How Faith Overcomes the World, Part 1

1 John 5:3-5

August 31, 2003

 

            Let me begin this morning by saying that the depth and riches and wealth of spiritual truth found in this passage of Scripture is not something that can be exhausted in two or three sermons. It’s not something that can be exhausted in an entire lifetime. Learning to overcome the world by faith and win the victory already won by Christ is a lifelong pursuit for the Christian. My understanding of what overcoming the world by faith means has been profoundly affected and indelibly marked by John Piper and the biblical truths brought to light in his book Future Grace. I recommend you buy this book and read it slowly, and digest the biblical insights he gives. The whole book, really, is an attempt to help give believers insight into how faith overcomes the world. I owe John Piper a great debt for my own understanding of this subject; God has used him to help shape my thinking about what faith is and how it overcomes the world, so if you want to look further into the power faith has for conquering the world for the glory of Christ and the joy of His servants, I recommend you get a copy of Piper’s book Future Grace and read it prayerfully.

            The theme of 1 John 5:1-5 is that the Christian life is a life of God-wrought faith that manifests itself in love for the brethren and overcomes the world. These two things, loving the brethren and overcoming the world, are proofs that we have been born of God and have received from God the gift of faith in His Son, Jesus. The Apostle John is tying together his arguments from chapter 4 about loving the brethren, and he is showing how this type of love fits into the mosaic that is the Christian life.

            The Christian life is a transformed life. It is a complete life. So often we like to compartmentalize things, and to categorize and systematize them. We tend to do this with our Christianity, and whenever we do so, our view and understanding of what it means to be a Christian inevitably is deficient. We may think of Christianity in terms of faith. It is a belief in Jesus Christ. And that is true. But we must not reduce Christianity down to simply intellectual assent or a cold, detached belief in a series of doctrines. Why? Because Paul said in 1 Corinthians 16:22, If anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed. If we say we believe and that we have faith, but we do not love the Lord, we stand condemned. Faith without love does not save.

Someone else, then, might say that Christianity is all about love, but this is deficient as well, because Jesus Himself said in Matthew 7:21, Not everyone who says to Me, “Lord, Lord,” will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. And John also said in 1 John 5:3, For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. We cannot reduce the Christian life, then, simply to love that is an emotion, because if our love is not accompanied by obedience to the will of God we will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Others, then, take another route and reduce it down to obedience to God’s commandments. The Jews are the most obvious group of people who have done this. They have completely left out faith and love, and they have tried to pursue righteousness as if it were by the works of the Law. But Paul says in Romans 3:28, For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the Law. It is faith that justifies us, not obedience to the Law. How, then, do we reconcile these things? How can we put all of these seemingly contradictory and paradoxical statements together to form a coherent doctrine of salvation?

            I believe the Apostle John tells us in this section we are examining this morning that the way all of these things fit together is this: The Christian life is a complete life. It is a transformed life. It is not a life that can be reduced to a single characteristic or trait, and if that single characteristic or trait is in your life, then you must be a Christian. Rather, the Christian life is a transformed life in every way. The work of God takes root in the life of a person who is saved, and God transforms every aspect of that person’s life. This work of God is what John calls being born of God in verse 1. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. This new birth, being born of God, is what changes everything in a person’s life. It is because God causes the Christian to be born again that the Christian’s life is impacted on every level. The new birth is the key to understanding it all. What does it involve?

            First, the Apostle told us that it involves faith. Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. The person who has faith is most surely born of God. The new birth results in faith; it produces faith. The new birth also produces love. Listen to what the Apostle tells us: whoever loves the Father loves the child born of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. Love is also a part of the new birth. But then, that last statement tells us that being born of God involves obedience. Obedience is also a result of being born of God. We know that we love the children of God, when we love God and observe His commandments. That is obedience to God, and it is also a result of the new birth. So the new birth transforms you in every way. It causes you to believe that Jesus is the Christ, it produces love in your heart for God and for His children, and it produces obedience to the commandments of God.

