To Encourage You

1 John 5:4-5 “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

I assume you’re familiar with the Louis Armstrong song “What a Wonderful World.”  I love that song.  It reminds us of so many truly wonderful things that are part of the world we all live in. They are things like “trees of green, red roses too . . . skies of blue and clouds of white, the bright blessed days, the dark sacred nights . . .the colors of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky (that) are also on the faces of people going by . . . (of) friends shaking hands, saying how do you do. They’re really saying I love you.”  But is that all there is?  Is everything wonderful about this world? 

Of course, you and I both know the truth.  Despite all the wonderful things in this world, the God Who made this world has warned us that “the world is passing away along with its desires” (1 John 2:17).  Because of this God has warned us with these words: “Do not love the world or the things of the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life – is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 John 2:15-16).  What the Bible is speaking about here is not the physical world and those wonderful things that Louis Armstrong sang about.  Rather, it’s talking about the sin that is in this world and that has marred it so.  You see, it is the sin that is in this world that has caused the whole creation, including man, “to groan” (Romans 8:22-23).  Because of the Fall, this wonderful world is passing away.  Because of the sin that is in this world and that permeates all the systems of this world run by man, the world and its sinful desires are passing away because of the righteous judgment of a holy God. 

We have been warned that this world, like the world at the time of Noah, will one day be destroyed.  And everyone who clings to this world, whose focus is on the things of this world, and who embraces the sin that is in the world, will “go down with the ship.”  It’s a downward spiral, a vortex, that is inevitably coming upon this place that we call our home. 

But it is to this sure demise that the verses above from 1 John 5 speak.  It tells us that the Christian “has overcome the world.”  The Christian lives in victory over the destruction that will overcome the world and its sin.  And how do we get this victory?  Is it by war, like the jihad of the Muslims that would establish a world-wide caliphate of dominion over it?  Hardly. No, it is by faith that we have overcome the world, for it is by faith in the message of the gospel that the believer can say to the downward spiral toward death that is inevitable for this world and everything in it, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).  It is because of our faith and the knowledge we have about the world and everything in it that we obey God’s command to “not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2). 

May God give us the wisdom to walk by faith and not by sight as we live in “this wonderful world,” a world that, despite all it’s beauty, will soon pass away because of sin.  May God give us a focus that is not on this world but on “a new heaven and a new earth” that will soon come, for the Lord has warned us all that “the first heaven and the first earth (will soon) pass away” (Revelation 21:1).   May we overcome by placing our faith in the One “Who so loved the world (i.e., the people of this world), that He gave His only begotten Son, what whosoever believes in Him will not perish but will have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

Praise be to His glorious name!