By looking at the cross of Jesus and believing He suffered for us (Isaiah 53:5), died to set us free from sin's penalty (Romans 6:23), ransom us from Satan's kingdom (1 Timothy 2:6), reconcile us with God (2 Corinthians 5:18), remove God's wrath from us (1 Thessalonians 1:10), and purchase our eternal life (John 3:16), we begin to experience the love of God in our hearts, in some measure.
It is seeing the cross of Jesus and putting faith in the cross that helps us to experience the love of God. And experiencing the love of God helps us to have love for God in return, and then obedience to God follows. This is how faith enables us to overcome the world.
Question 3. What does 1 John 5:4-5 teach?
Our passage today tells us that faith overcomes the world (1 John 5:4). By “world” the Bible means that organized system, led by the devil (the “god of this world”), whereby humanity orders its life independent of God. It’s the boasting that “I did it my way”, set my own rules, and lived as if there were no God. Faith overcomes this world's system of independence from God, of living as if He does not care for us, of living to gratify our own lusts.
The world is a spiritual entity that is under Satan’s power. “The whole world is under the control of the evil one” (1 John 5:19 NIV). Under the control of Satan, the world has an outlook which excludes God, rejects His authority and which would allow all of us to decide for ourselves what good and evil are.
Under the world’s system, we believe we are to “follow our hearts”, “be true to self at all costs”, and “if it feels good, do it.” This "world" is the desire to be free of God, to throw off the restraint He would put on us: "Let us break their chains and throw off their shackles" (Psalm 2:3). This is what faith in Jesus begins to overcome in our lives.
And, for our purposes today, the world’s system is the way we lived in impurity: when we had an image flash in our minds, we decided to gratify our flesh without any consultation with God. If we wanted to continue an illicit relationship, we did so without regard to God and His Word. This is “the world” and its system of independence from God, the world that is under the control of the evil one, the world of enslavement to sin.
And so it is wonderful news that faith in Jesus begins to give us the victory over this kind of thinking and acting.
The above descriptions of the world, with its hostility toward God and its desire for independence from God is exactly what believers in Jesus begin to overcome through faith (even small faith, faith as a mustard seed). Faith overcomes the world. Through faith, we not only are rescued from the power of darkness (Colossians 1:13), escape the trap of the devil (2 Timothy 2:26) and repent of our independence from God, but also faith begins to give us the victory and enables us to triumph in life!
Here we see how God leads us into more and more victory: we are shown the cross, we turn and look and begin to believe, God puts His love in us as we view Jesus' death in our place, we begin to love Him back and desire to obey Him, our faith grows and along with growing faith comes some victories. Faith is overcoming the world.
Question 4. What will faith enable you to do in the war against your flesh?
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