THE WORLD CONQUERED
by John MacDuff - 1800s
"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said" —
"In the world you shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; 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 round 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 in all points tempted." "Both He (that is, Christ) who sanctifies, and they (His people) who are sanctified, 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 tribulations? It is a seducing world? — 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 He bids you 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 fibers of sorrow in the branches; when the pruning knife touches them, it touches Him. "He has gone," says a tried sufferer, "through every class 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 darkening waves, that they may follow the guiding light hung out astern from the only Ship of pure and unsullied humanity that was ever proof against the storm.
Be assured there is disguised love in all 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 we slip; the rough path is safest for the feet." The tearless and undimmed eye is not to be coveted here; that is reserved for heaven!
Who can tell what muffled and disguised "needs be" there may lurk under these worldly tribulations? His true spiritual seed 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 blast. He often leads His people still, as He led them of old, to a "high mountain apart;" 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 comfortable unto them.
"I hope in your Word."
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