EMB BLOG
FAITH IS THE VICTORY
By
Professor EM Blaiklock MA., Litt.D.
But let us not think that faith is a mere matter of history, and a spectacle of past triumph. Faith has been the victory.
That is certainly true, but a present tense haunts the text, and insists on recognition. Faith is the victory. Is it true of today's experience? Is it true of Christians in stricken lands bowed under the load of persecution and the scorn of men? All history says that it is, and the Bible from end to end demonstrates and promises that all who afflict God's people are finally cast down in doom and in catastrophe.
But let us also leave out of immediate account, though not out of our prayers, that which is mercifully spared the happier lands of earth, where liberty still resists the dark, and let us ask whether that insistent present tense is true of our own experience. Is faith victorious in our own circumstances, thinking and emotions? Faced with fear and the tormenting figments of a morbid imagination, in times of weariness of mind and anxiety, can we step straight into peace through faith which is the victory, faith in Him who, as Edward Vernon renders a verse in Mark, "drove away the Evil Things which haunted men's minds?" Faced with some tangle of vicious circumstances, with life awry, and difficulties seemingly insurmountable hemming us in, can we step straight into hope, through faith which is the victory, faith in Him whose wisdom is never worsted nor frustrated? Faced with some dire temptation, in some grim struggle with the world, the flesh, and the devil, can we step straight into overcoming strength, through faith which is the victory, faith in Him who was tempted in all points like as we are, and who has promised with every temptation a way of escape? These are questions for each one of us to answer.
The next stands uncompromisingly before us and states no less. Is faith the victory?
Saints, apostles, prophets, martyrs,
Answer 'Yes
Let us who are not apostles, prophets or martyrs, and saints only in the gracious language of the New Testament, lay hold of the truth, and, by daily exercise or soul, work towards its realisation. The truth is there, embedded in the verse, and the promise it contains, but, such is the sluggishness of the human heart, for most of us victory comes more slowly than in the time of one triumphant act, and out of the stress of battle. Still, let it come. Inch by inch in our lives let Christ prevail. If victory is not the lightning flash, then let it be the tide. As Edith Lovejoy Pierce puts it, let us also pray:
Oh Christ Thou art within me like a sea,
Filling me as a slowly rising tide.
No rock, or stone, or sand-bar may abide Safe from Thy coming and undrowned in Thee.
.........
There is little more to say, and I should leave the theme there were we not attempting to understand John's last message to the Church. I shall pick only two points for further comment. There is, says v. 16, " a sin unto death." Note that it is not an act of sin which is in question, but an attitude towards Christ. What then is involved? The question cannot be considered outside the whole context of the New Testament. Was not the arch-persecutor of the Church the great apostle to the Gentiles? Had not Peter denied his Lord with oaths and curses? Was not the dying thief accepted in the last agonised hour of an evil life? We know that spiritual ruin comes from one cause alone-rejection of Christ. And experience makes it clear that such rejection can be so constant and consummate that before death closes the day of opportunity a soul may be hardened, ruined, and thrust beyond hope. The persistent and wilful choice of darkness instead of light, of the false in place of the true, of the world instead of the Lord, can destroy all power of response to the Spirit's ministry.