OVERCOMING

^[p. 215] OVERCOMING

1 John 5: 4, 5; Revelation 12: 11

I have in mind to speak about overcoming. John, of course, tells us more about it than any other New Testament writer; he presents it as in Christ, and as in Christ it is magnified indeed. He said to His disciples, “I have overcome the world”, and the thought is that He leads in all these matters. In the gospels the Spirit presents to us what goes beyond the present dispensation, for they present Christ Himself as here. What He was, indeed, cannot be confined to any dispensation, and so in reading the gospels, we have to bear in mind that much in them alludes to a coming dispensation, whereas the epistles are generally restricted to the present dispensation, and to what is current at the present time, in ways and thoughts and words suitable to Christianity; suitable to heaven, of course, but suitable to Christianity. This is true especially of the epistles of Paul, who employs terms and gives suggestions that no other apostle or scripture writer does. Thus in him the idea is set out of a special vessel, not only a special worker or apostle or evangelist; not only a special brother, he is that, of course, but a vessel; “an elect vessel”, as the Lord said of him. In him we find the ways, the words, the thoughts and ideas of a Christian. The name Christian was an irregular one when first used. It has to be understood in connection with the work of Paul and Barnabas when they toiled for a whole year together, as you might say, in heaven’s best employ. We have set out in them the idea of a Christian, and that idea runs down to our day, no doubt greatly magnified and ornamented in human thought, as the Spirit of God has used and portrayed it so much; thus it should be understood as designating a heavenly product, that can be called ^[p. 216] Christian. Peter employs it, although writing to Jewish exiles, and he says to them, “if any man suffer as a Christian”, not as a Jew, but as a Christian, and it meant suffering to be a Christian. When Agrippa said to Paul, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian”, Paul’s reply was that he himself was that, but he wished that all that were there including Agrippa were that, were Christians; that they should be as Paul, “except these bonds”. He did not wish anyone to have them, and clearly the idea of overcoming was there in Paul.

I have read from John’s epistle to bring out this thought of overcoming in relation to Christianity. Christianity is not comparable at all with any human sect or system on the earth. It is a heavenly product and the Spirit of God glorifies it in those who are Christians and who as such are overcomers. Hence John in the verses read, says, “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?” These verses speak of overcoming, and also give the way of it, the facts that lead to it. The thought that all that has been begotten of God overcometh the world, alludes to the generative power of God; not simply that one is born anew, or born again, for that is not quite so advanced in the work of God; new birth is basic, and without it nobody can be a Christian, nor an overcomer, but more is needed and that is included in the term, “born of God”. There are many who regard the thought of “born again” as if it meant “born of God”, but it is not that, it is not quite so far on as that. Persons in the millennium will be “born again”. Indeed, without new birth we can have no part or lot properly in divine matters, but John in his epistle is dealing with more than that.

^[p. 217] He is the evangelist who especially deals with new birth, but here he is speaking of “born of God”. Peter also speaks of it, but John alludes much to it, and therefore those who would seek help and guidance as to the fulness of the truth should refer to John. Many are content with what is short of the fulness of the truth. John, in speaking of the Lord, tells us of His fulness, that is, of Christ’s fulness, and no-one should be content with less. So here John says, “whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world”. The idea is what is new as to birth, but what is implied is persons, not merely material. In the gospel (chapter 3), the Lord says that no-one can see the kingdom of God unless he be “born anew”, but we have more than that here, and the better translation says, “For all that has been begotten of God gets the victory over the world”. Much has to be said by way of expansion, for John is abstract, as has often been remarked, which means that he is saying some things and leaving out other things which could be said. Whatsoever here implies much that could be said, but the abstract idea is very brief, as intended, so that many may be included; indeed all that are born of God are included. It is a very wide and comprehensive thought and a very blessed thought, for Christians are outside of the things in the world and superior to it.

