EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 03-01-2025
My Worship Time
Focus:
PT-4 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?”
I continue quoting from John MacArthur’s sermon in
these verses.
“We
struggle though in the world. Paul struggled in Romans 7 against the power
of his fallen flesh. He struggled under terrible persecution by the world,
beaten, shipwrecked, stoned, whipped, assaulted, attacked, despised, hated,
jailed, put in stocks, finally executed. But none of that took away his victory
because the worst that you could ever do to a believer would be to kill a
believer and to do that is to usher them into the full honors of their eternal
triumph. It’s really an astounding thing. The worst you could ever do to us is
the best. If they take our lives, they free us from the debilitating flesh
which clings to us. They can never take our salvation. Nothing can ever
separate us from the love of God in Christ. Nothing can ever break our faith.
Nothing can ever cause a believer to stop believing. And even if they kill us,
all they’ve done is freed us up to enter the glorious realities of spiritual
perfection in the presence of Christ.
“And
so, we are overcomers. We are victors. We are conquerors, by definition. And
that’s why; in a sense, Satan, the world, illness, and even death itself are
somehow not a threat to us. You can’t find yourself too overwhelmed by them,
too distressed by them, too overwrought with anxiety and concern. They are temporary enemies,
temporary annoyances. But the victory is won, and someday we’ll enter in
to our eternal life and we will be given an inheritance, the Bible says, that
is the very inheritance that Jesus receives because we will be joint heirs with
Christ. Whatever failures come and go here, we conquer in Him.
“So we see the definition of an
overcomer. Now John wants to give us the description of an overcomer. How do you know
you’re one? This is important for us, especially if you got a grip on what I
just said. I can’t think of anything more wonderful than living my entire life
knowing that Satan can never defeat me, the world can never defeat me, sin can
never defeat me, the law can never defeat me, and death can never defeat me.
Right? I am invincible, not in myself, but in Christ. My sins have been paid
for in Christ. The penalty of sin has been paid in full. I have been granted
eternal life. I have been given a permanent faith and trust. I have had planted
in my heart an affection for the things of God, a new nature which longs for
those things that are holy and righteous and good and just. I am a new
creation. Nothing will ever change that. I have been born again. I cannot be
unborn. I possess the life of God. I don’t love the world. I am not any longer
vulnerable to lying, damning deception because the truth is in me, and the
truth teacher has taken up residence in my life, the Holy Spirit. I am
invincible. I am an overcomer.
“That’s
nothing for me to be proud about; it’s something for me to be humbled by
because I do not deserve that. I didn’t deserve it when Christ made me an
overcomer and I don’t deserve it now, because I, with Paul, still look at
myself and say, “O wretched man that I am.” Well then if you don’t deserve it,
and if there’s still sin in your life, and if occasionally you still fall prey
to the temptings of the world and the allurements of Satan and you still sin,
how can it be said that you have conquered them? It can be said that I’ve
conquered them because the Bible says that I’ve conquered them in Christ – in
Christ.
“But
if I’m not perfect, what is it then that signals that I am a conqueror? If I
still sin and fail, how do I know that I am an overcomer? It’s a very important
question cause if you look at your life like I look at mine; you don’t see on a
day-to-day basis some kind of spiritual invincibility, do you? You wouldn’t
rise up and say, “I will tell you this; as far as sin goes I am unconquerable?”
I don’t think so. You wouldn’t even come close to saying that. You would
understand that if you are put into the category of a super-conqueror, it is by grace. Right? It
is because a righteousness not your own has been granted to you, put to your
account, the righteousness of God in Christ. It is because God in mercy and
grace has made you a super-conqueror in spite of what you are, not because of
it.
“But
nonetheless there have to be some ways in which I can look at my life and say,
“I either am or I am not an overcomer.” And there are three, and you won’t be surprised by
these if you’ve been with us in our study. Overcomers are characterized by the
same three things that John has been talking about since chapter 1. The three
tests by which anybody’s salvation can be evidenced. Number one, faith – faith
in the truth. Number two, love – love to God and to others. And number three,
obedience to the Word. And
here we find John back in the same zone he’s been in through this whole
epistle. He weaves together these same three. We’ve been saying it again
and again; there are moral
tests, love and obedience; there are doctrinal tests, a right understanding of
your sinfulness and faith in the only one who is a provision for sin, namely
the Lord Jesus Christ. In order to know that you’re a Christian you have
to examine what you believe about Christ, and you have to look at your life and
see there the evidence of love and obedience. These have been themes woven
through the whole epistle. Here we find them again.”
Lord
willing more tomorrow.
3/1/2025 8:15 PM
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