By: Yonas Lakew

As Christians, one thing we must be certain of and something that we become more certain about as we grow in our sanctification is that this world is not our home. This earth and its culture of rebellion are not what we strive for. This is the wilderness that we must go through to get to the promised land of God. A wilderness is not a place of comfort, and certainly not a permanent place that one establishes as their home. No matter what we do to make it comfortable and pleasant, the wilderness will always remind us that this is not our final resting place. Navigating this wilderness is a process that God guides us through. A process of dying to the old self and living for God. A process of surrender and trust in the one Creator. As we go through this process, there is one question that would be beneficial to reflect on: where do we fix our eyes as we pass through? Knowing the numerous distractions in this world, knowing and tasting the weaknesses of our flesh, and experiencing the temptations of the evil one, it will do us much benefit to know where to focus our eyes and where we get the strength to carry on. As always, scripture gives us the answer.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” -Hebrews 12:1-2

The Christian life from an outsider perspective can be marked out in seeing a person as a result of Christ turning away from something and running towards something completely different. Turning away from sin and corruption and running towards God through Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is a complete transformation of a person for the purpose of salvation for the glory of God.  It is a separation from the world and union with heaven. It is being marked out to live a distinct way of life that is foreign to the wisdom of this world. In other words, you can’t live the true Christian life by accident. To live this particular life, everything rests on and in Christ.   

Salvation is notably only through Christ; therefore, our focus must be on Him as Hebrews 12:1-2 illustrates. Our union with Him is everything. In the same way we had union with Adam in sin and death, we have in Jesus union in life and righteousness. What Jesus does is accomplish for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves. Jesus overcame the world; therefore, through Him we also overcome. Now we may look at this statement and not really understand its significance and weight because we really don’t understand the extent of the power that exists in opposition to this plan of God. It takes a lifetime of watching God’s power working perfectly in our weakness to really get a deeper understanding of how much more grace abounds in Christ. 

In Christ, all who are saved are those who have overcome the world through His work. Another angle of looking at it is that none are saved who do not overcome the world. There is absolutely no room for the defeat of the Christian by the world. Christ has a perfect record in this work in every believer. The moment we come to faith, what happens is something very powerful and unique to anything we have experienced. In our faith in Jesus Christ, we are demonstrating that we have received what would be an otherwise impossible task of laying our lives before Christ. Giving up our lives to Christ is a mercy of God and a very blessed gift that God gives. It is something that goes against every grain of our being as natural-born sinners to do on our own. We are people of such stubborn and self-centered disposition that we would give our lives for anything before we give it up for Christ. It takes an incredible amount of humility that is beyond our reach without the grace of God. All this is only possible through Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit. 

Why do I labor to make that point? Because there seems to be an underlying thought that there are other ways that we can overcome the world and have victory. We need to come to a final conclusion that true victory is found unequivocally in Christ alone. This mindset of looking for victory through other ways is not just an action of a non-believer, but it is also a mistake that we see in some professing believers. Instead of running to Christ by trusting in Him and knowing that everything we need can be found in Him, some consciously or subconsciously run towards other things in addition to Christ. Now, they may not explicitly say that they have other ways that they can overcome the world without Christ, but they will demonstrate it in the way they approach the Christian life. 

To know if we are those Christians who are making this grievous mistake, we must ask ourselves these questions: Where does Jesus fit in the life that we live now? And how does Jesus relate to the biggest problem of our lives? And to what end do we strive and live for? If we reflect on these questions carefully and honestly, it will lead us to a place of truth about our condition. After we come to an answer, we must learn from scripture where Christ asks us to put Him in our lives. What level of loyalty does he demand of us? If we find it impossible to give our loyalty to the extent that the bible calls us to, that may mean we have not surrendered to Christ as we thought at first. 

That introspection will reveal to us if what we say actually aligns with what we truly believe and live out. What people most often do, sometimes in ignorance, especially early on in their Christian journey, is to add Christ to the life that they already have, not realizing the life-altering power of Jesus. They see Jesus as an addition to enhance the life they already live. In this approach, they are claiming godliness and yet denying its power (2 Timothy 3:5). In this approach, they don’t denounce a life of idolatry of seeking Earthly gains; instead, they use Christ as a means to that end. They declare to themselves that Christ will be the extra power they need to live their best life now. 

