fit for us beyond all we can ask or think.
(2) This most wise and just and powerful God hath appointed a law or rule according to which the children of men should conform themselves.
(3) This law and will of His He hath communicated and revealed to men in His holy Word, especially by the mission of His Son.
(4) He hath given unto mankind, in and through Christ, a full manifestation of a future life after this of rewards and punishments, and according to that law of His thus manifested by His Son He will, by the same Jesus Christ, judge every man according to his works.
(5) The reward of faith and obedience, in that other life to come, shall be an eternal, blessed, happy estate of soul and body in the glorious heavens, and in the presence and fruition of the ever glorious and eternal God.
(6) The punishment of the rebellious and disobedient unto His will and law of God thus manifested by His Son shall be separation from the presence of God.
(7) The Son of God hath given us the greatest assurance imaginable of the truth of this will of God by taking upon Him our nature, by His miracles, by His death and resurrection and ascension into glory, and by His mission of the Spirit of wisdom and revelation into His apostles and disciples.
(8) God, though full of justice and severity against the obstinate and rebellious, yet is full of tenderness, love, and compassion towards all those that sincerely desire to obey His will, and to accept of terms of peace and reconciliation with Him, and is ready upon repentance and amendment to pardon whatsoever is amiss.
2. As touching the act itself, it is no other than a sound, real, and firm belief of those sacred truths. He that hath this firm persuasion will most certainly repent of his sins past, will most certainly endeavour obedience to the will of God, which is thus believed by him to be holy, just, and good.
V. How faith overcometh the world, which takes in these two considerations.
1. Touching the degree of the victory that faith gives, it is a victory, but not without a continued warfare.
2. Touching the method whereby our faith overcometh the world.
(1) In general the great method whereby faith overcometh the world is by rectifying our judgments and those mistakes that are in us concerning the world and our own condition.
(2) But I shall come to particulars, and follow that track that is before given, in the distribution of the world, as well within as without us, and consider the particular method of faith in subduing them.
1. As for our passions.
(1) Faith directs their due placing upon their objects by discovering what are the true and proper objects of them out of that large and comprehensive law of God which present them as such to the soul, and to be observed under the pain of the displeasure of the glorious and Almighty God.
(2) Upon the same account it teacheth our passions and affections moderation in their exercise, even about their proper objects, and due subordination to the supreme love a man owes to the supreme good, God Almighty.
(3) Upon the same account it teacheth us, under our obligation of duty to God, to cut off and mortify the diseases and corruptions of passion, as malice, envy, revenge, pride, vain glory, ostentation.
2. In reference to our desires.
(1) Natural; it teacheth us great moderation, temperance, sobriety. As touching those degenerate and corrupt lusts, as covetousness, malice, envy; faith doth first of all in general show us that they are prohibited by the great Lord and Lawgiver of heaven and earth, and that under severe penalties; again, secondly, it shows us that they are the great depravers of our nature, the disturbers of the peace, security, and tranquillity of our minds; again, thirdly, it shows us that they are vain, impertinent, and unnecessary perturbations, such as can never do us any real good, but feed our vain imaginations with deceits instead of realities.
3. I come to the consideration of the world without us, as that which possibly is here principally intended, and the victory of the Christian by his faith over it, and first in relation to the natural world. This world is a goodly palace fitted with all grateful objects to our senses, full of variety and pleasantness, and the soul fastening upon them grows careless of the thoughts of another state after death, or to think of the passage to it, or making provision for it; but to set up its hope and happiness, and rest in it, and in these delights and accommodations that it yields our senses. Faith overcometh this part of the world–
(1) By giving us a true estimate of it, to prevent us from overvaluing it.
(2) By frequent reminding of us that it is fitted only to the meridian of life, which is short and transitory, and passeth away.
(3) By presenting unto us a state of future happiness that infinitely surpasseth it.
(4) By discovering our duty in our walk through it, namely, of great moderation and vigilancy.
(5) By presenting unto us the example of the Captain of our salvation, His deportment in it and towards it.
(6) By assuring us that we are but stewards unto the great Lord of the family of heaven and earth for so much as we have of it, and that to Him we must give an account of our stewardship.
(7) By assuring us that our great Lord and Master is a constant observer of all our deportment in it.
(8) And that He will most certainly give a reward proportionable to the management of our trust and stewardship.
4. As to the malignant world of evil men and evil angels; and therein first in relation to the evil counsels and evil examples, that solicit or tempt us to the breach of our duty to God. The methods whereby faith overcometh this part of the malignant world are these.
(1) It presents unto us our duty that we owe to God and which we are bound indispensably to observe under the great penalty of loss of our happiness.
(2) It presents us with the great advantage that we have in obeying God, above whatsoever advantage we can have in obeying or following the sinful examples, counsels, or commands of this world, and the great excess of our disadvantage in obeying or following the evil examples, or counsels of the world.
(3) It presents Almighty God strictly observing our carriage in relation to these temptations.
(4) It presents us with the displeasure and indignation of the same God in case we desert Him, and follow the sinful examples or counsels of men, and with the great favour, love, approbation, and reward of Almighty God if we keep our fidelity and duty to Him.
(5) It presents us with the noble example of our blessed Saviour.
(6) It presents us with the transcendent love of God in Christ Jesus, who, to redeem us from the misery of our natural condition, and from the dominion of sin, and to make us a peculiar people zealous of good works, chose to become a curse and die for us, the greatest obligation of love and gratitude and duty imaginable.
And secondly, as to the other part or scene of this malignant world persecutions, reproaches, scorns, yea death itself, faith presents the soul not only with the foregoing considerations, and that glorious promise, Be faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life, but some other considerations peculiarly proper to this condition.
(1) That it is this state that our blessed Saviour hath not only foretold, but hath annexed a special promise of blessedness unto.
(2) That there have gone before us a noble cloud of examples in all ages, yea, the Captain of our salvation was thus made perfect by suffering.
(3) That though it is troublesome, it is but short, and ends with death, which will be the passage into a state of incorruptible happiness.
3. Concerning the third kind of world, namely, the providential world, consisting in external dispensations of adversity or prosperity.
1. And first concerning the dark part of the world, namely, adversity, as casualties, issues of wealth, or friends, sicknesses, the common effects whereof are impatience, distrust, murmuring, and unquietness.
(1) Faith presents the soul with this assurance, that all external occurrences come from the wise dispensation or permission of the most glorious God; they come not by chance.
(2) That the glorious God may, even upon the account of His own sovereignty, inflict what He pleaseth upon any of His creatures in this life.
(3) That yet whatsoever he doth in this kind, is not only an effect of his power and sovereignty, but of His wisdom, yea, and of His goodness and bounty.
(4) That the best of men deserve far worse at the hands of God than the worst afflictions that ever did or ever can befall any man in this life.
(5) That there have been examples of greater affliction that have befallen better men in this life: witness Job.
(6) That these afflictions are sent for the good even of good men, and it is their fault and weakness if they have not that effect.
(7) That in the midst of the severest afflictions, the favour of God to the soul, discovering itself like the sun shining through a cloud, gives light and comfort to the soul.
(8) That Almighty God is ready to support them that believe in Him, and to bear them up under all their afflictions that they shall not sink under them.
(9) That whatsoever or how great soever the afflictions of this life are, yet faith presents to the believer something that can bear up the soul under these pressures, namely, that after a few years or days are spent, an eternal state of unchangeable and perfect happiness shall succeed.
2. As to the second part of this providential world, namely, prosperity, which in truth is the more dangerous condition of the two without the intervention of the Divine grace.
(1) Faith gives a man a true and equal estimate of this condition, and keeps a man from over valuing it, or himself for it; lets him know it is very uncertain, very casual, very dangerous, and cannot outlast this life.
(2) Faith assures him that Almighty God observes his whole deportment in it, that He hath given him a law of humility, sobriety, temperance, fidelity, and a caution not to trust in uncertain riches, that he must give an account of his stewardship also.
(3) Faith lets him know that the abundance of wealth, honour, friends, applause, success, as they last no longer than this short transitory life, and therefore cannot make up his happiness, no nor give a man any ease or rescue from a fit of the stone or colic; so there is an everlasting state of happiness or misery that must attend every man after death. (Sir M. Hale.)
The ability of faith to overcome the world
I. The mere light and strength of nature is not able to subdue the world.
1. Before we can readily give up all that is dear to us in this world, we must be very sure of something better in the next, and of this we cannot be sufficiently assured by unassisted reason.
2. An authoritative rule of life was wanting to the Gentile world.
3. A sinner by the light of nature cannot tell what will satisfy for sin.
4. To this want of knowledge we add want of strength in the natural man to perform his duty when known. Tis not enough that we have eyes, but we must have strength also to walk in the way that is set before us.
II. The Christian faith is perfectly qualified for this end; for raising a true believer above all the temptations here on earth.
1. The evidence given for the truth of the Christian faith.
2. The helps and encouragements proposed in the gospel for overcoming the world. (W. Reeves, M. A.)
Victorious faith
I. The conquest itself overcometh the world. We mingle among men of the world, but it must be as warriors who are ever on the watch, and are aiming at victory. Therefore–
1. We break loose from the worlds customs.
2. We maintain our freedom to obey a higher Master in all things. We are not enslaved by dread of poverty, greed of riches, official command, personal ambition, love of honour, fear of shame, or force of numbers.
3. We are raised above circumstances, and find our happiness in invisible things: thus we overcome the world.
4. We are above the worlds authority. Its ancient customs or novel edicts are for its own children: we do not own it as a ruler or as a judge.
5. We are above its example, influence, and spirit. We are crucified to the world, and the world is crucified to us.
6. We are above its religion. We gather our religion from God and His Word, not from human sources.
II. The conquering future. Whatsoever is born of God.
1. This nature alone will undertake the contest with the world.
2. This nature alone can continue it. All else wearies in the fray.
3. This nature is born to conquer. God is the Lord, and that which is born of Him is royal and ruling.
III. The conquering weapon even our faith. We are enabled to be conquerors through regarding–
1. The unseen reward which awaits us.
2. The unseen presence which surrounds us.
3. The mystic union to Christ which grace has wrought in us.
4. The sanctifying communion which we enjoy with the unseen God.
IV. The speciality of it. This is the victory.
1. For salvation, finding the rest of faith.
2. For imitation, finding the wisdom of Jesus, the Son of God.
3. For consolation, seeing victory secured to us in Jesus.
Lessons:
1. Behold your conflict–born to battle.
2. Behold your triumph–bound to conquer. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Faith the secret of world-victory
A survey of history discovers to us the presence of a constant law, which may be thus described, progress through conflict. The conflict is of two kinds–physical, as where one nation hurls itself against another in war, or one party seeks to overcome another by sheer force of numbers; and moral, where the battle is one of truth against error, of righteousness against injustice, of religion against the forces of ungodliness. Corresponding to these two kinds of conflict are two kinds of victories–the one material, where present success is often on the side of the strongest battalions; and the other moral, where more permanent results are achieved by gradually transforming mens ideas, by substituting better institutions for corrupt and defective ones, and above all, by making men themselves better. Now Christianity, if it is anything, aims at being a world-conquering principle. This is its ultimate aim, but it has a nearer aim, which is really the guarantee for its accomplishing the wider result. Its nearer aim is to give the individual in his own spirit the victory over the world, to implant there the Divine principle of victory, to make the individual himself a type of that fuller victory which is yet to be realised in society as a whole.
I. There is a power we are to overcome–the world. By the world, in Johns sense, we are to understand a set of principles, the principles that rule and operate in godless society, and stamp their character on its thought, habits, and life; or rather, it is society itself, viewed as ruled and pervaded by these principles, and for that reason hostile to godliness. But if this is what is meant by the world, it might seem as if the task of overcoming it, or at least of preventing ourselves from being overcome by it, were one of no great difficulty. We might be tempted to despise our foe. It might seem as if all we had to do was to withdraw from the world–not to mix with worldly people, not to mind their opinion, not to follow their example. But in the first place even this is not so easy a thing to do. The slave of the world may think himself bound to it by only silken ties; it is when he tries to emancipate himself from its bondage that he finds how really they are iron fetters. There is, for example, the tyranny of public opinion. How few have the courage to go against that? There is the tyranny of fashion. Is it so easy, in circles where fashion is regarded, to emancipate oneself from its imperious mandates, and to take the brave Christian stand which duty may require; There is the power of old-established custom. What a hold there is in that! Most difficult of all to escape from is the spirit of the world. You think to escape from the world, but go where you will its dark, hostile form still confronts you. Thus far I have spoken only of taking up a defensive attitude to the world–keeping the world at arms length–preventing ourselves from being overcome by it. We must feel, however, that the ringing note of victory in our text must mean far more than this. To overcome the world is not only to conquer evil, but to establish good. And though the effort to do this, as regards the world outside, may sometimes fail–though the world, as has often happened, may rise up against the man who seeks to make it better, and may crush him; still is he the real victor who has refused to bow his knee to the Baals that are round about him, for in his own spirit he has the consciousness of having been able to stand by the good, and withstand the bad, and whatever may be the immediate result of his witness, he knows it is that which he has contended for which shall in the end prevail.
II. What is the power by which we are to overcome it? It is, the apostle says, our faith. The words in the original are even more emphatic. The passage reads, this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith. In the power of Christian faith the victory is already won. Not that long conflict has not still to be carried on, but in principle, in spirit, in the certainty of the issue, the battle is already decided. Beliefs–I speak here, of course, of real, not merely nominal beliefs–are the most potent factor in human life, the real power that make and shape the course of history. The first apostles were men with beliefs, and as they went forth speaking out the beliefs that were in them, it soon began to be said of them, Lo, these men that have turned the world upside down are come hither also. Columbus was a man with a belief, and this belief of his gave the world a new continent. Lord Bacon was a man with a belief–belief in a new method of science–and his belief inaugurated the new era of scientific invention and discovery. The early political reformers were men with beliefs, and some of the wildest of their beliefs have already become accomplished realities of legislation. To have in you a belief which is fitted to benefit and bless your fellow men is to be not only in your own small way a social power; it is to be in the truest sense a benefactor of mankind. But what is this belief which Christianity implants in our hearts which has these wondrous effects? The answer is given in the next verse, who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? Now, of course, if belief in Jesus as the Son of God were only belief in a theological proposition, it neither would, nor could, have any effect of the kind alleged. But this is not its real nature. Belief in Jesus as the Son of God, in him who truly entertains it, is not belief in a theological proposition, but belief in a great Divine reality, and if we look at the nature of that reality we have no difficulty in seeing that it not only will have, but must have, the particular virtue here ascribed to it. To overcome the world, or in plain modern words, to fight successfully the battle of good against evil, there are at least necessary these conditions: First of all we must have firm faith in the reality of goodness–of that we are contending for. In the next place we must have the firm conviction that the powers working on the side of goodness in the world are stronger than the powers that can be arrayed against them. In the third place, we must know ourselves to be in our own inmost life linked with these victorious powers. And lastly, as the outcome of all this, we must have undoubting confidence in the ultimate triumph of our cause. These conditions are fulfilled in the man who believes from the heart that Jesus is the Son of God. (James Orr, D. D.)
Faiths victory over the world
I. What it is in the world that the Christian has to overcome.
1. Its allurements. The world holds out many fair, enticing charms. It addresses the senses and imagination. Its temptations, are artfully varied.
2. Its terrors.
II. How the Christians faith enables him to obtain the victory over the world.
1. Faith enables the Christian to overcome the allurements of the world–
(1) By showing him the vanity and unsatisfying nature of all earthly enjoyments.
(2) By pointing out to him the dangerous consequences of the unlawful pursuits of worldly men.
(3) By filling his soul with those pure and spiritual delights which produce a disrelish for the perishing pleasures of sin.
2. Faith enables the Christian to overcome the terrors of the world–
(1) By the gracious supports which it yields under every trial.
(2) By setting before him the example of the great Author and Finisher of our faith.
(3) By the glorious hopes with which it inspires him.
Conclusion:
1. This subject furnishes us with a rule by which to judge whether our faith be genuine.
2. The danger of worldly prosperity. Apt to produce pride, self-sufficiency, forgetfulness of God, insensibility to spiritual objects.
3. The benefit of sanctified affections. They aid us in the exercise of faith. (D. Black.)
The victory of faith
I. We notice faith as the power for overcoming the world.
II. Faith is itself a victory. Simple as it seems, all will bear witness it is not easy to possess this faith, and so says the direction here given. It is a victory. Our position stands like this. You have hitherto been seeking the conquest of the world directly. You have subdued your lusts by turning away from temptation, and they have smouldered in your hearts. You have kept from sin by shunning the acquaintance and occasion of open violation. Now, says Christ, instead of doing this, you must bring your heart into subjection to Me. You must overcome every feeling and thought which leads you to look away from Me, and you must believe in Me. Again, your course is not to come to open contest with the world. You are not to go into danger so that you may prove your strength. But you are to wage war on a smaller ground. You are to contend with your own hearts, as they would lead you not to trust on that which you cannot see, or on that which you cannot perfectly understand, until you have that childlike confidence, that trust on Christ which shall enable you to make your cause the cause of Jesus. This is the victory of faith. That the possession of this faith is a victory I purpose now to show. It is a victory over self-assertion. Self is to us naturally the wisest, the most important of all beings. Our own opinions are always the best, our own interests always those which we most keenly look after. Hence, on the one hand, we oppose the entrance of Christ into our hearts, because we love self, We form our own opinions and we act upon them; but when Christ takes possession we are no longer self-assertive on this matter. Thus the belief that saves is a victory over what I have called our self-assertion. Another form in which self appears is self-interest. We refuse to hear and to receive because it is against our supposed interests to do so. We shall suffer some trouble, or lose some preferment. Full of self; how, then, can Christ find admittance? Dagon must fall before the ark of God: how much more must self before the Son of God! It is not only so, but self will fight for sole possession. Shall I mortify myself, inflict injury on myself? So we reason, and so we oftentimes drive Christ away. This must all be subdued before faith comes. To obtain an entrance into so well-protected a city, demanding forces of such power and nature may well be called a victory. But it is also a victory over the natural unbelief of the heart. There is a difficulty in receiving spiritual things. The natural man is of the earth, earthy. It is as though the choicest music were played to charm the deaf, or the utmost skill exerted to please the blind by the combination of colour. Thus it is that men oppose reason and faith, as though the man who had reason could not have faith. This unbelief must go before a man can receive Christ. All this pride of intellect, all this self-conceit of wisdom, must give place to the higher and nobler attribute of faith. But you must see that it is a victory not won by man alone. Yes, men may believe; but it is when evidence convinces. The Spirit of God must arouse the dormant soul.
III. The world is subjected, or overcome, by this victory. It is overcome to us each as we have this faith in our Lord.
1. The strength of the world over us lies in the undue value which we set on sensuous things. Faith overcomes the world by opening up issues and pressing claims which men do not feel without it.
