The subject of the victorious Christian life deals with practical matters of life. After conversion the heart cries for holiness, to be like Christ. Any born again child of God wants to overcome sin and live “above the world”.
Sometimes, people hear testimonies of missionaries and preachers who, after years of failure, attend a good Bible conference or study, or just hear a great sermon where the word of God is preached and suddenly come into a blessing of a higher walk with Christ. Many Christians try and try: and when they don’t succeed, they sink down to a lower level of Christian experience, living on a standard lower than what they would like, but helpless to advance and fearful of making fools out of themselves trying. Other Christians, having never even heard of a victorious life, continue sinning and confessing, sinning and confessing; and they wonder, “Is this all Christ has to offer?”
Are there such things as Apprentice Christians and Journeyman Christians and Master Christians, and if there are, should there be? Without a doubt there is the possibility of a victorious life. There is absolutely no possibility of a sinless life, but there is the possibility of living above sin and overcoming sin and not letting sin dominate your life.
The Bible teaches victory over sin for every believer. “For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” (1 John 5:4). John is not speaking about victory in Heaven, which is absolutely certain for any believer, but victory on earth; daily victory which is only possible to the Christian who obeys what the Bible says about daily victory.
The Christian who spends his time in the psychological mishmash of modern devotional broadcasts and telecasts will always have an up-and-down experience because he is never rooted to anything stable. These unstable people have no final authority other than the celebrities they watch on TV or listen to on the radio because they don’t read their Bible or even know what’s in it. They are completely dependent on what these celebrities say when it comes to defeating sin in their lives and are Bible ignorant.
The Bible is the word of God and to the Christian who is unwilling to submit to the Bible as his final authority and insists on having twenty different people contradict each other and insert their own opinions into his problem will never have victory over sin. With the root sins of pride and unbelief in your life, Satan will do his utmost to keep the knowledge from the Christian that he can have a victorious life. The Devil doesn’t mind an intellectual person or a religious person as long as he is a powerless Christian, but he surely fears the power of a triumphant life. The Devil isn’t worried about your high standards or how you refuse to fellowship with people who do this or that so that you live like some kind of monk, just as long as the power of God isn’t manifested in your life. He couldn’t care less about how many gifts you have that make you look like a prideful, conceited smart aleck, just so long as your life is fruitless and barren of the fruits of the Holy Spirit in Galatians 5:22 & 23. After all, the gifts can be counterfeited, the fruit cannot.
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There are promises of the victorious life. In John 10:10, Jesus said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly”. The Lord Jesus Christ doesn’t want Christians to have just a little bit of life in victory, but abundant life in victory.
Paul says, “For sin shall not have dominion over you” in Romans 6:14. That’s strong language. This is what God said to Cain when Cain messed up. God said, “Unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.” (Genesis 4:7). The Lord told Cain he had no business letting sin run him.
Paul said, “Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:14). Always, not just sometimes, but always ours is the victory through Christ. 1 Corinthians 10:13 is a great promise to the believer, showing him that under any set of circumstances, in any temptation, he can claim a promise that God will answer for the Holy Spirit has written, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” Or as Paul says, “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.” (Romans 8:37). That is, not just victory, but abundant super-abounding victory over our enemies; the world, the flesh, and the Devil.
The principle of the victorious life is faith. The victorious life is a gift received from God by faith, and it rests in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Our salvation was a gift, we didn’t deserve it, we didn’t earn it. Our victory is also a gift; we cannot attain it by our own strength: that is impossible. “The just shall live by faith.” (Romans 1:17) with Paul quoting Habakkuk 2:4.
The believer is saved and begins a new life in the Spirit, but most Christians are like the foolish Galatians who tried to continue in the flesh by works (Galatians 3:3). These foolish Galatians were always worried about outward appearance and never inward condition. Victory is the work of the Saviour in us and not our accomplishment in the least. That is, Christ’s finished victory on Calvary’s cross is His victory over sin which we appropriate by faith exactly as we appropriate salvation by faith, and it is Christ’s victory in us, “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Or as Paul said, I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20).
As we confess our inability to gain victory and we yield to the mighty power of the Lord Jesus Christ, He gains the victory in us: or, as the Lord told Paul, “my strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:29).
The drunkard who gets saved and gets immediate victory over liquor – THAT is not the victorious life. The dopehead who gets converted and immediately has victory over dope
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– THAT is not the victorious life. The person who gets saved and immediately starts jabbering in “tongues” – THAT is not the victorious life.
The victorious life is when people get victory over pride, jealousy, envy, stubbornness, exaggeration, laziness, ambition, and egotism.
Faith does nothing. Faith lets God do it all.
