1 John 5:4-11
The victorious life. Many Christians talk about it, that Jesus gives us victory over the world. What does that mean?
For much of the ancient world, victory meant conquering others. The Roman Empire didn’t believe in stable borders with her neighbors. Every chance he had, the emperor sent out his armies to take new land or fight off a rebellion. Victory meant taking what you wanted from others.
Victory can also mean living a successful life. Victory is when our family does well, our career is on track, and our life is under control. The victorious life is “the good life.”
For Christians, however, victory is not conquering others or gaining “the good life” from the world. Christian victory is the battle that Jesus won with the world, a victory he won on the cross. Jesus gives us that victory through faith, through the word and the sacraments.
But the world wants to convince us that we have no victory in Christ. There’s the guilty voice that tells us God could never love us. There are the problems that weigh us down. We think, “I could never have victory when everything is going wrong.” We have temptations that pull us away from living the way we want to. We can even come to believe that we have no victory in Christ.
But we should never believe our own thoughts over what God says to us. God’s word always trumps our conscience. St. John tells us that God has given us witnesses to prove that we have victory in Christ. The Spirit, the water, and the blood. That is, Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and the testimony of the Holy Spirit through them. We don’t trust ourselves. We trust the promise of God.