Overcomer or Overcome? Incentive for
Maturity
Revelation 3:4-6: “You have a few names even in
This is really the incentive
clause in this evaluation report. This is the challenge to the church to
straighten out their problems. What we are reminded of in these overcomer
passages is that the decisions that we make today will determine who we are
tomorrow, not also in time but also in eternity. The decisions that we make today
regarding the priority of the Word of God in our life and our ongoing relationship
to the Lord Jesus Christ not only affects our capacity to enjoy life today but
it will also affect our role and responsibilities in the coming kingdom when
the Lord Jesus Christ returns to establish His kingdom. Scripture clearly
states that when He returns those who are believers in this age return with Him
and will reign as priests and kings in that future Millennial kingdom. Our
training ground is during this age, this life. This is why we go through tests,
why we get the opportunity to trust God in different pressure situations, the
whole test of making our relationship with God and His Word the highest
priority in our life. It is all related to this preparation for the future
kingdom.
We recognize that there are
basically two crucial decisions that every one of us has to make. The first is
really a one-time decision, and that has to do with our relationship to the
Lord Jesus Christ and determining our eternal destiny, that Jesus Christ died
on the cross for our sins. So the issue for every human being is what you are going
to do about that. Secondly, we as believers have been adopted into God’s family
and there is a code of conduct established that dictates how members of the
family will live. We don’t always live that way. Sometimes we violate that code
of conduct and when we do that we have a way of recovery, and that is simply to
admit or acknowledge our sin to God the Father and we recover, and that
relationship within the family is restored. While we are in that family we
sometimes get a little upset that we are in that family. Sometimes there are
those who decide they are going to live the way they want to live, and these
are rebellious believers who are out of fellowship, disobedient to God, and
they live like they are part of another family—even though we know that the
Scripture says that there are only two families and we are either a member of
the royal family of God or a member of Satan’s family. So there are two
families and each families has its own separate and
distinct code of conduct. There are a lot of believers who act like they are
still in the family they were born into and they continue to act that way.
There is no obvious distinction between them and those who are in God’s royal
family. These are folks who renounce their family responsibilities and end up
coming under divine discipline, because God says He is going to discipline any
member of the family who is disobedient—Hebrews 12:7. That is what we see going
on in Revelation 3:2-3. It is a reprimand with the solution included in the reprimand.
“…and I will not blot out his
name out of the book of life.” What does this mean? We have to understand it in
terms of an understanding of what the book of life is, but we also have to
understand it as part of a sentence: “I won’t blot out his name but I will confess.”
We will take those two phrases together to understand the import of what is
said. It is not just the individual words that are important,
it is how the whole thing comes together in a contextual sentence.
Revelation 20:12 is
describing the last judgment is history, the great white throne judgment where
God is on a great white throne and all the unbelievers of human history are
brought before that throne for their final evaluation. “And I saw the dead,
small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book
was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those
things which were written in the books, according to their works.” So there is
one set of books which is a recording of all of the production of every human
being—good works and bad works, it doesn’t distinguish here between good and
bad works. Then there is another book which is the book of life. The dead are
judged according to their works. God evaluates all their works, stacks them all
up, and asks whether it equals the perfect righteousness of Jesus Christ,
because no one can go into heaven without perfect righteousness. The sins are
paid for, Christ did that on the cross, but unless you receive the imputation
of righteousness and eternal life where you are regenerated, you don’t have
salvation. It is not enough to simply have your sins paid for. Three things
have to happen in order to be saved. First, the sin has to be paid for; second,
your negative righteousness has to be turned to perfect righteousness. Third,
your spiritually dead position has to be resolved by receiving a new spirit and
being born again, which includes the reception of God’s life, eternal life. Christ
paid the penalty for our sins, and that takes care of the first part of the
problem. He did that for everyone, but the reason it is not a universal
salvation, the reason not everyone is saved who sins are paid for, is because
the other two problems have to be dealt with. That only comes as a result of
the individual’s volition. He has to trust Christ, and then He receives the
imputation of Christ’s righteousness and is declared justified. In trusting
Christ, God then regenerates him and gives him eternal life. That resolves the
debate that has gone on for over 500 years now over whether Christ died only
for the elect or for everybody. He died for everybody but we are not saved
unless we trust Him and get the other two problems resolved. So these dead
unbelievers are evaluated according to all their works and when it is all added
up it doesn’t come close to the perfect standard that God has established. The
book of life indicates those who are saved, those who have trusted in Christ as
savior.