Dr. C.G. Trumbull said, “One qualification that you must have for the victorious life is the broken pinion, the broken nature, weakness”. God couldn’t bless Jacob and give him a new name until he had busted his hip, and torn his thigh muscle. Jacob limped the rest of his life (Gen.32:24-33). Paul couldn’t know the power of Christ’s resurrection until he knew the “fellowship of his sufferings” (Phil. 3:10) and was smitten in the flesh with a “thorn in the flesh” by Satan which caused him to carry a medical doctor with him all his life (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).
With all this gas about “faith to be healed” and “having faith” and all that nonsense, Paul remained sick until the day he died and had a physician with him in jail when he died (2 Timothy 4:11), whom he called “the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14). The secret of victory is the indwelling of Jesus Christ. Victory is in trusting not trying.
The secret of the victorious life is our identification with Jesus Christ. The great chapter on this is Romans chapter 6. In this chapter we learn two important truths. First of all, substitution; Jesus Christ in our place. Next, identification; us with Jesus Christ.
To the sinner God teaches substitution: look and live.
To the saint God teaches look and die.
We have to identify with Christ’s death and burial: identify with Christ’s resurrection and present triumphant life to have victory over sin. All this is found in Romans chapter 6. First of all, there is the great truth that I died with Jesus Christ (Romans 6:3). Secondly, there is the great truth that I arose with Jesus Christ (Romans 6:4). Thirdly, there is the great truth that I share Christ’s present life (Romans 6:8).
I died with Christ: “planted together in the likeness of his death” (Romans 6:5); “our old man is crucified with him” (Romans 6:6); “I am crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20). Absolute identification.
Since death frees a man once and forever from the power and dominion of sin (Rom. 6:7), we are dead to sin and free from sin by the fact we are identified with Jesus Christ’s death.
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It is the Holy Spirit who puts you into Jesus Christ. Once in Him, you share HIS LIFE. If you share HIS LIFE, then you share His ETERNAL LIFE. If you share his ETERNAL LIFE, as you live and breathe and are listening to my voice, your life goes back to the open tomb, up on the cross, and is nailed there with the Saviour, dead with Christ, and buried with Christ. “Therefore we are buried with him” (Romans 6:4).
Our water baptism is a picture of that.
I died with Christ. I was buried with Christ. I arose with Christ. “We shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection” (Romans 6:5); “even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4); “that henceforth we should not serve sin” (Romans 6:6); “we shall also live with him” (Romans 6:8); “but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God” (Romans 6:10).
“Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). Do you see it? You are dead with Him. You are buried with Him. You are risen with Him. You are walking with Him, if you have the victorious life.
The secret is that the indwelling Lord Jesus Christ lives in the heart, and body of every believer for the purpose of becoming Lord and Master of that life. Not just Christ in your life; Christ in your body , Christ in YOU. Never just your life; that is the way to try to run Christ out of your body so that He only shares in certain things that you do, and that road to a type of Hell on earth is as good as any other.
The phrase “Christ in your life” isn’t found in the Bible. Christ IS your life (Colossians 3:4). The carnal believers in Corinth who were bragging about their gifts, didn’t even know their body was “the temple of the Holy Ghost” (1 Corinthians 6:19). Every saved person in this sanctuary has the Lord Jesus Christ in his body, or as Paul said, “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels” (2 Corinthians 4:7).
“Christ in you, the hope of glory.” I AM DEAD, and the living Christ lives and rules in my yielded body and gains constant triumph and victory for me as I yield to Him. In my body at any one time, there is one person “on the throne”. On the throne of my heart either the Lord Jesus Christ reigns, or I reign. If I am on the throne, He is at the foot of the throne. If He is on the throne, I am kneeling at the throne. I’ll give you one guess who should be on the throne. If you are on the throne, sin is reigning because you still have sin in your mortal body and your born “dead in trespasses and sin”. Your body is subject to the laws of sin because it rots and the worms get it. There is a worm-eaten dictator on the throne of your heart if you are running your life. If Jesus Christ is running your life, HE is on the throne, and YOU are at the foot of throne.
What are the requisites for a victorious life? Two things absolutely, which are both found in Romans, chapter 6.
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Yield: “Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin; but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead” (Romans 6:13).
Reckon: “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6:11).
The requisites for a victorious life are yielding and reckoning. First, you have to take your body and yield yourself to God as a man or woman who is “alive from the dead.”
