STU:The victorious Christian life

   The subject of the victorious Christian life deals with practical
matters of Christian life. After conversion the heart cry is for
holiness, to be like Christ. Any born-again child of God wants to
overcome sin and live above the world. Sometimes people hear
testimonies of missionaries and preachers who, after years of failure,
attend a good Bible conference where the word of God is preached and
suddenly come into a blessing of a higher walk with Christ. Many
Christians try and try, and when they don't succeed, they sink down to
a lower level of Christian experience, living on a standard lower than
they desire, but helpless to advance, and fearful lest they should make
fools out of themselves by trying. Other Christians, having never heard
of the victorious life, continue sinning and confessing, sinning and
confessing, and they wonder, "Is this all that Christ has to offer?"

   Are there such things as apprentice Christians and journeyman
Christians and master Christians, and if there are, should there be?
Undoubtedly there is the possibility of the victorious life. There is
no possibility of a sinless life, but there is the possibility of
living above sin, and overcoming sin, and not letting sin dominate your
life.

   The Bible teaches victory over sin for every believer. "For
whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory
that overcometh the world, even our faith" (1 John 5:4). John is not
speaking about victory in heaven, which is absolutely certain for any
believer, but victory on earth, daily victory which is only possible to
the Christian who obeys what the Bible says about daily victory.

   The Christian who spends his time in the psychological mishmash of
modern devotional broadcasts and telecasts will always have an
up-and-down experience because he is never rooted to anything stable.
These unstable people, who have no final authority, have no sure
authority to correct school teachers and Greek and Hebrew professors.
After all, if your authority is your Greek and Hebrew professors, then
when it comes to overcoming sin, you will have to run to them for the
final authority, and they may not know anything about it. The Bible is
the word of God, and to the Christian who is unwilling to submit to the
Bible as the final authority and insists on having twenty translations
that contradict each other, I will tell you frankly, sir, you will
never have victory over sin, so don't look for it. With the root sins
of pride and unbelief in your life and thinking your education equips
you to correct the word of God, there isn't any possibility at all that
you will overcome ten percent of your sins.

   Satan will do his utmost to keep the knowledge from the Christian
that he can have a victorious life. The devil doesn't mind an
intellectual person or a religious person, as long as he is a powerless
Christian, but he surely fears the power of a triumphant life. The
devil isn't worried about high standards of double, secondary
separation that make you like a monk or a nun, just as long as the
power of God is not manifested in your life. The devil doesn't care how
many gifts you have that make you look like a conceited smart aleck,
just so long as your life is fruitless and barren of the fruits of the
Holy Spirit (Gal. 6). After all, the gifts can be counterfeited; the
fruit cannot.

   There are promises of the victorious life. In John 7:37-38 Jesus
stood and cried that out of the man's belly shall flow "rivers of
living water." This is Jesus' own promise to the believer. He said, "I
am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more
abundantly" (John 10:10). The Lord Jesus Christ doesn't want Christians
to have just a little bit of life in victory, but abundant life in
victory. Paul says, "For sin shall not have dominion over you" (Rom.
6:14). That is strong language. That is what God said to Cain when Cain
messed up. God said, "Unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt
rule over him" (Gen. 4:7). The Lord told Cain he had no business
letting sin run him, that he could run sin.

   Paul said, "Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to
triumph in Christ" (2 Cor. 2:14). Always, not just sometimes, but
always ours is the victory through Christ. First Corinthians 10:13 is a
great promise to the believer, showing him that under any set of
circumstances, in any temptation he can claim a promise that God will
answer, for the Holy Spirit has written, "There hath no temptation
taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will
not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the
temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it."
Or, as Paul says, "Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors
through him" (Rom. 8:37). That is, not just victory, but abundant
super-abounding victory over our enemies: the world, the flesh and the
devil.

