Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well. ^2 This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. ^3 This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, ^4 for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. ^5 Who is it that overcomes the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

How many of you have heard of the company called Blue Ribbon Sports? No one? Blue Ribbon Sports is the world’s largest maker of sporting goods and you’ve never heard of it before? Maybe that’s because in the 1970’s, Blue Ribbon Sports changed their name to Nike, Inc!

Can you tell me what’s wrong with this picture? I covered up the Nike logo on Tiger’s hat. Right now, there is no other athlete who is more closely associated with Nike than Tiger Woods. Forbes.com reports that, “Woods is the first athlete in history to bank $100 million in a year, thanks in part to a raise he finagled out of long-time endorser Nike.”[i] Out of the $100 million he earned in 2006, about $90 million came from all of his product endorsements and almost half of that $90 million came from Nike. It’s no wonder he is smiling! Maybe I could make a little money on the side like this pastor who wears a Nike clerical robe!

The company changed its name to Nike because Nike is the name of the Greek Goddess for victory. It’s actually pronounced “nee-kay,” but I’m going to stick with nike because it is more familiar. Nike’s familiar swoosh logo was created by Caroline Davidson in 1971. Davidson was an advertising student at Portland State University. She met Phil Knight, the co-founder of Nike, while he was teaching accounting classes and she started doing some freelance work for his company. Phil Knight asked Caroline to design a logo that could be placed on the side of a shoe. If you take the statue of the Greek Goddess Nike and turn it upside down, can you see what you get? You get a Nike swoosh. Davidson created the famous Nike logo from the wing of the goddess of victory. Do you know how much she got paid for developing what is arguably the most familiar logo in the world? Only $35.00![ii]

After WW2, the U.S. military picked up on the goddess of victory when they created the first missile defense system with rockets called Nike rockets. They would place these Nike missiles in strategic places in order to protect major U.S. cities. To this day, you can still see remnants of these missile defense shields in places like Warren, WI and Waukesha. They named them Nike rockets also after the Greek Goddess of victory because the missiles represented military power and victory for our country.

According to Greek mythology, the goddess Nike was supposed to bring victory to everyone she helped. According to modern marketing, Nike apparel is supposed to represent victory in the athletic arena and according to mid-twentieth century military strategists, Nike rockets were supposed to represent victory in the arena of war. I share all of this with you because this passage in chapter five is a passage about Christian victory. Verse four reads, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. As we already learned, the Greek word for victory is nike, so verse four would read like this:

This is the victory that has overcome  the world.

This is the   nike    that has   nikessa    the world.

“Nike” is not only the word for victory, but it is also the word for overcome. Therefore we could translate verses four and five like this: For everyone born of God is victorious over the world. This is the victory that has been victorious over the world, even our faith.  Who is it that is victorious over the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. In our English translations it looks like the word victory is only used once, but it is actually used four times in these two verses. This is a passage about victory.

So, do you feel victorious this morning? Do you feel like a person who has overcome the world or do you feel more like someone who has been swallowed up by the world? We don’t talk a lot about victory in the evangelical church. There is something about victory that sounds prideful. There is something about victory that has too much of a mentality of conquest. When an army wins a military victory they also win a material prize—more land, more power and more goods. We don’t want to be conquerors and victors do we? This sounds so prideful. You are victorious!! How does that make you feel to be called victorious? Does it seem strange because it may not be true? When I read that I am victorious, it reminds me a little of the bankrupt self-esteem movement where people are trained to look in the mirror and tell themselves a string of positive affirmations. “I’m smart. I’m handsome. I’m a good pastor. People like me. I’m successful. Today is going to be the best day of my life. I am victorious!”