Revelation 20:15: “And
whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of
fire.” It doesn’t matter how good your works are, if your name isn’t in the
book of life—and you only get there by trusting Christ as savior—then
you don’t have eternal life.
Revelation 21:27: “But there
shall by no means enter into it any thing that defiles, or causes an
abomination, or a lie: but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of
life.” This is talking about the new Jerusalem. So
once again the Lamb’s book of life refers to everyone who is a born-again
believer and has received the eternal life of God.
In trying to solve this
problem of blotting out of the book of life there are those who say that what happened
in eternity past is that God wrote everybody’s name in the book of life, and
then if you don’t believe your name gets blotted out. But that doesn’t fit the
other usage in the book of Revelation. Revelation 13:8, talking about the
unbelievers in the Tribulation period, says, “And all that dwell upon the earth
shall worship him [the Antichrist], whose names are not written in the book of
life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” The phrase “all that
dwell on the earth” is one that is used frequently and consistently in the book
of Revelation to describe the unbelievers during the Tribulation period. Notice:
these are those “whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb
slain from the foundation of the world.” These people are still alive and they
have the potential for being saved, but their names were never written in the
book of life and they are worshipping the Antichrist.
Revelation 17:8: “The beast [Antichrist]
that you saw was, and is not; and will ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go
into perdition: and those who dwell on the earth will marvel [the unbelievers
who succumb to his deception], whose names were not written in the book of life
from the foundation of the world, when they see the beast that was, and is not,
and yet is.” So again this indicates that their names weren’t written in the
book of life. A name only gets written in the book of life when one trusts in
Christ as their savior. So we can’t come back to
Revelation 3:5 and say that the blotting out of the book of life refers to
those who just didn’t accept God’s plan of salvation. So to what does it refer?
Revelation 3:5: “He who
overcomes, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out
his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father,
and before his angels. He who has an ear, let him hear
what the Spirit saith unto the churches.” “He who overcomes” is the participial
form of the Greek NIKAO [nikaw],
the verb related to the noun NIKE [nikh],
the Greek goddess of victory. The word means victory or success. The verb means
to overpower, to gain victory, to win in a contest, to overcome challenges. So
it has the idea of victorious ones, those who are victorious in a contest. We
are to be victorious in the Christian life, but the very fact that we can be
victorious does imply the fact that we may fail. Even Paul, in 1 Corinthians 9,
said that he beat his body daily into submission to make sure that he would not
be disqualified; not that he would lose salvation but in clear recognition that
in running the race and entering the contest he could fail. It is not that he
would lose his salvation but he would lose the blessing, the rewards that would
be his for being a victorious contestant in the spiritual life race.
We have to remember when we
study things like this that there are three phases to salvation. The first
phase is justification, when we are freed from the penalty of sin. Justification
passage has to do with getting saved, and the solution there is not to “remember
how you received and heard,” the solution there is to believe that Jesus Christ
died on the cross for your sins. Phase two is the spiritual life which is lived
by applying the Word of God and we become free from the power of sin. Then phase three, we are glorified, we are freed from he presence
of sin.
When we come to this question
of identifying the overcomer we have to recognize that there are these two
views: a) that every believer is an overcomer; b) that only believers who are
advancing in the Christian life are overcomer believers. So there are two
classes of believers, and we see this in 1 Corinthians chapter three which
describes the judgment seat of Christ: those who receive gold, silver and
precious stones, and those who receive wood hay and straw which is all burned
up. The latter loses rewards and they enter heaven, yet as through fire. So
there is one group which is rewarded for their works because they are done in
the power of the Holy Spirit, and there is another group that loses rewards but
they don’t lose their salvation.
The verse that people go to
that causes some problem has to do with a statement made in 1 John 5:4: “For
whatever is born of God overcomes the world: and The first thing to point out
here is that this passage is talking about overcoming the world. That is not
salvation; it is not what occurs at salvation, it isn’t an overcoming of the
world, it is an acceptance of Christ’s payment for our sins. That is different.
Overcoming the world is a phase two issue, a spiritual life issue; not a phase
one issue. That is clear from such passages as Romans 12:2. This is the issue
after salvation, not for salvation. In 1 John 5:4 we have to recognize that
overcoming here deals with the object of the world, not overcoming sin, not
overcoming spiritual death, but overcoming the world. The problem is that there
is that phraseology at the beginning of the verse which says, “For whatever is born
of God overcomes the world,” and “this is the victory that has overcome the
world, our faith.” The faith that he is talking about there is not the faith in
Christ for salvation, but it is post-salvation faith-rest drill. That is how
you overcome the world.
