Overcomers

“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 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 that world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?” 1 John 5:1-5

In today’s world and with the news of the world we need the good news of Scripture that uses words like ‘overcomes’ and ‘victory’. We have victory in Christ. The one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God overcomes the world.

Part of our problem is that we forget that we have been saved and brought out of the kingdom of darkness and brought into the kingdom of the Son. Now that we have been saved, we show our love for God by our obedience and we now have the ability to be salt and light in a dark world.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t see any hope in the world apart from the Gospel. The one who is a believer in Christ has a far different view of the world than the one outside of Christ. We don’t overlook the sin. We don’t sugar coat the problems. We are oblivious to the pain and suffering in our world today. But there is great hope in Jesus Christ, and we cling to that identity we have in Him. As we learned in our first look at Romans last week, we need to consider our identity in Christ as Paul did. May we focus not just our vision but our thoughts and our speech and our action upon Christ and fellow believers.

Let us love those who have been born of Him. And as we do so we remember what Jesus said:

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34-35