At best that sounds weird and at worst it sounds prideful. Of course John did not tell us to look in the mirror and parrot positive affirmations to ourselves, but it kind of feels this way. To me, it sounds too much like a church that teaches prosperity theology. Many of those churches have the word “victory” in their church name, like Victory Chapel or Victory Family Center. The mission statement and mantra of the largest church in America is this: Discover the Champion in You. At least to my ears, “Discover the Champion in You,” sounds a bit too much like “I am victorious.” You all know what I think of prosperity theology. The better examples of prosperity theology are self-seeking and unbibilical and the worst examples are so far from the truth of the gospel as to be a different gospel altogether. You know that I am no friend of prosperity theology. Yet there is a kernel of truth in their message. When such churches teach about being overcomers and being victorious, they have tapped into a definite Biblical truth.

We don’t talk much about being victorious, but we should. These verses about victory are written in the past tense and the present tense. This is the victory that has been victorious over the world. This is past tense. Our victory over the world has already been assured in the past and our victory over the world is an ongoing process in the present. If the Bible teaches us that we are victorious, it would be sinful to teach that this means we will abundantly prosper in material ways and that we will be protected from sickness and poverty, but it is also sinful to avoid teaching this message. The Bible teaches that Christians are victorious and it is necessary that we discover what this means and how it applies to out life. It is also vital to understand that we are victors because like it or not, we are at war. Our daily lives are a continual war in the spiritual realm. Our chief enemy is not merely looking to accumulate more wins than losses. Our enemy is not looking for fair competition on a neutral athletic field. The all-consuming, single passion of our enemy is the annihilation of every Christian. The blood-lust and soul-lust of our enemy will not be satisfied until he has devoured each person seated here this morning. We are at war on a battlefield that is owned by the enemy. He is the prince of the power of the air and the ruler of this world. Yet, this passage tells us that have been victorious over this same world. Can you see how important it is that we understand that we are victorious?

First we need to understand how this victory has been assured. Once again, verses four and five give us the straightforward answer. For everyone born of God is victorious over the world. This is the victory that has been victorious over the world, even our faith.  Who is it that is victorious over the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. Only those who are born of God are victorious .Only those who have passed from death to life are victorious. Our victory is a gift that has been handed to us by God—the gift of salvation. This is why we do not seek to discover the champion in you, but rather to discover the Jesus in you. If I have a champion within me that is waiting to be discovered, this assumes that I have something inherent in me that is powerful enough to defeat the world and bring success. This is nothing less than a New Age idea of unlimited potential. New Agers claim that we are all gods waiting to be released. Similarly, the secular motivational speakers want us to believe that we are inherently successful and we need only to release our potential. But this is not the message of Scripture. Scripture tells us that we are inherently sinful and destined for eternal death. Therefore, victory can never come from within but it must come from without. This is what is required to be victorious—to be born of God; to place your faith in Jesus as the Son of God and only Savior. This victory can only come from outside of us.

It is like the Soviet soldiers who liberated the emaciated, suffering prisoners at Auschwitz, the Nazi death camp. Anatoly Shapiro (pictured left) was the commanding officer who said, "The first thing I saw was a group of people standing outside in the snow who looked like skeletons, wearing striped clothing and rags on their feet instead of shoes. "They were so weak they could not turn their heads. We told them, 'The Red Army has come to free you.' They couldn't believe us at first. They would come up to us and touch us to see if it was true."[iii]

Like these Auschwitz prisoners, victory has been handed to us as a gift. We did not earn it and it did not come from within us. But to refuse to live in this victory would be like to remain in the death camps. Shapiro found that the prisoners struggled to believe whether that their freedom was real. What if these prisoners did not believe the victory declared by the soldiers? Would they dare walk beyond the gates of the camp? If they truly did not believe they had been set free, they would assume that their captors would still be coming for them. If they walk through the gates to freedom, the Nazi soldiers might hunt them down and shoot them. If they don’t believe the declaration of victory, the safest choice is to go back to the barracks and await the return of their captors. This would have been a sad state of affairs had it actually happened, but this is the way some of us live the Christian life. In reality we are victors who should be reveling in the victory of the cross, but instead we look as if we are still locked away by the enemy. Jesus Christ has broken into our death camp and has victoriously declared to us, “You are free!” yet we continue to live as prisoners of our chief enemy. The enemy doesn’t have to destroy you, he only needs to keep you locked up under false pretenses.

