John 16:33 (NIV) "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
I John 5:1-4 (NASB) 1Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. 2By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. 3For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. 4For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world--our faith.
John writes in a world grown weary. The glory of Greece is past. The Roman peace is degenerating into corruption, cruelty, and callousness. And the goddess Tyche, or Fortuna in Latin, is emerging as the most popular god of the people. The goddess of Fate. In this kind of world, John says to the early church and to us, “This is the victory that has overcome the world--our faith.” It might make more sense to us to think of the world in terms of “the spirit of our world.”
The spirit of our world has a hold on us when we watch the evening news with its usual recital of cruelty, tragedy, and scandal, and God seems remote, powerless, and irrelevant. The effect of the spirit of this world is to be driven into a life of anxious striving and the self pre-occupation that goes with it. The spirit of the world causes us to develop schedules that are too busy for us and too full to be aware of God. When we close our eyes we hear only worries and concerns instead of the deep care and concern that God has for us. Do we sense our on-going battle with this world, or have we grown numb to it and succumbed to it?
The faith that John is talking about is a life of inward confidence in God that is expressed in love. Situations that might have seemed hopeless are seen as redeemable by the power of this love. People who were seen as irritating are seen as people with a need for love.
Do we know that faith that overcomes the world? The delight at being alive and belonging to God with a mind and heart clear and quiet? A sense of being guided by God, supported by God’s plan being worked out? Grateful and able to love and relate to diverse and sometimes difficult people? Belief in Jesus as the Son of God establishes this life of faith. Our faith is not rooted in wishful thinking. Our faith is rooted in fact. Belief is the certainty that in Jesus God entered uniquely into our world. In Jesus God showed that He cared enough to live among us. Jesus died in the belief that His death was God’s love for us, and in the hope that His death would touch our hearts. That is a fact on which we rest our confidence and risk our love.
From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope May 4, 1997
© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell Broyles
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