Overcomer

Overcomer – another word that has had a trigger effect from my past. It is usually associated with the idealism of perfectionism and has strong connections to the compulsive idea of eliminating every tiny little sin from your life so you can be perfect enough to get to heaven. Because of this my mind has to do a double-take and rethink the implications and context whenever I hear this word.

I just looked up this word and its variations in the New Testament and I noticed that it appears five times just in the book of 1 John. Then I counted seven times that it appears just in the messages to the churches in the beginning of Revelation. It is obviously very important to God so I really should find out the truth about this word and maybe unlink it from whatever is triggering a misunderstanding in my own mind.

Blessed is he that overcomes that he... This is the message from heaven that links blessing and overcoming. But a new thought came to my mind recently from another verse that talks about overcoming. “Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Rom. 12:21) This took me back to another revelation that I received while listening to some of Jim Wilder's Munchies. It really made sense to me and gave me a good context that helped explain a lot of other things about salvation history.

He explained that in the Old Testament the authority over the earth was under the control of Satan who had usurped it from Adam. Under those conditions basically God's instructions to His people could be summarized as containment and defense against further spread of evil. Many of the Old Testament laws and proscriptions we designed primarily to defend against the continuing spread of the effects of sin in the world.

But when Jesus came and regained authority over this world through His perfect life and death and replaced Adam as the head of the human race, the basic rules of operation dramatically changed. After the resurrection, instead of containment of evil, a new method of operation went into effect. Now extravagant amounts of grace flooded the world and evil was to be overwhelmed with good, not just defended against. God opened the floodgates of heaven to pour grace and love through anyone willing to be used as channels so that the whole earth could be flooded with the glory of God. Blessing was available in abundance through Jesus Christ and His followers were to be witnesses of the incredible, transforming power of God's love as Satan's power no longer had the monopoly on earth. His authority was lost and he could only operate as he could trick humans into relinquishing their God-endowed authority to him on an individual level through temptations.

With this condition in mind, it can now be seen that the idea of overcoming takes on a whole new light. Instead of thinking with Old Testament style reasoning of trying to contain and eliminate sin through meticulous observances of rules and performances, overcoming is an attitude of opening our lives as growing channels of grace to flow through us from God to overwhelm the sin and despair all around us. It is a whole new dimension that we are not yet very familiar with or think about. But that is what the New Covenant is all about – filling the earth with the glory of God through His people.

The New Covenant is still a covenant however, with all of the implications of how a covenant operates. I found an interesting connection to this when I took a look at 1 Cor. 13 viewing it as a description of God Himself as well as the fruit that will be seen in the lives of His followers.

Since God is love it is not a stretch to put in God's name in place of love in this chapter and then see what the results reveal about Him. God bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails...

I looked up the word translated “bears” because I wanted to see better what it really might mean. I was surprised at the strong connection that it has to the principles of covenant. The word “bears” in the original means, to roof over, i.e. to cover with silence (endure patiently):--(for-)bear, suffer. This is covenant language that is also found in Psalm 91. “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” (Psalms 91:1) This is a direct statement of protection obvious to those who live in a culture that understands covenants. While it is very unfamiliar to western thinkers, covenant arrangements are stronger than life itself to people who live in those societies. There is even something called a threshold covenant that means that even if a stranger or an enemy steps across your threshold into your house you are obligated to protect them with your own life and treat them hospitably until they leave your dwelling.

Given this understanding of covenants, 1 Cor. 13:7 and Ps. 91:1 are both talking about a covenant protection arrangement that God has for His people who enter into covenant with Him. As long as they are under His roof they can rest completely assured of His protection for them in whatever way He chooses to express it.

Psalm 91 continues to expand on our understanding of the fabulous benefits of covenant relationship when the key words are carefully examined. But I will leave that for another day.

Just by Faith

I started out in Romans 1 this morning but ended up spending much more time in Habakkuk 2 uncovering a number of revelations for me. I went there following the thread of faith that I picked up in Rom. 1:5 and linked to verse 17 which quotes Hab. 2:4. Then to better understand this verse I ended up perusing the whole chapter of Hab. 2 and found several more themes, some of which interestingly weave together several threads that I have written about over the past few days. I find it affirming when God does things like this – not affirming in the sense of flattering my wisdom but affirming in the sense that He is so kind to share His thoughts with me. Sometimes He causes me to start thinking about them ahead of the time that I read about them so that I will know they were not stimulated from what I read but from the Source that provided them to both minds. I love how God weaves things and people together to reveal Himself to us. In fact, that is some of what I find in this chapter.

As I often like to do, I opened up the interlinear feature on my computer for Hab. 2 so I could ponder over some of the original words to see what varied implications might be hidden from sight by the English translation. While I am certainly not an expert in Hebrew or any other language, I feel that God is able to share a lot of insights and inferences of His original intention in a passage if I take the time to expose myself to a little more research and keep my mind open to the influence of the Holy Spirit at the same time.

