"And His commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?"--1 JOHN v. 3, 4, 5.
St. John here connects the Christian birth with victory. He tells us that of the supernatural life the destined and (so to speak) natural end is conquest.
Now in this there is a _contrast_ between the law of nature and the law of grace. No doubt the first is marvellous. It may even, if we will, in one sense be termed a victory; for it is the proof of a successful contest with the blind fatalities of natural environment. It is in itself the conquest of a something which has conquered a world below it. The first faint cry of the baby is a wail no doubt; but in its very utterance there is a half triumphant undertone. Boyhood, youth, opening manhood--at least in those who are physically and intellectually gifted--generally possess some share of "the rapture of the strife" with nature and with their contemporaries.
"Youth hath triumphal mornings; its days bound From night as from a victory."
But sooner or later that which pessimists style "the martyrdom of life" sets in. However brightly the drama opens, the last scene is always tragic. Our natural birth inevitably ends in defeat.
A birth and a defeat is thus the epitome of each life which is naturally brought into the field of our present human existence. The defeat is sighed over, sometimes consummated, in every cradle; it is attested by every grave.
But if birth and defeat is the motto of the natural life, birth and victory is the motto of every one born into the city of God.
This victory is spoken of in our verses as a victory along the whole line. It is the conquest of the collective Church, of the whole mass of regenerate humanity, so far as it has been true to the principle of its birth[276]--the conquest of the Faith which is "The Faith of _us_,"[277] who are knit together in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of the Son of God, Christ our Lord. But it is something more than that. The general victory is also a victory in detail. Every true individual believer shares in it.[278] The battle is a battle of soldiers. The abstract ideal victory is realised and made concrete in each life of struggle which is a life of enduring faith. The triumph is not merely one of a school, or of a party. The question rings with a triumphant challenge down the ranks--"who is the ever-conqueror of the world, but the ever-believer that Jesus is the Son of God?"
We are thus brought to two of St. John's great master-conceptions, both of which came to him from _hearing_ the Lord who is the Life--both of which are to be read in connection with the fourth Gospel--the Christian's _Birth_ and his _victory_.