Focus: Conquering Faith (Pt.6)

Text: 1Jh.5:4

"For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith."

You are born again to overcome the world. Your faith is what the world is against, but your faith has conquering power. Your faith is your power, and it is the reason you are being attacked by the world.

The world wants to trick you by its wisdom. It wants to make you live in fears and doubts. The world boasts of its wisdom, but James talks about "the meekness" of true wisdom (Jam.3:13). He says, "But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy" (Jam.3:17). God's wisdom does not play partiality, and it is totally devoid of hypocrisy. 

James connects heavenly wisdom with pure religion, and he says that "pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world" (Jam.1:27). The world is full of spots and things that defile, and true religion and wisdom have no place for them. This world has nothing good about it to love, and whoever loves this world as it is, is being deceived. Paul tells us about a certain Demas who is in love with "this present world," and he says, "Demas has forsaken me" (2Tim.4:10). 

You cannot love the world and God at the same time. Romance between you and the world does not exist.

This world is evil. James says, "Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God" (Jam.4:4). God and this world are not on the same wavelengths. They have nothing in common. They do not see eye to eye. Whoever is a friend of this world is indeed an enemy of God. By faith the believer in Christ turns the world upside down. He topples the world. He is given to setting the world right, not loving it. People said about Paul and his men, "These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also" (Act.17:6). Everywhere a believer goes, he turns things upside down, because he lives differently and dances after a different drumbeat. 

Paul says, "And be not conformed to this world" (Rom.12:2). He says, "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God" (1Cor.2:12). The believer in Christ possesses a different spirit than that of the world. His form is different, and so he cannot conform to the world. He is molded into the image of Christ, not into the image of the world. The believer lives above the world. 

Paul says that grace teaches us that, "denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world" (Tit.2:12). Peter says that God brought judgment upon "the world of the ungodly" (2Pet.2:5). The believer lives a godly life in an ungodly world. Paul says, "But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (Gal.6:14). The cross has separated the believer from the world. The world has lost its charm to the believer in Christ. Nothing of the world attracts him. He is crucified to the world, and he lives by the philosophy and principle of the cross of Christ.

The believer in Christ judges the world by his life of faith. Noah, by his life and preaching, condemned the world of his time. Paul says, "Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters?" (1Cor.6:2). He says again, "But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world" (1Cor.11:32). 

God disciplines the believer to keep him from being condemned along with the world.

What the world worships is different from what the believer worships. When Paul's faith and gospel topple the world around him, the people raise alarm and say, "So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth" (Act.19:27). This world worships idols - gods of gold and silver, and all other things.

Child of God, this world is not friendly to you at all. The battle goes on daily, and you are born and equipped to win the fight. Arm yourself with the word. Frame your personal world with the word of God. As often as you hear the word of God, mix it with faith. Draw strength from the indwelling Spirit of God. Use your divinely imparted authority. Pray without ceasing, and live your life by the dictates of Christ. You are an overcomer.

by Bishop Moses E. Peter