From Jim McGuiggan... HOW TO CONQUER THE WORLD

HOW TO CONQUER THE WORLD

Overcoming a sexual addiction is not the same as overcoming “the world”. To see a pleasing increase in your capacity for patience is not the same as overcoming “the world”. To gain ground in the pursuit of moral excellence is not the same as overcoming “the world”. To overcome “the world” is to overcome a world and not just to gain ground against specific wrongs! To overcome “the world” is to experience complete triumph over it and not simply to fight it. To “overcome the world” is to leave that “world” and enter into “the new creation”.
“Look, I have overcome addiction to alcohol—see? I have overcome ‘the world’.” And what of those who are in the Lord Jesus but still struggle with alcohol, bitterness, pride, lust, envy, ill-temper or whatever? Have they not overcome “the world”? And what of the other sins that you haven't left behind—do these show that you haven't overcome “the world”?

We will continue to be sinners until the world is better and what we call “free” will will truly be free. For how can we at a serious level speak of free will when we are capable of choosing what we know is evil and unlike the Lord Jesus? There’s an important tension here in life as we now live it. It’s clear that “free will” is in some respect a reality or the Holy One would not call us to heartfelt obedience. Yet, if knowing the sweet and strong will of God for us we still wrestle for moments or perhaps weeks to respond in obedience. How could a will completely free, will to disobey our Holy Father? But all of this though very important leads us away from what I’d like to pursue. I just want you to know that I know that I don’t know very well what I’m talking about. It isn’t that it is obscure—it’s that it’s too deep and complex. We don’t have enough breath to dive deep enough and stay down long enough to come back up fully satisfied.

It isn’t simply that we don’t live what we know. We don’t know what we know!

My guess is that there only a relatively few believers lived comfortably in the pig-pen before the blessed God, like a great lion confronted them and barred their way as they strode further down the road to perdition. My guess is that many of them by God’s grace were good girls or boys and without any jarring experience, in a smooth and almost “natural” transition, took Jesus’ hand when he offered it to them in the gospel. They were morally aware and decent before they ever entered into a faith union with God in Christ.

There are multiplied millions like you throughout the world who have not yet come to our Lord and who do not know there is a Lord to come to. God has always been and is at work in the lives of the nations [Acts 14:15-17; 17:24-29]. We’re not competing with non-Christians in a moral competition, to see who gets the best score. Our obedience is not obedience to the moral law; it is the obedience of faith in the Lord Jesus [Romans 1:5; 16:25-26] and that means that we respond in Christ-imaging righteousness. Paul would insist in Romans 6:1-8 that we are not to forget the meaning of our baptism and what took place there.

The cross of the Lord Jesus is the place where God reconciled us to himself and reconciliation to God means that our lives and purpose are reoriented and realigned with the heart of God.

The “obedience of faith” is how the “world” is overcome. Not merely specific sins—“the world”! In what way is “the world” overcome and in what way are our specific sins overcome by faith?

The faith that conquers “the world” is not simply our subjective act of inner believing. It’s the internalizing of truth that is true whether we believe it or not, truth about Jesus; it’s the glad embracing as true what God’s work in Jesus is and means. For our point at this moment, in entering into him by faith we enter into a full identification with the one who slew “the world” [Galatians 6:14].

The entire pagan “world”, religious, political or social and the corrupted Jewish “world” were the creations of sinful humanity. The beauty and goodness of the creation and the strength and wisdom of the authorities and powers that God created for the advancement of life in and under his grace and guidance—all these were corrupted and became avenues and instruments to express the alienation between God and his human creation.

Among the many things the death of the Lord Jesus did is this: it exposed and sentenced “the world” for what it truly is—God’s good creation as seen through the eyes of “the prince of this world”, God’s good creation as it is construed by all those who are enslaved to and by the “god of this world” [John 12:31; 2 Corinthians 4:4].

Only Jesus of Nazareth refused to join the war against God, only he saw life and all that goes with it as life to be lived in joyful devotion to God. His absolute devotion to the Holy One exposed the powers for what they were and they slew him for it. This was no surprise to him for he came to do his Father’s will and to give his life a ransom for humanity [his entire life that culminated in his death]—Matthew 20:28; 1 John 2:2.

He chose to die [John 10:11, 17-18] knowing that in dying he would defeat the powers [John 12:31-32; Colossians 2:15] and in this absolute obedience to the Holy One he would be granted absolute power to guide and rule the world [Ephesians 1:17-23; Philippians 2:5-11]. But in dying he not only did the will of the Holy Father, it did it to rescue the human family [Galatians 1:3-4].

However we “explain” the “atoning” process, the NT writers place the dying of the Lord Jesus at the heart of it. He gives his life to ransom us, he carries our sins up on to the tree [1 Peter 2:24] and he gives himself for us [Ephesians 5:2].

All this to say, he is himself the conqueror of “the world” which is anti-God, anti-holiness and anti-life [John 16:33; 1 John 2:15-17] and when by faith in him we embrace him we embrace all that he is and means—we triumph over “the world”.

We don’t triumph over “the world” by becoming sinless. We triumph over “the world” by embracing the Sinless One, by trusting his judgment on sin; all sin, including our own sin. In believing in the “world’s” Conqueror we approve of the sentence he passed on “the world” and so it is by and on his cross the world is not only crucified to him—it is crucified to us [Galatians 6:14].

By faith in him, which is generated by his faithfulness his crucifixion becomes our crucifixion and our relation to “the world” has definitively ended [Galatians 2:19-20; Romans 6:7].

And so we hear 1 John 5:4. Because by his grace we believe who and what we believe we conquer the entire anti-God “world” and are now part of a “new creation” [2 Corinthians 5:17; Philippians 1:29].

©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.

Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, theabidingword.com.