2. This world has power over us because we feel so dependent on it. When a man is called on to leave father and mother, all the attractions, the joys, and the comforts of home are a constraining influence to keep him from the sacrifice. Ah! but faith gives the man something higher to possess. He is provided for. This is the support of faith, and the world is overcome.
3. Other similar reasons could be given for the victory over the world, all of them fixed, centred in the person of Jesus Christ. Take Christ away, and there is no ground for faith; but while Christ lives and is set forth before men, so long faith can keep her hold, and overcome the world. The soul makes Christs work its own; and as He overcame, so also shall all the faithful. (H. W. Butcher.)
The world overcome by faith
There is a sound of war in this saying. John, apostle of love though he be, has not that solvent charity which, under an affection of breadth, falls in rectitude, and comes at length to accept things, morally the most opposite, as equally good.
I. The world, what is it? And here a dozen voices are ready with a definition, which commonly is an abstract of personal experience or opinion. The most opposite things have been described as worldly; curiously, men have agreed to condemn worldliness, but they have not agreed what the thing condemned really is. One man, having no sacred reserves, gives himself wholly to the pursuits of this life; by diligence and energy he succeeds, and he has his reward. Another mingles his daily work with some other pursuit; he is fond of pictures, of music, of science, or what not; and yet a third, as he thinks favoured by his circumstances, gives himself largely to the enjoyments of life: work is but the fringe, the web of existence is made up of pleasure. After the lapse of years let these men compare notes; ask each his opinion of the others, and what do you find? You find probably that they have a sort of good natured contempt for one another as having lived in a vain and worldly way. Yes, and you may find a fourth man, who has lived a more austere and closely ordered life than any of the rest, equally ready to condemn them all for their worldly spirit. Of these several men each had some thing of truth in his opinion, but not the whole truth, nor that which goes to the root of the matter. Worldliness is a principle, a spirit, which can take this shape or that: it can be found in purple and fine linen, faring sumptuously every day, or in the rags and self-denials of the anchorite. The world, then, may lie in the predominance of things seen and temporal. The Bible is full of examples of this, set out for our learning by a Divine hand. There was the sunny haired Samson, with a high commission and a noble energy, forgetting the great work he had to do in the indulgence of the passion of the moment; there was Esau, who, to satisfy the hunger of the hour, flung away his birthright for a mess of pottage. When Satan said to our blessed Lord, All these things will I give Thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me, he pitched the temptation upon the same principle; its force lay in the power of the seen and temporal to obscure the unseen and eternal. Worldliness lies in the predominance of self, that inseparable foe, that idol of the heart which men carry with them wherever they go. The world, too, is found in the predominance of the world of men, that care for human opinion, for the judgment of our fellows which brings with it unreality, eye service, and a disregard to the supreme will of God. This spirit makes men at once cowardly and audacious, filling them with the fear of man and yet making them regardless of the fear of God. We have it exemplified in Saul, king of Israel, that strange sad union of strength and weakness, magnanimity and folly, he had sinned by directly disobeying the Divine command; but when he hears his sentence from the lips of Samuel he grieves over the dishonour which might accrue to himself far more than over his sin against the Most High: I have sinned, yet honour me now, I pray thee, before the elders of Israel. Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on Him? that is, has Christ become respectable? have the fashionable party–the men in power–accepted Him? If they have, then will we, but not otherwise. This drew from our Lord the strong exclamation, How can ye believe which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour which cometh from God only? This form of worldliness is one of the deadliest enemies of the truth. Everywhere it is potent to keep men from Christ.
II. How is it to be overcome? This is a pressing question for everyone who thinks seriously. How is it to be kept out of my heart, how shall I be kept in the world and yet not of it? This is the victory, even our faith. This meets the world, not in any particular form of it, but in the heart where its real root is. Take this principle, faith the worlds victor, in the lower sphere, and it is true. Faith, a strong over-mastering conviction, even though a poor one, has a wonderful power to lift men above the world, above themselves. But it is not of faith in a general way that John speaks. It is of our faith, a faith born of God, a faith that lays hold of Jesus Christ, a faith that works by love; it is faith in a person, that is, trust in Jesus Christ. This is the Divine remedy for the power of worldliness. It meets the love of the world with another love, a mightier, higher, nobler love–the love of Jesus Christ. How wonderfully this great principle of faith, fixed on the Saviour, can meet each of the three great forms of worldliness which have been delineated! We are in danger of being absorbed in the present, in the things which we taste and touch and handle; but if we receive Christ into our hearts what do we get with Him? Eternal life, the opening prospect of glory, honour, immortality. He enables us to die daily, because of the eternity with Christ beyond the veil. See, too, how faith in Christ helps a man to conquer himself as nothing else can. The ascetic, who proclaims upon the housetops his self-abnegation, yet worships himself; but when a man can say, I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, then Christ has become the inmate of that heart and the centre of that life. Again, that sensitiveness to human opinion, that love of praise, can be put under by faith in Jesus Christ, because in Him we have brought close to us the pure atmosphere of heaven, where the one aim and desire is to obtain the approval of God. Thus everything is moved up into a higher sphere, and the objects of life are seen in a true perspective. But this is not all, for us in our weakness and guilt and cowardice, there is another side to this truth, a side higher than that which lies in the natural action of faith. For the poorest, weakest, darkest souls that with much trembling lay hold of Jesus Christ, His strength is pledged. His might becomes their might. A man who soberly measures the forces of the world about him, who has any experience of the fickle shifting nature of his own heart, may well feel how helpless he is to overcome the world. Yes, but you are not alone. The great Captain of Salvation will fight for you, with you, in you. Finally, it is only those who overcome the world by faith who know rightly how to use it. Look at the Lord Himself. I, said He, have overcome the world. He gives the pattern of an absolutely unworldly life, and what sort of life was His? The lilies pleased Him, the birds sang sweetly to Him, the social gathering welcomed Him, the children climbed fearlessly upon His knee, sorrowful faces broke into sunshine when He came. He used the world as not abusing it. Depend upon it we must either conquer or be conquered–we must be the slaves of the world or its masters. Which shall it be? (E. Medley.)
The faith which overcomes the world
I. Faith is the divinely appointed medium for the conveyance of Gods power to us. We are joined to Christ by faith and love both; but let, us now distinguish their respective functions. The first breath of the Christian life is faith; love is subsequent. The unalterable condition of salvation is faith, not love. The condition required for Pentecostal power was faith. So all the gifts of God are according to our faith. But here is the distinction: faith is the receptive attitude, love the distributive. Love sacrifices, faith appropriates. Faith is before, love after a great blessing. They form really the same wire in complete circuit, but faith is the current our way, love the return to God. We can easily penetrate to the philosophy which makes faith the medium of receiving. It is such a medium between man and man of that which belongs to spirit and character. The man in whom I believe influences me most and makes my character. I may love another far more, but unless I also give my confidence to him or have faith in him he does not mould me. Faith in this marvellous way takes the being it clings to into our innermost nature and gladly surrenders to him. It alone truly expels haughtiness and pride, which, while they exist, make it impossible to save. With no more faith in Him than in Socrates or Seneca, they are never saved nor even sensibly influenced by the Spirit of Jesus. Faith alone, and there is no substitute whatever, completes the preparation of the heart for Christ. At the same time it gives Him most agreeable and wondrous honour. Faith is the coronation of Jesus in the heart. Faith is the only basis for coworking with God. Man selects a business partner whom he can trust, not because he is his bosom friend nor because he passionately loves him. He must believe In him. So will man Call upon God to be his partner in all the affairs of life only when he has faith. And all our qualifications for cooperating with God come by faith. Gods great workers were all men of mighty faith.
II. To have and to hold such faith is itself an inspiring victory. It is called victory, faith, and its abiding in the soul denotes a complete rout of self-sufficiency, that conceit of little souls and that real delusion of great ones; it proclaims that the reign of the senses and of sense-fettered reason is over! The man of faith has already overcome a vast world within himself, which the sinful world outside had made by hardening and blinding. What declarations there are concerning this faith! There is a characteristic of that faith which best pleased Jesus not to be overlooked. It goes beyond express promises to the love and the power of God. The promises are in human language painfully inadequate. From them bold faith gathers its original conceptions of Jesus, and here the Centurion and the Syrophenician woman distanced all the Jews and saw, the one the possibilities of Omnipotence, the other the fulness of love. (C. Roads.)
Victorious in the world by faith
In nature you will find a wonderful illustration of separation in the life of the water spider. That wonderful little creature needs air to breathe, as we do, and yet it lives in its cocoon under water, and enjoys life. Why is this? Because in a peculiar way it takes beneath the surface supplies of fresh air with which to fill its cocoon, and just breathes an atmosphere of its own, surrounded all the time with an alien element, which, if it rushed in, would speedily kill the little creature. (F. C. Spurr.)
Soldiers of the overcomer
Believers! forget it not! You are the soldiers of the overcomer. (J. H. Evans.)
Faith conquering worldliness
His mouth will not water after homely provisions, that hath lately tasted of delicate sustenance. (J. Trapp.)
Conquering faith
A believer walketh about the world as a conqueror. He saith of these things here below, as Socrates did when he came into a fair, and saw there sundry commodities to be sold, as another said, I neither have these things, nor need them, nor care for them. (J. Trapp.)
The nobility of faith a defence
Children admire gawds and gewgaws; but let a nobleman that hath been used to the pomp and bravery of the court, pass by a whole stall of such toys and trifles, he never casts his eye towards them. (J. Trapp.)
Faith overcoming the world
When a traveller was asked whether he did not admire the admirable structure of some stately building, No, said he, for Ive been at Rome, where better are to be seen every day. Oh, believer, if the world tempt thee with its rare sights and curious prospects, thou mayest well scorn them, having been, by contemplation, in heaven, and being able, by faith, to see infinitely better delights every hour of the day. This is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 4. Whatsoever is born of God] Whatsoever (the neuter for the masculine) is begotten of God: overcometh the world. “I understand by this,” says Schoettgen, “the Jewish Church, or Judaism, which is often termed olam hazzeh, this world. The reasons which induce me to think so are, 1. Because this , world, denied that the Messiah was come; but the Gentiles did not oppose this principle. 2. Because he proves the truth of the Christian religion against the Jews, reasoning according to the Jewish manner; whence it is evident that he contends, not against the Gentiles, but against the Jews. The sense therefore is, he who possesses the true Christian faith can easily convict the Jewish religion of falsity.” That is, He can show the vanity of their expectations, and the falsity of their glosses and prejudices. Suppose we understand by the world the evil principles and practices which are among men, and in the human heart; then the influence of God in the soul may be properly said to overcome this; and by faith in the Son of God a man is able to overcome all that is in the world, viz., the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, and the pride of life.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
He explains himself, viz. that to one who is born of God his commandments are not grievous, because such a one, in that divine birth, hath received a life and nature that makes him far superior to this world, exalts him above it, makes him victorious over the worldly spirit, {as 1Jo 4:4} over all worldly desires, and fears, and hopes, and joys, which are the great hinderances of our obedience to God.
This is the victory; i.e. the instrument, the weapon, by which they overcome, and which virtually includes in itself this victory over the world, as effects are included in the power of their cause, is their
faith, that principle which in their regeneration (as above) is implanted in them.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
4. For(See on 1Jo5:3). The reason why “His commandments are not grievous.”Though there is a conflict in keeping them, the sue for the wholebody of the regenerate is victory over every opposing influence;meanwhile there is a present joy to each believer in keepingthem which makes them “not grievous.”
whatsoeverGreek,“all that is begotten of God.” The neuter expressesthe universal whole, or aggregate of the regenerate,regarded as one collective body Joh 3:6;Joh 6:37; Joh 6:39,”where BENGELremarks, that in Jesus’ discourses, what the Father has given Him iscalled, in the singular number and neuter gender, allwhatsoever; those who come to the Son are described in themasculine gender and plural number, they all, or singular,every one. The Father has given, as it were, the whole mass tothe Son, that all whom He gave may be one whole: thatuniversal whole the Son singly evolves, in the execution ofthe divine plan.”
overcomethhabitually.
the worldall that isopposed to keeping the commandments of God, or draws us off from God,in this world, including our corrupt flesh, on which theworld’s blandishments or threats act, as also including Satan, theprince of this world (Joh 12:31;Joh 14:30; Joh 16:11).
this is the victory thatovercomethGreek aorist, “. . . that hath(already) overcome the world”: the victory (wherefaith is) hereby is implied as having been already obtained(1Jn 2:13; 1Jn 4:4).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
For whatsoever is born of God,…. Which may be understood either of persons born; of God; or of the new creature, or principle of grace wrought in them, particularly faith hereafter mentioned, which is an heaven born grace, the gift of God, and the operation of his Spirit: this
overcometh the world; the god of the world, Satan; the lusts which are in the world; false prophets gone forth into the world; and the wicked men of the world, who by temptations, snares, evil doctrines, threatenings, promises, and ill examples, would avert regenerate ones from observing the commands of God; but such are more than conquerors over all these, through Christ that has loved them:
and this is the victory that overcometh the world, [even] our faith. The Arabic and Ethiopic versions read, “your faith”; great things, heroic actions, and wonderful victories, are ascribed to faith; see
Heb 11:33; which must not be understood of the grace itself, as separately considered, but of Christ the object of it, as supported, strengthened, assisted, and animated by him: and then it does wonders, when it is enabled to hold Christ, its shield, in its hand, against every enemy that opposes.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
For (). The reason why God’s commandments are not heavy is the power that comes with the new birth from God.
Whatsoever is begotten of God ( ). Neuter singular perfect passive participle of rather than the masculine singular (verse 1) to express sharply the universality of the principle (Rothe) as in John 3:6; John 3:8; John 6:37; John 6:39.
Overcometh the world ( ). Present active indicative of , a continuous victory because a continuous struggle, “keeps on conquering the world” (“the sum of all the forces antagonistic to the spiritual life,” D. Smith).
This is the victory ( ). For this form of expression see 1John 1:5; John 1:19. (victory, cf. ), old word, here alone in N.T., but the later form in Matt 12:20; 1Cor 15:54; 1Cor 15:57.
That overcometh ( ). First aorist active articular participle of . The English cannot reproduce the play on the word here. The aorist tense singles out an individual experience when one believed or when one met temptation with victory. Jesus won the victory over the world (Joh 16:33) and God in us (1Jo 4:4) gives us the victory.
Even our faith ( ). The only instance of in the Johannine Epistles (not in John’s Gospel, though in the Apocalypse). It is our faith in Jesus Christ as shown by our confession (verse 1) and by our life (verse 2).
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
Overcometh [] . See on 2 13.
The victory [ ] . Only here in the New Testament.
That overcometh [ ] . The aorist tense, overcame. On the cumulative form of expression, the victory, that which overcame, see on 4 9. The aorist is to be held here to its strict sense. The victory over the world was, potentially, won when we believed in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. We overcome the world by being brought into union with Christ. On becoming as He is (iii. 17) we become partakers of His victory (Joh 16:33). “Greater is He that is in you than He that is in the world” (iv. 4).
Our faith [ ] . Pistiv faith, only here in John’s Epistles and not in the Gospel. Our faith is embraced in the confession that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. On the question of the subjective and objective use of the faith, see on Act 6:7.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “For whatsoever is born of God.” (Greek hoti pan to) Third person singular neuter gender, means “everything” having been begotten of God This appears to refer to 1 ) the spirit of Man_1:2) the mind of Man_1:3) the body of man, as well as the world in the regeneration. Rom 8:19-23.
2) “Overcometh the world.” (Greek nika) conquers, subdues, or overcomes the world system of disorder rebellion and sin. Rev 11:15.
3) “And this is the victory “ (Greek haute estin he nike) “‘This exists as the victory” – The evidence of victorious hope is declared to be faith in Jesus. Heb 11:1.
4) “That overcometh the world, ‘ (Greek he nike sasa) the overcoming kind of victory – over the present world order – Abel had and used it, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses did. Heb 11:1-40.
5) “Even our faith.” (Greek he pistis hemon) The “gift of faith” is offered to every responsible sinner – when a sinner accepts it of God and places it in Jesus Christ, it becomes “his faith” possession to eternal life, Eph 2:8-9; Joh 1:11-12; Rom 4:4-5.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
4 This is the victory As he had said that all who are born of God overcome the world, he also sets forth the way of overcoming it. For it might be still asked, whence comes this victory? He then makes the victory over the world to depend on faith. (93)
This passage is remarkable, for though Satan continually repeats his dreadful and horrible onsets, yet the Spirit of God, declaring that we are beyond the reach of danger, removes fear, and animates us to fight with courage. And the past time is more emphatical than the present or the future; for he says, that has overcome, in order that we might feel certain, as though the enemy had been already put to flight. It is, indeed, true, that our warfare continues through life, that our conflicts are daily, nay, that new and various battles are every moment on every side stirred up against us by the enemy; but as God does not arm us only for one day, and as faith is not that of one day, but is the perpetual work of the Holy Spirit, we are already partakers of victory, as though we had already conquered.
This confidence does not, however, introduce indifference, but renders us always anxiously intent on fighting. For the Lord thus bids his people to be certain, while yet he would not have them to be secure; but on the contrary, he declares that they have already overcome, in order that they may fight more courageously and more strenuously.
The term world has here a wide meaning, for it includes whatever is adverse to the Spirit of God: thus, the corruption of our nature is a part of the world; all lusts, all the crafts of Satan, in short, whatever leads us away from God. Having such a force to contend with, we have an immense war to carry on, and we should have been already conquered before coming to the contest, and we should be conquered a hundred times daily, had not God promised to us the victory. But God encourages us to fight by promising us the victory. But as this promise secures to us perpetually the invincible power of God, so, on the other hand, it annihilates all the strength of men. For the Apostle does not teach us here that God only brings some help to us, so that being aided by him, we may be sufficiently able to resist; but he makes victory to depend on faith alone; and faith receives from another that by which it overcomes. They then take away from God what is his own, who sing triumph to their own power.
(93) The words literally are, —
“
For every thing begotten by God overcomes the world,” etc. The neuter gender is used for the masculine, “every thing” for “every one,” as in the first verse; or according to כל in Hebrew, it is used in a plural sense, for πάντες as in Joh 17:2, “that all ( πᾶν) which thou hast given him, he should give them ( αὐτοῖς) eternal life.”
Macknight and others have said that the neuter gender is used in order to comprehend all sorts of persons, males and females, young and old, Jews and Gentiles, bond or free. Why, then, was not the neuter gender used in the first verse? It is clearly a peculiarity of style, and nothing else, and ought not to be retained in a translation.
“
Victory” stands for that which brings victory, the effect for the cause; or it may designate the person, as νίκη means sometimes the goddess of victory. — “And this the conqueress who conquers the world, even our faith.” — Ed
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
1Jn. 5:4. Overcometh the world.The world is regarded as the sphere of the self-seeking principle. He who is born of God is born into another spherethe sphere of the God-seeking principle. And the higher overmasters the lower, ; the present order of things as opposed to the kingdom of Christ. Victory that overcometh.R.V. hath overcome (Rom. 8:2). Our faith.Which unites us to Christ, and makes us participators in His victory.
