Christians Overcome The World In Christ

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.

Called To Holiness

1 Thessalonians 4:1-7

Finally, then, brothers, we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, that you do so more and more. For you know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus. For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness.

Through Jesus Christ, God has made all Christians holy. In baptism, we are clothed with Christ, and his holiness and faithfulness become ours. So, God calls each of us to live holy lives, sanctified lives. We are to spend our whole lives learning to live out what God has already made us.

In 1 Thessalonians 4:1-7, St. Paul tells us and the church in Thessalonica to abstain from sexual immorality. Just like the Thessalonians, the culture surrounding the church presses us toward sexual immorality, celebrating passions of lust rather than discipline over our bodies.

It used to be different, though. Only 60 years ago, Christians could count on the rest of society to reinforce sexual morality. We all believed that sex was supposed to be reserved for marriage. Now, however, people see it as weird to abstain from sex until marriage.

So, the church has to talk, really talk, about sex. Why did God create it? What are we supposed to do with sex? How does it relate to our Christian calling? Listen to the sermon to find out more.