1 John 5:4 For whatever is born of God overcomes the world: and this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. I. HOW THE VICTORY IS GAINED. "Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world." Beware of mere outside enlargement. Accretion is not increase. But where there is true life, you have growth and increase. The victory of vitality is onward, upward, skyward, heavenward. Look at this tree — a poor puny twig, you put it in the ground. Yet it is a victor, a conqueror proud and unbending; the very earth that keeps it up is thrust below it in triumph. One of the mighty forces of the universe next comes meddling with it, to coerce it downward, to overthrow it. Gravitation, from its march among the mazes of stellar light, from the holding up in its great hand of the swinging suns in yon far off abyss, now attacks this little newcomer. But there's life in the attacked, and the merest cell of protoplasm is greater than a whole universe of Jupiters and Saturns and stars and suns. The treeling conquers. Watch it rearing its tufted little head, upward stretching, upward reaching, upward growing, upward in spite of the steady downward pull of that blind nigh infinite force, upward. It's a marvel, a conquest, a triumph, an overcoming indeed. This shrublet lives, and because of life "born of God" it conquers and overcomes. Take another view point, for I wish to lead you up to all that is implied in the phrase "born of God." The "born" of man: what is that? Intellect, idea, mind, soul, thought. Is there not the march of a conqueror here? "No!" says the opposing Firth of Forth to the beseeching request of man for permission to cross, and it stretches out the broad arm of waves and waters to prevent and protest. No? but the "born" of man says Yes, and Inchgarvie bares its rocky back for the giant piles, and the great Bridge in levers and cantilevers springs in mocking triumph from shore to shore, and the roll of ordinary traffic now heralds the conquest in a daily song. Ay, wherever you look, whatsoever is "born" of man overcometh, rocks rend, valleys rise, and the great sea's bosom is beaten by revolving paddles and screws into the very king's highway. This is the victory, born of man, "born of God, LIFE!" At conversion the spiritual principle of the new creation starts its onward programme of evolution to the full stature of the perfect man in a glorified Christ. The new man lives, the old man dies and disappears. What is involved must be evolved, and the Creator has pledged Himself to it. "Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world." The world is no friend to grace. It threatens and frightens, annoys, vexes, and checks. It may deform and deface, but kill? Never. The Mugho pine tree shaken by the headlong winds, just thrusts its roots more deeply into the crevices of the rock; the threatening vibrations but make it embrace the cliff and imbed itself in the strong Alpine heart all the more firmly; it's the better for all the blaud and bluster of the storm. So if your soul has got life, the merest atom, the minutest cell, the feeblest flicker, the faintest breath, it will grow the higher and higher for these assaults of Satan, for all the downward pulling of the gravitation of the pit. II. THE CERTAINTY OF THE VICTORY. The Calvary is over, the great battle in the darkness is by, the devil is defeated, but it is yours now to pursue and to keep him in the "glorious confusion" of flight. It is yours, Christians, to be after the fleeing foe. "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." The faith here referred to by the apostle is not so much an attribute of our poor tired bankrupt hearts, but it is an objective outside thing, in fact, just an outward Creed or Confession. It is the fides quae and not the fides qua, the faith believed and not the faith believing. In the present ebb and flow of religious opinion or non-opinion, a creed is as necessary to the Church as the vertebral column to the human body. In the storm everything else may go by the board; the whole cargo may be jettisoned on the surf, but one thing is never flung over the gunwale to lighten the ship, and that is the compass. The binnacle sticks to the deck, and the faithful needle points on through the dash of the storm to the haven of safety and rest. (John Robertson.) Parallel Verses KJV: For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. |
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