Grace,
mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (1
John 5:4)
This is the
victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
Unser Glaube ist der Sieg, der die Welt überwunden hat.
Prayer: Heavenly
Father, send us your Holy Spirit, that I may preach well, and that we all may
hear well, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
I have chosen this little text
today because it was Peter’s favourite bible verse. This is the victory that
has overcome the world—our faith. Often when I met with Peter over the last
three or four years, he would often recite this verse.
Many people think that the bible
has nothing new to teach people that they can’t already work out for
themselves. On the contrary, time and time again, the bible ends up teaching us
something that we could never even have imagined in our wildest dreams. And the
writings of Jesus’ disciples and apostles, whether it is the Gospels, like Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John, or the letters of various apostles to various churches, were
written for the express purpose to teach something. Teaching, teaching,
teaching – this is what Jesus’ disciples were doing when they wrote their books
and letters. They wanted to teach the world something. They wanted to teach the
world about Jesus. And what they had seen with their eyes and had on their
mouths to teach people was a living word full of the Holy Spirit. That’s why it’s
so important for us as Christians to read these writings, to read the Word of
God, which the Holy Spirit inspired through these writers, these holy teachers
sent out by Jesus. And especially we should read them at a Christian funeral
and a Christian burial: because all Christian comfort has to be taught. Nothing
comforts us at a time of death that we can work out in our own minds by ourselves.
The comfort of God is the comfort of his holy Word, and it is the comfort that
the Holy Spirit himself speaks through these words.
And so the text for this sermon today
is not a piece of poetry, these words are not a nice lofty sounding piece of
rhetoric that just makes us feel a bit better. We don’t come to a funeral
today, saying: “This man has died, but poetry and beautiful language still
lives on. Thank God for nice words, and beautiful language!” No – that’s no use
to us at all. What we need is something real, something precious, something
powerful, something true, something solid, something good.
This is the victory that has
overcome the world—our faith.
Let me read the verses just
before this bible verse:
Everyone who believes that Jesus
is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves
whoever has been born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God,
when we love God and obey his commandments. For this is the love of God, that
we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone
who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has
overcome the world—our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one
who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
To make this passage simple, there
is one thing that we have to understand here, and that is: the whole
Christian life is something that is created by God himself. Most people
have a completely wrong idea, as if a Christian life is something that is
simply worked out and shaped by Christians themselves. No—Christians don’t plan
their lives. In fact, nobody plans their lives. And even if they do, their
lives never come about the way they thought.
For example, Peter would never
have asked for the bad health he had in the last years of his life. He would never
have planned it that way. But also, that same hardship that he experienced also
became a kind of testing ground for his faith. It wasn’t a time where he
discovered something, where he worked something out, it was a time when God
created something new in him, each day. It was a time when God taught him, and
comforted him. All of our faith, no matter how small and weak it is, is not our
work, it is God’s creation. He is the one who speaks his word, who teaches us,
and sends us the Holy Spirit.
And so St John says: Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Do you see? We might have expected St John to say that everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has done something good. No. Not at all. It doesn’t say that at all. It says, everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. All of us are born of a mother and have an earthly father, but this has got nothing to do with our faith. If we believe that Jesus is the Christ, if we believe that Jesus is the Saviour of the world who has died for us on the cross and risen from the dead, then we know that this is something that we could have never worked out for ourselves, but it is something that the Holy Spirit has taught us. It is something that was created in us by God when he gave birth to us all over again.
And so later St John says: For
everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory
that has overcome the world—our faith.
Why was this verse such a comfort
for Peter, do you think?
First of all, this verse says
some things to us that we could never come up with from our own imagination. It
teaches us that the world is a kind of enemy to us. We know from history and
from the news on TV what it’s like for two countries to fight and have a war.
But this passage is not talking about that sort of a war. It’s talking about a
kind of war between the Christian faith and the whole world.
Now why would St John talk like
that? Wasn’t the world created by God? Didn’t he create it good? Yes—but through
sin, the world is corrupted and made a sinful place. Now it’s a valley of
sorrows, a “valley of the shadow of death”, as Psalm 23 calls it.
Isn’t Christianity all about “peace
on earth”? Why talk about the whole world as if we’re at war with it? Well, right
from the moment we’re born, we’re in a constant battle. We struggle with the
way in which we disappoint ourselves, we struggle to do everything we want to
do, we struggle with sin, with troubles, with sadness, with weakness, with
sickness, with age.
But whenever we receive true Christian
comfort, we are receiving something that God is creating new, and creating
afresh for us. Whenever God does something like this, then the angels sing “peace
on earth”, just as they did at Christmas. No-one could ever imagine that in our
darkest hour, in our greatest hardships of life, that we could actually ever be
comforted: but it happens, through God’s word and through his Holy Spirit. God
creates something new. And when God creates something new, then there is a
victory. It’s not our victory – it’s God’s victory. He has defeated all the
sadness in the world, all the sorrow, all the hardship. He defeats the world for
us when he creates living faith in us in Jesus Christ.
Everyone who has been born of God
overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
Do you hear that word? Victory!
The victory that Jesus Christ himself shares with us.
But we might come together for a
funeral such as we are today and think: “Where’s the victory?” A man’s life has
come to an end. He was sick for a long time. Where’s the victory in that?
Don’t you know just as God the
Father created living faith in Peter, he also promises to create a new living
creature out of Peter in the next life? As St Paul writes in one of our
readings from earlier: We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about
those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus,
God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
Did you hear the word twice there: asleep? The bible talks about death like this all the time. Even when Jesus raised a little girl from the dead in the Gospels, we read that he said, “This child is not dead but sleeping.” And the people laughed at him.
The victory that God our heavenly Father wants to give us today is for us to hear that word “asleep” and believe it, not as a euphemism for death, but as a living reality. If he is asleep, it means that he will also wake up, and be raised by the hand of his friend and Saviour and Lord who was crucified for him. This is our faith as Christians. This is what Jesus died for and was raised from the dead for, so that we may live with him in his kingdom for eternity. This is the faith that unites Christians of all nations together throughout the world. And when God creates in us the living faith in his living word, then God has won a great victory, and he shares this wonderful victory, and this wonderful comfort with all of us. This is the victory which was won by Jesus Christ by his death on the cross, won by him when he raised from the dead, and is now shared with us through Holy Baptism and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit through the living and active word of God. This victory was the victory in the midst of all of Peter’s struggles in life, and it is the victory that is still given to him even in death. And even in the midst of our grief and mourning, it is still the victory that our Lord and Saviour and Friend, Jesus Christ, comes and shares even with us.
And so we say together: This is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
Blessed + are those who mourn for they will be comforted.
Amen.
Lord God, heavenly Father, we thank you for the victory over the world that you share with us. We thank you for sharing this victory with Peter, and we thank you for all the many blessings that you have given to us through him. Send us your Holy Spirit, and create in us a living faith in the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting. Create in us your living victory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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