1 John 5:1-5

Victory over the World

Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament, 28th Edition Chapter 5

5 Πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων ὅτι Ἰησοῦς ἐστιν ὁ Χριστὸς ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ γεγέννηται,* καὶ πᾶς ὁ ἀγαπῶν τὸν γεννήσαντα ἀγαπᾷ °καὶ ⸀τὸν γεγεννημένον ἐξ αὐτοῦ.* 2 ἐν τούτῳ γινώσκομεν ὅτι ἀγαπῶμεν τὰ τέκνα τοῦ θεοῦ,* ὅταν τὸν θεὸν ἀγαπῶμεν καὶ τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ ⸀ποιῶμεν. 3 αὕτη γάρ ἐστιν ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ,* ἵνα τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ τηρῶμεν,* καὶ αἱ ἐντολαὶ αὐτοῦ βαρεῖαι οὐκ εἰσίν. 4 ὅτι πᾶν τὸ γεγεννημένον ἐκ τοῦ θεοῦ νικᾷ τὸν κόσμον·* καὶ αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ νίκη ἡ νικήσασα τὸν κόσμον,* ἡ πίστις ⸀ἡμῶν.

5 Τίς ⸂δέ ἐστιν⸃ ὁ νικῶν τὸν κόσμον εἰ μὴ ὁ πιστεύων* ὅτι Ἰησοῦς ἐστιν ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ;*

English Standard Version Chapter 5

5 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

NIKE ADVERT

As a young lad my heroes were nearly all footballers! I caught the bug at a young age, my Dad took me up to Molineux to watch Bully rescue a dramatic late point for Wolves against Watford sometime in 1993 and that was it. Every non-uniform day was an opportunity to wear my newest football shirt, evenings after school were spent haring round the garden in my second hand England away shirt self-commentating on my own exploits.

Wrapped up in every football fans obsession is the hope of glory; the dream of domination, of victory, of vanquishing the foe whichever team that may be. No football fan dreams of mediocrity for their team, they want to win. And the best kind of victory is the kind that is against all the odds, against a terrible and imposing opposition who’s fans hate your team as much as you hate theirs!

I remember a particular advert for Nike football boots which captured this inner story so well; it starred legends like Ian Wright, Paolo Maldini, Ronaldo (the original one) and Eric Cantona, the reason we all wore our collars up in those days!

In this advert these heroes were facing off against a team of demons in a kind of hellish colloseum, the fans all baying for blood! At first our heroes take an absolute battering and then Maldini courageously wins possesion, passes up field, to Figo, to Kluivert, to Ronaldo and finally to Cantona. Cantona has one demon left in goal, a horrible fellow with wings and glowing eyes, Cantona nonchalent as you like pops his collar up, gives it the ‘au revoir’ and blasts the ball right through the demons guts into the goal! Glory!

Why on earth am I telling you all this? Because the Greek word today’s sermon centres on is a greek word you all know; νικη - the greek word for victory!

Of course the brand Nike takes its name from the Greek/Roman goddess of victory Athena Nike.

That Nike advert really does relate in many ways to the passage we are considering today; hostile opposition not simply bent on defeating you but destroying you, a crowd baying for blood, wanting to see you loose, and the final triumph of good over evil.

VICTORY

That word Νικη appears no less than four times in this passage each time in a slightly different grammatical form. John is wanting to make sure that the theme of victory, of triumph makes an impression upon us as we read this. It is translated mostly as triumphs, overcomes, or as victory in the English translations but the root word is always the same in Greek.

The concept of victory of necessity implies conflict. You can’t have victory unless there is a struggle, you can’t be victorious unless there is some oppositon, some foe to be victorious over!

The story of the life of a believer is a story of conflict, of struggle. A Christian is someone who is at war. There’s no such thing as a Christian pascifist in the type of conflict we are talking about here in 1 John 5. Don’t be fooled into thinking that the Christian life is one of pascifism. A passive Christian is a dead Christian.

The Christian is to be at war with the world according to John.

So what does victory over the world look like? Are we to overcome the world like Alexander the Great? Taking nations through military power? Or is it by rising to the top of the pile that a Christian overcomes the world? By being the greatest influencers in economy, government, media, education and so forth. This kind of approach has been called the 7 mountain mandate by some. The general idea is that Christians rise to prominent positions of influence in the world and in so doing begin to have dominion. Others have called this approach ‘Dominionism.’

Some even go so far as to say that the only true purpose of the Church is to equip leaders to begin to rise up the ladders of influence in the world and exert influence. But is this what John means here?

Firstly, we have to understand what John means by The World here. It might appear to be obvious on first reading but by ό κοσμος (the world) John means minimally 10 different things in his writings.

In John 3:16 the world is what God loves through sending Jesus; is John saying we are to be in conflict with what God loves? No! The meaning of the word is derived from the context as much as from the word itself, that’s why we’ve got to be careful not to just jump to conclusions when reading the Bible. A word can very easily mean one thing over here and quite another over there.

Paul talks about the Christian struggle in Ephesians 6, ‘For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.’ Eph 6:12.

