Victory!

Victory!

"For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world - our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world, but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God" (1 John 5:4-5).

It ought to be our practice, if we have any religion, to examine the state of our souls from time to time, and to find out whether we are "right in the sight of God" (Acts 8:21).

Are we true Christians? Are we likely to go to Heaven when we die? Are we born again - born of the Spirit - born of God? These are searching questions, which imperatively demand an answer: and the text which heads this paper will help us to give that answer. If we are born of God, we shall have one great mark of character, we shall "overcome the world."

In opening up this subject, there are three points to which I propose to invite attention in this paper.

1. In the first place, let us consider the name by which John describes a true Christian. He calls him six times over, in his First Epistle, a man "born of God," and once, "begotten of God."

2. In the second place, let us consider the special mark which John supplies of a man born of God. He says that he "overcomes the world."

3. In the last place, let us consider the secret of the true Christian's victory over the world. He says, "This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith."

Let me clear the way by expressing an earnest hope that no reader will turn away from the subject before us, under the idea that it is a controversial one. I doubt whether any doctrine of the Bible has suffered so much from impatient dislike of controversy as that which is contained in the phrase, "Born of God." Yet that phrase contains a great foundation verity of Christianity, which can never be neglected without damage. Deep down, below strifes and contentions about the effect of baptism, and the meaning of liturgical services, there lies in those three words one of the primary rocks of the everlasting gospel - even the inward work of the Holy Spirit on the soul of man.

The atoning work of Christ for us, and the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit within us, are the two cornerstones of saving religion. Surely a truth which the last writer of the New Testament brings forward no less than seven times in the five chapters of one Epistle - a truth which he binds up seven times with some of the distinguishing characteristics of the Christian man - such a truth ought not to be disliked or timidly passed by. Surely it may be handled profitably without entering upon debatable ground. I shall attempt so to handle it in this paper.

1. First and foremost, I ask my readers to notice the NAME by which John describes a true Christian. Here, and in five other places, he speaks of him as one "born of God."

Let us briefly analyze this rich and wonderful expression. The natural birth of any child of man, in the humblest rank of life, is an important event. It is the bringing into being a creature who will outlive sun, moon, stars, and earth, and may one day develop a character which shall shake the world. How much more important must spiritual birth be! How much must lie beneath that figurative phrase, "Born of God!"

(a) To be "born of God" is to be the SUBJECT OF AN INWARD CHANGE of heart, so complete, that it is like passing into a new existence. It is the introduction into the human soul of a seed from heaven, a new principle, a Divine nature, a new will. Certainly it is no outward bodily alteration; but it is no less certain that it is an entire alteration of the inward man. It adds no new faculties to our minds; but it gives an entirely new bent and bias to our old ones. The tastes and opinions of one "born of God," his views of sin, of the world, of the Bible, of God, and of Christ, are so thoroughly new, that he is to all intents and purposes what Paul calls "a new creature." In fact, as the Church Catechism truly says, it is "a death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness."

(b) To be "born of God" is a change which is the peculiar gift of the Lord Jesus Christ to all His believing people. It is He who plants in their hearts the Spirit of adoption, whereby they cry, "Abba Father," and makes them members of His mystical body, and sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty (Romans 8:15). It is written - "He quickens whom He will." "As the Father has life in Himself, so has He given to the Son to have life in Himself" (John 5:21-26). In short, as the first chapter of John teaches, so it will be as long as the world stands - "To as many as received Him He gave power to become the sons of God, even to those who believe on His name; who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God" (John 1:12-13).

~J. C. Ryle~

(continued with # 2)