EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 03-02-2025
My Worship Time
Focus:
PT-5 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.
“Whoever
believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God” – ek tou Theou
gegennētai, literally in the Greek, “out of God has been begotten” – great
statement. The emphasis on
out of God. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ out of God has
been begotten. Simply say, everybody who is an overcomer is begotten of God.
Everybody who is begotten of God believes that Jesus is the Christ. Conversely,
if you do not believe that Jesus is the Christ, if you don’t believe in Jesus,
all He is as the Son of God and Messiah and Savior, you haven’t been begotten
of God. And if you haven’t been begotten of God you are not an overcomer. You
are still under the power of Satan, under the power of death, under the power
of sin and the law, under the power of the world, and under the influence of
the false teachers who move through the world. In John chapter 1 verse 12 it
says, “As many as received Him” – as received Christ – “to them He gave the
right to become the children of God, even to those who believe in His name.”
You believe in the name of Jesus Christ, God makes you His child. You are
literally out of God, begotten when you believe in Jesus Christ.
“The
point is, overcomers are those who believe in Jesus Christ as God, Messiah, and
Savior. The combination here is important in the language, “Whoever is
believing has been begotten,” literally. Whoever is believing that Jesus is the
Christ, the Greek says, has been begotten. Whoever is now believing is, by that
very believing, giving evidence of having been begotten. That is to say, and
this is so important, continual
believing is the result not the cause of the new birth. Did you grab
that? Arminian theology says that you can be born again as long as you keep
believing. You will be born again as long as you keep believing. I don’t know
if you ever see Gene Scott on television. That’s the heart and soul of his
theology. If you keep believing, God keeps saving you. As soon as you stop
believing, He stops saving you. That’s not what this says. What this says is whoever is
believing that Jesus is the Christ has been begotten of God. It is your
believing that proves that you’ve been begotten. What you received at salvation
was a permanent faith, not a temporary one. “For by grace are you saved through
faith, and that not of yourselves, it is” – what? – “the gift of God.” God gave
you a permanent faith.
“You
say, well what about people who stop believing? Well John dealt with them,
didn’t he, back in chapter 2 verse 17, “They went out from us, because they
were not of us. If they had been of us they would have continued with us, but
they went out from us that it might be made manifest they never were of us.” If you stop believing, it was
never saving faith. Those who have been begotten of God are believing.
Our present continuing faith is the result and therefore the evidence of our
past having been begotten by God. If you have been born again, if you have been
regenerated, if you have been given new life by God, it will manifest itself in an ongoing faith in
Jesus Christ.
“You
may look at your life from time to time and you may see some failures in the
category of moral test. You may say, “Well I don’t see the love I should see at
this point. I don’t see the obedience I should see.” Sometimes you’re going to
back yourself up to that one first great proof. But I still believe in Jesus
Christ. And if I still believe that Jesus is the Christ with all that that
means, then I have already been begotten by God and that’s the evidence of it.
It is a terrible deception and unbearable burden to say to someone, “As long as
you keep believing, God will keep saving you.” Who wants to live in that kind of fear and with the kind
of God who rewards works, making faith into some price if paid thus purchasing
salvation?
3/2/2025 9:28 PM
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