Overcoming The World
(week 05/04)
Olubi Johnson
1 John 5:1-4 NKJV: Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves Him who begot also loves him who is begotten of Him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world–our faith.
Here, the scripture tells us that the commandments of God are not burdensome, because whosoever is born of God overcomes the world and it is our faith that gives us the victory over the world.
What is the world and how does our faith give us victory over the world?
1 John 2:15-17 NKJV: Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world–the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life–is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.
The world in this context is the lust of flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life.
The Holy Spirit, through John, warns us not to love:
The lusts of the flesh: inordinate affection for the pleasures or indulgencies of the physical body: idle and corrupt talking, gluttony or overeating, laziness and oversleeping, sexual immorality and such like.
The lust of the eyes: inordinate affection or indulgence for the desires of the carnal mind:
Covetousness, envy, anger, stubbornness, hatred and such like.
The pride of life: pride, selfishness, oppression, boasting, dissensions, vain-glory and such like.
These things originate from negative spiritual forces in the air and operate in the mind, the emotions, the will and the physical body.
Ephesians 2:2-3 NKJV: in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind
We overcome these things by releasing the forces of the fruit of the Spirit by our faith.
When we overcome these things we will find that God’s commandments: the commandment of life and love are not burdensome or difficult to practice.
1 John 3:23 NKJV:
And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment.
Romans 13:8-10 NKJV: Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not bear false witness,” “You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
It is the world: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life that make keeping God’s commandments grievous or difficult.
Pride makes it difficult or hard to draw life from God through His Word since God resists the proud (Jam.4.6).
The lusts of the flesh and of the eyes makes us selfish so we find it difficult to love others as God loves them.
We are to use our faith to overcome these things by daily:
1. Receiving the life of God using the name of Jesus (Jn.4.10,14; 5.26; 20.31)
2. Confessing the Word of God concerning the love of God and the fruit of the Spirit in faith, understanding that, as we speak, God’s Word in faith we are releasing the spiritual forces of the fruit of the Spirit to counteract and overcome the lusts of the flesh and are creating in our souls and bodies the character of God.
3. Praying in the spirit or praying in tongues, knowing that, as we do this, the power and the wisdom of the Holy Spirit is being released with the grace and mercy of God to enable us supernaturally to keep God’s commandments, overcoming all Satanic opposition that would want to hinder us from doing God’s Word.
These three things: the life of God, the Word of God that reveals how to fear and love God and praying in the spirit gives us ‘strength’, ‘skill’ and ‘speed’ respectively to overcome as it were Satan’s ‘defenders’ (using a soccer illustration) of the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes and the pride of life.
Hitherto the church has emphasized using our faith primarily for material things but in this 3rd. day and particularly in this year 2004, in order to prepare us for the fire of judgment (Mal. 3.1-3; Is.4.4) that will fall on the church from about the year 2005, God wants us to primarily use our faith to overcome the world and develop the divine character in our souls and flesh.
Prophetically speaking, the end-time Christian who will reign as a King with Christ in this life-time and also in the millennium (Rev. 3.21), like David and his mighty men, must kill the ‘Goliath’ of the lusts of the flesh and his three ‘brothers’: the lusts of over talking, overeating, oversleeping and immoral sex. (2 Sam. 21.15-22).
The Christians who do this now are like David and are being prepared to be Kings set on the Holy hill of Zion (Ps. 2.6-9) and will rule the nations with a rod of iron (Rev. 2.27) and inherit the riches of the gentiles (Is. 61.6) in this dispensation before the millennial reign, so tasting of the powers of the age to come (Heb.6.5) and causing the gospel of the Kingdom to be preached and demonstrated to all nations before Jesus returns physically in person to the earth (Mat. 24.14).