Now the next statement is that “this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith”. I am speaking of what John makes much of, for he speaks much as to overcoming, particularly in the book of Revelation, of which I shall speak in a moment. The word is used there many times, firstly in every epistle to the seven assemblies. They had seven letters written to them, and in each letter there was a special word to the overcomer and much promised by way of reward. The Lord speaks of Himself in the seventh letter, saying, “I also have ^[p. 218] overcome and have sat down with my Father in its throne”. The Lord is tonight on His Father’s throne as an Overcomer, and He is saying that this is open to us. The honour of sitting down with Him, not on His Father’s throne, but on His own throne, and that throne is future. He is not sitting on it yet, but He will sit on it, and we shall join Him on it, and hence the greatness of the suggestion. The word in John’s epistle is, that “this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith”, and then he says, “Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?”; so that the passage goes on to a very concrete matter. It is addressed to all persons who believe that Jesus is the Son of God. But the idea of faith is the first thing. It seems to be set down for us as the first great thought in overcoming. I say the first great thought, because it is so here, and believers are to understand that, in overcoming, there is this idea of being “born of God” — not simply “born again”, but “born of God”. Then so as to amplify that and clarify it, we have, “Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?”; that is a great presentation of the truth.

Although “our faith” is mentioned before, I refer to it, so that the brethren will all be revived in their interest in what belongs to us; it is our faith. It is not what is called a creed or religion of which there are many, but it is faith, not faith in the sense of what a person may have, but faith in the sense of the truth held in faith, and that, of course, applies to Christianity. It singles out Christianity in the way in which I have spoken about it, that there is nothing comparable with it at all as a system. I say system, for it is a system; and the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are operating in it systematically; the saints are taking part in it too. God ^[p. 219] has worked on the principle of system from the outset, from the creation, and so in Christianity, and in Judaism too, as He will in the millennium, and among the nations. All will be on the principle of system originating with God. Faith belongs to Christianity, not simply to Christians, but to Christianity, and it is characterised by faith, “our faith”, and it has overcome the world. You may say that there is little evidence of it, but the little that there may be is included, and even though it were only one person the thing would be established, but there are many more. Not that I am assuming to know all the brethren here, but thank God they are here, and I am here with them, as among them. It is another matter to assume to know them, although we shall know each other in heaven, dear brethren; that is the thing to look forward to. “I shall know according as I also have been known”; that is a very precious thought.

Now I go back to what I was saying about faith. It is a thing that applies to Christians, and makes Christianity what it is. It refers to the faith period as coming into the world. It did not come into the world properly until Christ came into manhood, and coming here He was “the leader and completer of faith” (Hebrews 12: 2); not indeed that it was not there before. It was here, hence we get it depicted down the line from Abel, but at the same time the Spirit of God says, “Jesus, the leader and completer of faith”; so that we have to look to Him, and learn from Him. He says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find rest to your souls”, Matthew 11: 29. So faith is to be learned from Christ. It is a universal thought in Christianity, and this is the dispensation of faith, as Paul in writing to the Galatians says, “faith having come”; that is, when Christ became Man and inaugurated the great idea ^[p. 220] of faith; it is now an established matter, the Spirit of God maintaining it here on earth. If there were no faith, there would be no Christianity.

When the next dispensation comes, it will be a sight dispensation, and everything will be seen then, but now everything that is of God is to be understood by faith. That which is seen is not faith, but that which is not seen is eternal, and so faith links us on with what is eternal. Although we shall not need faith in heaven, yet it links us on with eternity, because it is the element of faith that makes everything real, but what will be by sight in the future is now by faith. We are designated a heavenly people as discerning things by faith, and hence the word is, “this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith”. Our faith, not what a person might have himself, of which we are told in 1 Corinthians 13, “faith, so as to remove mountains”. There is not time to explain that, but that is to be understood, that one might remove mountains by faith, yet, if one has not love, he is nothing. He could not be less than nothing. He is nothing at all spiritually, even although he have faith to remove mountains. I say that as calling attention to what Paul says, and that we might not be aiming at doing great things or exploits, but rather being governed by faith and by love. Faith working by love is the practical idea of Christianity. But the faith mentioned in this verse, “our faith”, is not simply that some of us are believers, but that there is such a thing as the faith, which is Christianity, known as a system of truth, but known by the Spirit and understood by the Spirit; it is a system of truth, because the truth is to be held as a whole. The Lord Jesus is said to be the truth; the Spirit is the truth, too, but objectively the idea is applicable to Christ. He speaks of Himself thus in connection with other things, saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life”. These three things are applicable to Christ, who is the truth. Thus the faith is the complete thing, the whole, not simply that I have part in it, for, of course, we know in part, but the Lord tells us that the Spirit will guide us into all truth.

