PT-2 "How to Recognize an Overcomer" (1 John 5:1-5)

 

EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/6/2025 9:11 PM

 

My Worship Time                                             Focus: Part 2 “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?”

            “Now we talked about this definition, first of all, of overcomer: One who conquers, one who defeats, one who is unconquerable. And we mentioned to you last week that that is not something that the ancient world believed belonged to human beings. They were fairly realistic. And they realized that no matter how good a person might be, no matter how right they might try to live, no matter how they might direct their lives, they were not invincible. If there was such a thing as a mortal who had some great powers by which he could triumph in unusual ways, he was almost considered a god. In ancient Greek times, if you read ancient Greek literature – I used to read a lot of it, particularly when I was a student because it fascinated me to understand how they viewed the spiritual and supernatural world – you find that it was the gods who were powerful. It was the gods who were unconquerable and invincible, and human beings were just failures. They might win here or there along the way, but ultimately it was real to portray humans as those who failed eventually.

            “Some of the fascinating legends that grew up around certain human beings that triumphed have so fancified their lives that we can’t even get to the real core of what they were. Because it was so rare, they literally sort of made sort of semi-gods out of people. One story that always fascinated me was a story about Ariadne who was the daughter of the king of Crete. Now the king of Greece had a son named Theseus. And Theseus, the son of the king of Greece, and Ariadne, the daughter of the king of Crete, kind of had a thing going together, and they cared greatly for each other. Theseus wanted to do something to demonstrate his great prowess to finally win the hand of Ariadne. There was, according to the legends about this real person named Theseus, a cave somewhere in which a Minotaur was living. Do you have any remembrance about Minotaur in some of your studies when you were a student? That is a monster with a bull’s body and a human head. And the Minotaur lived in this cave and anybody who got near the cave was killed, and the Minotaur had a regular agenda of coming out of the cave and eating seven Athenians and seven maidens regularly. And so they wanted to get rid of the Minotaur, and Theseus wanting to prove his prowess to win the heart of Ariadne determined to go in and find the monster and slay him. Now what made it difficult was the cave in which he lived was a labyrinth from which no one who ever went in had ever escaped, because once you got in you couldn’t find your way out and eventually you gave up and were consumed, if not sooner, by the beast.

            “Well Ariadne wanted to assist her lover in his effort to convince her father of his worthiness for her hand, and so she smuggled him a sword. He was supposed to be able to prove his prowess by going with nothing but his bare hands, but she smuggled him a sword. And then she did a very smart thing, she tied a long scarlet cord to his foot so that he could find his way back out after he slew the beast – which he did. And he came out and won the girl. And you know how the story ends; they all lived happily ever after.

            “Well that’s not true, but around this character Theseus, because he had a certain power and prowess, grew this kind of typical legend. Pure fantasy for sure, but not really a bad illustration of the believer who goes into the labyrinth of the enemy and slays the enemy with the sword of the Spirit and finds his way out because of the scarlet cord of the blood of Christ. That’s a stretch but you get the picture. Basically the Greeks didn’t believe that that was the normal way in which human conducted life and if somebody did that, they were turned into a legendary figure. That’s the point.

            “What does Scripture say we have overcome? We went into that last time. We talked about the definition of an overcomer and the things that we’ve overcome. And we talked about Satan. The Bible is very clear; we’ve overcome the evil one. Death, we have triumphed over death and the grave. We have triumphed over sin. We have triumphed over the Law in the sense of the sentence of the Law. We have triumphed therefore over judgment. And we have triumphed over ignorance. We are the overcomers. We have triumphed.”

3/6/2025 9:22 PM