Who indeed is the victor over the world
We might suggest some answers. First there are the powerful, those who can impose their will upon others, those who have others at their command, who can impose rules as they wish, or make arbitrary rules as they desire. Second there are the rich, those who can overcome seemingly any obstacle by using their wealth. But do they really overcome the world? They may seem to do so for a time but it cannot last.
that though the wicked sprout like grass and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction forever (see Psalm 92:7).
So the rich and the powerful are not victors over the world. The help of which they avail themselves cannot save them. To it they entrust themselves, and God allows them to do so. Our own intellectual construction of victory is too much influenced by worldly thinking.
Who indeed is the victor over the world
but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
If we can't have victory on the world's terms we tend to relegate our idea of what it means to a fairly subjective, hypothetical, abstract condition which doesn't matter all that much in the way we live. We look at ourselves and Christians we know, who theoretically should possess this victory, believing as we do in Jesus as the Son of God, but we see people who look anything but victorious. Indeed, we see a people that looks substantially defeated by the world around us.
Our faith holds the answer to a victory that is sufficient to fill our whole lives. It can become real to us and evident to those who see us. How, then, can we receive and enter in to this promise?
This is the one who came through water and Blood, Jesus Christ,
not by water alone, but by water and Blood.
Our faith is in Jesus, who came not only as divine, revealed at the water of his baptism, but also fully as man, revealed by the blood of his cross. Indeed, both blood and water were mingled when they poured from the side of Christ on the cross (see Matthew 27:49).
What does this mean for us? It means that the victory of Jesus looked nothing like we would have predicted. And if we truly put our faith in that victory it won't much matter to us if our own victory is similarly obscure for the moment. Nothing we endure in this life need be endured alone. Nothing we suffer in this life need be suffered without the certain hope of renewal and resurrection.
I write these things to you so that you may know
that you have eternal life,
you who believe in the name of the Son of God.
Because of what Jesus did we have a life that the world cannot take from us. We have a victory that is so durable that no challenger can destroy it. Our faith helps us to integrate even our suffering, our fear and anxiety, and our distress under a banner of unshakable hope. The testimony of the Father about his Son is something which can become so internal to us that it becomes the key that allows us to understand and interpret the apparent victories of the world for what they really are, and to allow us to persevere with unflagging hope.
If we find ourselves more like the man full of leprosy, unable to move forward and all but defeated, we are nevertheless not defeated if and as long as we ask Jesus to heal us. Even if we have arrived at a condition where we cannot reach out to him, if we call out, even with our uncertainties, he will reach out to us.
“Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean.”
Jesus stretched out his hand, touched him, and said,
“I do will it. Be made clean.”
And the leprosy left him immediately.
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