1Jn. 5:6-7.In R.V. 1Jn. 5:7 is properly omitted. It is an interpolation, and probably inserted to meet the exigencies of the Trinitarian controversy. By water and blood.I.e. with these distinguishing marks or evidences. Water is the symbol of our Lords baptism; blood, of our Lords cross, passion, and sacrifice. Observe that these stand at the beginning and at the close of His ministry, and so present to us the whole life. He was declared to be the Son of God by the Divine voice at His baptism. He was declared to be the Son of God by His resurrection, when His life-work was completed in the shedding of His blood. So these two things become the ground of our faith in Him. The Spirit.The witness within us, which fits to the witness of the water and the blood outside us. Notice the use of and in this verse. Jesus showed Himself to be Messiah by means of () the water and the blood; marks the sphere, substratum, element, in which the proof was afforded. Not by water only.This is directed against the Cerinthians, who held that Jesus did suffer on the cross, but the Christ did not. St. John asserts that the same Jesus to whom the Divine testimony came at baptism, received the Divine testimony when His life-mission was completed on the cross. He has the testimony of both the water and the blood; and the inward witness of the Spirit seals the double testimony. Spirit is truth.Better, the truth: truth in perfection. His inward witness may be absolutely trusted.
1Jn. 5:8.This is but a repetition of 1Jn. 5:6, for the sake of emphasising it.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH1Jn. 5:4-8
The Power that overcomes the World.It is usual to limit thought to faith as the power that ensures our victory over our surroundings, our overcoming the world; but if this paragraph be taken as connected thinking, it will be seen that St. John explains what faith it is that thus overcomes the world. It is the faith in the Sonship of Jesus, which links us to Him, makes us sons like Him, and brings to us the victory of obedience and submission which He won. (It will be understood that 1Jn. 5:7, in this paragraph, is treated as an interpolation, inserted by some later hand to support a particular theory.)
I. The faith that overcomes.It is significant that St. John should say, even our faith. It may be trueit is in fact truethat faith, as one of the powers of human nature, the power that enables a man to act upon unseen considerations, does enable men to rise above the entanglement and depression of present circumstances. The world could not get on without faith. All her high triumphs have been triumphs of faith. But St. Johns world is not the world of material difficulties, but the world of moral evils. And he knows well enough that commonplace human faith can never gain victory over that. It is our faiththat specific thing which must be called the Christian faith, which alone can overcome the moral world, the world of evil.
II. The object of the faith that overcomes.Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world. It should not be possible for us to miss the point of St. Johns teaching in these sentences. It is the man who, believing in Jesus as the Son of God, is himself a son of God who overcomes the world. The object of faith is the Sonship, or, more precisely, Christ the Son. His Sonship was the secret of His triumph over the world, which, though He lived in, He was not of. And our sonship in Him will have to be the secret of our triumph, if ever it be said of us, they have overcome the world.
III. The grounds faith has for resting on this object.Jesus the Son is fully attested; the witnesses are altogether sufficient and trustworthy. There are three witnesses to the acceptable Sonship. The Spirit, who testifies of Christ in our hearts. (But it is quite possible that St. John had in his mind the spirit of the life of Jesus, which was the most perfect expression of sonship, and the satisfactory attestation that He was the Son.) The water, which stands for the direct testimony given by the Father at our Lords baptism: This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And the blood, which stands for the Divine acceptance of our Lords sacrificethe self-sacrifice of the Sonwhich was declared in His resurrection from the dead. These three agree in one thing; they declare that Jesus is the Son of God, and present Him to us, in this relation, as the object of our faith.
The Worldly Idea of overcoming the World.We read in history of one in departed days who fancied that he had accomplished the hard task of overcoming the world. We read how he carried his victorious arms over every region of the then known earthhow he subjugated king after king, and brought nation after nation beneath his sway, and then fancied that he had overcome the world. We read how he felt it sad to think that his heroic task was done, and how he wept that there were no more worlds to conquer. Oh, far astray, far mistaken! There was one world to conquer yet, to which that conqueror was a slavea world to overcome for which the arms of Alexander were of no avail. This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.A. K. H. B.
Our Victorious Weapon.Value of this text as the speech of an aged, experienced disciple. Compare our feeling if it had been the utterance of a young man. We should say that he did not know life, or that he was visionary and impulsive. But St. John looked back over many years of conflict, and many scenes of struggle and victory; and he may commend to us a weapon which he has found in every way efficient.
I. What is the design which the world has upon us?We are represented as trying to overcome it. Then what is it trying to do? Born into the world, we might have said that surely the world ought to be our law. And yet we know that we are superior to the world. It should be under us, as the creatures are. It should be our servant, to help us in doing the will of God. Illustrate by things good as servants that are bad as masterswater, fire, wealth, pleasure, the world regarded morally. The difficulty is that some of these servants are always trying to get to be masters. That makes our conflict with the world. It wants to be master. The general conflict is represented in the individual; the world fights to gain authority in some one direction, and a man becomes a miser, a drunkard, or vicious. Conceive a man ruled by the world. Is that a true man? Social science, philosophy, and religion all say, No, a man must rise above the world. And Christ alone effectually shows man how to do it.
II. Is it left with us to decide whether or no we will resist, and try to overcome the world?In one sense it is. That is the great term of our probation herewill you be ruled by the world or by God? To you, shall the world be master or servant? This is especially pressed on attention in early manhood. But, in another sense, it is not left to us. We are urged by such impressive considerations to strive to overcome, that we are scarcely manly if we do not so strive. Illustrate by such things as: proofs about us of the ruin following world-triumphs; the high, and sole, claims of God to our love and service; the light of that better world where God only is loved and served; the testimony of those who have lived God-ruled lives. As Christians, no sort of option is left to us; we are actually, we are deeply, pledged to the carrying on of this warfare.
III. With what weapon may we have the assurance of victory?Picture Bunyans Christian, going through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and betaking himself to the weapon of All-prayer. Here the great sword is called Our Faith. The world can only overcome by dimming and unvitalising God, and so loosening from us the sense of His claims and relations. The chance of the world lies in the absence of God from our thought, and from our love. Men can only sin when at heart they say, The Lord shall not see. Then our hope of conquering lies in our keeping God in our love, and thought, and trust. Abraham conquered, because he thought of God as Him before whom I walk. Moses conquered, because he persisted that the Presence should go with him. David conquered, because he could say, I have set the Lord always before me. That is precisely the work of faith. The faith of God in Christ, the human Christ, is the faith that keeps God closely and directly related to our daily life. Only let faith keep God near, as we do our business, as we gather up our profits, as we go to and fro in our households, then the world shall never overcome us; we shall surely overcome the world. Observe a distinction. Is this commending a general faith in God, as being just, and strong, and wise, and good? Yes, it is; but it is much more. It is a commending of what must be the foundation, and the constant daily support, of such faith,the faith of God in Christ; in God revealed, manifested in the human life of the Son; the faith of God, who was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1Jn. 5:4. Faith overcoming the World.
I. What is the true notion of conquering the world?Our notion of being victorious in life is when each man, according to his own ideal of what is best, manages to wring that ideal out of a reluctant world. A man desires conspicuous notoriety and fame. But what is the teaching of this epistle? Following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ Himself, the poor man, the beaten man, the unsuccessful man, may yet say, I have overcome the world. What does that mean? Well, it is built upon this: the world, meaning thereby the sum-total of outward things, considered as apart from Godthe world and God we make to be antagonists to one another. And the world woos me to trust to it, to love it; crowds in upon my eye and shuts out the greater things beyond; absorbs my attention, so that if I let it have its own way I have no leisure to think about anything but itself. And the world conquers me when it succeeds in hindering me from seeing, loving, holding communion with and serving my Father-God. On the other hand, I conquer it when I lay my hand upon it, and force it to help me get nearer Him, to get more like Him, to think more often of Him, to do His will more gladly and more constantly. The one victory over the world is to bend it to serve me in the highest thingsthe attainment of a clearer vision of the Divine nature, the attainment of a deeper love to God Himself, and of a more glad consecration and service to Him. That is the victory, when you can make the world a ladder to lift you to God. Rule the world by making it help you to be wiser, gentler, nobler, more gracious, more Christ-like, more Christ-conscious, more full of God, and more like to Him, and then you will get the deepest delight out of it.
II. The method by which this victory over the world, of making it help us to keep the commandments of God, is to be accomplished.The true victory over the world is won by a new life, born of and kindred with God; that life is kindled in mens souls through their faith; and the faith which kindles that supernatural life, the victorious antagonist of the world, is the definite, specific faith in Jesus as the Son of God. You can conquer the world if you will trust in Jesus Christ, because such trust will bring you into constant, living, loving contact with the great Conqueror. I can appropriate Christs conquest to myself if I trust Him. The might of it, and some portion of the reality of it, passes into my nature in the measure in which I rely upon Him. So if we join ourselves to Him by faith, and bring into our daily life, in all its ignoble effort, in all its little duties, in all its wearisome monotonies, in all its triviality, the thought, the illuminating thought, of the victorious Christ, our Companion and our Friendin hoc signo vincesin this sign thou shalt conquer. They that keep hold of His hand see over the world and all its falsenesses and fleetingnesses. They that trust in Jesus are more than conquerors by the might of His victory. You can conquer the world if you will trust Jesus Christ, because your faith will bring into the midst of your lives the grandest and most solemn and blessed realities. Faith is the true ansthesia of the soulthe thing that deadens it to the pains and the pleasures that come from this fleeting life. Get near to Jesus Christ by thought, and love, and trust. Trust to Him and to the great love that gave itself for you. And then bring Him into your life, by daily reference to Him of it all; and by cultivating the habit of thinking about Him as being present with you in the midst of it all; and so, holding His hand, you will share in His victory.A. Maclaren, D.D.
The Victory of Faith.Men acknowledge that the world is a place of conflict, but they often mistake the nature of the conflict, and the nature of the weapon that should be employed in it.
I. They mistake the nature of the conflict.They look upon it as a battle with poverty, with ignorance, or with weakness. But a victory over all these does not mean a victory over care, or sorrow, or death. But the apostle tells us that the true enemy is not in. the world, nor in the things that are in the world, but rather in the world within the heart. The enemy is not poverty, but desire; not obscurity, but lust. He who overcomes the world is not he who paves his way from poverty to wealth, but he who gets rich by the penuriousness and parsimony of his spirit; not he who has made his way to the highest places of earth, but he who has risen into the true knowledge and purity of God. The true victory lies in the vanquishing of the hearts desires.
II. The weapon is mistaken also.Industry will overcome poverty, and knowledge obscurity; but if these are not the foes, then must we try another weapon. Even in the common aspect of life faith is needed. A man cannot do well who secretly disbelieves in the work he is doing. So to conquer within we must believe in goodness. And not only in goodness in the abstract; it is faith in a person which the apostle tells us will overcome the world. Faith in great principles has done much. But for the greatest and most permanent success we must have faith in goodness guaranteed, illustrated, and emphasised in the life and death of a person. Here then comes the glory of Christs life, that it is precisely the emphasis of all faith in goodness.W. B. Carpenter, D.D.
1Jn. 5:4-5. Faith a Moral Power.Faith may be described as a preferring of some future and unseen good to a present and visible one, on the authority of some one whom we had reason to think good and wise. And religious faith consists in preferring future to present good things, on the authority of God Himselfthat is, of One who is perfectly wise and good. Christian faith has this advantage over simple religious faith, in the more general sense of the word, that having obtained clearer and fuller notions of Gods perfections, it is rendered stronger and more triumphant over temptations. Christian faith, or the faith that Jesus is the Son of God, gives us so much clearer and fuller notion of God, that it makes us know both Him and ourselves, and love Him, far better than we could do without it. This, then, is the faith that overcometh the world; for it is a faith that looks to an eternal reward, and it is founded on such a display of Gods love and holiness, that the Christian may well say, I know in whom I have believed. Conceive any one of us, old or young, having this faith, and do we not feel sure that it must overcome the world? Do we not feel sure that all temptations must be powerless against him who is heartily persuaded of what God has done, and will do for him, who looks forward to the kingdom of heaven, and knows and feels by whose blood it has been thrown open to him? Do we not see clearly, and do not our own hearts tells us, that if temptations are too strong for us, it is because our faith is weak.Dr. T. Arnold.
1Jn. 5:6. The Threefold Witness.By water and blood. It is the Spirit that beareth witness. It is important that the mind should not be confused by the suggestions of 1Jn. 5:7, which brings in the doctrinal term Holy Ghost. It is probable that 1Jn. 5:8 precisely represents the thought to which St. John wishes to give expression, and that no reference to the third person of the Divine Trinity is intended. St. Johns mind was not so occupied with the work of the Holy Ghost as was the mind of St. Paul. St. Johns whole interest was absorbed in the person of Christ, and his point here is, that faith in Jesus Christ, as the Son of God, is the faith that is overcoming, and will overcome, the world. It is strictly relative to his subject to point out how well founded that faith in Christ is. There are three witnesses; two are usually regarded as sufficient. And these three altogether agree in their testimony. But what precisely is it that these witnesses testify to? Not generally to Jesus Christ, but specifically to Jesus Christ as the Son of God. They are three witnesses to the human sonship of the Divine Son. When once this is grasped, the reason for mentioning them here is understood. That they are witnesses in earth (1Jn. 5:8) sufficiently proves that the Holy Ghost is not meant. What St. John says is really this: The witness of the waterthat is, of Christs baptismwas the miraculous attestation of His Sonship by a voice from heaven. The witness of the Spiritthat is, Christs own spirit, the tone and temper of His daily lifewas a most persuasive exhibition of His Sonship. The witness of the bloodthat is, of His resisting unto blood all temptation to unsonlike doings, His self-sacrifice for the sake of obedient sonshipwas an all-convincing proof of His Sonship. Surely, then, we have all-sufficient grounds for believing that Jesus is the Son of God. Then He is what we ought to be. And trying to be what He is will prove for us the overcoming of the worldfirst the world within, and then the world without.
1Jn. 5:8. Water and Blood.The Rev. W. M. Sinclair, D.D., in Ellicotts Commentary, gives suggestively the more usual explanation of these symbolic terms. Water and blood are referred to as two of the three great witnesses, or sets of evidence, for Christ. They are symbols, and look back to two of the most characteristic and significant acts of His personal history. The one is His baptism, the other His cross. Why His baptism? The baptism of John was the seal of the law. It was the outward sign by which those who repented at his preaching showed their determination to keep the law no longer in the letter only, but also in the spirit. Jesus, too, showed this determination. Baptism in water was His outward sign and seal to the Old Testament: that He had not come to destroy, but to fulfil the law; not to supersede the prophecies, but to claim them. It was to show that in Him the righteousness and purification which the law intended was to be a reality, and through Him to be the law of His kingdom. Thus it pointed to all the evidence which this Old Testament could possibly afford Him; and, through the Old Testament, it pointed to the dispensation of the Father. Thus, when this most symbolic act was complete, the almighty Giver of the old law or covenant was heard saying, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Blood in the same way refers to the special work of Christ Himselfthe work of reconciliation and atonement by His death and passion, the realisation of all that the sacrifices and types of the former state of religion had meant. That He was the true sacrifice was proved by the perfection of His life, by the signs and wonders with which He had attracted and convinced His followers, by the fulfilment of prophecy, by the marvels of His teaching, by the amazing events which had happened at the different crises of His life, by His resurrection and ascension, and by the confession of all who knew Him well that He was the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth, and with the glory as of the Only Begotten of the Father.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
CHAPTER XV
FAITHTHE POWER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
1Jn. 5:4-12
A.
The Text
For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith. (5) And who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? (6) This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ, not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. (7) And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the truth. (8) For there are three who bear witness, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and the three agree in one. (9) If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater: for the witness of God is this, that he hath borne witness concerning His Son. (10) He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in him: he that believeth not God hath made him a liar; because he hath not believed in the witness that God hath borne concerning his Son. (11) And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. (12) He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.
B.
Try to Discover
1.
What does John mean by overcome the world?
2.
How does faith that Jesus is the Christ enable one to overcome the world?
3.
How does the Spirit testify that Jesus is the Son of God?
4.
What should be the Bible believers attitude toward textual problems such as the one found in some versions of 1Jn. 5:7 (b) ?
5.
What has God testified concerning His Son?
6.
Is it possible to have eternal life and not believe that Jesus is indeed the Christ, the Son of God? Explain your answer.
C.
Paraphrase
Because whatsoever hath been born of God overcometh the world; And this is the victory that hath overcome the worldOur faith. (5) Who is he that overcometh the world, Save he that believeth That Jesus is the Son of God? (6) This is he that came through means of water and blood Jesus Christ: Not by the water only But by the water and by the blood, And the Spirit it is that is bearing witness, Because the Spirit is the truth. (7) Because three there are who are bearing witness (8) The Spirit and the Water and the Blood; And the three are witnesses unto one thing. (9) If the witness of men we receive The witness of God is greater. Because this is the witness of GodIn that he hath borne witness concerning his Son, (10) He that believeth on the Son of God Hath the witness within himself: He that doth not believe God False hath made him, Because he hath not believed on the witness which God hath witnessed concerning his Son(11) And this is the witness: That life age-abiding hath God given unto us, And this life is in his Son: (12) He that hath the Son hath the life,He that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.
D.
Comments
1.
Preliminary Remarks
In the late third or early fourth century A,D., a scribe who was copying this scripture probably inserted (in 1Jn. 5:7) a sentence which reads, for there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost. (King James Version)
It is not within the scope of this present work to discuss the relative merits, of this sentence. It is a matter of record that it appears first, not in the original Greek of the New Testament, but in the Latin translation. The earliest manuscript in which it appears in Greek is a copy made in the sixteenth century.
It is not needed to complete Johns argument concerning the divine proofs of Jesus identity as the Christ, the Son of God. Since we are following the text of the American Standard Version which omits this sentence, we shall not comment on it.
2.
Translation and Comments
a.
The source of Christian strength . . . 1Jn. 5:4-5
(4) For everyone having been begotten from God is overcoming the world. And this is the victory which gets the world overcome; our faith. (5) Who is the one overcoming the world if not the one believing that Jesus is the Son of God?
For in this verse refers us back to 1Jn. 5:3. The reason the commands of God are not distressing to His children is that they are indeed His children. There is a power which comes through regeneration which is not available to the unregenerate. (Compare Act. 2:38-39 and Eph. 3:14 ff) To put it bluntly, no one ever lived a Christian life without first becoming a Christian. There is a new kind of life to be had in Christ that is completely unknown outside of Him. It is identified with spirit rather than flesh.
The child of God is to expect victory. Much of the power of the early church found its source in this expectancy. They had stepped into a new kind of life, rather than merely adopting a new religion. The unseen things of eternity had become more real to them than the three dimensional materialism of this earthly existence. Friends marveled at it, enemies trembled at it, and emperors went mad trying to understand the dynamic with which the first century Christians faced both life and death.
