THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF AN OVERCOMER
S.McCallum
Philippians 3: 7-12; Ephesians 4: 1, 10-13
I wish to say a word on the distinctiveness of an overcomer. We have been speaking about overcoming, as in the Revelation, but I want to refer to the model that we have in Paul as an individual. You will notice that in the passages that I have read his individuality is referred to, and it is a very encouraging thing to have an example set before us in whom this thought of overcoming works in a very distinctive way. If ever there was an overcomer there surely was one in Paul. You might say, Well, none of us here is a Paul; but I think we need to see that he has come before us in the holy writings as a model, in fact he goes so far as to say "Be my imitators": he said it in two epistles which specially I have in mind. So I trust we will be encouraged to see how this thought of overcoming worked in a man of like passions to us. Whatever his commission was, so distinctive, a vessel specially selected by the Lord, an elect vessel as the Lord could speak of him, we want to see also what he was as a man of like passions to us so that we may be encouraged to follow him in the steps of overcoming. There is no use to be platitudinous because we all have to overcome. We would not deny that, I am sure. It is something that one has been thinking a good deal about, the need of overcoming, specially as to overcoming in ourselves. Some of us are shy, some are aggressive, some are extroverts, some are introverts. You young brothers may think these are peculiar words to use, but an extrovert is one who is not bashful about making known what he or she thinks about themselves; an introvert is a person who is driven in on himself and occupied inwardly with himself. We have to overcome in all these matters. Then there is the world, the sin system, that is around us in relation to which our baptism has had to do. The moral door out of the world system, the sin system, is through baptism. You remember the word to Paul by a brother: "Arise and get baptised, and have thy sins washed away", Acts 22: 16. You say, I thought the blood of Christ had to do with the washing away of our sins. It has; John tells us in 1 John 1: that the blood of Jesus Christ, God 's Son, cleanses us from all sin. What wonderful power the blood of Christ has! Let us never lose sight of the blood. It is not only mentioned in Romans, the fundamental epistle in relation to the glad tidings, but it is mentioned in the mature epistles; in church epistles, Ephesians and Colossians, the blood is brought forward. Never let us lose sight of the blood and the way that our guilt has been met a wonderful thing! Mr Darby, in one of his most advanced hymns (No.88), refers to the blood, you will remember: 'We should be part, through Jesus' blood', showing what an appreciation he had of the blood.
I have read from the epistle to the Philippians to show what an overcomer Paul was, so that we may be encouraged. We may be occupied with failure. Sometimes young people get discouraged but I think today is a day of wonderful encouragement, that God should have preserved something that remains, something that is in keeping with the Lord's own heart and desires as in Philadelphia. Not that I am saying that we are Philadelphia (we have had help not to take presumptuous ground in these days) but we walk in the light of the spiritual thoughts that are contained in such as the letter to Philadelphia. This epistle is an epistle that is full of the thoughts of love and confidence. There is in one chapter, reference to two sisters who are not agreeing, but love lies behind the approach of Paul the overcomer even to this matter in Philippi. In Philippi there was no synagogue. You say, What does that have to do with what you are speaking about now? Well, many difficulties arise through features that belong to the synagogue, legal features. The Galatians were greatly troubled by synagogue features. But the remarkable thing about Philippi was that, though sisters were held in honour, two sisters seem to get into difficulty in the course of church history in Philippi. It would not seem that the sisters mentioned in chapter 16 of the Acts are those referred to here by name; they may have been, we do not know but he beseeches them. He does not say, I command you to be of the same mind in the Lord, he beseeches Euodia and Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. It is remarkable that this should come into a letter like this that is full of affectionate references; full, I might say, of brotherly love, and especially reference to their love for Paul who was the great minister of the assembly.
Here he is in prison. The second passage that we read refers to that: "I, the prisoner in the Lord". Surely a man like that would have much to overcome. I do not know what you have to overcome; I know what I have to overcome, my wife does too, and no doubt the rest of you know what is to be overcome. We have to overcome in different spheres of life but particularly in relation to assembly life. There are more brethren in this area than in most places on this continent. Even this gathering now is a large number of brethren to us where there are only seven breaking bread. But thank God we have young people. Thank God for the young people! But there is much to be overcome. What you find with Paul is that while he was a great minister of the assembly he was a great lover of young people. Did you ever notice that? Did you ever notice in his letters his sentiments of affection for young people? You might think Titus was an aggressive kind of person (I suppose he was like Isaiah of whom Paul says "Esaias is very bold", Rom 10: 20). Titus was very bold but Paul says as to him "my own child", Tit 1: 4. Timothy was a man that was given to tears, feelings; Paul says "remembering thy tears", 2 Tim 1: 4. Young people sometimes think they want to show what they are made of and determine that they are not going to be marked by sentimentality but I do not think it was sentimental feelings that Timothy had, they were feelings in relation to the testimony. It is a great thing to be marked by love for the testimony. When I came into fellowship in 1924, when I broke with what I was once connected with, it was a real matter, and it should be a real matter, young people, that you have to break with certain links that you once enjoyed as I did at that time, not only with younger people that I was greatly fond of but with older people. It is a great thing to love the older brethren. It is a great thing when younger brethren come and speak to older brethren; there is something about it that is particularly choice. Paul was ready for that; it was not only Timothy, not only Titus that he loved in the truth but Onesimus a runaway slave. You say, If you only knew some of the things that entered into my history! Well, did Paul reflect on Onesimus' past history to him personally? He did have to refer to it in writing to Philemon but think of his affection for that young brother, a runaway slave. Paul overcame so many things that are natural to many, and his affection and devotion for the younger brethren were outstanding.