Secondly, you have to “reckon” that you are dead because God said so. Even though every member and every limb in your body will cry out that you are NOT dead but very much alive, and they have certain needs that have to be satisfied. God says our members are dead. God said they are nailed to the cross. The fact that they move, the fact that they breathe, the fact that they want this and want that is immaterial in God’s sight. Theologically and doctrinally, you are dead. With Paul you can say, “I am crucified” (Galatians 2:20). You are crucified at this present moment if you have been saved, and your old man is nailed (though still active), like a body hanging on the cross dying. It is dead and buried and put out of God’s sight as far as God’s official sight is concerned, and the new man is “risen to walk in the newness of life”.
Therefore, every Christian in his present state has THREE THINGS that are true about his or her body: 1. As far as the movements of the physical body of the child of God are concerned, they are the work of a man who is slowly dying, nailed to a cross. 2. That old nature, with its ability to bring forth good works and its ability to sin, the Lord has reckoned neuter, noneffective, a nullity, DEAD. He has abrogated it and doesn’t count it one way or the other. 3. As far as the new man inside the Christian is concerned, “he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:17). The new man is risen and walking with Christ, and this new man can have victory daily over sin.
If it is true that you are dead to sin with Christ, then there is only one thing for you to do and that is to yield yourself to God. Paul says, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies [ your body, not just your life, its’s more personal than that].” Never mind all that psychological, humanistic, socialistic stuff that is so commonly said these days.
“Your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service” (Romans 12:1). That is, assume your new position by faith. Reckon yourself to be dead, and reckon yourself to be alive from the dead. You are now living on resurrection ground, on the victory side of the cross. Sin and the world will have no hold on you according to God. Don’t fight sin: you can’t – you will lose the battle. Instead, yield to the Lord Jesus Christ. Yield to the power of the resurrected Christ. In your fight against sin, your greatest weapon is yielding to Christ and reckoning yourself dead. Those weapons of our warfare are said not to be “carnal,” but “mighty through God” (2 Corinthians 10:4).
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For Christian people there is a choice; either victory or defeat. As a Christian, you still have your own free will. If you choose victory, you can certainly have it as a gift from the Lord, providing you yield yourself to Him and “reckon yourself dead”. If you reject this gift of victory, you will continue to live a defeated Christian life. Paul says, “Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?” (Romans 6:16). So, the choice is yours, you either yield to righteousness, or you yield to sin. YOUR WILL determines what follows.
Freedom is yours for the taking: “Being then made free from sin” (Romans 6:18). Then you have a warning in Romans 6:19. If you choose uncleanness, it will lead down from iniquity to iniquity. Then you are told since you are free from sin you become a servant to God (Romans 6:22).
The choice then is “To whom will I surrender myself and my members?” The logical man, who thinks rationally, will realize there is only one choice to make. If you are a servant of Jesus Christ, then you are His, not your own. Paul says, “ye are not your own…ye are bought with a price” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20).
Is there really any argument or debate in your mind as to whom you should yield? Did the world pay for your sins? Did the flesh pay for your sins? Did the Devil pay for your sins and save you from Hell? Did SIN die for you that you might get to Heaven? Or did Jesus Christ? Then what is the choice to make?
Obviously, the choice is found in Romans 12:1-2. Obviously, I have been asked to do a reasonable thing which is not in the least unreasonable. I am to take my BODY and present it to God as a living (there’s the resurrection) sacrifice (there’s Calvary) as those that be alive from the dead (there’s the burial). This is my “reasonable service,” so that I might prove “what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God” (Romans 12:2).
The great “catch” is this: the thing that prevents 90 percent of the Christians and makes them waste their time talking about the gifts of the Holy Ghost and peace and love and all of this modernistic stuff is the fact that these Christians still want to conform to the world. There is no way under God’s Heaven you can present your body to God as a “living sacrifice” unless you are transformed by the “renewing of your mind” and cease to be conformed to the world (Romans 12:2). I wish someone had told me about this 19 years ago.
This explains why 90 percent of the Christians in any age never find the will of God for their lives. Too many of the Christian celebrities are simply money making rackets that talk like they have their heads in a psychology textbook rather than the Bible. Ignorance about the Bible and of the Bible and having no Bible as your final authority in all matters
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of faith, practice, and doctrine is the reason why Christians are plagued from morning to night with thoughts about losing their salvation or committing the unpardonable sin. If
you add that to how so many of us are still conformed to the world in our opinions, our thinking, our friends, our dress, our habits, and OUR AMUSEMENTS, then you can understand how weak modern Christianity has become for truly transforming a person’s life on a day to day basis and on an hour by hour basis.
May all of you live a victorious life in Christ and know what its like to walk day by day on the mountaintop with the Lord Jesus Christ.
Invitation. Hell is real. If you die without Christ your soul is going to burn in eternal agony forever, as in everlasting. But, you can receive Jesus Christ as your personal saviour tonight and become a child of God, adopted into His family, saved and safe forever. If there is anyone here………