Most of the crisis which now face civilization result from the loss of this eternal awareness, and its accompanying power. Karl Marx looked about him at the downtrodden masses of Europe; hungry, miserable, defeated creatures, who for centuries had been communicants in the ritualistic sacerdotalism which passed for Christianity. He concluded that religion was to blame for most of the economic woes of a civilization dominated by The Church.
In his Communist Manifesto, Marx declared the only path to meaningful fulfillment was to abandon Christianity for pragmatic, materialistic atheism. Religion, he said, is the opiate of the people.
Much of what passes for Christianity today seems to support the creed of Karl Marx! The defeated, frustrated existence of the average church member does little to deny it. When the first glow of conversion has dimmed, we seem to soon forget that the inalienable birth-right of every born-again child of God is victorious life.
In our worship, the staid formalism has replaced heartfelt, awe. Spirit and reality so typical of the first century, also testifies against that for which it ostensibly stands. We have allowed the new life to become largely a spectator religion. We have placed faith in a liturgical straight jacket.
In the verses before us, John pin-points the source of power. It is our faith. Faith in the firm conviction that, in Jesus, the word of power by which God sustains the worlds, became flesh! It is a personal trust in Him that makes His power our own, His victory ours.
New Testament faith is more than mental assent to a proposition. It is more than mere belief. It is more than the acceptance of theological dogma or conformity to doctrine. Faith is the assurance of our hope; a conviction of unseen realities. (Cf. Heb. 11:1) The child of God knows from experience that the real values of life, both here and hereafter, lie in an other-wordly realm. We are not in the flesh, but in the spirit. (Rom. 8:9) We no longer live according to the course of this world, (Eph. 2:2) but according to the purpose and direction given those who are looking ever to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. (Heb. 12:2) As He endured the cross, despising the shame, (Heb. 12:2) so we learn in whatever our lot, therein to be content (Php. 4:11). Not as those who have been stupefied by the opiate of the people, but as those who know that whatever the outward circumstances of life, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. (Rom. 8:37)
The sons of God are not the victims of circumstance! When the eternal Word of God rose from the grave as a man, He demonstrated that Gods love for His human children is inviolable. He gave Himself to us, both in body and in spirit. He conquered both life and death, and He has promised to be with us to the culmination of human history, (Cf. Mat. 28:20)
No power in either the seen or the unseen world can prevent us from being victorious excepting our own failure to recognize that this is what He wants for us!
The present world struggle with materialism in the guise of Communism will be won if Christians will recapture a real trusting awareness in Him Who came into the seen to demonstrate the reality of the unseen. It will be lost if Christians continue to cower before the great god Science and to believe the answer to materialistic communism is to be found in materialistic Americanism. We stamp the means of victory on our coins. We must stamp it on our hearts. In God We Trust!
b.
The object of faith . . . 1Jn. 5:6
(1Jn. 5:6) This is the one who came through water and blood, Jesus Christ; not in water only, but in the water and the blood.
In the American revival which filled the church houses just following World War II, signs could be seen on every major highway entreating passersby to, find yourself through faith. Perhaps the revival proved to be more a bust than a boom because the signs failed to tell us faith in what?
Faith is not merely a positive attitude toward life. It is more than self-confidence. Faith must have an object. It is a trusting-awareness of that object.
The object of the Christian faith is a Galilean Carpenter, who, through certain phenomenal events in His life, was revealed to be the uniquely begotten Son of God; a visitor to this dimension from another arena of activity. Of these phenomena, John selects two which suit the purpose of this epistle: His baptism and His death.
One form of gnosticism, propounded by the followers of a philosopher named Cerinthesus, claimed that whatever was divine about Jesus came upon Him at His baptism and left Him on the cross. This John flatly denies. This One did not come from water to blood, that is, from His baptism to the cross. He came through both.
He was Deity incarnate before His baptism, and when He shed His blood on the cross, He was still God as man. Otherwise, the death of Jesus loses its meaning. If Jesus was not God from the beginning, before His baptism, the Word was not as man but in man and Jesus victorious life of obedience to God was a farce. If He did not remain God as man when He died, then God did not express His love to the world on Calvary.
c.
Evidences of faith . . . 1Jn. 5:7-10
(1Jn. 5:7) And the Spirit is the one testifying, because the Spirit is truth. (1Jn. 5:8) For they are three, the ones testifying; the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are for the one thing. (1Jn. 5:9) If the testimony of men we are receiving, the testimony of God is greater; because this is the testimony of God, for He has testified concerning His Son. (1Jn. 5:10) The one believing in the Son of God is having. His testimony in him. The one not believing God has made Him a liar because he has not believed in the testimony which God has testified concerning His Son.
To the evidence of Jesus baptism and death, John now adds the testimony of the Spirit. Perhaps the most obvious allusion here is to the descent of the Spirit upon Jesus at His baptism. To the skeptic this is no evidence at all, but to the one who has been begotten of God and himself been anointed by the Spirit (See on 1Jn. 2:20) this argument is nearly conclusive in itself. It will never make sense to the one who thinks as a materialist, refusing to accept anything as real unless he can understand it through the physical senses. But the testimony of the Spirit is conclusive proof to the one who has learned from Christ that the realm of the spirit is the real world.
The testimony of all these three witnesses is for one thing: That ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye may have life in His name. (Joh. 20:31)
In our day the testimony of the Spirit includes not only our awareness that He is within us as well as His testimony throughout the life of Jesus; it includes the written word which He inspired John and the others to write.
Such evidence is also meaningless to the person who must subject everything to the test of human reason. Inspired scripture is unacceptable to one who will not believe what he cannot dissect in a laboratory or analyze chemically. But it is the precious proof to the one who is in tune with the infinite.
The attack of modern rationalism against the deity of Jesus began with an attack on the written testimony of the Spirit. The claim that Jesus was a deceiver rather than a deliverer depends upon the destruction of Scriptural evidence to the contrary.
For this reason we are told that the Bible is a collection of forgeries and myths. No honest scholar can deny that the writings of the Scripture claim for Jesus exactly what the rationalist (as well as the gnostic) cannot accept; that He is God as man. Since this is obviously the claim of these writings, it becomes necessary to disprove the reliability of the writings themselves. To do so is to deny the inspiration, or to use Johns term, the testimony, of the Spirit in the Bible, and especially the New Testament.
To the child of God, the most meaningful evidence available to prove the incarnate nature of Jesus is the testimony of the Spirit in written word.
Johns statement, in 1Jn. 5:10, that the believer has Gods testimony in him is another allusion to the presence of the Holy Spirit in the believer. Perhaps the greatest need among modern Christians, in this respect, is to realize that the Holy Spirit is not simply a divine influence, but a person. The Bible never refers to the Holy Spirit as It, but always as He or Him. The presence of this Divine Guest within our lives is evidence of the Deity of Jesus, for it was Jesus Who promised Him to us. (Cf. Joh. 16:7ff) It is upon obedience to Jesus that the Spirit comes to us. (Cf. Act. 2:38-39)
The person who does not believe that Jesus is the Incarnate Son of God has made the Spirit a liar. It is impossible to imagine any greater sin. It is impossible to imagine any more certain assurance of being eternally lost than this denial of what the Holy Spirit has claimed to be true. This is the epitome of self-worshipping egoism.
It is through the presence of the Holy Spirit in the life of the child of God that faith becomes power. Firm conviction, even personal trust, alone is not enough to bring about victory over what John calls the world.
Real victory comes through an acute awareness of unseen reality. The awareness must be deep-seated within the heart of a person. It is not something which can be understood academically and then clung to tenaciously in the face of apparent contradiction. Awareness of the kind necessary to give us victory over the limitations of physical senses is ours only when our trust opens our hearts and allows the Divine Representative to live in us. One is less likely to doubt the reality of spiritual life when the Spirit Himself is his constant companion.
To put it another way, a great deal of our failure to overcome the world is our inability to keep to the spiritual point of view. We can see and feel and smell the things of the world. The awareness of temporal values is so strong we seem ever able to rationalize the control they have over our behavior. Only when, through faith, the unseen is constantly real because the Holy Spirit is in us, can we overcome the inclination to act as though the physical world were more real than the spiritual.
Perhaps a word of caution is needed here. The distinction drawn between the seen and the unseen as well as the insistence that the spirit dimension is more real than the physical are for the sake of blasting away the scales from our spiritual eyes. We must not be deluded into believing a dualism in which the physical is separate from and irreconcilable to the spirit. This was the fundamental error of gnosticism.
What we must realize is the meaning of victory over the world. The physical is intended to be the servant, not the master. The body is to be used as a dwelling place of the soul. The physical senses are the means by which we maintain contact with the present environment. We simply must not let the tail wag the dog by reversing the divine order. This we do when the world, with its materialistic values, rather than Gods Spirit, becomes the motivating force of our lives.
Although John does not deal with the matter directly, he has laid down the reason God requires His children to give money to the church as an act of worship. It is not as though He needed anything. (Act. 17:25) Rather, we are required to give for our own good, because in so doing we learn to subject material values to spiritual. As Jesus put it, where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Mat. 6:21)
d.
The testimony identified . . . 1Jn. 5:11-12
(1Jn. 5:11) And this is the testimony, that life eternal God gave to us, and this life is in His Son. (1Jn. 5:12) The one having life; the one not having the Son of God is not having life.
That to which the witnesses testify, indeed the entire message of the Bible, is brought into sharp focus in these verses. God gave us eternal life; eternal life is in His Son, those, and only those, having the Son have eternal life.
There is no hesitancy, no philosophical perhaps. The issue is life and death. The declaration is straightforward and simple.
Nothing is more needful today than the reiteration of this same vital truth. The institutionalized church, muscle bound by over-organization and flabby from too much material wealth, has offered to the world a cheap substitute for this faith, and a counterfeit for the life only this faith can bring.
The materialistic rationalism so prevalent among todays protestant theologians has done nothing to restore the life-giving power of the Gospel to its rightful position as the focal point of the Christian message.
Stripped of its liturgical and creedal straight jacket, and purged of the nauseous egoism represented in materialistic, rationalistic theology, the Gospel, Gods glad news of life, is still the power of God unto salvation to all those who believe!
E.
Questions for Review
1.
Why is the statement concerning the three witnesses which is found in the King James Version of I John omitted from more recent versions? (1Jn. 5:7)
2.
Why are the commands of God not distressing to the children of God?
3.
What is the source of victorious power in the life of a Christian which is not available to the world?
4.
How does the life of the average church member today support the doctrine of Karl Marx that religion is the opiate of the people?
5.
Give a definition of faith as John uses the word in 1Jn. 5:4.
6.
Explain the statement, The sons of God are not the victims of circumstance.
7.
Faith must have an _____________. It is not just a positive attitude toward life.
8.
One form of Gnosticism called Cerenthic claimed that whatever was divine about Jesus came upon Him at _______________ and left Him at _____________.
9.
What is Johns answer to this claim?
10.
The Spirit and the water and the blood all testify to one thing. What is the purpose of their testimony?
11.
In our day, the testimony of the Spirit includes the as well as His testament in the life of Jesus and His presence in our own lives.
12.
In order for rationalism to destroy belief in the deity of Jesus it must first destroy the ________________ of Scripture.
13.
The person who does not believe in the deity of Jesus as the Incarnate Son of God has made the Spirit a ___________.
14.
Real victory over the world comes from faith which gives us a constant awareness of _______________.
15.
A great deal of our failure to overcome the world comes from our inability to keep to ___________________.
16.
To have victory over the world is to make ___________________ the master and _________________ the servant.
17.
How does our giving to the church aid in our overcoming the world in our personal lives?
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
4. This overcoming the world is a key-note to John’s apocalypse.
Rev 2:7; Rev 2:11; Rev 2:17; Rev 2:26. It implies that the hostile world seeks, both by temptations and by persecutions, to seduce or to destroy the sons of God. It is faith in Christ that causes, and even constitutes, the victory of the faithful over all the hostilities of the world. The for commencing this verse indicates that it gives a reason why his commandments (1Jn 5:3) are not grievous, but joyous. Faith and victory render an exultant obedience to his commandments a delight. Faith in his leader, and assurance and enjoyment of victory render the Christian soldier joyously obedient to his captain’s orders.
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
The True Christian Overcomes By His Faith in Jesus the Son of God ( 1Jn 5:4-5 ).
‘For whatever is begotten of God overcomes the world. And this is the conquering power that has overcome the world, even our faith. And who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?’
Being begotten of God not only results in our loving those who have been begotten by Him, but enables us also to overcome the world. Those who are begotten of God do not follow the ways and desires and hopes of the world, rather they triumph over them. And what causes them to triumph? Even their faith, their faith in the human crucified and resurrected Jesus as being also God’s Son.
Indeed this faith has already enabled them to overcome. It is the conquering power that has already given them the victory, because He in Whom they believe has gained the victory. We are more than conquerors through Him Who loved us (Rom 8:37). We commence from a position of victory, because we commence in Him..
Thus the true Christian is a guaranteed overcomer. He overcomes the Evil One (1Jn 2:14), he overcomes antichrist (1Jn 4:4), and he overcomes the world. This is because his faith is set on Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Who lifts him above the world, gives him conquering power, and reveals to him the inadequacy of the false teaching about the non-human, mythical ‘Christ’ of the false prophets, and the deceitfulness of the Evil One. He enjoys royal protection.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
1Jn 5:4-5. For whatsoever is born of God, &c. That is, every child of God. The connection of this with the preceding verse stands thus: “His commandments are not grievous; because in observing them we gain a victory through grace over this world, our grand enemy; and nothing can be accounted grievous which produces so much good.” The principle by which they overcame, was faith in the infinite merit and intercession of Christ. It may be proper just to take a view of the advantages which true Christians have for gaining the victory over this world, by means of that faith which is of the operation of the Spirit of God: Whoever believes that Jesus is the Son of God, or the Messiah, that great Personage, who was with God, and was God, eternally lay in the bosom of the Father, and came from him; and who promised a glorious and happy immortality unto all persevering believers; who lived the most exemplarylife; worked great numbers of unquestionable, glorious, and beneficent miracles; had a real body, and really suffered and died as a propitiation for the sins of the whole world, sealing his doctrine with his own blood, and offering his life as a sacrifice of a sweet-smelling favour unto God; rose again from the dead, and after that, was exalted in his mediatorial kingdom to the right hand of God, a Prince and a Saviour; and who has all power committed unto him both in heaven and upon earth; particularly power to raise the dead, to judge the whole world, to punish the impenitent with everlasting misery, and to render eternal rewards unto his faithful servants;Whoever firmly believes these things through theSpirit of God, what may he not be expected to do or suffer, to avoid the future punishment, and obtain the transcendent rewards which God hath graciously promised to them that love him?What can this world offer him of equal value? What evil can it threaten him with, to deter him fromsuch a pursuit? When it opposes him, how complete a victory may he gain in the power of Divine grace!
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
1Jn 5:4 . Confirmation of the preceding thought.
] The neuter is used here as in Gospel of Joh 3:6 ; Joh 6:37 ; Joh 17:2 ; it serves “to bring out the general category;” see Meyer on Joh 3:6 ; comp. Winer, p. 160; according to the sense = . . .; it is not the disposition, but persons that are meant. Quite erroneous is the remark of Baumgarten-Crusius: “the . . . has here only an external signification: whatever has the position of God’s children.”
] for: , , chap. 1Jn 4:4 .
is the simple present; in the conflict between the and him who is born of God, the latter is constantly gaining the victory. Baumgarten-Crusius unsatisfactorily explains by “to keep oneself innocent;” this does not exhaust the idea of victory; that is not obtained when we take our stand against the enemy, but only when the enemy is overcome. The completion of the victory in its full sense certainly only takes place with the second coming of Christ.
Rickli and de Wette explain by “love of the world and of self;” better Lcke, Calvin, Sander, Dsterdieck, Brckner, etc.: “all that strives against the will of God within and without man;” but even this is too abstract. It is the kingdom of the wicked one which, under its prince the devil, striving against the kingdom of God, seeks to tempt the believer to unbelief and disobedience to the divine commands.
As the apostle wants to show how he that is born of God overcomes the world, he continues: . The pronoun refers to , which in its import is no other than the , , 1Jn 5:5 . The expression is peculiar, inasmuch as faith is described as the itself, and the is ascribed to it. Lorinus rightly remarks: victoria proprie non vincit, sed comparatur pugnando, sed energiam continet ea formula, denotans in quo sita sit vincendi ratio, unde victoria parta. [296] The aorist is not to be turned into the present (a Lapide, Lorinus, Grotius, etc.); even though the victory is a continuous one, in which every believer is constantly taking part, the aorist nevertheless indicates that faith from the beginning overcame the world. The explanation of Baumgarten-Crusius: “it is already victory won that ye have become believers” (similarly Neander), is incorrect; it is not here intended to commend faith as the result of a fight, but as that which fights, and which has won the victory; hence the active (so also Braune).
[296] Ebrard opposes this explanation with the arbitrary statement that “is the action which conquers the world” (!).
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
DISCOURSE: 2463
OVERCOMING THE WORLD
1Jn 5:4-5. Whatsoever is born of God, overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
CHRISTIANITY is a warfare: every follower of Christ is by profession a soldier. The enemies whom he is engaged to combat are, the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is of one of these more especially that my text speaks; and that is, the world. Mankind at large are led captive by it. The Christian combats and overcomes it. In this respect he differs from, and surpasses, all the human race. These things are plainly affirmed in the passage before us: which will lead me to shew,
I.
The victory which every true Christian gains
The Christian is here described as born of God
[He is not only born of the flesh, like other men, but has a new nature imparted to him from above, and which he alone possesses. The Spirit of the living God, who moved upon the face of the waters, and reduced the whole chaotic mass of this world to order and beauty, has moved upon his soul, to restore it to the image of his Creator, in which it was originally formed, in righteousness and true holiness. The person here spoken of as born of God, is also characterized as believing that Jesus is the Son of God. This shews what the process of the Holy Spirit is, in transforming the soul. He makes us to feel our guilt before God: he reveals the Lord Jesus Christ to us, as the appointed Saviour of the world: he enables us to believe in him, and to confess him openly before men, as all our salvation and all our desire. Thus the regenerate person shews himself to be a believer in Christ; and the believer in Christ approves himself to be regenerate. And hence the terms, as characterizing the child of God, are convertible, and of the same import.]
He overcomes the world
[From the moment that he experiences the regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit, he enters into conflict with the world, and overcomes it. He overcomes both its allurements and its terrors. Every thing in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, is fascinating to the corrupt heart of man, and gains an ascendant, over all, whilst in their natural and carnal state. But the regenerate person has higher gratifications, which he affects as his supreme good, and for which he sacrifices all that this world can give him. He feels that earthly vanities debase the soul: and he will no longer be led captive by them. He says to them all, Depart from me, I will keep the commandments of my God
In like manner, he triumphs over its terrors also. The world will take up arms against those who dare to oppose its maxims and its habits. Sometimes, by contempt and ridicule it will endeavour to check the Christians progress; and sometimes by the most envenomed hostility and bitter persecution. But the regenerate person braves all the worlds hostility, and will be deterred by nothing from following the path of duty. If the whole creation were to rise up against him, he would say, Whether it be right to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye: for I cannot but do what my God has enjoined.