To live the Christian life in this way is to misunderstand the person and the mission of Jesus Christ. In His earthly life, one of His opponents was the Pharisees. As prominent leaders in their communities and as people with a high degree of influence, when they saw Jesus and His impact on the people, they came to test Him out of jealousy and envy. They came confidently and foolishly, thinking their earthly wisdom would thwart the heavenly wisdom of Christ.  Not realizing that the wisdom of Christ and the life that He was calling people to was not of this world. They didn’t understand that the authority and position that Jesus had and has was completely different then what they themselves had. Jesus was not trying to rise to their position, but that he already sat in the Highest position. They were fixed in viewing Jesus as a regular man who came to challenge them for their position of power, even though the evidence screamed otherwise. Jesus challenged them not just to look at His words but to look at the evidence and signs that He truly holds a unique position and power as the Son of God, begotten of the Father. They didn’t want to concede to this fact because it would mean giving up their wrong perspective of themselves.  

They were fixed on loving the life they had. They were content in living for their flesh, and they saw Jesus as an obstacle to that end. Jesus was being the light that He is and exposing the darkness that was in them. Jesus did not make it possible for them to continue in that lifestyle without being exposed. That is exactly what happens with us as Christians when we truly live authentically for Christ. The world will hate us because our lives will testify that the world’s deeds are evil. 

Now, let’s reflect further on the principles we learn from the interaction between Jesus and the Pharisees. In principle, it shows us if we have built idols in our lives where even the Son of God telling us our mistakes is not enough to turn us around. For the Pharisees, being people of status, were everything to them, but Jesus was demonstrating that being people of substance is much more important. He wanted them to know that looking the part of someone significant but not having that status is absolutely worthless. They claimed to have that significance by attaching themselves to God. They worked hard to dress the outside to look like it, but completely forgot the inside of their hearts (Matthew 23:25).  

 We must learn from this mistake and turn if we are doing the same thing. Attachment to sin is very powerful. That attachment must be broken for us to be free and united with Christ. As long as this attachment to sin is there we are willing to go even to the extent to sell even the Son of God to satisfy our greedy hearts, as Judas did. When we have not overcome sin by dying to it through the cross of Christ, we will always make justification to have Christ and have our sin at the same time, just as the Pharisees claimed God and had their sin at the same time. We need to understand that when engaged in this way of life, we don’t actually overcome the world, but we have subtly submitted to it and have found a new way of satisfying our never-ending hunger for this world.   

 To give you some examples, one great idol that people submit to is education. Some seem to think that education will solve the big problems we have in this world. Even as Christians, they seem to hint especially to their children that their education will be the way to unlock the purpose of life. Coming from an immigrant background myself, education was a great idol. Family stressed the importance that to live a proper life, one must have a have proper education. Now, education in itself is not the problem, but the position we give it in the outlook of life is the problem.  In this, we make the Christian life a secondary matter. We fail to understand that Mankind, in its pursuit of higher education, has learned to diversify the wickedness and become more efficient than decreasing or turning from it. An unconverted educated person only puffs up with knowledge, seeing themselves as higher than they actually are. Education does not change the heart, only Christ does.  

Another example of an idol is a successful career that is also tied to education. Some people look at this as finding their purpose and being a valued member of society. This approach emphasizes finding what we are good at and becoming really successful so that we matter. That when we do that that’s when we overcome. We can only have a meaningful life when we reach this goal. There are so many people in bondage by believing this lie, not realizing that the discontent in their hearts will not be satisfied by a successful career. Again, this idolization is another example of putting one aspect of life and elevating it to a god-like status. Seeking to find identity in something that is far below human dignity and worth. Our hearts are meant for much greater thing that no amount of stuff can satisfy it. Our hearts were meant for God. We are worried about so many other things when only one thing is important. If we are seeking this path, we find life to be emptier and emptier as we climb higher and higher in our pursuit of a successful career. A great job does not make us overcomers.