            I believe that one of the biggest problems in our churches today is that we fail to see the Christian life as a complete life that is transformed by being born of God. The Christian is, at the most basic level, a child of God; he is born of God. If we understood this it would eliminate immediately all of our questions about whether a person has to be obedient to be saved, or whether a person must take Christ as both Savior and Lord to be a Christian. The issue is not just faith, or love, or obedience, the question is, “Have you been born of God? Does His Seed dwell in you? Are you a child of God?” And the Apostle argues that if you have been born of God, then these will be the results: faith, love, and obedience. If you do not have any or all of these traits, then you have not been born of God, which means you are not a Christian. That is why Jesus said in John 3:3, Unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. It is the new birth that is the main thing and these are the effects it produces.

            If this is so, then why does the Bible, especially the New Testament, so often speak of salvation in terms of faith alone? If faith, love, and obedience are all components of the new birth, why is faith held up as the primary thing? Why is it that the Bible teaches salvation by faith alone instead of salvation by love or salvation by obedience? The reason the Bible speaks of faith in this way is because faith is the driving force behind love and obedience. The Christian life is a complete life, and all of these aspects are interrelated. The new birth, faith, love, and obedience are like links on a chain. Faith is what God requires of a person to justify him, that is, to count that person righteous and forgiven of sin. Faith is the result of the new birth. When a person is born of God, that person receives the gift of faith, and that faith is in God’s Son, Jesus Christ. So the new birth produces faith, which is why the Apostle said, Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. Faith is the result of being born of God.

            This faith is all that is required to be saved. Nothing more is required of a person to be saved. We are justified by faith apart from any works, but this faith that God gives us and that we place in Christ produces love. It is not passive; rather, it works, and it works through love. That is what the Apostle taught, you remember, in 4:16. He said that we have believed the love which God has for us. We have faith that God loves us, and we believe it because we have seen His love in our crucified and risen Savior, Jesus. But what is the result of this faith? The one who abides in love abides in God. The one who believes in the love God has for him must also abide in love, because believing in that love necessarily produces love. So faith produces love.

            What is the result of love? What does love produce? Jesus told us clearly in John 14:15, If you love Me, you will keep My commandments. Love produces obedience. If we truly love the Lord, we will be obedient to what He has commanded us to do. There is this chain, then. The first link is the new birth. God causes us to be born again by His Spirit and the Word, and that produces faith. We are eternally saved once we have faith in Jesus alone for salvation. If our faith is real and the result of the new birth, however, it produces love for both God and man, especially other children of God. And this love is, in verse 5:3, demonstrated by keeping the commandments of God. The Apostle says, For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. If we love God, the natural response is that we will do what He says. Not only will we be obedient, but being obedient will not be a burden. Keeping God’s commandments will not seem like a load too great to bear. That is why the Apostle says, and His commandments are not burdensome. For the Christian obedience is not something that we find burdensome or grievous. We will say with the Psalmist, I delight to do Your will, O my God (Ps 40:8). Doing what God commands is not burdensome to the Christian living by faith in Jesus Christ. Why? The Apostle tells us, For whatever is born of God overcomes the world.

            Last week we looked at this statement, and we deduced that what makes God’s commands seem difficult and burdensome is affection for this world. God’s commands seem heavy and burdensome to the natural man living in this sin-filled world, because this world promises us happiness, security, joy, blessing, and satisfaction. The world promises to fulfill us. It promises to make us happy. And it even goes so far as to suggest that if we do not participate in its pleasures then we are missing out, and we are not having as much fun as we could be having. Much of marketing is built on this premise: “You do not have this product. Therefore, you are missing out. You are not as happy as you could be. You are not as fulfilled as you could be. If only you had this one thing more, then you would be satisfied.” And of course, the world buys this lie, and you can see the mess that our world is in today because people follow after the course of this world, believing it will bring them happiness and satisfaction.