There are those who will have regeneration to consist in baptism. But I would ask, Can it be said of every baptized person, that he overcomes the world? Does not the whole state of the Christian world contradict this? Are there any, amongst heathens themselves, more captivated by its allurements or enslaved by its terrors, than millions of baptized persons are? This shews, incontrovertibly, that, whatever blessing God may see fit to confer on any particular persons in baptism, baptism itself is not, and cannot be, regeneration: for, if it were, every baptized person must, of necessity, overcome the world; which we see and know is far from being true in fact.
There is a peculiarity in the expression in my text, which will serve to throw considerable light on this subject. It is said, Whatsoever is born of God [Note: .] overcometh the world. In conversion a new nature is formed within us [Note: 2Pe 1:4.]: a new principle, new judgment, new taste, is imparted to us: and the whole of that is, in its very nature, opposed to the world, even as light is to darkness: and, as light struggles with darkness till it has overcome it, so does that new and heaven-born principle, which is imparted to us in conversion, conflict with, and overcome, the world; so that the bonds in which, during our unregenerate state, we were held, are broken, and we are enabled to walk at liberty, in the way of Gods commandments. This may be well explained by an expression of our blessed Lord, who says, Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him, shall be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life [Note: Joh 4:14.]. The meaning of which passage is, not that the Holy Spirit which he imparts shall infallibly bring us to everlasting life, but that that will be its constant tendency and operation. A fountain is always sending forth its waters upwards: and so shall the Holy Spirit within us always operate to raise the soul from earth to heaven. Let the two passages be compared; and they will shew, not what baptism does, but what the new nature, which the Spirit of God imparts in conversion, will effect, in all that are truly regenerate.]
Let us now point out,
II.
The means by which he achieves it
The Christian, to his latest hour, is no stronger in himself than others. He is, from first to last, like a new-born infant in its mothers arms. But, as we have already seen, he believes in Christ; and, through the faith which is thus formed in his soul, he is enabled to maintain his conflicts even to the end: This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
1.
From faith he derives his motives
[He believes all that the Scriptures have spoken respecting the world, and all who belong to it: It lieth in wickedness [Note: ver. 19.], and will finally be condemned [Note: 1Co 11:32.]. He believes, too, that a very principal end for which our blessed Saviour gave himself for us was, that he might deliver us from this present evil world [Note: Gal 1:4.]. Under this conviction, he engages on the side of his Lord and Saviour; and determines, through grace, that what HE so desired, shall surely be effected. Hence he draws the sword, and throws away the scabbard. He will not be conformed to this world: but will seek to be transformed by the renewing of his mind, that he may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God [Note: Rom 12:2.]. If at any time he be tempted to taste of its cup, he puts it from his lips, as David did the waters from the well of Bethlehem; saying, Be it far from me, O Lord, that I should do this: Is not this the blood of my Lord and Saviour, who not only jeoparded his life, but laid it down for me? I will not drink it [Note: 2Sa 23:16-17.]. In like manner, if bonds and imprisonments await him for his fidelity, he will say, I am ready, not only to be bound, but also to die, at any time, and in any manner, for my Lords sake [Note: Act 21:13.]. Constrained by the love of Christ, he wars a good warfare, and thus endures unto the end [Note: Mat 10:22.].]
2.
From faith he receives his strength
[By faith he is united to the Lord Jesus Christ, as a branch to the vine; and by faith also he receives, out of his fulness, grace, according to his necessities [Note: Joh 1:16; Joh 15:5.]. In Christ he is strong and invincible [Note: 2Ti 2:1.]: and through Christ he can do all things [Note: Php 4:13.]. To the natural man the Christians conduct is perfectly inexplicable. He cannot conceive how a poor weak creature like himself should be able so to overcome all the allurements of sense, and all the terrors of an infuriated world. But the Christian soldier has armour provided for him, even armour of an heavenly temper; and through that he is enabled to sustain the unequal combat [Note: Eph 6:11.], and to triumph over all his enemies [Note: 2Co 2:14.]. Thus does he fight the good fight of faith [Note: 1Ti 6:12.]; and thus is he made more than conqueror, through Him that loved him [Note: Rom 8:37.].]
But in this victory he stands alone; as you will see, whilst I shew,
III.
His exclusive claim to this prowess
God himself appeals to us: Who but the regenerate ever effects this?
[Look through the world, and see, Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? It must be remembered, that a mere speculative faith in Christ is not that which is here spoken of, but such a faith as leads us altogether to rely on Christ for every thing, and to devote ourselves entirely to his service. And now, I ask, where will you find one single person, except the regenerate believer, who so overcomes the world? You may find some who seclude themselves from it: but they flee from the combat altogether. You may find some who retire from it in disgust: but they are overcome by it. The person for whom I inquire is, a man who lives in the world, and fulfils all his civil, social, and personal duties in it; and yet is enabled to discard all its maxims, to set at nought all its customs, to despise all its vanities, to mortify all its corruptions, and, whilst in it, not to be of it, any more than the Saviour himself was [Note: Joh 17:14; Joh 17:16.]? Where will you find one who makes the word of God his sole directory; and determines to adhere to that, in opposition to all the contempt that can be poured upon him, or the persecution which he may be called to endure? Search amongst the despisers of spiritual regeneration, and see if you can find one of this character: search amongst the despisers of a life of faith, and see if you can find one. You may search all the records of the world, and I will defy you to find one. God himself sets you at defiance. Go, search him out: Who is he that thus overcomes the world? I tell you there is not one on earth, except he who is born of God, and he who believes in Jesus as his only hope. There may be found persons who fly from the world: but they do not act as good soldiers of Jesus Christ. The people who fight and overcome, are those only who have been before described: and it is through faith in Christ alone that they maintain the conflict; it is by the cross of Christ alone that the world is crucified unto them, and they unto the world [Note: Gal 6:14.].]
On the other hand, What truly regenerate man does not effect it?
[Every one that is born of God does effect it. Whatever be his age or condition in life, it makes no difference; whether he be a king on his throne, or a beggar on the dunghill, this is his spirit, and this his conduct. In the external habits of men there must, of necessity, he a great difference: because it is not possible for a monarch to live precisely in the style and manner of a private man: but, in the internal principles and feelings there will be no difference whatever between the rich man that lives in splendour, and the poor Lazarus that lies at his gate. The hearts of all, whether young or old, rich or poor, learned or unlearned, will rise superior to the world; they will all account themselves pilgrims and sojourners here; and have their conversation in heaven [Note: Heb 11:13 and Php 3:20.], where their treasure is, and where they hope to spend a blissful eternity in the presence of their God.]
Behold then here,
1.
A test, whereby to try your state
[You cannot wish for a better touchstone than this. You see that every Christian in the universe will stand this trial; and that no other person whatever can. To a certain extent, the unregenerate and unbelieving may resemble the regenerate believer: but when you bring them to this test, the difference between them will instantly appear. I would not speak disrespectfully of any person, or any body of men; nor would I presume to sit in judgment upon them. But I will submit a question to you, which I think deserves consideration. It is well known that names of reproach are given to those who are more religious than their neighbours, and names of honour assumed by those who differ from them. At the present day, their respective titles are, the orthodox, and the evangelical: (what they may be at a future period, we know not: in every age they vary: and my object is, not to designate persons, but characters:) and these are supposed to differ very widely from each other in principle: but it is in practice, rather than in principle, that they differ: for you may hold what principles you will; and if you will be of the world, you will be reputed orthodox: but if you will not be of the world, whatever your principles may be, you may be infallibly sure that you will be ranked with the evangelical. Here, in fact, is the true point of distinction between the nominal and the real Christian: the nominal Christian is of this world: and the real Christian is not of this world, nor has any desire to be of it: for he knows, that even to desire its friendship, is to be an avowed enemy of God [Note: Jam 4:4. the Greek.].]
2.
A rule, whereby to regulate our conduct
[We must he dead unto the world, even as our Lord himself was. And does this appear unreasonable, or impracticable? Let anyone imagine a number of angels, sent down from heaven, to occupy different stations in the world for a season: how would they conduct themselves? They would take each his station, whether it were to rule a kingdom, or to sweep the streets. They would look down with contempt upon all the vanities of the world; and would stand at the remotest distance from its contagion. They would be intent only on serving God in their respective places, that they might be approved by him when they should be called to give up their account. Now, what should hinder us from considering ourselves in this precise point of view? True, we have corruptions, which the angels have not: but these corruptions are to be mortified, and not indulged: and though our duty is rendered the more difficult by means of them, it is not a whit altered. Nor need we despair of attaining at least some measure of victory over the world; because the Spirit within us has always this bearing; and because the Lord Jesus Christ, in whom we believe, has said, My grace shall be sufficient for thee. This, then, I would recommend to every regenerate soul; Love not the world, nor any thing that is in the world [Note: 1Jn 2:15-16.]: but let the same mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus, and endeavour in all things to walk as he walked [Note: 1Jn 2:6.].]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. (5) Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? (6) This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth.
In these verses we here discover where the strength of the Church lies, and in whom alone she finds victory, even in Christ. The Apostle expresseth it by the word our faith. But by faith, is meant Christ, the great object of faith. Seeing the Son, our Lord calls it, and believing on him; Joh 6:40 . And this includes all the blessed properties connected with it. He that is born of God, seeth himself a needy, lost, and helpless creature. He beholds a glory in Christ, and a fulness and suitableness in Christ, for salvation. He discovers also, a warrant in God the Father, to come to Christ, as a remedy of God’s own providing. He feels an hungering and a thirsting for Christ, excited by the Holy Ghost in his soul. And thus he comes to Christ, and finds him to be wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; 1Co 1:30 . This is to overcome the world, and to have a real soul enjoying faith, in the assured conviction, that Jesus is the Son of God!
I detain the Reader over the words of this verse, where it is said, that Jesus Christ came by water and blood; not by water only, but by water and blood. I have already in the Commentary (Joh 3:8 ) very largely spoken to this subject, to which I refer. And in addition, shall only think it necessary to say, that when the coming of Christ is thus here so blessedly spoken of, we cannot be at loss to apprehend, that as by his blood he hath redeemed his Church; so, by his Spirit he hath regenerated her; the Holy Ghost bearing witness, as the Spirit of truth, to her adoption character to this purport, is the language of the Holy Ghost, by the Apostle. After that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; which he shed on us abundantly, through Jesus Christ our Savior; that being justified by his grace, we, should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life; Tit 3:4-7 .
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
4 For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
Ver. 4. Even our faith ] Which shows a man a better project, puts his head into heaven beforehand, gives him to taste of the hidden manna. Now his mouth will not water after homely provisions, that hath lately tasted of delicate sustenance. Are we afraid of men? saith one. Faith sets hell before us. Are we allured by the world? Faith sets heaven before us. It was by the force of his faith that Luther brake out into those words, Contemptus est a me Romanus et favor et furor, I care neither for Rome’s fawnings nor frownings.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
4 .] because (reason, why His commandments are not grievous: not, as c., , making . . . . merely parenthetical) all that is born of God (the neuter is here used as gathering together in one, under the category of “born of God,” the implied in the last verses. So St. John uses the comprehensive categorical neuter in reff. c. seems to deny this personal meaning of , and to understand it “every thing,” applying it afterwards to . as one such thing. Aretius and Paulus take it similarly. But besides the Apostle’s usage cited above, the whole analogy here is against such an interpretation. It is we , not our faith, of which the term is used) conquereth ( , of habit: simply predicated of the category . . .) the world (the kingdom of evil under its prince the devil, God’s adversary; in the main as Calv., “quicquid adversum est Dei spiritui. Ita natur nostr pravitas pars mundi est, omnes concupiscenti, omnes Satan actus, quicquid denique nos a Deo abstrahit.”
The argument then is this: The commandments of God are not grievous: for, although in keeping them there is ever a conflict, yet that conflict issues in universal victory: the whole mass of the born of God conquer the world: therefore none of us need contemplate failure, or faint under his struggle as a hard one), and the victory which ( hath ) conquered the world is this, our faith (the identification of the victory with the faith which gained it, is a concise and emphatic way of linking the two inseparably together, so that wherever there is faith there is victory. And this is further expressed by the aorist participle, by which, as Estius (notwithstanding that the vulgate has “qu vincit”), “significatur victoria jam parta:” cf. ch. 1Jn 2:13 , 1Jn 4:4 . Socinus absurdly explains the aorist as speaking of those whose Christian course is done, against the plain , not only here but in 1Jn 5:5 ).
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
1Jn 5:4 . The reason why “His commandments are not heavy”. Punctuate , , . . . The neut. ( .) expresses the universality of the principle, “drckt die unbedingte Allgemeinheit noch strker aus als ‘Jeder, der aus Gott geboren ist’ ” (Rothe). Cf. Joh 3:6 . , the sum of all the forces antagonistic to the spiritual life. “Our faith” conquers the world by clinging to the eternal realities. “Every common day, he who would be a live child of the living has to fight the God-denying look of things, to believe that, in spite of their look, they are God’s, and God is in them, and working his saving will in them” (Geo. MacDonald, Castle Warlock , xli.). St. John says first “is conquering” ( ) because the fight is in progress, then “that conquered” ( ) because the triumph is assured.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
1 John
FAITH CONQUERING THE WORLD
1Jn 5:4
No New Testament writer makes such frequent use of the metaphors of combat and victory as this gentle Apostle John. None of them seem to have conceived so habitually of the Christian life as being a conflict, and in none of their writings does the clear note of victory in the use of that word ‘ overcometh ‘ ring out so constantly as it does in those of the very Apostle of Love. Equally characteristic of John’s writings is the prominence which he gives to the still contemplation of, and abiding in, Christ. These two conceptions of the Christian life appear to be discordant, but are really harmonious.
There is no doubt where John learned the phrase. Once he had heard it at a time and in a place which stamped it on his memory for ever. ‘Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,’ said Christ, an hour before Gethsemane. Long years since then had taught John something of its meaning, and had made him to understand how the Master’s victory might belong to the servants. Hence in this letter he has much to say about’ overcoming the wicked one,’ and the like; and in the Apocalypse we never get far away from hearing the shout of victory, whether we consider the sevenfold promises of the letters that stand at the beginning of the visions, or whether we listen to such sayings as this:-’ They overcame by the blood of the Lamb,’ or the last promise of all:-’ He that overcometh shall inherit all things.’
Thus bound together by that link, as well as by a great many more, are all the writings which the tradition of the Church has attributed to this great Apostle.
But to come to the words of my text. They appear in a very remarkable context here. If you read a verse or two before, you will get the full singularity of their introduction. ‘This is the love of God,’ says he, ‘that we keep His commandments: and His commandments are not grievous.’ They are very heavy and hard in themselves; it is very difficult to do right, and to walk in the ways of God, and to please Him. His commandments are grievous, per se; a heavy burden, a difficult thing to do-but let us read on:-’ They are not grievous, for whatsoever is born of God’ -keepeth the commandments? No!’ Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.’ That, thinks John, is the same thing as keeping God’s commandments. ‘This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.’ Notice, then, first, What is the true notion of conquering the world? secondly, How that victory may be ours.
I. What is the true notion of conquering the world?
Let us go back to what I have already said. Where did John learn the expression? Who was it that first used it? It comes from that never-to-be-forgotten night in that upper room; where, with His life’s purpose apparently crushed into nothing, and the world just ready to exercise its last power over Him by killing Him, Jesus Christ breaks out into such a strange strain of triumph, and in the midst of apparent defeat lifts up that clarion note of victory:-’I have overcome the world I’ He had not made much of it, according to usual standards, had He? His life had been the life of a poor man. Neither fame nor influence, nor what people call success, had He won, judged from the ordinary points of view, and at three-and-thirty is about to be murdered; and yet He says,’ I have beaten it all, and here I stand a conqueror!’ That threw a flood of light for John, and for all that had listened to Christ, on the whole conditions of human life, and on what victory and defeat, success and failure in this world mean. Not so do men usually estimate what conquering the world is. Not so do you and I estimate it when we are left to our own folly and our own weakness. Our notion of being victorious in life is when each man, according to his own ideal of what is best, manages to wring that ideal out of a reluctant world. Or, to put it into plainer words, a man desires, say, conspicuous notoriety and fame. He accounts that he has conquered when he scrambles over all his fellows, and writes his name, as boys do, upon a wall, higher than anybody else’s name, with a bit of chalk, in writing that the next winter’s storm will obliterate! That is victory! The ultra-commercial ideal says, ‘Found a big business and make it pay.’ That is to conquer! Other notions, higher and nobler than that, all partake of the same fallacy that if a man can get the world, the sum of external things, into his grip, and squeeze it as one does a grape, and get the last drop of sweetness out of it into his thirsty lips, he is a conqueror.
Well! and you may get all that, whatever it is, that seems to you best, sweetest, most needful, most toothsome and delightsome-you may get it all; and in a sense you may have conquered the world, and yet you may be utterly beaten and enslaved by it. Do you remember the old story-I make no apology for the plainness of it-of the man that said to his commanding officer, ‘I have taken a prisoner.’ ‘Bring him along with you.’ ‘He won’t let me.’ ‘Come yourself, then.’ ‘I can’t’? So you think you have conquered the world when it yields you the things you want, and all the while it has conquered and captivated you.
You say ‘Mine’! It would be a great deal nearer the truth if the possessions, or the love, or the wealth, or the culture, or whatever else it may be, that you have set your desire upon, were to rise up and say you are theirs! Utterly beaten and enslaved many a man is by the things that he vainly fancies he has mastered and conquered. If you think of how in the process of getting, you narrow yourselves; of how much you throw away; of how eyes become blind to beauty or goodness or graciousness; of how you become the slaves of the thing that you have won; of how the gold gets into a man’s blood and makes his complexion as yellow as jaundice-if you think of all that, and how desperate and wretched you would be if in a minute it was all swept away, and how it absorbs your thoughts in keeping it and looking after it, say, is it you that are its master, or it that is yours?
Now let us turn for a moment to the teaching of this Epistle. Following in the footsteps of Jesus Christ Himself, the poor man, the beaten man, the unsuccessful man, may yet say,’ I have overcome the world.’ What does that mean? Well, it is built upon this-the world, meaning thereby the sum total of outward things, considered as apart from God-the world and God we make to be antagonists to one another. And the world woos me to trust to it, to love it; crowds in upon my eye and shuts out the greater things beyond; absorbs my attention, so that if I let it have its own way I have no leisure to think about anything hut itself. And the world conquers me when it succeeds in hindering me from seeing, loving, holding communion with and serving my Father, God.
