Overcomers, triumphant and more than conquerors

Our readings for this Sunday (4/19) include this passage:

1 John 5:4-5 (NIV) for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

Overcomers. Simply because we believe in Jesus, and because Christ’s redemption restores us to full fellowship with Him.

That passage sounds too good to be true. But Paul said this:

Romans 8:31-39 (NKJV) What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is he who condemns? It is Christ who died, and furthermore is also risen, who is even at the right hand of God, who also makes intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written:

“For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”

Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Or how about this passage?

2 Corinthians 2:14-16 (NAB) But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ and manifests through us the odor of the knowledge of him in every place. For we are the aroma of Christ for God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to the latter an odor of death that leads to death, to the former an odor of life that leads to life. …

It sounds to me like God intends for us to be on top of our circumstances rather than under them, “the head and not the tail” (Deuteronomy 28:13).

So, how do we get there? Little by little, just as God gave Canaan to the Israelites little by little, and not all at once. But we need to believe that God wants us to thrive, and not just “survive till Jesus comes back”, too.

Doug