5th October, 2010

LLOYD HARKNESS

I remember when talk of being an overcomer was something new, a promise rediscovered, a hope to be embraced, an authority to be anchored in your spirit.

PICTURE: © Tom Albrighton (www.sxc.hu) "The real and the false, the overcomer and the overcome; this has been the state of the church for 2000 years. For 2000 years the church has been glorious and pathetic, faithful and faithless, a bride in preparation and a harlot, wheat and tares."

Along the corridors of time it grew a little mouldy, became a little tainted. It is easy for a touch of spiritual pride to come in when your church culture is defining you as an overcomer in an overcoming church.

So I trust this Word piece will scrape back any mould which might linger on the topic of being an overcomer. The golden truth that Christians are made to be overcomers in Christ cannot afford to be discoloured with a hue of over-confidence, pride or self righteousness. Likewise, doubt, despair or a lukewarm response to Christ calling us to be overcomers, in and through Him, is not to blacken His calling.

Jesus said of those who profess to follow Him some would prove to be tares while others were the wheat. This mixture would remain until He does the harvesting, when the tares will be separated and burnt and the wheat gathered to His eternal bosom.

The real and the false, the overcomer and the overcome; this has been the state of the church for 2000 years. For 2000 years the church has been glorious and pathetic, faithful and faithless, a bride in preparation and a harlot, wheat and tares.

But it is through the overcomers that God’s eternal purposes are being brought to pass. The overcomers, united in purpose and service of Christ and scattered throughout local congregations past and present, are God’s true and victorious church.

This is the church which shall be the bride adorned for her husband, Christ Jesus. Her character, the substance of who she is, is so attractive to Jesus that only an analogy of marriage can begin to portray what lies ahead in their union at the marriage supper spoken of in the Revelation.

And not to stretch the analogy too far it is also Jesus who is adorning and beautifying his bride to be. He is making her holy.

Jesus is not just our model as an overcomer, He is our equipper. Christ conquered the world, the flesh and the devil completely and forever, not just in a one-off tussle at the temptation before His public ministry. He put all three under His foot to serve the Father wholly and solely.

Jesus overcame the world and He encourages us to ‘take heart’, to keep his ‘peace’, in our dealings with the world and its troubles. We too can conquer world, flesh and devil, but, if Jesus is insisting we ‘take heart’ we can be sure along life’s route there will be temptations to give up in the face of heated opposition. It might simply be that you lose a battle and this feeds doubt in God’ Word that we are overcomers in Christ. All of the disciples went missing when Jesus was led from the Garden of Gethsemane: hardly an overcomer’s victory.

We will not get everything right but Jesus says ‘take heart’ and overcome.

We are equipped and enabled to overcome if we receive what He offers. He has given us the Word of God, faith, his blood and our testimony to overcome the world, the flesh and the devil.

As Jesus equips so He builds an overcoming church, a church who maintains her first love and does not let go in the face of opposition, a church who identifies corrupt doctrine and puts aside all forms of defilement, a church who does not slip into religious deadness or become hard of heart towards other Christians, a church who shuns religious pride and a self-congratulatory mindset that leads to lukewarmness.

Jesus overcame and sat down with the Father on His throne. The followers of Christ, who likewise overcome, are given the right to sit with Jesus on His throne. (See Revelation 3: 21)

Exercising His authority in our lives now will result in far greater authority in whatever God chooses to do in His kingdom in the future.

The overcomer has the reward of eternal life now and a life in the Father’s mansion, in Jesus' kingdom, beyond the veil of death.

In the final revelation of Revelation, which is a vision of the New Jerusalem, it is the overcomer who inherits ‘all’. The undauntingly faithful, who despite the failures of others and their own imperfections and frailties, receive ‘all’, according to God’s eternal unfrustrated purpose.

In Revelation the blood of Christ the Lamb and the word of a Christian’s testimony are referred to frequently as the source of empowerment in the final days of the church age. Applying the blood of Jesus, the dunamis (power/might) which comes from His sacrifice, and living in the dynamic of a transformed life that bears witness to His abundant grace, makes the difference. Stripping it all down to the bare minimum, these two things, alone, ensure a Christian overcomes.

No mould, no tarnished gold, no black doubt should cling to the notion of overcoming in Christ. Rather, we need to enmesh hope and authority in receiving the overcomer promise.

The word overcomer is to be part of our vocabulary and experience.

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