FAITH IS THE VICTORY

FAITH IS THE VICTORY
By Professor EM Blaiklock MA., Litt. D.

3-VICTORY OVER THE WORLD:
The division between Chs. 4 and 5 is not a natural one. The theme runs on and traverses familiar ground. But when John so repeats himself, we can never afford to let our attention flag. In truths re-stated some new facet of light gleams out.
That is why v. 4 needs long attention. It insists that the life begotten of God in the surrendered heart is indestructible, and that faith is victory. The bold verse, in other words, contends that once faith is born in the heart of a man, he is henceforth invincible. If a man grasps with full confidence the truth of Verse Five, that the living God burst into human history in Christ, and in Christ wrought his salvation, neither angry despot, leviathan, nor Satan himself can destroy him.

Like the vase in which roses
Have once been distilled,
You may break, you may shatter
The vase if you will,
But the scent of the roses
Will cling to it still.

Consider the audacity of such a statement in its context of time and place. Familiarity has dulled the edge of some of the sharpest words in the vocabulary of the faith, and an effort of the mind is required to catch the fresh strength of a saying as it first fell from lips or pen. John, the fisherman from Pales-tine, wrote these words at the end of the first century of the Pax Romana. Rome ruled the world in which the Apostle lived and wrote, Rome the mighty conqueror, whose word was law around the circle of the Inland Sea. If victory was the prerogative of any man, it belonged to the prince by the Tiber, whose legions were thrusting north through the lakes of Cumberland, manning the banks of the Rhine and the Danube, and holding the fierce Parthians behind the Armenian mountains. Rome was supreme.
But Rome was doomed. Already in the cryptic language of the strange book he had sent the guards when he toiled in the slave-camp of Patmos, John had told of her defeat, and how the victory was there in whom Christ 12th, who, our living and out dying their persecutors, were to aid in the fulfillment and fruition of the plans of the living God. Faith “the title deed of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. “Was to prove a mighty of force than the swords of the legions, and all the power of the first world totalitarian state.
"Faith is the title-deeds of things hoped for." The words are a possible translation of the opening sentence of the Ch.1I of Hebrews, and the splendid hymn illustrates the truth of the verse before us. "By faith Noah..." runs the word.
Against all apparent probability, and no doubt under the ridicule of a comfortable and vicious age, Noah saw the coming of judgment and knew that God in the end would vindicate His law. He saw the hidden realities of the situation, the weakness of that which seemed so strong, the rottenness of that which outwardly appeared so fair, and the transience of evil. Faith was victory if victory was survival from an overwhelmed and obliterated world.
"By faith Abraham ..." the poem continues. In the roaring sea-port on the gulf where man first learnt to ply the sea, in Ur, the London or New York of that distant age, whence the caravan routes swept west to Egypt and the Mediterranean, and the seaways east to the Indus and Ceylon, Abraham saw God's purpose, not in the wealth, the art, and the culture of men, but under the desert stars, in nomad tents, where a tiny group could become a people, and the people a multitude like the sands, like the constellations, all the children of that faith which led Abraham to abandon home and friends for an ideal and a vision. His faith was victory, if victory was the fulfilment of that dream. Ur is a heap of rubble, but the Church still lives.
“ By faith Moses….”
The adopted prince of Egypt saw not in the gltter and glory of the court, but, against all appearance and probability, in the slaves of Goshen, the oppressed minority, whose tattered horde he dared to pluck from the hands of tyranny, and to march across the barriers of sand and sea. His faith was victory, if victory means the emancipation of a nation.—-a nation which gave the old Testament to the world.