   The principle of the victorious life is faith. The victorious life
is a gift received from God by faith, and it rests in the finished work
of Jesus Christ. Our salvation was a gift; we didn't deserve it, and we
didn't earn it. Our victory is also a gift; we cannot attain it by our
own strength; that is impossible. "The just shall live by faith" (Rom.
1:17). The believer is saved and begins a new life in the Spirit, but
most Christians are like the foolish Galatians who try to continue in
the flesh by works (Gal. 3:3). These foolish Galatians were always
worried about outward appearance and never inward condition. Victory is
the work of the Saviour in us and not our accomplishment in the least.
That is, Christ's finished victory on Calvary's cross is His victory
over sin, which we appropriate by faith exactly as we appropriate
salvation by faith, and it is Christ's victory in us. "Christ in you,
the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). Or, as Paul used to say, "I am
crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I [not I, not I,
not I], but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the
flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave
himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).

   As we confess our inability to gain victory and we yield to the
mighty power of the Lord Jesus Christ, He gains the victory in us, or,
as the Lord told Paul, "my strength is made perfect in weakness" (2
Cor. 12:9). The drunkard that gets saved and gets immediate victory
over liquorthat is not the victorious life. The dopehead who gets
converted and immediately has victory over dopethat is not the
victorious life. The reprobate who gets saved and immediately begins to
blabber in tonguesthat is not the victorious life. The victorious life
is when respectable people get victory over pride, jealousy, envy,
stubbornness, exaggeration, laziness, ambition, and egotism. Faith does
nothing. Faith lets God do it all. Dr. C.G. Trumbull said, "One
qualification that you must have for the victorious life is the broken
pinion, the broken nature, weakness." God couldn't bless Jacob and give
him a new name until he had busted his hip, tore his thigh muscle and
Jacob limped all the rest of his life (Gen. 32:24-32). Paul couldn't
know the power of Christ's resurrection until he knew the fellowship of
His sufferings (Phil. 3:10) and was smitten in the flesh with a thorn
in the flesh by Satan which caused him to carry a medical doctor with
him all his life (2 Cor. 12:7-9). With all this gas about "faith to be
healed" and "having faith" and all that nonsense, Paul remained sick
until the day he died and had a registered physician with him in jail
when he died (2 Tim. 4:11) whom he called the beloved physician (Col.
4:14). The secret of victory is the indwelling of Jesus Christ. Victory
is in trusting, not trying.

   The secret of the victorious life is our identification with Jesus
Christ. The great chapter on this is Romans 6. In this chapter we learn
two important truths. First of all, substitution: Jesus Christ in our
place. Next, identification: us with Jesus Christ. To the sinner we
teach substitution: look and live. To the saint we teach: look and die.
We have to identify with Christ's death and burial, identify with
Christ's resurrection and present triumphant life to have victory over
sin. All this is found in Romans 6. First of all, there is the great
truth that I died with Jesus Christ (Rom. 6:3). Secondly, there is the
great truth that I arose with Jesus Christ (Rom. 6:4). Thirdly, there
is the great truth that I share Christ's present life (Rom. 6:8).

   1. I died with Christ: "planted together in the likeness of his
death" (Rom. 6:5); "our old man is crucified with him" (Rom. 6:6); "I
am crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2:20).

   Absolute identification. Since death frees a man once and forever
from the power and dominion of sin (Rom. 6:7), we are dead to sin and
free from sin by the fact that we are identified with Jesus Christ's
death.

   It is the Holy Spirit who puts you into Jesus Christ, and once in
Him, you share His life. If you share His life, then you share His
eternal life. If you share His eternal life, as you live and brcathe
and are reading this book, your life goes back to the open tomb, up on
the cross, and is nailed there with the Saviour, dead with Christ and
buried with Christ. I was buried with Him. "Therefore we are buried
with him" (Rom. 6:4). Dead things ought to be buried, so we are buried
with Christ.

   Our water baptism is only a picture of that, so, when the unsaved
Campbellite makes Romans 6 water baptism he takes you to hell with him
by giving you a burial that is not a real burial and a baptism that is
not a real baptism, but only a figure.

   I dicd with Christ. I was buried with Christ. I arose with Christ.
"We shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection" (Rom. 6:5);
"even so we also should walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6:4); "that
henceforth we should not serve sin" (Rom. 6:6); "we shall also live
with him" (Rom. 6:8); "but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God" (Rom.
6:10).

