Wednesday 30 December
Conquerors of the world
Read 1 John 5:1–5
Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (verse 5)
The world can be a very frightening place. Terrible things happen to people. They are haunted by what they have seen and experienced. In human terms they can seem to lose everything: home, livelihood, family, country. Or they have to endure ill-health that robs them of all normal life. And all of us encounter the simpler forms of human wickedness and are called upon to respond with love, courage and obedience.
We have already thought over the past few days about God being with us as light in the darkness. But he isn’t there just to help us through. With God’s help we can be not only survivors but conquerors. How do we know this? Because Jesus, the love of God in human form, confronted everything that human beings could do to him and yet never stopped loving them and forgiving them. He conquered by never swerving in his love and obedience to his Father, in offering back to the Father the task that he had been sent to do: to break sin’s power over human beings. To transform death itself.
We can conquer all that the world and human wickedness can inflict on us because Jesus shows us, to paraphrase Romans 8:39, that there is nothing in all creation that will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that he showed. If we have faith that what God did in Jesus he can also do in us through his Spirit, then nothing will be able to shake our love and obedience.
† God, thank you that with your help I can not only face the wickedness I meet in the world and in myself, but conquer it by faith in you. Amen