The Apostle, however, tells us that whatever is born of God overcomes the world. How? How does the one born of God overcome the world? Why is this true? What is the reason the allurements and temptations of this world do not overcome the child of God? He goes on, And this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith. He comes back to his point in verse 1 that the one born of God has faith in Jesus. The one born of God has faith because God has given him faith. Therefore, he can say that the one who is born of God overcomes the world, because he has faith, and that is the victory that overcomes the world. Seeing that the Christian life is a complete life, a life of God-wrought faith manifesting itself in love for the brethren and in overcoming the world, the question this morning and next Lord’s Day is this: How does the faith that comes from the new birth overcome the world? I want to look at the second half of our definition of the Christian life this morning and ask the question, “How does our God-wrought faith overcome the world?” That is a vital question, because how you answer it will determine your success or failure at overcoming the world on a daily basis. This is a question that cannot be ignored, because there are too many people in churches who live defeated lives and never seem to be able to overcome the world. And when the Apostle says, This is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith, they have no idea how faith overcomes the world and how to apply this teaching to their trials and temptations at home, at work, at school, at the grocery store, when they’re alone, when they’re with friends, or in any other situation. The Apostle is clear that faith, which is a result of the new birth, overcomes the world. The question this morning is, “How?” How does faith overcome the world? To answer that question, we have to ask another one. We have to ask, “What does the Apostle John mean by the world and by faith? When he says that faith is the victory that overcomes the world, what do his terms mean?” It is essential that we understand the biblical definition of the world and of faith.

 

The World

 

            Let’s start with world. What does the Apostle mean when he says world? We do not want to take this and make it mean less than it actually means. The Apostle is not here talking about the world in the sense of bars and clubs and drinking and gambling and things of this nature. Of course those things are included, but that is not specifically what he means. I think what he means is in 1 John 2:16. There he defined the world for us in very clear and precise terms. The summary of all that he says there is that the world is all that is opposed to God. The world is to God what night is to day, what dark is to light, or what sin is to righteousness. The world is completely opposed to God and everything that God is. It is the system set up as a false god, despising the glory of God. The Apostle breaks down what is in the world into three categories.

            First, he said that the world is partly made up of the lust of the flesh. What is this? It just means the things the flesh desires. The cravings of our bodies. This could be hunger, thirst, comfort, ease, sleep, or any number of things that our bodies naturally desire. The world lives for these things. Certainly God has given us natural bodily desires, and they are not in and of themselves evil, but there is a lusting after them, a desiring after them, that is of the world. Eating because you are hungry is not a sin, but eating because you desire to eat in and of itself with no thought of the glory of God is a sin. Sleep is not sinful in and of itself, but it can be when we have a lust for sleep, when we have a strong desire for it and become lazy and unfruitful in our labors. The world, then, is not the needs of the flesh, but the lusts of the flesh. The flesh needs certain things to survive, but there is a point where we are no longer doing what our flesh needs, but what it desires above and beyond its needs, and I think that is what the Apostle means here. It is living to satisfy your physical body as your first priority.

            Secondly, he mentions the lust of the eyes. This refers to what is seen. It is this physical, visible world. It is desiring the beautiful things this world has to offer. It is living for what is seen. Coveting would fall into this category, seeing something someone else has and desiring it because it looks good to you. This is a very subtle and fatal trap because we are naturally creatures who rely on our vision and our physical sense of sight to make judgments and decisions. The lust of the eyes is letting what you see and what is in the here and now of this world dominate your decisions and your actions. It is living for this temporal, visible world.

            Finally, he mentions the boastful pride of life. What is this? It is trying to take glory and honor for yourself. It is the desire to be looked up to and esteemed by other men rather than giving all the glory and honor to God. It is what people do to try to make others think more highly of them. Perhaps it can be found in boasting about what school you went to, what job you have, what position you have in a company, what rank you have in the military, how intelligent you are, where you are from, or anything else that puts the spotlight on you rather than on Christ. This is the desire to have people adore you, even worship you. The boastful pride of life is trying to have an image that will put you on display. It is trying to accumulate the things the world prizes, so that the world will prize you.

            The world, then, is anything that pulls us away from God. It is living for this physical, visible, temporary world. It can be inside us (the lust of the flesh and the pride of life) or outside us (the lust of the eyes). It is whatever is contrary to that which is eternal in value and glorifying to Christ. John Calvin put it like this: “The term world has here a wide meaning, for it includes whatever is adverse to the Spirit of God: thus, the corruption of our nature is a part of the world; all lusts, all the crafts of Satan, in short, whatever leads us away from God.”