To avoid deceiving ourselves in this way, we must take to heart that to overcome this world from a biblical perspective is entirely different from what we ourselves naturally tend to think. To overcome is not to do something the world does and just add Christ to it. As our passage, Hebrews 12:1-2, shows, it is those who throw off sin that overcome. It is those who continually crucify the flesh and its destructive desires that have that victory. They have turned away from the fruitless deeds of the flesh of sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these (Galatians 5:19-21). It is in this change of direction by the grace of God in Christ Jesus that we can truly identify as overcomers. Otherwise, all other paths lead to destruction. 

Fixing our eyes on Christ is the way that we throw off sin. The Gospel is an invitation to be united to Christ and, as a result of that union, to have that transformed life.  This requires that we know our Lord like we know the most important people in our lives and even more then that. We need not study Christ as some subject in a classroom, but to know Him as our brother, friend, father, and Lord. This requires understanding who He is and what He wants most. 

“We need not study Christ as some subject in a classroom, but to know Him as our brother, friend, father, and Lord.”

First, we need to have reverence for Him, understanding that Jesus is God in the flesh. When He speaks, He is not just making recommendations, but He is commanding. He is the one whom even the wind obeys on the stormy sea. He yields an unbelievable amount of authority and power. Yet he invites us to call Him our friend and brother. We are called not only to have reverence for Him but also to have that connection and closeness.  As the exact imprint of God, Christ demonstrated the imminent and transcendent characteristics of God.  

If we fail to get a hold of both ends of the characteristics of Christ or emphasize one over the other, we will completely misunderstand Jesus.  If we emphasize the transcendence of Christ and neglect His imminence, we get an unreachable Christ, as some sects of denominations tend to do. If we emphasize the imminence of Christ and neglect His transcendence, we get a personalized Christ that we can shape how we want, as most American evangelical Christians tend to do. We need a proper balance in the way we see Christ. To fix our eyes on Him must mean to have that proper balance that exists within Christ. 

Next, understanding His mission becomes a critical step.  Why did Jesus come to Earth? He came that he may reveal and rescue. He came to reveal the sinfulness of sin. The power and stronghold that sin had over mankind over each individual. He showed us on our own we are striving after the wind. He showed that we are servants to the one we obey namely sin. In Christ, we come to an understanding that the human race was and is incapable of fixing itself. He showed us that each and every one of us contributes to the evil that is in the world. It took God stepping into time to reveal this truth because none of us was outside of this corruption to truly see it. We were all together lost and hopeless in ourselves. It took God stepping into time because it was only Him who can see the heart of man.  

Jesus did not just stop at revealing sin, but he came to rescue us from it. He rescued us by being the vessel of the judgment of God. He gave His body as a sacrifice for us.  The way that He saves us, He reveals the truth that improvement was not what we needed, but a brand new life was needed. We didn’t just need teaching, but we needed power and transformation. By Jesus going to the cross is the only way that we would be cleansed to have the Spirit of God live in us to supply us with the power. By the Spirit is the only way that we can overcome this world and have that overcoming power we need to live on to God. Jesus pointed to the way of salvation as Himself. He shows us it is Him and Him alone because He was the only one who was an acceptable sacrifice to God. In His resurrection and ascension, He confirmed the satisfaction and completion of this great salvation. 

Knowing this allows you to reject every false Messiah who claims to have the answer. False Messiah’s don’t come with power but only clever words and theatrics meant to entertain the flesh.  All False Messiah’s demonstrate their lack of understanding of the human condition. They don’t see the problem, so they can’t provide the solution.  They come in various forms through various routes, many through religious ideologies and others through human thought and philosophy, but all utterly fail to save. They may seem very diverse on the surface, but they all have the commonality of being from below. The difference is that Jesus came from above and proved it by the various miracles that he did and by the wisdom that he spoke, and he sealed it in His resurrection from the dead. So let’s fix our eyes on the true Savior of the world, Jesus Christ. 

Application Questions

• What place of prominence does Jesus hold in your life, and how do you know that? 
• What would you say is the biggest problem in the world? 
• Are you overcoming the world?