“Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”

This is a rhetorical question that John has touched on before. If we say we love God then we have accepted who Jesus the Christ is. John has dealt with this in Chapter four verse two.

“By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God,”

1 John 4:2

John is showing us that all these doctrines and teachings, all add up and make a cogent whole belief and system of truth. We overcome the world through our faith and faithfulness to the Lord and His truth. If we neglect the truth about Jesus and do not rehearse it in our thoughts and prayers, we can find ourselves drifting away and following the wrong Christ. We can easily make a Jesus of our own invention and adapt ourselves to false doctrine, which abounds in our day, and we move away from the truth of God to fables.

The only way to overcome this corrupt world is through Jesus Christ. We must know Him personally and learn the truth about Him in the Word of God. We need to ensure we are believing in the right Jesus, the one revealed to us in God’s Word and not a pale and insipid modern reflection of some sort of peace guru!

Jesus is the Christ of God and holds the keys of death and hell for every human soul. He is the Eternal Son of the Father and has been given all things into His dominion. He will be the judge of every soul and is the Lord over everything that happens and decides the fate of every life. He has humbled Himself and become obedient to death for our sake, that we might never have to pay the just penalty for our sin and therefore He alone is the Saviour of the world. We come to Him in repentance and faith and He gives us forgiveness and eternal life. It is only through this renewed and reborn life to God that we can overcome. No amount of will power or strength of character will do it, but only through the power of Christ that we can fight the sullying effects of this world. He makes us able to do it and He makes us willing to want it. Those who are not willing and therefore fail to turn and repent are not of Christ…

“But you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if it is so that the Spirit of God dwells in you. But if any man doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ, he is not his.”

Romans 8:9

It does not matter how vehemently you espouse the name of Jesus if you are not believing in the right person revealed. There are plenty who name Christ but have no idea about His person and who exactly He is. They have a false picture of Him and therefore deny the power of God, because they don’t actually believe in the revealed Son of God at all.

“… holding a form of godliness, but having denied its power.”

2 Timothy 3:5

The issues of this life eventually sweep them away and they become just like everyone else in the world – full of the concerns of this life and no real saving faith. Therefore what we believe about Jesus in the revealed Word of God is of prime importance if we are to enter into salvation and persevere against the onslaught of this wicked world.