I started out wanting to flush out more meaning behind the phrase, “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith”. That phrase has completely baffled me all of my life and I have not spent much time trying to unpack it until recently. I am not willing to accept stock answers for this but would like to uncover more clearly what God had in mind when this was conveyed to us through Paul. If this is the means by which “the righteousness of God is revealed”, then to understand better what the “righteousness” of God means I need to understand what “faith” means and even farther, what “faith to faith” means. Because Paul bases what he is trying to convey on the passage from Hab. 2:4, then to take a good look at that passage and its surrounding context would likely be of great help.

“I will stand on my guard post and station myself on the rampart; and I will keep watch to see what He will speak to me, and how I may reply when I am reproved.” (Habakkuk 2:1 NAS95) This is the beginning, the setup for the context of the faith passage. Some of the original language implies that I am peering intently into the distance to see what He will speak to me. This is a strong focus, an intentional and conscious focus of my mind, a hunger and an attitude of expectation to wait for what God wants to communicate with me. It is involves an awareness or analysis of how I may or should respond the I am reproved by God. That could take a lot of time to unpack just by itself, but I want to go on to the next verse that I feel picks up some of the things I have been thinking about over the past week.

“Then the Lord answered me and said, 'Record the vision and inscribe it on tablets, that the one who reads it may run.'” (Habakkuk 2:2 NAS95) The word for “tablets” means to to make it glisten, polished stone. Inscribe actually means to explain, to make it more clear. What this verse seems to be saying is that “the vision” needs not only to be put into written form (recorded), but it also needs to be made plain, more understandable and attractive. This brings together two things I have been pondering, writing and vision. Evidently, according to this passage, there is very good reasons to write things. Writing is a very useful tool for communicating and God wants us to do it. He also wants the vision that He conveys to us to be explained or translated through us in such a way so that others can understand it better, in a such a way that others are inspired and excited and enabled to run with it without so much hindrance. Hopefully that is what I am being trained to do.

Verse 3 has been widely applied to prophecy and particularly the great movement during the mid-eighteen hundreds. I am not going to spend time on this verse but would like to examine closely the next verse in which is found the famous phrase, “the just shall live by faith” made popular by Martin Luther.

“Behold, as for the proud one, His soul is not right within him; But the righteous will live by his faith.” (Habakkuk 2:4 NAS95)

As for the man of pride, my soul has no pleasure in him; but the upright man will have life through his good faith. (Habakkuk 2:4 BBE)

Gen. 2:7 gives the formula for the creation of a soul. You form dust into the image of God and then add the breath of life from God and lo, a human soul comes into existence. The soul is a balanced combination of these two ingredients. What I see in verse 4 in Habakkuk is an imbalance exposed in a soul due to pride. Then this imbalance is contrasted with God's solution for it – living by His faith.

With careful research some have come to the conclusion that this text is pointing primarily to the faith of God more than the faith of the just person. After thinking about this for awhile it became obvious to me why that should be the way to view this. God is the only source of life. If a person who is to be considered “just” is to have life it only makes sense that the life must come from God, not from his own faith in God. This exposes one of the more subtle problems in the teachings about faith popular in Christianity today. We are often in danger of putting more emphasis on our faith than we are on God Himself. This has the effect of depending on our ability to “work up” faith and makes God beholden to how much faith we can produce. I spent much of my life in this kind of thinking and still am working to undo the “hard-wiring” instilled in me by the deceiver. Just in the past few days I have been listening to some talks that explain this concept much more clearly which has helped greatly in unpacking this idea of “faith to faith”. The core of this issue is God's faithfulness far more that our faith in Him.

We cannot work up faith, contrary to what I and many around me assumed most of my life. Faith is spontaneous and reactive. This even ties back into verse 1 where my response to God's reproofs is considered. My ability to have a healthy, responsive, living faith in God is intrinsically linked to my beliefs about what God is like and how I perceive His attitude toward me. If I allow pride (self-dependence) to unbalance my soul, then I will not find pleasure in God or He in me. By extension I will not be found to be just (synchronized with God) because real faith that makes me right with God (justified) is totally a response to the faithfulness of God Himself.

Faith inspires faith just as love elicits love. This is possibly one of the most important yet most misunderstood foundations of real Christianity in personal life and the church. We hear very little about God's faith in us. Yet this is the reason that He has invested all of heaven and poured out His heart and His Son to save us – because He had faith that we would respond to His offers and attractions and cease our resistance to His love. This is what is meant by God's faithfulness. It is not just that He is consistent and always keeps His word, although that is part of it. It is the amazing and almost unbelievable idea that God actually has faith in sinners that they will sooner or later relinquish their rebellion and allow Him to transform them back into His own image. It is God's faith that we must live by to be just. It is God's faith that inspires all other faith. If we want more faith we must learn that it does not come by trying harder to work it up but by focusing on the greatest example of faith, God Himself. It is in beholding that we become changed. When we fill our mind with the reality of His faithfulness, His being full of faith in us, we will find faith awakening in response, even when we are reproved by Him because we will know in our heart that these reproofs are only from a heart full of love and designed to bring our hearts into harmony with His.

I know I need to spend a lot more time pondering this and allowing it's reality to awaken faith in my own soul. I want pride to be replaced with faith inspired by His faith in me. That still boggles my mind just to start thinking about it.

There is a lot more to be seen in Habakkuk 2 but I should stop for now and leave them for another day.

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