“For whoever is born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world: your faith.”

1 John 5:4

The world is a very oppressive place. It tires us and leads us down many wrong alleys. The things of this world do not lead us to God but distract us from our devotion and take us away from spiritual life. 

“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, isn’t the Father’s, but is the world’s.”

1 John 2:16

John has explained this to us already and shows us that the desires of the flesh, the eyes and the pride that infests our human hearts, is what takes us away from the Father. This world would tempt is always from God and our hearts follows it because they are fallen and dead to God. We must be born into the family of God through the new birth, and have spiritual life in our minds and hearts and souls, so that we know God. 

When we are born of God, we can overcome the world and we have the precious commodity of faith that is the one thing that will help us to be over-comers. Faith is not something that can be worked up in ourselves, it is the gift of God. 

“ for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, that no one would boast.”

Ephesians 2:8-9

When we seek God, His grace works in our hearts and gives us the desire to know Him. As we seek Him, we see our sin, which is the one thing that keeps us away for God and we repent of it and He forgives us. It is the work of God and not something we conjure up in our own mind, but comes from the work of the grace and mercy of God in our lives. God gives us the gift of faith to believe, because we cannot even do that by ourselves. Salvation is of God and our response is to accept it gratefully with hearts that love Him. We love Him, because He loved us first. 

As we walk through our Christians life, we are kept by God and He continues to give us faith and hope in Him. He moulds the circumstances of our lives so that faith can grow and we become His witnesses in a corrupt world. The world becomes less and less attractive to us, as our faith grows and our desire for God increases. We find our sustainance in Him and all our delight is in Him. 

“But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

1 Corinthians 15:57

We  are victorious through Him who loves us and gave Himself for us. We can overcome our sinful desires and propensities through the power of the Spirit and through what Jesus has done for us on the cross. He has broken the power of sin and death and has paid the price for sin. Therefore, is does not have to have dominion over us. This is the point about faith. Our faith in Christ actually makes us over-comers and we do not have to succumb to the things of this world. 

Because we are born again and have spiritual life, we desire the things of God rather than the things of this fallen world, and it’s fleshly desires. We seek God continually and not ourselves or the things of this life. We have a different way of thinking than what  we had before. The Scripture is attractive to us and we love to study and mediate upon it, and prayer is the life- blood of our spiritual life and the breath that we breathe. 

If we are born of God, we will overcome the world through the faith that we have received. All who overcome are saved…