I Got That!
Victory Series
I Got That!!
PART FIRST.—THE TRIUMPH OVER DEATH
“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
A sting and a victory belonged to him once. But where are they now?
55 O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
To you, death now has no victory at all. He has lost the only weapon which he could ever wield to win it—his sting. Victory is now transferred to the other side. No sting hast thou now, O death, and therefore no victory.
The victory is with us; not got by us, but given to us. It is not our own achievement; it is the gift of God. We cannot spoil thee of thy victory, O death, for we cannot rob thee of thy sting. Thy sting is our sin, and our sin is too strong for us.
“The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.” But we willingly consent to owe all to God. We thank him who “giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
“The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law.”
Sin deserves death; it is on account of sin that men die. Sin hath entered into the world, and death by sin. Therefore the sting of death is sin.
“The sting of death is sin.” The sting-like weapon which death uses in asserting and carrying out his victory is sin. He makes a handle—he makes a tool of sin. It is his barbed and venomous dart.
He gets his power to sting through sin. He makes the sin itself his sting. It is a sow and cruel sting; piercing not the body only, but the spirit also; inflicting a dastard and deadly wound on the whole man; aggravating a thousandfold the bitterness and degradation of death’s victory.
He comes to conquer, introduced by sin. Sin treacherously throws open the gate, and allows him entrance into the city. That is saying much for the evil of sin. But that is not all. That is not the worst.
Death, the conqueror, entering in through sin—through sin opening the gates for him—compels the traitor to become his tool. He takes sin along with him in carrying out his conquest. He stings on account of sin; he stings by means of sin. Sin is his weapon as well as his warrant. Literally and emphatically “the sting of death is sin.”
It is indeed a deadly, it is a bitter wound which that sting inflicts. It is a wound for which, when death has triumphed by means of it, there is nowhere in all the universe, never throughout endless ages, any cure or palliative to be found.
“The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law.”
“But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
II. It is through our Lord Jesus Christ
I. Victory is yours. The victory which was death’s is now yours. Where is thy victory, O death? The fortune of battle is turned. We have the victory now.