On the other hand, I conquer it when I lay my hand upon it and force it to help me to get nearer Him, to get liker Him, to think more often of Him, to do His will more gladly and more constantly. The one victory over the world is to bend it to serve me in the highest things-the attainment of a clearer vision of the Divine nature, the attainment of a deeper love to God Himself, and of a more glad consecration and service to Him. That is the victory-when you can make the world a ladder to lift you to God. That is its right use, that is victory, when all its tempting voices do not draw you away from listening to the Supreme Voice that bids you keep His commandments. When the world comes between you and God as an obscuring screen, it has conquered you. When the world comes between you and God as a transparent medium, you have conquered it. To win victory is to get it beneath your feet and stand upon it, and reach up thereby to God.
Now, dear brethren, that is the plain teaching of all this context, and I would lay it upon your hearts and upon my own. Do not let us be deceived by the false estimates of the men around us. Do not let us forget that the one thing we have to live for is to know God, and to love and to please Him, and that every life is a disastrous failure, whatsoever outward artificial apparent success it may be enriched and beautified with, that has not accomplished that.
You rule Nature, you coerce winds and lightnings and flames to your purposes. Rule the world! Rule the world by making it help you to be wiser, gentler, nobler, more gracious, more Christ-like, more Christ conscious, more full of God, and more like to Him, and then you will get the deepest delight out of it. If a man wanted to find a wine-press that should squeeze out of the vintage of this world its last drop of sweetest sweetness, he would find it in constant recognition of the love of God, and in the coercing of all the outward and the visible to be his help thereto.
There are the two theories; the one that we are all apt to fall into, of what success and victory is; the other the Christian theory. Ah! many a poor, battered Lazarus, full of sores, a pauper and a mendicant at Dives’ gate; many a poor old cottager; many a lonely woman in her garret; many a man that has gone away from Manchester, for instance, unable to get on in business, and obliged to creep into some corner and hide himself, not having succeeded in making a fortune, is the victor! And many a Dives, fettered by his own possessions, and the bond-slave of his own successes, is beaten by the world shamefully and disastrously! Pray and strive for the purged eyesight which shall teach you what it is to conquer the world, and what it is to be conquered by it.
II. And now let me turn for a moment to the second of the points that I have desired to put before you, viz., the method by which this victory over the world, of making it help us to keep the commandments of God, is to be accomplished.
We find, according to John’s fashion, a threefold statement in this context upon this matter, each member of which corresponds to and heightens the preceding. We read thus:-’ Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.’ ‘This is the victory that overcometh the world,’ or more accurately, ‘hath overcome the world, even our faith.’ Who is he that overcometh the world? He that believeth that Jesus Christ is ‘the Son of God.’ Wherein there are, speaking roughly, these three statements, that the true victory over the world is won by a new life, born of and kindred with God; that that life is kindled in men’s souls through their faith; that the faith which kindles that supernatural life, the victorious antagonist of the world, is the definite, specific faith in Jesus as the Son of God. These are the three points which the Apostle puts as the means of conquest of the world.
The first consideration, then, suggested by these statements is that the one victorious antagonist of all the powers of the world which seek to draw us away from God, is a life in our hearts kindred with God, and derived from God.
Now I know that a great many people turn away from this central representation of Christianity as if it were mystical and intangible. I desire to lay it upon your hearts, dear brethren, that every Christian man has received and possesses through the open door of his faith, a life supernatural, born of God, kindred with God, therefore having nothing kindred with evil, and therefore capable of meeting and mastering all the temptations of the world.
It is a plain piece of common-sense, that God is stronger than this material universe, and that what is born of God partakes of the Divine strength. But there would be no comfort in that, nor would it be anything germane and relevant to the Apostle’s purpose, unless there was implied in the statement what in fact is distinctly asserted more than once in this Epistle, that every Christian man and woman may claim to be thus born of God. Hearken to the words that almost immediately precede our text, ‘ Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.’ Hearken to other words which proclaim the same truth, ‘To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, which were born, not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.’ He does come with all the might of His regenerating power into our poor natures, if and when we turn ourselves with humble faith to that dear Lord; and breathes into our deadness a new life, with new tastes, new desires, new motives, new powers making us able to wrestle with and to overcome the temptations that were too strong for us.
Mystical and deep as this thought may be, God’s nature is breathed into the spirits of men that will trust Him! and if you will put your confidence in that dear Lord, and live near Him, into your weakness will come an energy born of the Divine, and you will be able to do all things in the might of the Christ that strengthens you from within, and is the life of your life, and the soul of your soul. To the little beleaguered garrison surrounded by strong enemies through whom they cannot cut their way, the king sends reliefs, who force their passage into the fortress, and hold it against all the power of the foe. You are not left to fight by yourselves, you can conquer the world if you will trust to that Christ, trusting in whom God’s own power will come to your aid, and God’s own Spirit will be the strength of your spirit.
And then there is the other way of looking at this same thing, viz., you can conquer the world if you will trust in Jesus Christ, because such trust will bring you into constant, living, loving contact with the Great Conqueror. There is a beautiful accuracy and refinement in the language of these three clauses which is not represented in our Authorized Version. The central one which I have read as my text this morning might be translated as it is translated in the Revised Version-’ This is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith.’ By which I suppose the Apostle means very much what I am saying now, viz., that my faith brings me into contact with that one great victory over the world which for all time was won by Jesus Christ. I can appropriate Christ’s conquest to myself if I trust Him. The might of it and some portion of the reality of it passes into my nature in the measure in which I rely upon Him. He conquered once for all, and the very remembrance of His conquest by faith will make me strong-will teach my hands to war and my fingers to fight.’ He conquered once for all, and His victory will pass, with electric power, into my life if I trust Him. I am brought into living fellowship with Him. All the stimulation of example, and all that lives lofty and pure can do for us, is done for us in transcendent fashion by the life of Jesus Christ. And all that lives lofty and pure can never do for us is done in unique fashion by the life and death of Him whose life and death are alike the victory over the world and the pattern for us.
So if we join ourselves to Him by faith, and bring into our daily life, in all its ignoble effort, in all its little duties, in all its wearisome monotonies, in all its triviality, the thought, the illuminating thought, the ennobling thought, of the victorious Christ our companion and our Friend-in hoc signo vinces-in this sign thou shalt conquer! They that keep hold of His hand see over the world and all its falsenesses and fleetingnesses. They that trust in Jesus are more than conquerors by the might of His victory.
And then there is the last thought, which, though it be not directly expressed in the words before us, is yet closely connected with them. You can conquer the world if you will trust Jesus Christ, because your faith will bring into the midst of your lives the grandest and most solemn and blessed realities. Faith is the true anesthesia of the soul;-the thing that deadens it to the pains and the pleasures that come from this fleeting life. As for the pleasures, I remember reading lately of some thinker of our own land who was gazing through a telescope at the stars, and turned away from the solemn vision with one remark,-’ I don’t think much of our county families!’ And if you will look up at Christ through the telescope of your faith, it is wonderful what Lilliputians the Brobdingnagians round about you will dwindle into, and how small the world will look, and how coarse the pleasures.
If a man goes to Italy, and lives in the presence of the pictures there, it is marvellous what daubs the works of art, that he used to admire, look when he comes back to England again. And if he has been in communion with Jesus Christ, and has found out what real sweetness is, he will not be over-tempted by the coarse dainties that people eat here. Children spoil their appetites for wholesome food by sweetmeats; we very often do the same in regard to the bread of God, but if we have once really tasted it, we shall not care very much for the vulgar dainties on the world’s stall.
Dear brethren, set your faith upon that great Lord, and the world’s pleasures will have less power over you, and as for its pains-
‘There’s nothing either good or bad, But thinking makes it so.’
If a man does not think that the world’s pains are of much account, they are not of much account. He who Bees athwart the smoke of the fire of Smithfield, the face of the Captain of his warfare, who has conquered, will dare to burn and will not dare to deny his Master or his Master’s truth. The world may threaten in hope of winning you to its service, but if its threats, turned into realities, fail to move you, it is the world which inflicts, and not you who suffer, that is beaten. In the extremest case they ‘kill the body and after that have no more that they can do,’ and if they have done all they can, and have not succeeded in wringing the incantation from the locked lips, they are beaten, and the poor dead martyr that they could only kill has conquered them and their torments. So fear not all that the world can do against you. If you have got a little spark of the light of Christ’s presence in your heart, the darkness will not be very terrible, and you will not be alone.
So, brethren, two questions:-Does your faith do anything like that for you? If it does not, what do you think is the worth of it? Does it deaden the world’s delights? Does it lift you above them? Does it make you conqueror? If it does not, do you think it is worth calling faith?
And the other question is: Do you want to beat, or to be beaten? When you consult your true self, does your conscience not tell you that it were better for you to keep God’s commandments than to obey the world? Surely there are many young men and women in this place to-day who have some desires high, and true, and pure, though often stifled, and overcome, and crushed down; and many older folk who have glimpses, in the midst of predominant regard for the things that are seen and temporal, of a great calm, pure region away up there that they know very little about.
Dear friends, my one word to you all is: Get near Jesus Christ by thought, and love, and trust. Trust to Him and to the great love that gave itself for you. And then bring Him into your life, by daily reference to Him of it all: and by cultivating the habit of thinking about Him as being present with you in the midst of it all, and so holding His hand, you will share in His victory; and at the last, according to the climax of His sevenfold promises, ‘To Him that overcometh will I give to sit down with Me on My throne, even as I also overcame, and am sat down with My Father on His Throne.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
For = Because.
world. App-129.
faith. App-150.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
4.] because (reason, why His commandments are not grievous: not, as c., , making . . . . merely parenthetical) all that is born of God (the neuter is here used as gathering together in one, under the category of born of God, the implied in the last verses. So St. John uses the comprehensive categorical neuter in reff. c. seems to deny this personal meaning of , and to understand it every thing, applying it afterwards to . as one such thing. Aretius and Paulus take it similarly. But besides the Apostles usage cited above, the whole analogy here is against such an interpretation. It is we, not our faith, of which the term is used) conquereth (, of habit: simply predicated of the category …) the world (the kingdom of evil under its prince the devil, Gods adversary; in the main as Calv., quicquid adversum est Dei spiritui. Ita natur nostr pravitas pars mundi est, omnes concupiscenti, omnes Satan actus, quicquid denique nos a Deo abstrahit.
The argument then is this: The commandments of God are not grievous: for, although in keeping them there is ever a conflict, yet that conflict issues in universal victory: the whole mass of the born of God conquer the world: therefore none of us need contemplate failure, or faint under his struggle as a hard one), and the victory which (hath) conquered the world is this, our faith (the identification of the victory with the faith which gained it, is a concise and emphatic way of linking the two inseparably together, so that wherever there is faith there is victory. And this is further expressed by the aorist participle, by which, as Estius (notwithstanding that the vulgate has qu vincit), significatur victoria jam parta: cf. ch. 1Jn 2:13, 1Jn 4:4. Socinus absurdly explains the aorist as speaking of those whose Christian course is done, against the plain , not only here but in 1Jn 5:5).
Fuente: The Greek Testament
1Jn 5:4. , everything which is born) Joh 3:6, note.- , the world) which is opposed to keeping the commandments of God and to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, and all things which the world presents in ones way to invite and terrify.- , the victory) The more faith grows strong in the heart, the more does the world yield.- , faith) See the efficacy of faith.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
world
kosmos = world-system. Rev 11:15; Joh 7:7. (See Scofield “Rev 13:8”).
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
Victory over the World
And this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith.1Jn 5:4.
1. These words occur in a letter written by St. John to all the different Christian communities in the cities and towns of the Empire. These little churches or congregations consisted of men and women of humble position, little or no wealth, not much learning, not much influence, and they were found in cities given up for the most part to modes of life wholly incompatible with Christianity. The little Christian communities had gone through the severest persecutions. Hundreds and thousands of Christians had been put to death for refusal to worship the Roman Emperor; they were condemned as disloyal subjects, as atheistsbecause they had no image of their Godas secret conspirators. The power of Rome was irresistible. They were surrounded with a society which tolerated evils and vices which would shock them, and on which at present they had made little or no impression. There was wild extravagance of luxury, and abject poverty and starvation side by side, with no poor law, no hospitals, and but very slender private charities. There was a cruelty towards slaves and children which was so common that it had ceased to shock people. There were vices which cannot be named, against which Christians set their faces like flint. This was the world that St. John saw, and these were the little communities to whom he wrote. And what he said was: This is the victory that over-cometh the world, even our faith. Is it not an amazing, a sublime audacity, to say that the faith of these little insignificant churches was overcoming this great powerful world of Roman armies, pagan vices, and heathen cruelties and superstitions? Yet this is what St. John says: Our faith is overcoming this world.
2. Of all the Apostles there was none that dwelt so constantly on overcoming as St. John. One can see that the idea of battle and triumph runs through his Epistles, as well as through the Book of Revelation. It is he that speaks of overcoming the wicked one; it is he that records those glorious promises which we find in the Epistles to the Seven Churches, promises that belong to the overcoming one. In all these references we have the thought of a victorious power overcoming a mighty, perpetual, opposing force. And yet, what is St. Johns ideal of the Christian life? Is it one of feverish excitement and strain? No, it is the very opposite of this. He more than all the disciples had learned the secret of the rest of faith; he knew what it was to abide under the shadow of the Almighty. He it was that learned the meaning of the paradox that the secret of all real activity is stillness of soul, and that the condition of continuous victory is an attitude of repose on the power of God. Well, that teaches us that the man who knows most about victorious conflict is not the man of restless energy and intense human activity, but the man who realizes his own weakness and knows fully what it is to rest in Divine omnipotence. This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
I
The World that Challenges the Believer
1. What is the world? The term rendered world means properly arrangement; and is then applied to the universe of created things in its orderly and systematic conformation, as opposed to the confusion of the original chaos. In all this, however, the idea is rather that of Gods handiwork than of Gods antagonist: in this sense, the world is not Gods enemy, but Gods witness. The term passed, however, in the hands of the inspired writers, into a designation of things visible and temporal, the state of things that now is, and the persons who have their treasure, their home, and their all, in it, as opposed to things spiritual and eternal, the state of things that shall be, and the persons who belong, even in this life, as to their home and higher being, to that Heaven in which God dwells. The world thus became a brief title for all that is not God nor of God, all that is earthly, sensual, and evil, all that tempts to sin, and all those who live without God, apart from God, or in enmity against God.
In the Apostles time, the world meant, no doubt, the whole mass of human society, with the exception of the handfuls here and there of those who had embraced the Christian faith. The line of separation between the Christian and the non-Christian elements of society could be readily and sharply drawn. But it is not so now. The Church has leavened the world; the world has leavened the Church. The non-Christian element of society is no longer a distinct and definable aggregation of men. The world exists, but it is, so to speak, no longer visible and separable. Its existence is as real, but its form is vaguer. It is the sum of the many forces, principles, and tendencies which oppose and counteract the progress of the spirit and the spiritual. It exists not only among us, but in us. It is all that part of each one of us which gives a more or less active resistance to growth in goodness, in knowledge, and in sympathy; the sum of the influences of fashion, and prejudice, and selfishness: the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.1 [Note: Memorials of Edwin Hatch, 4.]
The world of the nineteenth century is very different indeed from that of the first. There is no Nero or Domitian now on the worlds throne; there is no Coliseum with its hungry lions, and with its hungrier, crueller crowd of brutes in human form, to gloat over the sufferings of their innocent victims. The fight of faith is in another region, perhaps a harder one for us, for it was not of a lesser but of a greater conflict that the Apostle spoke when he said, We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. The wrestling of the nineteenth century has been of that high and difficult kind; the great foe has been Materialism, uttering itself in sceptical thought on the one hand, and in selfish luxury on the other. The world which is faiths antagonist has laid aside in our day its bludgeons, and all its apparatus of torture and intimidation, and has taken up instead flute, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of music to soothe conscience and to allure along the flowery paths of inglorious ease to sunless gulfs of ignominious death. And it is unutterably sad to think what multitudes allow their faith to lose all its fibre, and permit the aspirations and enthusiasm of youth to die down into the dullest commonplace, till they find satisfaction enough for their immortal spirits in coining their hearts, and dropping their blood for drachmas. Not the ferocious dragon of the Revelation, but the insidious Mammon installed in our time as the prince of the power of the air, and his wiles are as much to be dreaded as the ferocity of the beast.1 [Note: J. Munro Gibson.]
This is the world of which Carlyle said, Understand it, despise it, loathe it; but cheerfully hold on thy way through it with thine eye on the highest loadstars. This is the world of which Horace Walpole wrote, It is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel. This is the world of which Wordsworth wrote:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.
2. This world is a gigantic power, not easily resisted. It is not a thing of yesterday: it is a tradition of many ages, of many civilizations, which, after flowing on in the great current of human history, has come down, charged with the force of an accumulated prestige, even to us. To this great tradition of regulated ungodliness each generation adds something; something of force, something of refinement, something of social or intellectual power. The world is Protean in its capacity for taking new forms. Sometimes it is a gross idol-worship; sometimes it is a military empire; sometimes it is a cynical school of philosophers; sometimes it is the indifference of a blas society, which agrees in nothing but in proscribing earnestness. The Church conquered it in the form of the pagan empire. But the world had indeed had its revenge when it could point to such Popes as were Julius ii., or Alexander vi., or Leo x.; to such courts as were those of Louis xiv. or Charles ii.; for it had throned itself at the heart of the victorious Church. So now between the world and Christendom there is no hard and fast line of demarcation. The world is within the fold, within the sanctuary, within the heart, as well as without. It sweeps round each soul like a torrent of hot air, and makes itself felt at every pore of the moral system. Not that the world is merely a point of view, a mood of thought, a temper or frame of mind, having no actual, or, as we should say, no objective existence. It has an independent existence. Just as the Kingdom of God exists whether we belong to it or no, and yet, if we do belong to it, is, as our Lord has told us, within us as an atmosphere of moral power and light; so the world, the kingdom of another being, exists, whether we belong to it or no, although our belonging to it is a matter of inward motives and character. The world penetrates like a subtle atmosphere in Christendom, while in heathendom it is organized as a visible system. But it is the same thing at bottom. It is the essential spirit of corrupt human life, taking no serious account of God, either forgetting Him altogether, or putting something in His place, or striking a balance between His claims and those of His antagonists. And thus friendship with it is enmity with God, who will have our all. And a first duty in His servants is to free themselves from its power, or, as St. John says, to overcome it.
(1) Sometimes the world brings its power to bear on us by direct assault. In the first ages of the Church, when it was confessedly pagan, it made great use of this instrument for enforcing its supremacy. It imprisoned and killed Christians from the days of Nero to the days of Diocletian. It persecuted by social exclusiveness, by inflicting loss of property and position, by bodily tortures and by death. The mildest forms of persecution are all, thank God, that are now possible in this country, but if a man be deprived of advantages which he would otherwise have enjoyed, if he be met by a cold bow or a vacant gaze where he expects a cordial greeting, if he feels, in short, that he is under a social ban, and all this because he has dared to obey his conscience where obedience has been unwelcome or unpopular, he is, to all intents and purposes, persecuted. And if he can stand this persecution patiently, calmly, silently, so much the better for him. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness, sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. But how is he to stand it? By seeing him who is invisible. Who that has had to undergo a painful operation does not know the support that is derived from holding the hand of a friend who stands by, full of love and sympathy, till all is over? And faith links the hands of the persecuted with the very hand of Christ. Fear not, He says, for I am with thee. I have called thee by my name: thou art mine. And it is thus that the world, when it has done its very worst, is vanquished.