So our warfare takes place on a spiritual level. And yet John’s foe is perhaps broader than Paul’s definition in Ephesians. How do we know what he means by the world then? The meaning is found in verses 3 and 4; “we keep His commandments, for His commandments are not burdensome, for whatever has been born of God overcomes the world.”

The world here is whatever has not been born of God; sinful humanity, the powers of darkness that influence this world, and even our sinful flesh.

John says that our battle and our victory is over the things in this world that keep us from obeying God; His word, His commands about how we should live, what we should believe and specifically His commandments to us to love Him and to love one another.

The one who is born again will have victory by means of their ability to obey God in the midst of violent opposition; our victory isn’t a military one, nor is it a power grab, but it’s the victory of obedience.

THE FOE

Our enemy, the world, isn’t neutral towards God. Sure, the world denies this, in fact the world is happy for you to worship a god of your choosing as long as it’s not the God of the Bible. The God who IS, the God to whom ALL will give an account, the world hates that God. Even in our nation which has for so long basked in the benefits of obedience to God’s law now to simply read the scriptures aloud in public can land you in a prison cell. The world says ‘we’re ok with you obeying God so long as He never disagrees with us.’

The strategy of the foe

Silence - The world wants you to be silent. By all means, go to church, but never talk about it, ‘don’t push your beliefs on others!’ And yet what is that but a belief (that I shouldn’t push my beliefs) being pushed on me! As it has been said before, if no one knows that you’re a Christian, you probably aren’t one. In our silence particularly in sharing the gospel prevents us from loving God.

Compromise - This is perhaps the most insidious of tactics; if you’ll just compromise the word of God on this issue here; human sexuality, gender, the uniqueness of Christ, the authority of the scriptures we’ll be friends with you. The promise of friendship with the world has often been the siren call that led to shipwreck for the faith of many. Of course, a true believer is never truly led astray by this voice, since the true sheep knows the voice of the Shepherd and won’t listen to another, but there are many who by their compromises with the world show themselves not to be true believers. Sadly, some of those bargaining with the world stand behind a lectern every Sunday. As we know, lecterns, titles, dog collars and cassocks don’t save anyone, it’s only those believing on the Lord Jesus who will be saved. If we will compromise on God’s word then we don’t love God, we actually hate him.

Division - “The devil always sends errors into the world in pairs--pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one.” C.S Lewis. The world is full of division; the world wants the church to be full of division too. This is not to say that there should never be an occasion of disagreement between Christians! We have to be careful with this line of attack, since many have wanted to be so careful not to be divisive that they have switched off their discernment altogether. We know that there are things over which it is right for us to disagree; Peter withdrawing from the Jews in Antioch. As the late R.C. Sproul said, truth is divisive! However, we must resist the worldly temptation to become divisive people; bringing in worldly controversies into the church, beginning to apply wordly philosophies intended to divide and sub-divide into the Church. Even in the past 12 months there are so many issues that have led to polarisation in the world that have entered the church; almost too many to count. Can we love our brother or sister in Christ whichever way they may have voted, whatever colour their skin might be? That is the test.

OUR FAITH

How is our victory assured? John makes clear that ‘whatever’ has been born of God ‘overcomes the world’. This is true of necessity! Since God is God, wherever He is He overcomes. It’s by virtue of the New Birth that we have victory! Not by our pious works, not by our social standing or our resources and means but because He has made us born again!

And how is our victory manifest to us? Though faith. Faith follows the new birth in quick step.

This is John’s version of Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”15 Through faith we have the victory! “Christians don’t fight for victory; we fight from victory - Sean Douglas O’Donnell

Some have made this to mean that it is the principle of faith itself that overcomes the world. That I overcome the world by the working of my faith. But John makes clear that it’s not the bare principle of faith that gives the victory but rather the object of that faith; Jesus Christ.

Oecumenius: It is not faith in the abstract that overcomes the world. It must be faith in Jesus Christ, as John makes plain

Only one man has ever enjoyed total victory over all His enemies, only one man has truly stepped into the arena of the devil and sin and death and walked out having led them all a merry dance. It’s only when our faith rests in His victory that we walk in victory. And it’s His victory we walk in; pleasing our Father in all we do! The world hates to see us walking in obedience, walking in love, walking in truth, and that’s exactly what we do when we are born again. It’s a walk of faith, that looks like obedience.

How do we know that we’re born again? When we walk ever increasingly as He did, in victory over sin, deception and hatred. We know we’re born again our faith rests on Jesus alone; not on ourselves on other gods or on humanity in general.

Question: “How may I know that regeneration has occurred? How may I know if someone has been born again?”

Answer: “That person will not practice sin (3:9; 5:18). That person will practice righteousness (2:29). That person will love the brethren (4:7). That person will believe in Christ (5:1). And that person will overcome the world (5:4).”

Sam Storms

What about you? Are you at war with the enemies of God or have you made peace with them? Have you allowed compromise to get the better of you? Or perhaps you’ve been cowed into silence? Fix your eyes on Jesus today, look to Him, the author and perfecter of our faith! Let’s walk in His victory, let’s live from that victory this week.

Pray