But what does this victory entail? First and foremost it is victory over death. We are familiar with Paul’s declaration of victory over death in 1 Corinthians. He wrote, “Death has been swallowed up in victory! Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” There’s that word “nike” again. Death has been swallowed up in victory because of Jesus Christ. Did you hear about the woman who had a pencil in her brain for 55 years, most of which was removed recently. It was a miracle that it did not kill her when she was four years old and it is a miracle that she has lived for 55 years with a pencil in her brain. This woman has cheated death for 55 years. But Jesus did not merely cheat death, he defeated death! As one person has said, “Anyone who can defeat death can defeat anything.”[iv]

But that is not the only victory given to us through Christ. We also have been given the gift of victorious Christian living. 1 John 4:4 reads, “You dear children are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.” Once again the same “nike” word for victory is in this passage. It could read, “You dear children are from God and have been victorious over them.” If this is all so true, why do we not live in victory?

Two weeks ago I was talking with a Christian father of eight children from another town. His first six children are grown and are serving the Lord with abandon. But number seven child is an eighteen year old son who has decided to rebel. He flew off to another country to be with his girlfriend, and as his father told me, “to sow his wild oats.” Why do these things happen? Where is the victorious Christian living for this 18 year old with a powerful Christian heritage?

Here is what we need to say to teens—and anyone else: you don’t have to sin. You don’t have to walk away from the Lord in utter rebellion. Your sins have been forgiven—why walk in them? You have been victorious over the world—why then follow the ways of the world? We need to keep reminding ourselves that we do not have to sin. Isn’t this the reason that the apostle John wrote this letter? In chapter two he wrote, “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.” If you understand the contents of this letter you won’t sin. We saw in a previous message that John certainly does not mean that you will achieve sinless perfection, because immediately after he stated his purpose for writing, he also added, “but if anyone does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ the Righteous One.” You don’t have to sin, but when you do, you can run to Jesus in repentance and have all your sins washed away.

But what happened to this 18 year old rebel? For him, God’s commandments have become too burdensome. In verse three, John wrote, This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome. To an 18 year old rebel, the commandments of God are heavy burdens to carry around. He had carried around these burdens for eighteen years and now he decided to live his life without them. But this Scripture tells us that true obedience for God will not be a burden. Granted, sometimes there are consequences for doing the right thing. “Someone has said that faith is not so much believing in spite of evidence, but obeying in spite of consequence.”^[v] To know the love of God through the cross means that the commands of God are not burdensome. If obedience to your parents is burdensome, then you are not obeying from the heart.

But how do we obey from the heart? How do we teach our kids to obey from the heart? I will answer this question next Sunday, but for now, let me leave you with one thought. Do you remember Baghdad Bob from the first few days of the Iraq War? Baghdad Bob’s real name is Mohammed Said Al-Sahaf and he was the Iraqi Information Minister. Days after U.S. troops had entered and taken control of the city, Baghdad Bob continued to proclaim defeat for our military. On April 5 he said, "Nobody came here. Those America losers, I think their repeated frequent lies are bringing them down very rapidly....  Baghdad is secure, is safe." On April 7 he confidently declared that, "We have killed most of the [coalition] infidels, and I think we will finish off the rest soon." Even after being shown footage of Iraqi soldiers surrendering to U.S. troops, he said, "Those are not Iraqi soldiers at all."[vi] You see, our enemy Satan is like Baghdad Bob. Even in the face of utter defeat, he continues to tell us lies and call us losers. He says that we have been defeated. He says that we are weak.

But that’s not what my Bible says. Mine tells me that we are victorious through Christ. Mine says this: Who is it that is victorious over the world? Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God. We truly do have victory in Jesus.

Rich Maurer

August 19, 2007