Victory! # 3

Victory! # 3

2. The second thing I will now ask my readers to notice in my text is, the special MARK which John supplies of the man who is a true Christian. He says, "Whoever is born of God overcomes the world." In short, to use the words of that holy man Bishop Willson - the Apostle teaches that "the only certain proof of regeneration is victory."

We are all to flatter ourselves, that if we are duly enrolled members of that great ecclesiastical corporation, the Church of God, our souls cannot be in much danger. We secretly stifle the voice of conscience with the comfortable thought, "I am a Churchman - why should I be afraid?"

Yet common sense and a little reflection might remind us that there are no privileges without corresponding responsibilities. Before we repose in self-satisfied confidence on our Church membership, we shall do well to ask ourselves whether we bear in our character the marks of living membership in Chris't mystical body. Do we know anything of renouncing the devil and all his works, and crucifying the flesh with its affections and lusts? And, to bring this matter to a point, as it is set before us in our text, do we know anything of "overcoming the world?"

The three great spiritual enemies of man are the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is hard to say which does most harm to the soul. The last day alone will settle that point. But I venture boldly to say, that at no former period has "the world" been so dangerous, and so successful in injuring Christ's Church, as it is just now. Every age is said to have its own peculiar epidemic disease. I suspect that "worldliness" is the peculiar plague of Christendom in our own era. That same love of the world's good things and good opinion - that same dread of the world's opposition, and blame - which proved so fatal to Judas Iscariot, and Demas, and many more in the beginning of the gospel era - each is just as powerful in the nineteenth century as it was in the first, and a hundred times more.

Even in days of persecution, under heathen emperors, these spiritual enemies slew their thousands, and in days of ease, and luxury, and free thought, like our own, they slay their tens of thousands. The subtle influence of the world, nowadays, seems to infect the very air we breathe. It creeps into families like an angel of light, and leads myriads captive, who never know that they are slaves. The enormous increase of wealth, and consequent power of self-indulgence, and the immense growth of a passionate relish for recreations and amusements of all kinds, the startling rise and progress of a so-called liberality of opinion, which refuses to say anybody is wrong, whatever he does, and loudly asserts that, as in the days of the Judges, every one should think and do what is right in his own eyes, and never be checked, mall these strange phenomena of our age give the world an amazing additional power, and make it doubly needful for Christ's ministers to cry aloud, "Beware of the world!"

In the face of this aggravated danger, we must never forget that the word of the living God changes not - "Do not love the world!" "Do not be conformed to this world!" "Friendship with the world is emnity with God!" - these mighty sayings of God's statute book remain still unrepealed (1 John 2:15); Romans 12:2; James 4:4). The true Christian strives daily to obey them, and proves the vitality of his religion by his obedience. It is as true now as it was eighteen hundred years ago, that the man "born of God" will be a man who, more or less, resists and overcomes the world.

Such a man does not "overcome" by retiring into a corner, and becoming a monk or a hermit, but by boldly meeting his foes and conquering them. He does not refuse to fill his place in society, and do his duty in that position to which God has called him. But though "in" the world, he is not "of" the world. He uses it, but does not abuse it. He knows when to say "NO," when to refuse compliance, when to halt, when to say, "Thus far have I gone, but I go no further." He is not wholly absorbed either in the business or the pleasures of life, as if they were the sum total of existence. Even in innocent things he keeps the rein on his tastes and inclinations, and does not let them run away with him. He does not live as if life was made up of recreation, or money-getting, or politics, or scientific pursuits, and as if there were no life to come.

Everywhere, and in every condition, in public and in private, in business or in amusements, he carries himself like a "citizen of a better country," and as one who is not entirely dependent on temporal things. Like the noble Roman ambassador before Pyrrhus, he is alike unmoved by the elephant or by the gold. You will neither bribe him, nor frighten him, nor allure him into neglecting his soul. This is one way in which the true Christian proves the reality of his Christianity. This is the way in which the man 'born of God" overcomes the world.

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 4)