            That is the world, and when the Apostle discusses overcoming the world, these are the things to which he refers. He means conquering these lusts and this insidious pride. He means overcoming our bodily desires so that we control them rather than having them control us. We don’t live for the seen, visible world. We don’t take pride in accomplishments, rank, status, and other things that men boast about and glory in. No, we overcome all of these things if we are born of God by faith. We are victorious over these lusts and this pride that men seek after with such violence and desire.

 

True Faith

 

            If that is the world, and it is overcome by faith, what is this faith to which the Apostle refers? What is faith? Faith is very misunderstood in our day. Most people will claim to have faith in God. But what specifically is faith according to the Scripture? To answer this question, turn with me to Hebrews 11:1. There is perhaps no more descriptive chapter on faith in the Bible than this one, and I want to spend some time looking at faith as the writer of Hebrews defines it.

            First, faith is the assurance of things hoped for. That is what we read in Hebrews 11:1. It says, Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for. What does that mean? It means that we are certain that what we are hoping for will happen. Faith is being convinced that our hope is certain and inevitable and it will come to pass. It is assurance, a resting in this hope because we know it to be true.

What is it that we hope for? The Apostle Paul tells us in Romans 8:23-24. He says that we hope for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. Our hope is for final, ultimate salvation. The redemption of our body is our hope. We are looking to the day when Christ will come and redeem us completely from sin, so that we will be righteous forever. Our hope is not that this world will get better. Our hope is not in this candidate or that candidate for office. Our hope is not in the economy or the stock market. Our hope is not in peace talks and summits. No! Our hope is that one day Christ will come and redeem our bodies. One day He will come and our salvation will be completed and our bodies will be made like His glorious body. That is our hope. That is what we are eagerly awaiting. That is why Paul says in Romans 8:24, For in hope we have been saved. Our salvation now is not complete, but we have assurance that what we hope for, that is, the redemption of our bodies and their resurrection and glorification on the day of Christ, will certainly come to pass. We believe it. We are assured of our blessed hope.

            The writer of Hebrews goes on to tell us that faith is the conviction of things not seen. Faith is not only the assurance of our hope, but it is also the conviction that what we currently do not see we someday shall see. It is the certainty that what is in this world is only temporary, and what is unseen now is eternal. It is believing without a doubt that God’s invisible, eternal kingdom will come, even if we do not now see how it could come or when it will come, we are convicted that it will come.

What are the things not seen? I believe our hope is what the writer of Hebrews means. He is saying the same thing he said in the first part of the verse, only now in a different way. What we hope for are the things we do not now see. The Apostle Paul said this very thing in Romans 8:24-25, where he wrote, For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.  Faith, then, is the assurance and conviction that the unseen things we hope for will be a reality someday.

Our hope, remember, is the redemption of our bodies from sin and decay. Our hope is that we will be made like the Lord Jesus Christ at His coming, yet now we do not see it. We do not fully comprehend what it means and we cannot fully understand it. But still we are convicted that it will happen. It is our conviction that God’s promise to redeem us from our sinful flesh will come to pass. Because it is our conviction that God will redeem our lowly bodies and glorify them into spiritual, eternal bodies fit for His presence, we persevere in waiting for it to happen. Our redemption is not now seen; that is why we hope for it, and we eagerly wait for it because we are convinced that it will come to pass.

Our hope, however, is not confined to just our bodies, but also to all of creation. We not only will have glorified bodies freed from sin, but we will live in a glorified creation that is set free from the curse of sin. The Apostle Paul puts it like this in Romans 8:21: The creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. All of creation will someday be redeemed, and the curse that is now on creation will be lifted, and God will make a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Pet 3:13). This redemption of creation is not now seen. By faith we wait in hope for it to take place.

