Having The Victory
Did you ever see The Princess Bride? My favourite character was the Spanish drunk.
He says at one point,
“You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
My question today is, does having the victory really mean what we think it means?
Don’t we tend to think that having the victory means that everything should go our way? That God will move to serve our purposes?
Revelation 3, 7 and 21 says those who are victorious have not soiled their robes of righteousness.
What do robes of righteousness symbolise? Principally, they symbolise a pristine character. To be pristine is to be faultless and we can never be that. That can only describe one person, who made a way for us to become pristine in Him. While robes of righteousness cannot be earned, they can be so eagerly desired by us that we forego our own nature to take on Jesus Christ’s. This is next level living because this is not what our sinful nature truthfully desires. This is what the spirit within us, made alive in Christ, desires.
I’ve tried for hours to define victory and its relationship to righteousness with bible verses but it’s not sufficient, in short, to say it any other way than this. Having victory over life is purely to acknowledge that in HIM we live and move and have our being (Acts 17).
Ultimately, it means relinquishing our right and desire to our life and giving Jesus the right over it. That doesn’t sound exciting to the human rational.
Biblical victory overcomes sin first, not circumstances.
In overcoming sin, victory will affect our circumstances because it becomes a by-product of righteous living. If we choose to live with our hearts set towards righteous living, we have victory over all the issues of life.
1 John 2:16 talks about the lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. These are the issues of life which must be overcome in order that we become a royal priesthood described in Revelation and be readied to reign with Christ.
There is no way we can do that on our own, or even want to, if we’re truthful. How can we be that good?
Thankfully, God is all good. There is no darkness in Him. He is love. He is just. He is righteous. The remedy to our human tendencies is being found in Him; the need to completely surrender equates with prerogative’s ability to completely trust. Then we find rest for our soul, for our sinful nature.
We can only live that way, and carry the victory that has been promised to us into eternity, by abiding in Him.
Psalm 132:9 (CEV)
Let victory be like robes for the priests; let your faithful people celebrate and shout.
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