The dear brethren would do well to take it to heart, not to settle down even in any known or well established doctrine, but to see that we hold things in a vital way, as maintained by the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit is the truth subjectively, even as Christ is it objectively. What I would seek now to make clear is that this passage, in 1 John 5: 4, this “victory that overcometh the world, even our faith”; that is, the faith which we enjoy, which we come together constantly to look into, to speak of as the truth, is superior to anything in the world. The world is in mind here, and the victory is while we are here in the presence of it, and it is superior in the sense of power, the power of God, power in Christ, and in the saints. That we have the mind of Christ is a wonderful fact, and assures the intelligence, the power of thought that enters into this victory. What I am saying can only be seen when the faith is held as a whole, and held in a spiritual way, as a complete system of truth. Paul says that it was given to him to complete the word of God. I do not say that what Paul says is all, because the Old Testament is also involved as well as the gospels and other writings of the New Testament, in the truth, and matters of the faith include all these. These are things in which one would seek to be practical, not to be speaking over the heads of the brethren, but that all might follow, that our consciences and hearts might be affected by these things; that we might understand the greatness of the system with which we are connected, not only the system as formed of persons, but the system as formed by truth, and that truth is eternal. Christ ^[p. 222] is it, but the Spirit makes it real to us; we are living in it, it is a complete thing, and it is greater than the world. That is what I want to urge on the brethren. It is greater than the world, greater than all that is seen, greater than all that men assert as to science. Our faith is greater than all that. All else will disappear, whereas the truth will stand, and now it is held on the principle of faith. It will be held presently in the millennium on the principle of sight, the Spirit will be there too, but not on the same level as in the assembly. Those on earth will be on the lower level, but Israel, of course, will be on the highest level in that system; this is seen in the 144,000 with the Lamb on mount Zion; they have the power in themselves to learn the new song which the harp-singers sing before the throne (Revelation 14).

Well, that is what I understand by the verse in John’s epistle, “the victory that overcometh the world”; but then the next verse is the concrete expression of it in persons, in any one of us. The question asked by the apostle, by the Spirit of God, is “Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” I want to ask that question of myself, and I want all the brethren here to ask it of themselves, to see whether we really believe that “Jesus is the Son of God”. No doubt most of us would subscribe to it, because Scripture is so plain about it, but we want to have it in our souls on the principle of faith. “Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” That is what marked Paul almost at the outset of his career as a Christian he preached that Jesus was the Son of God, and he tells us that God revealed His Son in him. He revealed His Son to Peter, but to Paul it was to the end that he might “announce him as glad tidings among the nations”, so that our souls ^[p. 223] might be nourished and brought up in the gospel that Paul preached. That is all I have to say about these verses, and I pray that it will be simple and intelligible to all of us.

I proceed to the book of Revelation to show how these elements are used to overcome, not the world only, but the devil himself. One of the most remarkable things in chapter 12 is that the woman “brought forth a male son, who shall shepherd all the nations with an iron rod; and her child was caught up to God and to his throne”. He is called a male son, which, of course, may be regarded as a redundant term, but the Spirit of God by it emphasises the idea of Christ’s manhood as important and foundational as to His Person. So the chapter runs on to the overthrow of the devil, as it is said, “There was war in the heaven; Michael and his angels went to war with the dragon. And the dragon fought, and his angels; and he prevailed not, nor was their place found any more in the heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, the ancient serpent, he who is called Devil and Satan, he who deceives the whole habitable world, he was cast out into the earth and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a great voice in the heaven saying, Now is come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ; for the accuser of our brethren has been cast out, who accused them before our God day and night: and they have overcome him by reason of the blood of the Lamb, and by reason of the word of their testimony, and have not loved their life even unto death”.

