VICTORY IN CHRIST

By D.N.Carr.

With so many of us our Christian life is an up and down experience. At one moment we seem to be right on top, there is a glorious sense of fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ, we face life with a clear sky and a spring in our step but the next moment it is just the opposite, we are right down, in the very depths of depression, and we cannot climb out whatever we do.

There are so many things that seem to get us down. Our times of personal devotion, which so often were such a joy have gone stale on us and somehow we just seem unable to get through, our work gets on top of us and we become impatient and irritable. Some sin, which we thought we had conquered, once again rears its ugly head and down we go. Jealousy creeps in and we even find ourselves bickering with our fellow Christians, and things in the home become strained and tense. Then we meet some other Christian who seems to be so poised and calm, and that makes us feel more miserable still. Or perhaps we see something more of the Holiness of God and the perfection of the life of our Lord Jesus Christ and this casts us into complete despair. Our position can be summed up in the words of St. Paul, “For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do - this I keep on doing . . . What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7 v18-20 and 24). Is there no way out? Are we to expect to continue in this up and down experience for the rest of our lives? A thousand times NO! There is a way of victory, “I thank God - through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 7 v25).

The secret of this victory is to be found in one place only, or rather in one person only, in our Lord Jesus Christ. It is as we are in Him that His victory can and does become our victory. 

Let us look at the completeness of Christ’s victory.

When He lived upon earth He was completely victorious. 

He and He alone never fell into sin. He was able to face all his enemies and ask, “Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?” (John 8 v46). His Father said, “This is my Son, whom I love” (Matt. 3 v17). Pilate could find no fault in Him (Luke 23 v14). Judas realized that he had betrayed innocent blood (Matt. 27 v4). The centurion in charge of the execution party recognized that He was “a righteous man” (Luke 23 v47), and the penitent thief saw that “this man has done nothing wrong” (Luke 23 v41). But perhaps one of the most wonderful things about the Lord Jesus Christ was, that as perfect man, He “has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet was without sin” (Heb. 4 v15).

“Just as we are”, He was tired and yet He had time for the woman of Samaria (John 4 v6). He was harassed by the crowds and yet always had time to meet their needs (Matt.14 v13-21). He was surrounded by children and yet He stopped to pick them up in His arms and bless them (Mark 10 v13-16). He was misunderstood and yet he never lost His patience. He was disappointed, all His disciples forsook Him and fled, and yet He went quietly on His way (Matt. 26 v56). He was falsely charged and suffered terribly and yet He was silent before His accusers (Matt. 27 v26). He was cruelly and unjustly crucified and yet He asked His Father’s forgiveness for His persecutors (Luke 23 v34). He was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. 

When He died on the Cross He was completely victorious.

He died to sin “once for all” (Rom. 6 v10). During His life on earth we find that He was the special target for the devil. Over and over again Satan did his utmost to bring about His fall and yet never once did he succeed. Our Lord conquered in the wilderness (Matt. 4 v1-11), and incidentally notice the way in which He used the Word of God to win this victory, and the way that the devil only departed from Him for a time(Luke 4 v13).

In Matthew 16 v23 we find Satan returning to the attack and through Peter tempting our Lord to avoid the cross. In Gethsemane surely He was tempted in the same way to avoid all the horror of separation from God His Father, the result of bearing the sins of the whole world. Again even while He is on the cross the words are hurled at Him, “He trusts in God. Let God rescue Him now if He wants Him” (Matt. 27 v43). “He died to sin once for all”.

But how does all this affect us. If we look at Romans 6 we find that over and over again Paul points out that the Christian has been united with Christ in His death. “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death” (v.3). “We are therefore buried with Him through baptism into death” (v4). “We have been united with Him like this in His death” (v5). “We know that our old self was crucified with Him” (v6). “Now if we died with Christ” (v8). 

Do you see what Paul is getting at? He is saying, ‘when Christ died you died in Him. You are one with Him in His death. Now as Christ died to sin once for all, so in Him you died to sin once for all. Now you go and count on this’. “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin” (v11). The important thing to realize is that we are to reckon on an historical fact that took place in time. We are not saying ‘I am still alive and now by reckoning and reckoning and reckoning I shall become dead’. We are counting on the fact that Christ HAS died to sin and when He died we died with Him. 

This reckoning should not be a work and a struggle, but a quiet resting and trusting in what He has done. How then do we act when we are tempted to sin? Remember the sin principle is still within us. We shall continue to be tempted as long as we live upon this earth, in the same way that the Lord Jesus Christ was. The devil is not dead even though he has been defeated by the Lord Jesus Christ. 

It is as we abide in Christ, in His death to sin, that His victory becomes ours. “For You have been my refuge, a strong tower against the foe. I long to dwell in your tent for ever and take refuge in the shelter of your wings” (Ps. 61 v3-4). “You are my hiding place” (Ps. 32 v7 and 119 v114). What is the point at which we are tempted? Impatience? He died to it and we died in Him. Jealousy? He died to it. Selfishness? He died to it. Any sin that we like to name, He died to it and as we abide in Him so in Him we too died to it. This is the negative side of His victory. Through His death sin has been neutralized. 