So in this epistle what fulness of joy marked him. We are living in a day of crisis as to energy shortage; they say there will be a food shortage by the end of next year. But here is a man in prison, in chains, and what does he say? "I am full", Phil 4: 18. He does not speak of the shortages he must have encountered in prison, but he refers for instance to the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ: "For I know that this shall turn out for me to salvation, through your supplication and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ", Phil 1: 19. Even though things are going against him, even though some people were preaching what others thought, wrongly, was the gospel, to him it mattered little as long as Christ was preached. He speaks about their prayers and says "I know that this shall turn out for me to salvation, through your supplication and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ". In the last chapter Paul refers to supply in a material way (he is a remarkable overcomer) but in the section that I read he is dealing with what he once was, over against what he then was as having been take n possession of by Christ. Is that not a wonderful expression? Have you ever just pondered being take n possession of by Christ? It is not just taking possession of Christ but Christ taken possession of us. What a wonderful thing that is to any who have the consciousness that Christ has taken possession of us! No wonder Paul sets out the experience of an overcomer. Whatever was of value attaching to him naturally in this world, he had to overcome. He might tell you he was a doctor of physics or an M.A., but in what I have read it is evident that he had overcome any renown that attached to him as in the flesh. I am not decrying what people may attain in this way but Paul was not boasting in what he had acquired and what he had reached on natural lines as some persons do. This chapter is full of Christ.
One thing that marks an overcomer as seen in Paul is right spiritual objectives. It is a great thing to have objectives; even in ordinary life in this world some people get nowhere, as to providing righteously, through lack of objectives. Some people do not know how to work. A Christian should know how to work; Scripture supports that. But Paul says "I count also all things to be loss on account of the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord". He has an objective, and we all want to have right objectives. We want to have right objectives individually in our circumstances. You young brothers, you grow up in the world and get married; an important thing is to have right objectives and provide well for your wife, and your children as they come. That is a real matter in Christianity. Righteousness is our leader and we have to be righteous in all our matters. We have to overcome any laziness that may be with us because laziness never becomes a Christian. Paul overcame all that. Who was a labourer like he was? Who wrought like he did? Even the twelve said it was not right for them to leave the word of God and to serve tables, in that Hellenistic issue that arose in Acts 6; but Paul at the end of Acts knew how to gather sticks and how to keep a fire going for the comfort of those there.
Paul is a model as an overcomer. He was in prison, but he did not write a book about what the guards did when they arrived, or who did this or that to him, he is not filled with that. He is filled with Christ as an Object; he says "to know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death". What an overcomer this man was! He really manifested the truth of being desirous of being outside this world and all that marked it morally before God. He wanted to know Christ and the power of His resurrection. He did not say he wanted to know Him and the power of His life as in the gospels, but the power of His resurrection. It is a wonderful thing, dear brethren, if we can so live that, if we have to die and are buried, the grave will not be able to hold us but we will come up out of it in the power of resurrection to sustain that body of glory that we shall for ever live in with Christ and before God. What an overcomer! What a day we are in for overcoming! The local assembly, do you overcome in it? You remember how Paul, knowing the objective that he had, referred to a brother, Epaphras, he was at Colosse where man's mind had to be combatted in entering into the things of God; "Epaphras, who is one of you, the bondman of Christ Jesus, salutes you, always combating earnestly for you in prayers, to the end that ye may stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. For I bear him witness that he labours much for you, and them in Laodicea, and them in Hierapolis", Col 4: 12, 13. What objectives that brother had! How old he was I do not know but what objectives he had for his local brethren that they might stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. Do you criticise your local brethren? Do you think ill of some of them? That is done by some, but think of Epaphras wanting them to stand perfect and complete in all the will of God, to come short of nothing where the will of God is concerned .
So this epistle, and especially these verses which I have read, bring out what an overcomer Paul was. He says in verse 11: "if any way I arrive at the resurrection from among the dead". It is a wonderful thing to arrive morally at the resurrection from among the dead; that means you are going to live in another world and not in the light of this world. We have to make our living, we have to provide for things in righteousness, but let us be affected by the power of resurrection and by conformity to Christ's death. You think of His death, think of what conformity to His death would mean, think of how the world was judged in His death; "Now is the judgment of this world" (John 12: 31), He could say, referring to the world as a judged system. We ought to. think of it in that way, in fact we break bread in the light of its overthrow. Every Lord's day we break bread in the light of the overthrow of this world's system. Paul overcame what was in himself, overcame what was in his circumstances, overcame what was in local assemblies. What an example he is for us! So he can speak of joy in this epistle. It is a great thing to have joy in our gatherings: a great thing to enjoy one another. "My joy and crown" (chap 4: 1) he says of this assembly, "beloved and longed for". Do you long for your· local brethren? Are they beloved in your eyes? This is how Paul is before us as an overcomer in the real sense of the word. He did not complain about his circumstances, he did not complain about shortages (he does just refer to them) but he says "my God shall abundantly supply all your need according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus", chap 4: 19. This is an epistle, not of shortages, but of supply, written by a man in most extreme circumstances of limitations in prison.