These are wonderful verses, and I am not reading them because of their prophetic use, but rather to make clear to everyone how the blood of the Lamb, the blood of Christ, is used in our everyday life, our business life, and household life, in travelling, and so on. The blood of Christ is victorious as it is presented here; “they have overcome him by reason of the blood of the Lamb, and by reason of the word of their testimony”. It is the efficacy of it in redemption, so as to maintain our consciences clear before God and men and shelter them in the presence of the accuser. Our consciences are apt to fail us, save as we are kept in the full light and shining of the gospel. Paul says, “Because it is the God who spoke that out of darkness light should shine who has shone in our hearts for the shining forth of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”, 2 Corinthians 4: 6. It is in that light we are victorious, because we use and understand the blood of the Lamb, the redemptive power of it is a real and known thing, and Satan cannot overthrow it; even if we fail that does not overthrow it. The point is, that failure should not overthrow our faith. God has set us up in Christianity and in the Spirit and I may add, in the assembly. God has set us up in Christ in that wonderful system, with light as to all that Satan can employ to discredit us, to cause us to fear as to our eternal salvation. The devil is bent on that sort of thing. The blood of the Lamb, and its efficacy understood will shelter us from the attacks of the devil. John says they overcame “because of the blood of the Lamb”.

Then it says further, “and by reason of the word of their testimony”. That is to say, the efficacy of Christ’s blood has sheltered my conscience in the face of the devil’s attacks, and has caused me to be restful in the presence of God, because I am connected with the righteousness of God in Christ; faith will tell me that, and I have overcome the devil by that light, by that truth that I carry about with me, not what I believe only, but what I have in my soul, in my conscience. I am invulnerable to his attacks. Peter says, “Resist the devil and he will flee from you”. That is remarkable, and we have ^[p. 225] to do it with the truth as it is presented to us according to the efficacy of the blood of the Lamb. I not only say that I am a Christian, but I have a word of testimony. That also is an answer to defeat the devil; what I can say in the way of testimony, as it says here, “by reason of the word of their testimony”. One might add much to that because it is so great, the testimony of the truth by the power of the Spirit, rendered in the gospel, and so forth, going on all the time. I thank God for all that has been done in this way, in the meeting-rooms, hidden away from the public, and yet the Spirit of God actually having to do with the preaching there, and souls being converted and brought to God. This is going on day and night in the different parts of the earth where real Christianity is, and where the gospel is presented. Paul said, “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel”. Of course, Paul was a gifted man, but one often challenges one’s own heart, and one hopes the brethren are challenging their hearts now as to what preaching is carried on, how much the light of the gospel is being proclaimed even in the little meeting-rooms and in the small companies. So it says here they overcame by “the word of their testimony”. It describes what is presented now in hundreds of rooms all over the world continually, and that accompanies the idea of the efficacy of the blood of the Lamb, as it is proclaimed in the gospel.

A great deal more could be said as to the book of Revelation, especially as to the letters to the different assemblies; in each one of them we have the idea of overcoming and a reward is promised to every overcomer. I trust that the brethren will look into this book, and see how full it is, and how it is intended to help us in this terrible time in which we are living, for we are living in a terrible time politically and that is not all, for worse things are to come. The book of Revelation is full of the ^[p. 226] things that are to come, and it is not a sealed book. It is a book written at the direction of the Lord Himself by John the apostle. It is written in sections under three heads, and if we look into these carefully we will understand. One is speaking much about the book of Revelation, so that we might see how the overcomer is referred to there specifically. It is as if the Lord has in mind, that all that enters into Christianity is available to the saints in each assembly. The furnishings are all there, and the Lord is telling us that He knows they are all there. We also know they are all there, and almost every real Christian knows that they are all there; that the provisions are there, that the power for overcoming alluded to is there, not only the blood of the Lamb, but other things are recorded so that each one in the assemblies should have the idea of overcoming and should overcome. And then the Lord alludes to rewards. “As I also have overcome, and have sat down with my Father in his throne”. We are to sit down with Him in His throne, the Lord’s own throne, that is our outlook; the Lord would encourage us by it, and help us to be overcomers in view of it.

I commit the matter to the brethren, to our souls and consciences, for overcoming in view of sitting down with the Lord Jesus in His own throne, when He shall rule, for God “hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained”.

May God bless the word.