In His resurrection He was completely victorious.

The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is crucial to a victorious Christian life, in fact apart from it there can be no victory. The devil had done his worst. All the fury of devil-inspired men had been heaped on the Lord Jesus Christ. He had been nailed to the cross and had died. Surely this was the end, NO, on the third day God raised Him from the dead.

I believe this to be a historical fact. For nearly 2,000 years men have tried to disprove it and have failed. At the time of Christ’s resurrection His enemies who were on the spot failed to prove the disciples wrong. The number of His appearances and the way in which different people were convinced gives overwhelming evidence to the fact of the resurrection. Mary of Magdala recognized Him by His voice (John 20 vl6). Thomas recognized Him by the nail prints in His hands and the spear wound in His side (John 20 v27). The disciples in their home in Emmaus recognized Him by the way in which He broke bread. In 1 Corinthians 15 we have a list of the people to whom He appeared, culminating in an appearance to over 500 at once (v8). 

Over and above this, the greatest piece of evidence is the transformation that came over the disciples. Before Christ’s death and resurrection we see them a weak, scattered and defeated band of men, “Then everyone deserted Him and fled” (Mark 14 v50). After Pentecost they are found testifying to the fact of the resurrection in the very teeth of the virulent opposition from those who were directly responsible for His crucifixion. The first few chapters of the Acts of the Apostles ring out the message, “This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross. But God raised Him from the dead” (Acts 2 v23-24) . . . “whom you crucified but whom God raised from the dead” (Acts 4 v10). “With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 4 v33). It is fair to say that the Christian Church grew out of the absolute certainty that Jesus Christ was truly alive from the dead.

But how does this affect us? We saw in Romans 6 the way in which Paul constantly reiterated that we have been joined together, united, or identified with Christ, in His death. Running parallel to this we find an equal emphasis that we have also been identified with him in His resurrection life. Let us have another look at Romans 6. “Just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (v4). “We will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection” (v5). “We believe that we will also live with Him” (v8). “Alive to God in Christ Jesus” (v11). In Colossians 3 v1-3 Paul says, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ . . . for you died (in Christ), and your life is now hidden with Christ in God”. Again in Ephesians 2 v5 and 6, God “made us alive with Christ . . . and raised us up with Christ”. In Philippians 1 v21 Paul says, “For to me, to live is Christ” and in Galatians 2 v20, “but Christ lives in me”.

These passages make it quite clear that in the same way in which we are united to Him in His death, we are also joined to Him in His resurrection. The risen Christ is the same Christ who was completely victorious when He lived upon the earth, who was completely victorious when He died upon the cross, and is now completely victorious having been raised from the dead. We are in Him, united to Him in His death and resurrection so that His victory becomes our victory, but it is only as day by day we abide in Him, and count ourselves in Him to be dead indeed to sin and alive to God that we enter into the reality of this victory.

I can try and copy Him to the end of my days, but with my fallen nature I just cannot do it and this is true of all of us. Only Christ has been truly triumphant and victorious and it is only as we begin to let Him live out His victorious life in us, through His Spirit, that we too will become victorious. How does this work in practice? We cannot love people as we ought but Jesus Christ can. That person whom we just cannot stand, Jesus Christ loves and died for in just the same way as He loved us and died for us. The secret is not to pray that we might improve and become more loving. Christ never came to improve our old nature but to crucify it, that He might start loving through us.  

But you say, ‘I am so impatient, I have tried to conquer it all my life, and I have prayed that the Lord Jesus Christ would make me more patient but somehow my prayer has never been answered’. No, He will not answer such a prayer. He will never make you better. Your place and mine is identified with Him on the Cross. He is all patience, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23 v34). Our prayer should be ‘Lord, you are all patience, may your patience work out through me’. There is of course never any credit to us because it is His patience not ours. Wherever we find a weakness in our character we find the opposite strength in His and it is vitally important that we should “think of Him” in the Scriptures to discover His characteristics and then to appropriate them by faith. Where is the point of our failure? Do we find pride in our lives? He was always utterly humble. (John 13 v4 and Phil. 2 v8). Do we find impurity? He was the spotless lamb of God (John 8 v46). Are we prayerless? He was always at prayer (Mark 1 v35). In His death we saw the way in which He died to sin - this is the negative aspect. In His life we see the way He overcame sin, - this is the positive aspect. Our prayer should be ‘Lord, be what you are in me’, not ‘Lord make me more like you’.

We have seen that when our Lord was upon this earth He was completely victorious, “tempted in every way, just as we are - yet was without sin” (Heb. 4 v15). We have seen that when He died upon the Cross He was completely victorious, “He died to sin once for all” (Rom. 6 v10). When He was raised again from the dead He was completely victorious over death and over all the power of the evil one, and now as day by day we abide in Him in His death to sin, and in His victorious risen life over sin, we too shall find that “We are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Rom. 8 v37).

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