   "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27). Do you see? You are
dead with Him. You are buried with Him. You are risen with Him. You are
walking with Him, if you have the victorious life. The secret is that
the indwelling Lord Jesus Christ lives in the heart and body of every
believer for the purpose of becoming Lord and Master of that life. Not
Christ in your life; Christ in your body, Christ in you. Never your
life: that is the way to run Christ out of your body, so that He only
shares in certain things that you do, and that road to hell is as good
as any other. It is never Christ in your life anywhere in thc Bible. In
the Bihle, Christ is your life (Col. 3:4), and Christ is not in your
life. He is in your body. The carnal Charismatics of Corinth who wcre
bragging about their gifts didn't even know their body was the tcmple
of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. 6:19). Why, thc poor fools thought they were
letting Christ into their lives. Every saved person reading this has
the Lord Jesus Christ in his body, or, as Paul said, "But we have this
treasure in earthen vessels" (2 Cor. 4:7).

   "Christ in you, the hope of glory." I am dead, and the living Christ
lives and rules in my yielded body and gains constant triumph and
victory for me as I yield to Him. In my body at any one time there is
one person on the throne. In the throne of my heart. either the Lord
Jesus Christ reigns, or I reign. If I am on the throne, He is at the
foot of the throne. If He is on the throne. I am kneeling at the
throne. I'll give you one guess who should be on the throne. If you are
on the throne, sin is reigning because you still have sin in your
mortal body, and you are born dead in trespasses and sin, and your body
is subject to the laws of sin because it rots and the worms get it.
There is a worm-eaten dictator on the throne of your heart, if you are
running your life. If Jesus Christ is running your life, He is on the
throne and you are at the foot of the throne. Two Requisites for the
Victorious Christian Life

   What are the requisites for the victorious life? Two things
absolutely, which are both found in Romans, and that is why unsaved
heretics and carnal rebels are always in the Book of Acts. The reason
why these carnal Christians, these spiritual babies, are always in the
Book of Acts is because they know nothing about the powerful Christian
life. The requisites are found nowhere in the Book of Acts. They are
found in Romans 6, and-here they are:

   Yield: "Neither yield ye your members as instruments of
unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that
are alive from the dead" (Rom. 6:13).

   Reckon: "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto
sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 6:11).

   The requisites for a victorious life are yielding and reckoning.
First, you have to take your body and yield yourself to God as a man
who is alive from the dead. Secondly, you have to reckon that you are
dead because God said so, even though every member and every limb in
your body will cry out that they are not dead but very much alive and
they have certain needs that need to he satisfied. God says our
rnembers are dead. God said they are nailed to the cross. The fact that
they move, the fact that they breathe, the fact that they want this and
want that is immaterial in God's sight. Theologically and doctrinally,
you are dead. With Paul you can say, "I am crucified" (Gal. 2:20), and
if your Bible says, ''I have been crucified," you are reading the work
of a liar who is trying to get you to miss the overcoming life. It is
not enough to say, "I HAVE been crucified,'' because that doesn't solve
the problem. You are crucified at this present moment, if you are
saved, and your old man is nailed, though still active, like a body
hanging on the cross dying. It is dead and buried and put out of God's
sight, as far as God's official sight is concerned, and the new man is
risen to walk in newness of life.

   Therefore every Christian in his present state has three things that
are true about his body:

   1. As far as the movements of the physical body of the child of God
are concerned, they are the work of a man who is slowly dying, nailed
to a cross.

   2. In God's sight, that old nature and its ability to bring forth
good works or its ability to sin, the Lord has reckoned it neuter,
non-effective, a nullity, dead. He has abrogated it and doesn't count
it one way or the other.

   3. As far as the new man inside the Christian is concerned. "he that
is joined unto the Lord is one spirit" (1 Cor. 6:17). The new man is
risen and walking with Christ, and this new man can have victory daily
over sin.

