EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2-26-2025
My Worship Time
Focus:
PT-1 Intro. To “How to Recognize an Overcomer”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 1 John 5:1-5
Message of the verses: “1 Whoever believes
that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and whoever loves the Father loves the
child born of Him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God,
when we love God and observe His commandments. 3 For this is the love of God,
that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome. 4 For whatever
is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome
the world — our faith. 5 Who is the one who overcomes the world, but
he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”
As I look at the first paragraph of the commentary
that John MacArthur writes in his commentary it is a very long paragraph and in
that paragraph he describes the different ways that believers are identified in
the Scriptures. I thought that I would
go to the sermon that he preached on this subject and look to see how he dealt
with it there. I would like to quote
from his sermon where he writes about how believers are identified in the
Scriptures, but in that section he does not name the chapters and verses where
he gets that information. What I will do
is quote a number of paragraphs from that sermon as he begins to talk about how
important the word “Overcomer” is.
“There
are so many wonderful titles in the New Testament by which we describe
ourselves. We are called Christians which originally a term used to describe
believers in Jesus Christ in a somewhat derisive way. They were really called
Christians by pagans, little Christs. But it’s become perhaps the most familiar
of all terms to describe us. We are also in the Scripture called children,
children of God, children of light, children of the day, and children of obedience.
We are called believers or the faithful. We are called friends of Jesus Christ.
We are called brothers and sisters. We are called sheep. We’re called saints,
holy ones. We are called soldiers. We are called witnesses. We are called
stewards. We are called fellow-citizens. We are called lights in the world.
We’re called the elect of God. We’re called the chosen. We’re called
ambassadors of Christ. We’re called ministers. We’re called servants. We’re
called disciples. We’re called heirs. We’re called joint-heirs. We’re called
branches in the vine. We’re called members of the body of Christ. We’re called
living stones by which the temple of God is built. We are called epistles,
living letters. We’re called temples. We’re called beloved. We’re called followers.
And there are more.
“And
all of those terms and each of those terms give us the definition of who we
are. And in a sense it takes all of those terms to express the fullness of what
it means to belong to God through faith in Christ. I suppose we could say that
the composite of the significance of all those terms sums up the total
description and definition of those who are Christ’s. But there’s one other
title that isn’t generally a part of the short list that most of us would refer
to, and that is this term that is used a number of times in the text I just
read. We are overcomers. Twice in verse 4 it identifies us as those who have
overcome the world and then once again in verse 5. We are overcomers. This is a
descriptive term. If you would like another term you could use the term
victors. If you want yet another term that may be a little more contemporary,
you could use the term winners. We are the winners – very descriptive.
“Let
me give you a definition of this concept to start with, and then we’ll look at
some of the characteristics of it. The word here for overcomes, nikaō in the
Greek, it means to conquer. It means to win; it means to defeat; it means to
gain victory. The noun from nikaō is nikē from which we get the word Nike. The
Greeks loved the word nikē. They actually had a goddess by the name of Nikē,
and this was the goddess of victory, the goddess of triumph. And the Greeks
actually believed that victory could not be achieved by mortals, but only by
the gods. Only the gods were ultimately unconquerable. I mean, true and
ultimate and final and permanent and lasting and sort of eternal victory only
belonged to the gods. They were the only ones who could conquer and become
unconquerable. For men, there might be a triumph here and a triumph there, but
there would also be mingled in between defeat and failure. Only the gods could
reach the level of being unconquerable.
“Playing
against the background of that kind of thinking in the ancient times, it was a
pretty stunning thing to assign to Christians the kind of unconquerability that
belonged only to the gods in that culture. We like that word even in English.
The United States military forces have for many, many years called their
missiles Nike missiles. And then of course we have Nike shoes that are supposed
to lead you to triumph in whatever athletic endeavor you’re engaged in.”
Now
before I get too far into this sermon I will stop here and then pick up some
more in our SD for tomorrow, Lord willing.
2/26/2025 8:12 PM
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