PSED, Inheritance and Rewards; 1 John 2:14
1 John 2:14b NASB "…I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one." The statement "and you have overcome the evil one" is crucial and we have to understand it. It is easy to assume that it is simply a reference to salvation. However it implies much more than that and that is indicated by a word study of the verb nikao [nikaw]. The noun is nike [nikh]. The verb means yo have victory, to overcome, to conquer, to prevail. It is an athletic or military term for having victory or prevailing over an enemy, winning a race. It is a second person plural active indicative and the perfect tense indicates a completed action in the past focusing on its completion, that they have reached this level of victory, specifically over the evil one. Since there is always a struggle in spiritual warfare throughout the Christian life until the day we die we must not understand this in terms of having reached some plateau in the spiritual life where we no are longer involved in spiritual warfare, but specifically over the evil one and later on in 1 John 5 it mentions the fact that it is Satan who is the one who is continuously trying to distract the believer, tear down the believer, and so the adolescent believer has reached a stage where those elementary distractions are no longer the issue. This important. For the baby believer the issue is priority—getting to Bible class, studying the Scripture, coming to grips with the fact that doctrine is to be the number one priority in the life of the believer and that even though there are many wonderful things they can be involved in in life, legitimate things, if they are not involved in making doctrine the number one priority in terms of learning, assimilating and applying doctrine then everything else is worthless. So Satan is involved in distracting the believer from making doctrine number one.
The importance of victory in the life of the believer
- Victory is based first and foremost on the on the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross. John 16:33 NASB "These things I have spoken to you, so that in [abiding in] Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world."
- Victory is often expressed in relationship to the cosmic system which is Satan's classroom for inculcating his values, his ideals, his priorities into both believer and unbeliever. Believers can be dominated by cosmic thinking and that is exactly the problem that John is going to address.
- Victory is not an absolute but is the believer's in successive stages. Victory is won at the cross and then there are successive stages in each development. 1 John 5:4, 5. "For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith." This is not faith just in the sense of trusting but what is trusted, the object of faith which is doctrine. The starting point is belief in the deity of Christ, v. 5.
- Satan's modus operandi towards the unbeliever is to deceive the unbeliever in relationship to the gospel but towards the believer it is to deceive the believer in terms of the priorities of spiritual life, the priority of doctrine, and the priority of spiritual growth. 2 Corinthians 4:4; 11:13.
- There are levels of victory that advance beyond the initial victory of salvation. Salvation is a grace operation. Heaven is not a reward, it is a gift; but rewards, crowns, are for what we do, how we grow, the capacity developed in this life. Rewards are not gifts by definition, they are something extra given for what we have done.