Winning Over the World

Introduction

On Sunday morning, Sept. 2, 1945, the Japanese Foreign Minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu, signed the papers of surrender on behalf of the Emperor Hirohitu. This brought World War 2 to its full close. After 6 years of war in Europe and, for the United States, after 4 years of war in Europe, Africa, and the Pacific the war had clear winners and losers.

That morning seems to have marked a turning point for the United States as a nation. From Korea, Vietnam, to Afghanistan our nation has yet again to win a war outright. Our society seems to have suffered from this too. A nation that cannot rouse itself to declare winners and losers on Little League baseball fields struggles to muster the collective will to win the real fights it needs for survival whether in our streets or on our battlefields.

We blanche at the thought that there can be winners and losers.

Hence, as a society, we find it distasteful and even rude to consider that from God’s point of views there are winners and losers in life.

The Apostle John, sometime in the late 90’s AD, wrote his first epistle to assure his readers that they did know God.

He designed his letter to provide assurance by drawing distinctions between those who are of the world and those who are of God.

There are two classifications of people who occupy the planet at any given time. Those who are of the world and those who are of God.

Here is how this concluding sermon ties in with the others: there are clear, tangible markers that distinguish those who know God from those who do not. These distinctions are not matters of mere taste, and they are not just matters of appearance.

Our Struggle for Identity as Winners:

We do not have the dominant message. Man struggles with truth.

Ever since the fall of man, this space has been filled by other competing gods of man’s own creation, by the earth/nature itself, or by man’s denial of gods existence altogether.

Consider 1 John 4:1-4.

1 John 5:20: We can make the claim to know the truthful, the genuine or real, God in Christ.

Compare to 1 John 5:18

We do not have the dominant lifestyle.

Consider 1 John 2:15.

The world is more than the earth. It is the system of evil, corruption, lust, and lies perpetrated by the devil and lived out through human beings in our sinful natures.

We do not have the dominant power.

Believers are subjected to persecution and suffering in the world.

Does being in the majority make the majority right? Can the majority be wrong?

Believers as Victors

Positional victory (1 John 5:1).

Note that we do not believe in “nothing.”

We believe something specific about Jesus. We believe that He is the Messiah.

Contrast with 1 John 2:22 and 1 John 4:2 (Jesus as Messiah).

Jesus as Christ means we understand him to be the Son of God (1 John 4:15). It also means we understand him to be our propitiation (1 John 4:10).

Believing that Jesus is Messiah means we “have been born from God.” This is the same heavenly birth that Jesus spoke of to Nicodemus in John 3. We need a second birth to be in the kingdom of heaven.

Those who believe that Jesus is the Messiah have that birth.

John 1:12

Practical Victory (1 John 5:2-4).

Christ in us produces specific, identifiable behavioral traits.

John seems to be making the point (in 1 John 2:15-20) that those who know God do not love the world because the world and its things are incompatible and inconsistent with the nature of God.” In other words, those who know God love God, love to obey God, and love those who also love God. We love purity, righteousness, and the truth. (1 John 3:1-10), (1 John 1:5-7).

Believing in Jesus, loving the brethren, and lives of consistent, obedient purity distinguish believers from non-believers and give us assurance that we know God.

1 John 3:24-25

1 John 3:13-19; 1 John 4:19-21

1 John 2:29.

Our faith is victorious over the world because of the person it is in and because of the changed life he produces in us.