So he says in the verses I read in Ephesians, "I, the prisoner in the Lord". He says in the previous chapter, "For this reason I Paul, prisoner of the Christ Jesus". Notice how he speaks of himself personally. Is this wrong ego? I do not think so, this is the right ego. Romans 7 helps us to reach the right ego "I myself with the mind serve God's law" (v 25). It is a great thing to be marked by conscious experience in yourself, especially in the line of which we are speaking now overcoming. So he is prisoner of the Christ Jesus in the third chapter where he relates to us the wonderful character of the assembly and the service of God glory to God in the assembly. Here in chapter four he is the prisoner in the Lord, but he is overcoming. Now we know the difficulties of circumstances. Some of the older brethren here are living on fixed incomes with rising prices. Some of the businessmen are taxed in relation to shortages of materials and rising prices. All this calls for overcoming. How are we going to overcome in circumstances? Here is a man in prison but he writes the most magnificent church epistles: the greatest epistles that we possess in regard to the church and the church's place with Christ, the greatest epistle dealing with the mystery. Here he is in those circumstances. He is not writing, Did you hear about what is happening to me here? He does say to Timothy, a younger brother, "Be not therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner", 2 Tim 1: 8. Let us not be ashamed of the limited circumstances of the testimony, of the small meetings; let us get through to what excels in glory. At the meeting last night reference was made to the glory that surpasses (see 2 Cor 3: 10). Well, that is what we are linked with "the surpassing glory" and it ought to lift us in our spirits, cheer us in our souls. However difficult and dark the day may be, the darkening state of things in the assembly publicly, let us remember that there is that which lies above and beyond all that, and which will sustain our souls in spiritual experience in the conscious enjoyment and knowledge of God and Christ and the Spirit, conscious enjoyment of the mystery.
I read the verses that deal with the ministry. Let us see the importance of the ministry, how it proceeds from Christ having ascended above all things and how it is working in view of our arriving at certain objectives. Ministry is not just to entertain us for a few moments, or on a night that we have to spare; ministry as coming from Christ with His authority has in mind definite objectives that we should arrive at. The word 'arrive' is used: "with a view to the edifying of the body of Christ; until we all arrive at the unity of the faith". It is a wonderful thing to go on in the unity of the faith. Unity is a great matter. The Old Testament refers to it in Psalm 133 in a most attractive way. Disagreement is not very attractive, is it? It may be that Euodia and Syntyche would go out of the meeting, one by one side of the hall and the other by the other, so they would not meet and shake hands. That has happened between persons. What kind of assembly life is that? This has in mind until we all arrive at the unity of the faith. We are walking together in the appreciation of the light that has come to us in a wonderful way as to the assembly. And it says "and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man". Now we all want to arrive at maturity, do we not? The gospels give us maturity in a Man, Matthew, Mark and Luke give us features of that glorious manhood which we see in Jesus. As looking on the glory of the Lord we are all to be changed according to the same image (2 Cor 3: 18).
We do not take character from different images. The world does; they all have their images, whether it be tennis or baseball or football or maybe politics. We are not to be governed by these kinds of ideals or images, we are to be governed by God's pattern of manhood, which the word 'image' refers to, and how God is represented in that Man, the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul says "until we all arrive at the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, at the full-grown man, at the measure of the stature of the fulness of the Christ". Notice this word 'fulness' here; this epistle mentions it a few times. In a day like we are in when nations are in such a chaotic state, we want to see, in the light of the assembly and its relations with Christ and also with God and with the Spirit, the fulness that there is linked with the assembly and to grow in the appreciation of it. It says "the stature of the fulness of the Christ", and it goes on to say that we are no longer children. It is a great thing that we should not act like children but that we should be governed by the stature of the fulness of the Christ which the Gospels allude to. You remember how the king in the Song of Songs refers to the stature of the feminine lover; it is a wonderful thing to think of spiritual stature. Well, in all these things you can see what an example in overcoming Paul is; he is not deterred by circumstances, he can control circumstances both materially and spiritually. In these days of tests that we have been through and still have to go through let us be in the spirit of Paul the overcomer in whom such distinctiveness was seen, in the way that what men think so much of in the way of resources he thought so little of, having before him the importance of what was spiritual and what was linked with the assembly and Christ's relations with it.
May the Lord help us all, young and old, to be overcomers; specially you young people. You have a difficult day to live in, things are made little of that were regarded with horror years back. They may call it puritanical as they think of the days back, but never was there a day in which Sodom and Gomorrah conditions have developed like today, and we want to be overcomers in that as well as in many other things, for His Name's sake.
BROOKLYN NY
15 December 1973