   If it is true that you are dead to sin with Christ, then there is
only one thing for you to do and that is to yield yourself to God. Paul
says, "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that
ye present your bodies [your bodynot your life. Never mind all that
psychological, humanistic, socialistic stuff the fundamentalists are
using. Never mind the party line. YOURBODY] a living sacrifice, holy,
acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service" (Rom. 12:1).
That is, assume your new position by faith. Reckon yourself to be dead,
and reckon yourself to be alive from the dead. You are now living on
resurrection ground, on the victory side of the cross. Sin and the
world will have no hold on you according to God. Don't fight sin; you
can'tyou will lose the battle. Instead, yield to the Lord Jesus
Christ. Yield to the power of the resurrected Christ. In your fight
against sin, your greatest weapon is yielding to Christ and reckoning
yourself dead. Those weapons of our warfare are said not to be carnal
but mighty through God (2 Cor. 10:4).

   For Christian people there is a choice, either victory or defeat. As
a Christian. you still have your own free will. If you choose victory,
you can certainly have it as a gift from the Lord, providing you yield
yourself to Him and reckon yourself dead. If you reject this gift of
victory, you will continue to live a defeated Christian life. Paul
says, "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey,
his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of
obedience unto righteousness?" (Rom. 6:16). So, the choice is yours:
you either yield to righteousness. or you yield to sin. Your will
determines.

   Frecdom is yours for the taking: ''Being then made free from sin''
(Rom. 6:18). Then you have a warning in Romans 6:19. If you choose
uncleanness, it will lead down from iniquity to iniquity. Then you are
told since you are free from sin you become a servant to God (Rom.
6:22).

   Thc choice then is ''To whom will I surrender myself and my
members?'' The logical man who thinks rationally will realize there is
only one choice to make. If you are a servant of Jesus Christ, then you
are a bond slave, knocked down on thc block. or as Paul says, "ye are
not your own. . .ye are bought with a price" (1 Cor. 6:19-20). Is there
really any argument or debate in your mind as to whom you should yield?
Did the world pay for your sinand buy back your soul? Did the flesh
pay for your sins and buy back your soul? Did the devil pay for your
sinand save you from hell? Did sin die for you that you might get to
heaven? Or did Jesus Christ? Then what is the choice to make?

   Obviously, the choice is found in Romans 12:1-2. Obviously. I have
been askcd to do a rcasonable thing which is not in the least
unreasonable. I am to take my body and present it to God as a living
(there's the resurrection) sacrifice (there's Calvary) as those that be
alive from the dead (there's the burial). This is my "reasonable
service," so that I might prove "what is that good, and acceptable, and
perfect, will of God" (Rom. 12:2).

   The great catch is this: the thing that prevents ninety percent of
the Christians and makes them waste their time talking about the gifts,
and the Holy Ghost, and peace, and love, and all this turtledove
clap-trap, is the fact that these Christians still want to conform to
the world. There is no way under God's heaven you can present your body
to God as a living sacrifice unless you are transformed in the renewing
of your mind and cease to be conformed to the world (Rom. 12:2). This
explains why ninety percent of the Christians in any age never find the
will of God for their lives and bluff through with all these
translations, giving relative opinions because they don't know what
they are talking about, having never found the will of God to start
with. They are simply in money-making rackets like any unsaved man, or
they are in feeling and emotional experiences like any unsaved person
on the Johnny Carson show. In short, they are pious-talking hypocrites
because they are not transformed by the renewing of their mind. They
are conformed to this world. Christians who are conformed to this world
cannot find the will of God, and the victorious life is absolutely out
of the question. This is why most of these Christians are plagued from
morning to night about thoughts of losing their salvation or committing
the unpardonable sin, because they are shallow, Bible-rejecting,
relativistic, peace-loving, love-loving, humanistic, socialistic sheep.
They have never grown up into the fullness of the stature of Jesus
Christ, the full and perfect man (Eph. 4:13). They are still conformed
to this world in their opinions, their thinking, their friends, their
dress, their habits, and their amusements. May God help you to cut
loose from this bunch. Drop off fellowship from them and become
separated. Know what it is like to walk day by day on the mountain
plateau with the Lord Jesus Christ, or as the old song says, ''Living
on a mountain in Beulahland.''