(2) The world assails us by offers of compromise, by appealing to our interests, our desires, our passions. It seeks to throw its spell over us. As music charms the ear, so do the worlds honours, applause and popularity the hearts of many. Over some they exercise an irresistible sway. Over all they are mighty. There are few who can bear, without a sense of pain, the turning away from them of the worlds favour. It may be regarded as a test of the strength and sincerity of ones religion, that one can bear without wincing the frown or scorn of the world. It requires more than human strength to contend against and overcome that for which we have a warm desire. But the more we delight in the favour and approval of God, the less will we care for that of the world. The approbation of God and our own consciences is a better support than all the smiles the world can bestow.
(3) The world seizes the opportunity of attacking us when we are worn out by manifold cares and duties and troubles. Its influence is continuous and persistent. It seeks to absorb us. How many notable housewives, busy from morning to night with their household affairs, their children, their servants, could tell us that they scarce can find a minute to read the Bible, or to stop and think where they are going; and that at morning they are so anxious to get to the avocations of the day, and at evening so completely wearied and worn out, that they have not time or heart for prayer! How many a toiling, anxious man, working and scheming to make ends meet, and to maintain his children, and to advance them in life, has not a thought to spare for the other worldfor his own souls eternal destiny, or for the eternal destiny of those he holds dear! It is when we are careful and troubled about many things, that we are ready to forget that one thing is needful.
The world overcomes us, not merely by appealing to our reason, or by exciting our passions, but by imposing on our imagination. So much do the systems of men swerve from the truth as set forth in Scripture that their very presence becomes a standing fact against Scripture, even when our reason condemns them, by their persevering assertions, and they gradually overcome those who set out by contradicting them. In all cases, what is often and unhesitatingly asserted at length finds credit with the mass of mankind; and so it happens, in this instance, that, admitting as we do from the first that the world is one of our three chief enemies; maintaining, rather than merely granting, that the outward face of things speaks a different language from the word of God; yet, when we come to act in the world, we find this very thing a trial, not merely of our obedience, but even of our faith; that is, the mere fact that the world turns out to be what we began by actually confessing concerning it.1 [Note: J. H. Newman, Oxford University Sermons, 122.]
One of the severest trials of Gladstones life was the assassination of his trusted lieutenant and most intimate personal friend, Lord Frederick Cavendish. And it is pathetic to be told that in the stress of duty and responsibility following on this tragedy he referred sadly to the impossibility of dwelling on his loss as one of the penalties of his position. But think of the faith that could so rise superior to a gnawing grief as to be in no wise unfitted by it for the closest thought and most assiduous application. It is an illustration of the restful side of his faith.2 [Note: J. Munro Gibson.]
3. If the world is not being overcome by us, then we are being overcome by the world. It is like a stream. We are either going up against the stream, or we are being carried down by the current. When is it that the world is conquering us? When we are induced to accept its views, its maxims, instead of the principles of Gods holy word; when we are influenced by the opinion of men and by the spirit of the age. The world is conquering us when it is petrifying all our desires after God, when it chills all our aspirations upward, and when it steals out of our hearts the very inclination to pray to God and to listen to His voice. The world is overcoming us when it fills us with the fear of man, so that we are afraid to speak for Christ, and are dumb. The world is conquering us when it fills us with love of earthly things, and leads us to set our affections upon things below.
This is the victory wherewith the world overcomes us, even our doubt. The world has a principle, a bond of union, a faith; and the world must conquer us if we have none. It is necessary that we should keep hold of this truth, which we have, it would seem, almost forgotten, that faith is meant to defend us, not to be defended, to be an active principle within us, not the dead body round which the battle rages. Faith and religion ought to be our weapons of warfare, the instruments by which we are to do our duty. But how far will our present faith answer to this definition? A mans religion consists not, as Carlyle has said, of the many things he is in doubt of, and tries to believe, but of the few he is assured of, and has no need of effort for believing.3 [Note: A. T. Lyttelton, in Keble College Sermons, 18771888, p. 193.]
The world, which he defined as the activities of this life with God left out, seemed to him to invade everything in London, even the Church, tempting some of the clergy to aim at success and popularity, and become absorbed in efforts to gather large congregations around them by competing in attractions with neighbouring churches.
We have moved to London House till Easter. It makes my work easier for me, as I have not so much travelling. It also brings me more visitors and makes me feel more in the world. But oh! how much world there is! The devil and the flesh are not nearly so dangerous combined. The trial of a bishop is that he is always engaged in outside matters. I really rejoice in Confirmations, which bring me into contact with the young. I do not find so many human beings in London as there were at Peterborough.
I am perpetually overwhelmed with work. I have to express more opinions than I have time to verify. I am in the very centre of all that is worldly. I am exposed to all the most deteriorating influences. All that I can do is to realize these facts, and try to possess my soul as well as I can.1 [Note: Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton, ii. 224.]
Just when we are safest, theres a sunset-touch,
A fancy from a flower-bell, some ones death,
A chorus-ending from Euripides,
And thats enough for fifty hopes and fears
As old and new at once as natures self,
To rap and knock and enter in our soul,
Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring,
Round the ancient idol, on his base again,
The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly.
There the old misgivings, crooked questions are
This good God,what He could do, if He would.
Would, if He couldthen must have done long since:
If so, when, where and how? some way must be,
Once feel about, and soon or late you hit
Some sense, in which it might be, after all.
Why not, The Way, the Truth, the Life?2 [Note: Browning, Bishop Blougrams Apology.]
II
The Faith that Conquers the World
1. Faith is not a new faculty conferred upon the soul, but the quickening and expansion of a faculty that we already possess. Cold iron is precisely identical with iron heated in the fire; but though the metal is the same, the fire that has entered into it entirely transforms its condition, and endows it with a new power. And the fire also, by entering the iron, takes upon itself new action, making of the metal a vehicle of its dynamic potency. So does the Spirit of God take and transfuse and transform our ordinary faculties for His own great ends.
Thus faith is the conquering principle in religion. For Christian faith is not a thing apart from ones ordinary human nature and imposed upon it from without; it is the expansion of an original inherent moral quality, common to us all; it is the spiritualization of a natural faculty; it is the daily energizing, vitalizing power in which we live and do our best work, brought into contact with the Divine power. So glorified, it overcomes the worldthe worldly spirit with its carnal aims, countless temptations, and unholy methods, being the hardest there is to overcome. But even unglorified, it has this overcoming power, and if we only come to see this clearly, we shall not find so much difficulty in transferring to the life of religion a quality which we have learnt to regard as the supreme essential in every secular sphere.
Without belonging to any religious communion, Renan has his full share of religious feeling. Though he himself does not believe, he is infinitely apt at seizing all the delicate shades of the popular creeds. I may perhaps be understood when I say that faith does not possess him, but that he possesses faith.1 [Note: Anatole France, On Life and Letters, 284.]
2. The virtue of faith lies in its object. Faith is in itself nothing better than an organ, an instrument; and it derives its character entirely from that upon which it is fixed. The adorable majesty of God, His omnipotence, holiness, and love, His nature, so far as it has been revealed to us, the union of perfect God and perfect Man in the person of Jesus, the full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction offered by Him for the sins of the whole world, the free and gracious offers of pardon which are made in Him, His mediatorial sovereignty over the world, the secret and mysterious workings of God the Holy Ghostthese are the objects proposed to faith, upon which, if we fix the eye of the soul, we shall assuredly have power to overcome the world in the strength of that Divine vision. And in all this there is one central figure, even the Son of God made very Man, nailed to the Cross, pouring forth His precious blood for our sakes and in our stead, and then in triumph risen, exalted, crowned, sitting on the right hand of God in the glory of the Father.
The Power is all in Christ. Faith is the link that binds us to Him. Is there any power in faith? None whatever. Is there any power in a railway coupling? No; but look at these carriages, look at that train, look at that locomotive. Where is the power? You see it moving along, and you say, All the power is in the locomotive. Well, how do these carriages manage to get along if it is all there? You say: There is a coupling, a link, a very simple thing. There is no power in the coupling, but it links the power in the locomotive with the carriages, and if you break the link, all the power is gone.1 [Note: E. Hopkins, in The Keswick Week, 1900, p. 27.]
People say, Lord, increase our faith. Did not the Lord rebuke His disciples for that prayer? He said, You do not want a great faith, but faith in a great God. If your faith were as small as a grain of mustard-seed, it would suffice to remove this mountain!2 [Note: Hudson Taylor.]
3. The faith that conquers is a personal force or power in the soul. Not only does the truth conquer all that is false; not only does union with our invincible head make our victory sure; but we also conquer in the exercise of a personal faith, sustaining us in all the conflicts in which we engage. Such was the faith of Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and all the host of worthies whose names and deeds illustrate the eleventh chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews. It was by faith that Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. It was by faith that Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaohs daughter. It was by faith that he chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. It was by faith that he esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. Faith made men strong, courageous, and capable of daring exploits. Through faith common men subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword. By faith Joseph exercised self-restraint, regarded sin as an offence to God, and said, How then can I do this great wickedness, and sin against God? By faith men still overcome temptations, endure cruel mockings and scourgings, bear privations and tortures, discharge duties, lay aside besetting sins, achieve the mastery over themselves and all their enemies.
Faith is not the mere sum of probabilities, conjecture, or reasonings of any kind. It implies the action of the affections and of the will, the exercise of all those inner powers of our being which the Hebrews called the Heart.1 [Note: Edward King, 120.]
Often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true. Suppose, for instance, that you are climbing a mountain, and have worked yourself into a position from which the only escape is by a terrible leap. Have faith that you can successfully make it, and your feet are nerved to its accomplishment. But mistrust yourself, and think of all the sweet things you have heard the scientists say of maybes, and you will hesitate so long that, at last, all unstrung and trembling, and launching yourself in a moment of despair, you roll in the abyss.2 [Note: W. James, The Will to Believe, 59.]
Yet over sorrow and over death
Cometh at last a song that saith
This, this is the victory,
Even our faith.
Love maketh all the crooked straight,
And love bringeth love to all that wait,
And laughter and light and dewy tear
To the hard, blind eyes of Fate.
All shall look tenderly yet and free
Outside over the lea,
And deep within the heart of me.
4. The Apostle speaks of the victory in the past tense, as if it were already accomplished. Our Lord Himself exclaimed, In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world. These words were uttered by Him in the Upper Room in that hour when the burden of a great mystery rested upon Him, when He stood beneath the chilling shadow of the Cross itself before He descended into the valley of the Kidron, and crossing the brook, entered into Gethsemane, there amid the shadows of the Garden to pray more and more earnestly. Thus, before the conflict had as yet reached a deadly heat, the note of victory was sounded. This was the joyous anticipation of One who knew that virtually the conflict was now over. That fact was the inspiring assurance which He gave to His disciples. They, too, would have very similar tribulations, though not in the same degree, but those troubles would not necessarily mean defeat to them. He had conquered the world, why need they therefore be dispirited? The fact that He had conquered was the pledge of their final victory if they were His. He had supplied the great precedent. The world henceforth would be a conquered world. It would to the end of time have to acknowledge one total defeat at least. Christ, moreover, identified Himself with His followers, so that His conquering power should be also manifested in them.
5. The text does not say that faith is the means by which the world is overcome. It does not say that by faith the battle is fought and the victory is gained. It says that faith is the victory itself. It does not bid us marshal our forces against the world. It does not command us to contend with this or that evil. It does not require us to array on one side faith and on the other the world, and assure us that when the weary fight is done, through blood and toil and bitter contest, the latter shall be overcome. It draws us up into a higher plane. It leaves the world far below. It lets it move on for the time unheeded. It does not care for its hurried rush, its shout of defiance, its cry of victory. It places before the soul the eternal realitiesheaven and hell, life and death, the power of the sacraments, the influence of prayer, the ministrations of the angels, the watchful love of an overruling Providence, and, above them all and in them all, the Incarnate Saviour uniting man and human nature to the Eternal God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Three in One and One in Three.
The one victory over the world is to bend it to serve me in the highest thingsthe attainment of a clearer vision of the Divine nature, the attainment of a deeper love to God Himself, and of a more glad consecration and service to Him. That is the victorywhen you can make the world a ladder to lift you to God. That is its right use, that is victory, when all its tempting voices do not draw you away from listening to the Supreme Voice that bids you keep His commandments. When the world comes between you and God as an obscuring screen, it has conquered you. When the world comes between you and God as a transparent medium, you have conquered it. To win victory is to get it beneath your feet and stand upon it, and reach up thereby to God.1 [Note: A. Maclaren.]
One of our famous philosophers tells of an Italian who was placed upon the rack to secure a confession, and who bore the agony with courage by crying out continually: I see it, I see it. What did he see? The victim explained afterwards that he had conjured up the direr punishment that awaited him if he revealed his secret. He used the thought and vision of the scaffold to turn his mind away from the consciousness of present pain. So by looking at things which are not seen, men and women have borne the greatest hardships, and triumphed over the fiercest foes. And if it be the case that fear can in a measure expel the sense of pain and make torture tolerable, what will the passion of a great and thrilling love not do? Faith is the link that brings our love into contact with the Eternal Love, that puts us alongside the infinite resources of God. It is
The desire of the moth for the star
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.
(1) Faith has been conquering the world of ignorance and error by the promulgation of truth, which is the law of the intellectual life. There is now a lessening tendency to acquiesce in what is false, a growing tendency to find out what is true. Men are beginning to regard facts rather than opinions, the things that are rather than the things that are imagined. New tracks are being opened up, and every step of the old tracks is being resurveyed. This spirit of investigation is the spirit of Christianity. There are, no doubt, unbelievers in the manifoldness of the works and ways of God, who take every discovery as a fresh rebuff, who would put chains upon the feet of every traveller into the domain of science or of history, lest his report of what is to be found there should be different from their own or other mens dreams. But the number of such timorous doubters is lessening; the number of believers in truth is increasing.
When Dr. Lazeer, in Cuba, made up his mind by experiment that yellow fever was propagated solely through the bite of a mosquito, and gave his life in supreme testimony to this truth, the world not only added one more undying name to her roll of heroes, but began forthwith to act upon the new knowledge sanctified by this sacred test.1 [Note: D. Scudder, The Passion for Reality, 45.]
What thou of God and of thyself dost know,
So know that none can force thee to forego;
For oh! his knowledge is a worthless art,
Which, forming of himself no vital part,
The foremost man he meets with readier skill
In sleight of words, can rob him of at will.
Faith feels not for her lore more sure nor less,
If all the world deny it or confess:
Did the whole world exclaim, Like Solomon,
Thou sittest high on Wisdoms noblest throne,
She would not, than before, be surer then,
Nor draw more courage from the assent of men.
Or did the whole world cry, O fond and vain!
What idle dream is this which haunts thy brain?
To the whole world Faith boldly would reply,
The whole world can, but I can never, lie.2 [Note: R. C. Trench, Poems, 315.]
(2) Faith has been conquering the world of selfishness, by erecting the republic of unselfishness, by spreading the spirit of love, which is the law of social life. There is a greater desire now to relieve the burdens of the afflicted and the poor, an increasing effort to reform the criminal, a growing admission of the possible variety of human beliefs, a lessening disposition to settle all international disputes by the terrible decision of war, a growth of the mutual respect which is the parent of libertyfor the mutual respect of each for each means the common liberty of all. The growth of this is a growth of Christian influence, and of the Christian temper: it is a victory of our faith, for it is the victory of Christian love.
Alexander the Great, when he was master of the whole world, was the greatest slave within it, for he was discontented even with his victories; the pride of conquest held him in captivity by its iron chain. No; he who aims at the highest greatness in this world may only be more greatly selfish than the rest of mankind, and what is that but to be really little? He is truly great who is the most unselfish, and he is the least of all who lives for himself alone.1 [Note: C. H. Spurgeon.]
In the Patriarchate of Antioch there is a marvellous memorial to the victory of Christianity. In the centre of it, in a mountain region not far from Antioch, are to be found the ruins of one hundred and fifty cities within a space of thirty or forty leagues. In the most glorious days of Christianity, when it ruled the Roman world, these Christian cities were invaded by either the Persians or the Saracens, and, as the story goes, forsaken by their inhabitants in a single night. Twelve hundred years have passed away since then, and, in spite of time and earthquake and the burning Syrian sun, the traveller who visits them scarce dares to call them ruins. Not as thoroughly preserved, indeed, as Pompeii or Herculaneum, they still tell the story of Christian civilization in the days when the Church had recently won its victory over persecution and tyranny. The signs of comfort and of peace appear on all sides. Bath-houses and stables, balconies and shaded porticoes, winepresses, and even jars for preserving wine, yet remain. Still are to be seen magnificent churches, supported by columns, flanked by towers, surrounded by splendid tombs. Crosses and monograms of Christ are sculptured on most of the doors, and numerous inscriptions may be read upon the monuments. He who has visited Pompeii, with its sad record of the refinement and corruption of Rome, cannot fail to notice the difference, as he reads written over the door of a house, The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth for evermore; and on another, Lord, succour this house and them that dwell therein; or on a tomb where the dead are sleeping, Thou hast made the Most High thy refuge; no evil shall approach thee, no plague come nigh thy dwelling.
But what is most observable is the tone of triumph and victory that the inscriptions seem to breathe. On the porch of a house is written, If God be for us, who can be against us? and a sepulchral monument records the triumphant sentence, The earth is the Lords, and the fulness thereof. Even an obscure painter who, while engaged in decorating a tomb, tried, it would seem, his chisel on the wall of rock, as he rudely traced a monogram of Christ, in his enthusiasm as a liberated Christian, carved in the stone to remain for ages, This conquers.2 [Note: J. de Koven.]
I do not know, Mazzini says, speaking historically, a single great conquest of the human spirit, a single important step for the perfecting of human society, which has not had its roots in a strong religious faith.3 [Note: Bolton King, Mazzini, 223.]
Victory over the World
Literature
Arnold (T.), Sermons, ii. 8.
Banks (L. A.), John and his Friends, 166.
Brooke (S. A.), Sermons, i. 1.
Burrell (D. J.), The Church in the Fort, 306.
Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Women and Children, ii. 76.
Deshon (G.), Sermons for the Ecclesiastical Year, 239.
Garbett (E.), The Souls Life, 268.
Gresley (W.), Sermons Preached at Brighton, 315.
Gurney (T. A.), The Living Lord and the Opened Grave, 279.
Hare (J. C.), The Victory of Faith, 3, 32, 63, 103, 151.
Hatch (E.), Memorials, 3, 283.
