THE WORLD CONQUERED
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"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said,"
"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world!" — John 16:33
And shall I be afraid of the world, which is already conquered? The Almighty Victor, within view of His crown, turns around to His faint and weary soldiers — and bids them take courage. They are not fighting their way through untried enemies. The God-Man Mediator "knows their sorrows." "He was tempted in every way, just as we are." "Both He who sanctifies (that is, Christ), and those who are sanctified (His people), are all of one (nature)." As the great Predecessor, He heads the pilgrim band, saying, "I will show you the path of life." The way to Heaven is consecrated by His footprints! Every thorn that wounds them — has wounded Him before. Every cross they can bear — He has borne before. Every tear they shed — He has shed before. There is one respect, indeed, in which the identity fails — He was "yet without sin;" but this recoil of His holy nature from moral evil gives Him a deeper and more intense sensibility towards those who have still corruption within, responding to temptation without.
Reader! are you ready to faint under your troubles? under a seducing world? under a wandering, wayward heart? "Consider Him who endured!" Listen to your adorable Redeemer, stooping from His Throne, and saying, "I have overcome the world." He came forth unscathed from its snares. With the same heavenly weapon which He bids you to wield — three times did He repel the Tempter, saying, "It is written!"
Is it some crushing trial — or overwhelming grief? He is "acquainted with grief." He, the mighty Vine, knows the minutest fibbers of sorrow in the branches; when the pruning knife touches them — it touches Him. "He has gone," says a tried sufferer, "through every class of suffering in our wilderness school." He loves to bring His people into untried and perplexing places — that they may seek out the guiding pillar, and prize its radiance. He puts them on the darkened waves, that they may follow the guiding light hung out astern from the only Ship of pure and unsullied humanity that was ever armoured against the storm.
Be assured that there is disguised love in all that He does. He who knows us infinitely better than we know ourselves, often puts a thorn in our nest to drive us to the wing — that we may not be grovelers forever. "It is," says Evans, "upon the smooth ice that we slip; the rough path is safest for the feet."
The tearless and undimmed eye — is not to be coveted here on earth; that is reserved for Heaven! Who can tell what muffled and disguised "needs be" there may lurk under these worldly troubles? His true spiritual seeds are often planted deep in the soil; they have to make their way through a load of sorrow before they reach the surface; but their roots are thereby the firmer and deeper struck. Had it not been for these lowly and needed "depths," they might have rushed up as feeble saplings, and succumbed to the first cold blast. He often leads His people still, as He led them of old, to a "high mountain, alone;" but it is to a high mountain — above the world; and, better still, He who Himself has overcome the world — leads them there, and speaks comfort unto them!
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