The writer of Hebrews describes this hope as a city that God has prepared for us. Hebrews 11:16 tells us that God has prepared a city for those who believe in Him. God has prepared a city for His children. He has made them an everlasting dwelling place, but we do not see it now. Even so, we are convinced that it exists and that if we believe in Jesus we will inherit this city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God (Heb 11:10). God has designed and built a city with foundations that can never be shaken, and He has done so for those who have faith in Him. This is also part of our hope that is not seen, but we are convinced that it exists and will be inherited by the children of God. These, then, are the things that are not seen but of which faith is convinced.

We must go on to press our definition of faith one step further. We may believe all of these things, that God exists, that He will redeem His children, and that He has built a city for them that can never be shaken, and not have faith that pleases God. Look at Hebrews 11:6. It says, And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. Faith not only believes the facts about God, but it believes that those facts are desirable, lovely, and beautiful. Faith is not a cold belief with indifference to the object of our faith; rather, faith is seeing what is unseen with spiritual eyes and, upon seeing them, desiring them. John Piper, in Future Grace, puts it like this: “Faith in Christ is not just assenting to what God is for us, but also embracing all that he is for us in Christ.” Faith is not just the assurance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen, but it is believing that the things we hope for and the things we do not see are infinitely valuable and desirable. It is seeing spiritual realities as the most glorious, valuable realities and basing your whole life and existence on what you cannot see but believe by faith.

When the writer of Hebrews says that we have assurance of things hoped for, it is implied that we desire the things for which we hope. We long to have them, we long to enjoy them, our heart and affections are set upon them. And what is this blessed hope? What is this reward? Surely it is the things we have mentioned that faith sees: God Himself, being made into the image of Christ, His Son, and enjoying fellowship in His glorious presence forever. That is the goal. That is the desire. The faith of which the Bible speaks is not a cold, dead, intellectual thing. It is a conviction of eternal realities and a deep hope and desire to inherit them. If you don’t have this type of faith, then you don’t have faith as the Bible defines faith.

This morning I want to pose the question to you: Do you have this kind of faith? What do you mean when you say that you believe in Jesus? What is faith to you? To the biblical writers faith is not a static thing. Faith is not an emotionless thing. Faith has content. Faith also has desire. Have you understood what the Bible means by faith? Have you understood what the Bible means by the world? Do you live for this world, or are you strong in faith?

I believe that what is missing in the popular American definition of faith is the aspect of desire and hope. We have removed that from our definition of faith in our contemporary culture. Very rarely have I ever found someone who claims to be a complete atheist. Most people will claim to have faith, and so to tell them to have faith in Christ is almost meaningless to them because they think they already do. They may be living lives of complete sin and disobedience to God, but they believe a certain set of facts, so they think they have faith, but when pressed to the point of desire and love and hope and a yearning for God and His presence, they begin to equivocate and say that they believe, but they do not take it that far. When asked if they love Jesus Christ and if they are hoping in His eternal promises, it becomes evident that real biblical faith does not exist in their hearts. Faith always produces love because faith involves hope for eternal salvation, which is to know God as well as a creature can know his Creator. That is why Jonathan Edwards could write, “…love is the main thing in saving faith, the life and power of it, by which it produces great effects.” Saving faith must produce love for God, because faith the assurance that because of Christ’s atoning sacrifice our hope in His salvation will someday be our eternal reality, and why would you desire that if you did not love God with all your being?

The Christian life is a life of God-wrought faith that is manifested in loving the brethren and that overcomes the world. The Christian life is a complete life. Faith, love, obedience. Are you living this life? Have you been born of God? Do you see that these things are all working in you and that you are overcoming the world?

We’re not done with this yet, as there is still the question of how faith overcomes the world. This morning we just defined our terms, because if we don’t understand the true nature of faith and the definition of the world we will never understand how faith overcomes the world. But never forget that the Christian life is a life of God-wrought faith that is manifested in loving the brethren and that overcomes the world. This faith is profound, it is filled with hope and desire, and it sees what we cannot see with our physical eyes. It looks beyond this world into eternal realities. It sees Christ and His great salvation, and it prizes Him more than anything else in existence. May our faith be strong, and may we by faith live out this Christian life. Let’s pray.

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