Hiley (R. W.), A Years Sermons, i. 209.
Jerdan (C.), Gospel Milk and Honey, 154.
Jones (W. B.), The Peace of God, 148.
Keble (J.), Sermons for the Christian Year: Easter to Ascension Day, 201.
Kingsley (C.), Village, Town and Country Sermons, 231.
Liddon (H. P.), Easter in St. Pauls, 253, 300.
Little (J.), Glorying in the Lord, 176.
Maclaren (A.), A Years Ministry, i. 85.
Macleod (D.), The Sunday Home Service, 328.
Newman (J. H.), Oxford University Sermons, 120.
Pike (J. K.), Unfailing Goodness and Mercy, 67.
Price (A. C.), Fifty Sermons, iii. 81.
Ritchie (A.), Twenty-four Sermons from St. Ignatius Pulpit, 90.
Robertson (F. W.), Sermons, iii. 15.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Christian Warfare, No. 14.
Spurgeon (C. H.) Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xlvii. (1901) 589.
Thomson (W.), Sermons Preached in Lincolns Inn Chapel, 263.
Vaughan (C. J.), Epiphany, Lent and Easter, 271.
Voysey (C.), Sermons, xiii. (1890) No. 18.
Westcott (B. F.), Village Sermons, 172.
Wilmot-Buxton (H. J.), The Life of Duty, i. 209.
Wilmot-Buxton (H. J.), Mission Sermons for a Year, 252.
Wilson (J. M.), Rochdale Sermons, 62.
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
whatsoever: 1Jo 5:1, 1Jo 3:9
overcometh: 1Jo 5:5, 1Jo 2:13-17, 1Jo 4:4, Joh 16:33, Rom 8:35-37, 1Co 15:57, Rev 2:7, Rev 2:11, Rev 2:17, Rev 2:26, Rev 3:5, Rev 3:12, Rev 3:21, Rev 12:11, Rev 15:2
Reciprocal: Gen 6:22 – General Deu 30:6 – to love the Lord Psa 119:17 – I may live Joh 1:13 – were Rom 8:37 – Nay Gal 1:4 – from Gal 6:14 – the world Eph 2:2 – walked according Eph 6:16 – the shield 1Th 2:13 – effectually 2Ti 4:10 – having Jam 1:27 – to keep Jam 2:14 – though 1Pe 1:3 – hath 1Jo 2:15 – Love not 1Jo 5:18 – whosoever Rev 21:6 – freely Rev 21:8 – the fearful
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
SONSHIP AND VICTORY
For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
1Jn 5:4
Our first inquiry will naturally be, What is meant by overcoming the world? And in no better way can we find an answer to the question than by turning to the life of Him Who alone of all the sons of men can claim to have done it completely, Whose life was one continued, unbroken conflict with the world, and at the same time one continuous victory, and Who at the last could say triumphantly, I have conquered, I have overcome.
But we naturally ask, Wherewith are we to enter upon this conflict, what are to be the weapons of our warfare? St. John here anticipates the question, and at the same time answers it. And this is the victory, he adds, that overcometh the world, or, as it might be paraphrased, this is the means by which victory is to be realised, viz. our faith. The great weapon of our warfare is faith. And this may be shown to be the case in at least two different ways.
I. A strong belief in and a vivid realisation of another world towards which we stand in a definite relationthe apprehension of what St. Paul means when he says our citizenship is in heaven, must tend to brace us up for this conflict with the world of which we are speaking. It is stated of the Old Testament worthies mentioned in Hebrews 11 that it was by faith that they lived the lives and achieved the victories recorded of them; and this particular kind of faith seems to be indicated by a number of parenthetical sentences which are interspersed throughout the thrilling narrative; for instance, of Abraham, for he looked for a city which hath foundations, Whose builder and maker is God; and of others before his time as well as of himself, they confessed that they were pilgrims and strangers on the earth; they declare plainly that they seek a country; they desire a better country, that is a heavenly. Of Moses, too, he had respect unto the recompense of the reward; he endured as seeing Him Who is invisible. In all these statements it is implied that the great sustaining powerthe subjective power, at any ratewhich upheld them in their warfare, and nerved them for the conflict, and enabled them to face, not only privation and suffering, but even death itself, was the belief in another life and another worldin short, a vision of the unseen. St. John evidently has this in mind in regard to the Christian conflict.
(a) If a man has only a hazy apprehension of the world above and the life hereafter, which, unhappily, is all that too many have; if to him there is no definiteness in the conception he holds of the relation in which he stands towards heaven and of the prospect which awaits him hereafter, he is not likely to rise very much above the world in which at present he is living. This is real to him; the other is unreal, one might almost say ideal, and the real is sure to exercise by far the stronger influence.
(b) On the other hand, let a man once have a strong conviction of the reality of the unseen and of the certainty of the future life; let him be brought to feel that he is a citizen of another country, that is a heavenly, and that he is but a stranger and a pilgrim upon the earth; and he will use the world, as St. Paul puts it, as not abusing it, or using it to the full; use it as a wayfaring man, merely to satisfy his present needs, and it is not likely to exercise too powerful an influence over him. He will, at any rate, be better able to resist its seductions and to rise superior to its subtle power. In this sense this is the weapon of our victory that overcometh the world, viz. our faith.
II. It is also true in another sense.St. Paul says: The life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me. And again: I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. Faith is not only the faculty by which we realise the unseen, and by which the future life is assured to us; it is also the means whereby we lay hold of Christ and appropriate for ourselves the power of His risen life. Not only, as we have seen, has He overcome the world, but He calls upon His followers to do the same, and His conquest is not merely an example which they are to imitate; it represents a power which He communicates to all who are in vital union with Him by faith. Faith, then, in this sense also is the weapon of our victory. It brings down to us for the daily conflict the grace, the power, the very life of Christ. We live, yet not we, but Christ liveth in us. He gained the victory, He overcame in His own person; and the victory is being ever repeated; He is continually overcoming in the persons and experiences of His believing people.
III. To whom this glorious promise upon which we are dwelling is made.Whatsoever is born of God, says St. John, overcometh the world, or gains this victory. The neuter or impersonal form of the expression need present no difficulty to us. It is used, says Bishop Westcott, the greatest living authority on St. Johns writings, simply to convey a universal truth. And to show that it is intended to be taken personally, St. John goes on, And this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith, and in the next verse he asks, Who is he that overcometh the world? and replies, He that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God. Whatsoever, then, is practically equivalent to whosoever, and, we may take it, whosoever is born of God, to him is this promise given, to him is this victory assured. Born of God! What does this mean? Have you ever noticed that this expression born of God is almost peculiar to St. John? No less than six times in this Epistle is the expression found, born of God or born of Him, meaning God, besides other phrases such as sons of God, children of God, which the same idea underlies. The same thing is found in the preface of his Gospel. And it is interesting to notice in passing that he alone records the Saviours conversation with Nicodemus, from which it is almost certain he derived the metaphor. There can be no doubt that the same thing is referred to by other writers of the New Testament under other figures. St. Paul, for instance, speaks of the man in Christ Jesus as a new creature, or creation, and as alive from the dead, and St. Peter as called out of darkness into light; but it is St. John alone who seems to delight in the particular metaphor of the new (or Divine) birth. And to show what to him it represented, see what he says of it in this Epistle. In the first verse of the chapter before us (chapter 5) he writes: Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. A personal faith in Jesus as the Saviour is one condition, and at the same time an evidence of this Divine birth. In the second chapter and twenty-ninth verse he writes, Every one that doeth righteousness is born of God. A godly or righteous life is another condition and evidence. In the third chapter and ninth verse he says, Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; and, again, in the fifth chapter and eighteenth verse, sinneth not. I do not take this to mean that he is without sin, for he has previously written, If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves; but he does not sin wilfully, deliberately; he does not indulge in sin. And lastly, we have the expression of our text, which occurs more than once, Whatsoever, or whosoever, is born of God overcometh the world.
IV. And now to apply the whole thing practically.Is it possible that the failure of many to carry out their good resolutions, and to live the sober, the godly, and the righteous life, is due to the fact that they know nothing, as a matter of personal experience, of this new or Divine birth; that they are not in vital union with Him Who alone can strengthen them for the conflict; that indeed, as far as they fight at all, they are fighting in their own strength? My friends, I would appeal to you to live upon a different principle. The promisethe inspiring assurance of our textis specifically addressed: whosoever is born of God is assured that he shall overcome the world. All others are more likely, nay are certain, to be overcome. And do not water down the expression to mean simply those who are sprinkled with the waters of baptism. Your own common sense and your own experience must tell you that it means something more than that. All the great promises connected with the future life are to those who thus overcome.
Prebendary H. Askwith.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
THE VICTORY OF FAITH
The word faith has two meanings in the New Testament. It is used in a concrete sense of a definite form of belief like that which is embodied in the Creed of the Church in such phrases as One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, but more commonly it is used in an abstract sense, of a moral quality of the soula quality which may be, and which is, as frequently employed in the secular life as in the religious. As the art of painting is related to a particular painter or picture, so is faith as a moral quality related to a particular faith or creed.
Our Lord likens the moral quality called faith to the vital force which lives and works in nature. If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed nothing shall be impossible unto you (St. Mat 17:20). There is a power in lifeeven in its feeblest formswhich no weight of matter which is inert and lifeless can long resist. The dead mass, even of a mountain, must in course of time succumb under the resistless attacks of the smallest seedling, and has in itself the germ of vitality, and therefore of growth and development. I never see a dismantled fortress covered with the ivy that is steadily removing it, stone by stone, to its final destruction without reflecting that that ivy was once as a grain of mustard seed, when those stern bulwarks and ramparts were deemed the impregnable citadel of armed men. Now our Lord tells us that faith (as He uses the word) possesses a similar vital force.
I. Faith is a quality which ensures mans growth and expansion.It does not operate suddenly or effect miraculous changes; it takes time like the grain of mustard seed, but it is victorious in the end even against overwhelming odds. In one way or another all the greatest things we know of have been and are achieved by its power. It is faith that removes mountains of difficulty, that overcomes the manifold dangers, oppositions, weaknesses, impossibilities, of this mortal life of ours, and casts them into the sea of human triumph.
(a) Take the realm of commerce by way of example. What is it that enables a man to launch forth into enterprises that startle the world but faith in the practicability of some great scheme which to the cautious and prudent seems only foolhardy and chimerical?
(b) What is it that buoys up the lonely scientific worker through years of painstaking calculation and experiment but faith in the certainty of an ultimate discovery?
(c) Or what, in the sphere of intellectual effort, accounts for the difference between the good or the bad teacher but that one believes and the other does not believe in the efficacy of the training and instruction it is their business to give? The good teacher is one who believes that his or her efforts willl never be wasted, however unpromising the soil on which the good seed is sown.
(d) It is faith which has inspired and carried through all the crusades against evil and all the reforms and revolutions that have helped to rid the world of tyrannies, abuses, cruelties, and depravities of every kind.
II. Faith is the conquering principle in religion.For Christian faith is not a thing apart from ones ordinary human nature and imposed upon it from without; it is the expansion of an original inherent moral quality, common to us all; it is the spiritualisation of a natural faculty; it is the daily energising, vitalising power in which we live and do our best work brought into contact with the Divine power. So glorified it overcomes the worldthe worldly spirit with its carnal aims, countless temptations, and unholy methods, being the hardest thing there is to overcome. But even unglorified it has this overcoming power, and if we only get to see this clearly, we shall not find so much difficulty in transferring to the life of religion a quality which we have learnt to regard as the supreme essential in every secular sphere. That is my object, to demonstrate the saving power of faith as a moral principle of our being, without which all great achievements are impossible.
III. The example of great men.It has been said that reverence of great names is the secular side of the ecclesiastical doctrine of the communion of saints, but it is necessary to remember that such reverence, if it is to elevate and ennoble us, must be directed aright, must be bestowed on what is really worthy of it. We must see that, when we let ourselves be inspired by the luminous idea of a great character, we take it in its purest form, free from the details, exaggerations, and prejudices of its historic setting. It would be as grossly unfair to judge Oliver Cromwell as merely or mainly the executioner of Charles I as it would be to honour Nelson merely or mainly as the hero of Trafalgar. What we are morally bound to look for in a great man is: first, that he shall have worked for principles which we believe to be fruitful, and which are our own by virtue of that belief; and second, that he shall have been the inspirer of his own action in virtue of character and therefore worthy of admiration and imitation.
Archdeacon H. E. J. Bevan.
Illustration
Our great national hero Nelson worked for great principlesfor fruitful principles, the value of which we realise even more now than they did a century ago. The great victory of Trafalgar, which secured for us the undisputed sovereignty of the sea, meant the liberty of our land, the extension of our empire, the development of our commerce, and the opportunity of moulding and building up our national character on nobler Christian lines, independent of continental corruptions. Captain Mahan writes of Nelsons humble and sincere gratitude to God for rendering him the chief instrument of deliverance to his native land, and how, by his devout recollection of his indebtedness to God, he sought continually to keep himself in hand. His last prayer, offered up on the morn of the battle in sight of the opposing fleet, tells us why they buried him in the centre of St. Pauls, immediately under the very cross itself which surmounts the dome. May the great God Whom I worship grant to my country and for the benefit of Europe in general a great and glorious victory, and may no misconduct in any one tarnish it; may humanity after victory be the predominant feature in the British fleet. For myself, individually, I commit my life to Him Who made me, and may His blessings alight on my endeavours to serve my country faithfully. To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is entrusted to me to defend. Amen! Amen! Amen! Here is a prayer which breathes throughout the simplest, purest, highest faith of allit is in truth that victory which overcometh the world.
(THIRD OUTLINE)
THE CONQUEST OF THE WORLD
The life of Christians is emphatically a warfare, and great need have they to take unto themselves the whole armour of God. The world is one of the greatest foes Christians have to encounter; but it is not the world God createdthat is good, but the world Satan has made, and that is evil.
I. The opposition of the world.
(a) It may arise from earthly possessions. These, when rightly used, have proved a great blessing; but, when wrongly used, a great curse (St. Mat 19:16-24; 2Ti 4:10).
(b) It may arise from carnal honours. The human heart too frequently desires these. But carnal honours dazzle only for a time; and often, when possessed, seem of no value. Their pursuit, however, diverts the soul from the great business of life.
(c) It may arise from sensual pleasuresthe heart absorbed with fleshly vanities has neither time nor thought for spiritual realities.
(d) It may arise from bitter adversities. Prosperity lifts up, adversity casts down: the one soothes and flatters the individual, the other begets hard and wicked thoughts of Providence.
II. The triumph of faith.
(a) Faith is a spiritual principle. Not a train of ideas floating in the head, but a disposition of the heart (Rom 10:10). Cherished there, it proves itself a living, active principle of irresistible power.
(b) Faith is controlled by Divine truth. In every strait of worldly opposition the believer asks God, What wilt Thou have me to do? He has not long to wait for the answer. Faith has then a foundation on which to rest; and this is so firm that even the gates of hell cannot prevail against it (Dan 3:16-18).
(c) Faith is sustained by God Himself. He teaches the hands to war and the fingers to fight (Hebrews 11).
(d) Faith is triumphant over the world. It is spoken of, indeed, not merely as the means of victory, but as already a victory in itself. The issue of the conflict, then, is not uncertain.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
Verse 4. The world means the evil practices of mankind. (See the comments on chapter 2:15.) If a man truly loves God of whom he was begotten, the love he has for his Father will induce him to overcome the evil practices of the world. That is because his love is directed by his faith that was produced by the word of God.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
1Jn 5:4-5. For whosoever is begotten of Goda new form of words, the we of the previous verse with that which is born of the Spirit (Joh 3:6)overcometh the world: is victorious over the kingdom of evil generally, and particularly that sphere of the natural man and of self in the atmosphere of which the commandment of brotherly love weighs heavily.
And this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith. Not love here, for faith is the leading thought: faith IS the victory, its strength for that habitual overcoming of every obstacle to obedience which was in it as an original germ, and of the final attainment of which it is the pledge. The past and the present and the future are really here; but the stress is on the present. How it conquers, not in an ideal but a present and perfect victory, then follows in a sentence which takes a negative form but includes the positive reason.
And who is he that overcometh the world, butfor no other can, he and only hehe that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? He who in union with the Son of Godthe name that always opposes Him to the world and its prince,partakes His victory: I have overcome the world (Joh 16:33). So much for the words: theology both dogmatic and practical takes them up, and finds in them its richest material. Observe that the discussion of our external relation ends here: the apostles warning against love of the world, and his encouragement of opposition to the errors in the world, closes with finished and abiding victory over it.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Two things are here observable, namely, a proposition, and the explication of that proposition.
Observe, 1. The proposition, Whosoever is born of God, overcometh the world. Every regenerate Christian is a victorious Christian, he is a conqueror, yea, the greatest of conquerors, he conquers the whole world.
Observe, 2. The exposition of this proposition, This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. It is a spiritual conquest, and spiritually obtained, even by faith.
Note here, 1. That the world is a Christian’s grand enemy. A conquest supposes a combat and a combat supposes an enemy.
2. That every regenerate Christian is a victorious conqueror over this enemy. The Christian is a soldier as soon as he is a believer, and he is a conqueror as soon as he is a soldier. This is the victory; he hath his enemy under his feet, even whilst he is in the fight.
Note, 3. That the special weapon by which the Christian conquers the world, and his spiritual enemies, is his faith. Many warriors have done great things in conquering kingdoms, but this is a greater conquest than all theirs; their conquest was but poor and partial, only of some small parts of earth, but the Christian’s conquest is unviersal; those conquerors whilst they prevailed abroad were slaves at home; whilst they were lords of nations, they were vassals to their own lusts; but these conquerors, which the text speaks of, begin their victories at home, and enlarge their triumphs over all enemies abroad: This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Verse 4
Overcometh the world. By being born of God, he is endued with a spirit which enables him to rise above the world, and resist its allurements to sin.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
5:4 {5} For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: {6} and this is the victory that {e} overcometh the world, [even] our {f} faith.
(5) A reason: Because by regeneration we have received strength to overcome the world, that is to say, whatever strives against the commandments of God.
(6) He declares what that strength is, that is, faith.
(e) He uses the time that is past, to give us to understand, that although we are in the battle, yet undoubtedly we shall be conquerors, and are most certain of the victory.
(f) Which is the instrumental cause, and as a means and hand by which we lay hold on him, who indeed performs this, that is, has and does overcome the world, even Christ Jesus.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Every Christian has overcome the world by his or her initial faith in Jesus Christ. To continue to overcome and obey God all we need to do is continue to exercise faith in God (cf. Rom 8:37; 1Co 15:57).
"It is striking that John does not say ’whoever’ but ’whatever’ (Greek: to gegennemenon, neuter gender). This suggests that there is something inherently world-conquering in the very experience of being born of God. We are now immediately told what this is: ’and this is the victory that has overcome the world-our faith.’" [Note: Hodges, The Epistles . . ., p. 216.]