The term “born of God” is a
perfect tense of the Greek verb GINAO [ginaw]
which indicates a completed action in past time. The emphasis in this verse is
on the present result of a past action, being saved. John makes a number of
similar statements as this in the Gospel of John that make it sound as if he is
talking about salvation. But what he is talking about from his perspective is
that he doesn’t conceive of a Christian who is living a disobedient life. He is
thinking only in terms of a Christian who is operating on those divine assets. Cf.
1 John 2:29; 3:9. A lot of people see that as if you have been regenerated you
can’t sin. We can either conclude as some do that genuine born again believers
practice righteousness, don’t sin, love everybody, and can’t sin, or, what John
is saying is that only a regenerate person can practice righteousness, not sin,
love their brothers, but not all who are born again will practice righteousness,
avoid sin, love their brother. What he is saying is that only a born again
believer can do these things. They might not, but they are the only ones who
can. That is the only logical conclusion we can come to. In that, he is saying
that only the regenerate can overcome the world. That is what 1 John 5:4 says. But
not all regenerate people overcome the world. If all regenerate people
automatically overcome the world as part of positional truth, or even experiential
truth, then 1 John 2:15 would not make sense. “Love not the world, neither the
things that are in the world. If any man love the
world, the love of the Father is not in him.” That is a prohibition levelled at
every born again believer, and he is saying don’t love the world. Love not the
world, neither the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the
love for the Father is not in him. If you are already saved and therefore you
have overcome the world,
why would John come back and say don’t love the world? Overcoming
the world is a post-salvation issue. That is what Romans 12:2 is about. Don’t love the world nor the things in the world. In other
words, when you are out of fellowship you are loving
the world; when you are in fellowship walking by the Spirit you are loving the
Father. It is either one or the other. The contrast is between one who loves
the world and one who loves the Father. They are mutually exclusive.
1 John 2:3: “And hereby we do
know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.” A lot of people thing that
knowing Him is being saved. We are so sloppy as
evangelicals, we take biblical phrases and invest them with different meanings.
The phrase “knowing Jesus” is never used as a statement of salvific
relationship in thew Bible. Example: 1 John 2:4: “The one who says, I have come
to know him [perfect tense], and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and
the truth is not in him.” The problem with interpreting this as referring to
someone who is not saved is that in John 14:9 we have the same terminology: “Jesus
saith to him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet you have not known me,
Philip?” This is the perfect tense of the same verb. So Philip is saved but he
doesn’t know Jesus. He recognized Him but he doesn’t have that mature
relationship. That is what knowing God is all about in these verses. In John 13
Jesus has made it clear that all the disciples were saved, except one—Judas,
not Philip. “By this we know that we have come to know him” is referring to
that post-salvation process of spiritual life—not entry into the life but the
ongoing experience of the life. How do you know that you are growing and
maturing as a believer? Because you keep His commandments; you are obedient. Our
love for God matures as we grow. Overcoming the world in the context of John’s
usage can only refer to what happens after salvation: learning to conform our
thinking to divine viewpoint and not human viewpoint, and the modus operandi,
the mechanic, the skill, is what? Faith: trusting God, not salvation promises
but the other promises that God gives in Scripture, and as we learn to walk by
faith, walking by means of the Holy Spirit, we advance to maturity. That is an
overcomer.
But there’s a problem. People
point out that the word “overcomer” refers to all believers in Revelation chapter
21:7, 8: “He who overcomes shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and
he shall be my son. But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually
immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake
which burns with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” See, you have
one group who ends up in the lake of fire, people say, and the other group has
to end up in heaven. So overcomers here refer to those who are saved? Not if
you understand the Greek. This passage isn’t talking about getting eternal
life, it is talking about inheritance: “He who overcomes shall inherit.” The
overcomer gets and inheritance. The non-overcomer loses his reward at the
judgment seat of Christ. He doesn’t get an inheritance. “…shall have their part
in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone.” In English we think of the
word “part” as a role. E.g. Did you get that part in
the play? But that is not what the underlying Greek word means. The Greek word
is MEROS [meroj], a word which is a
technical legal term in Greek legal literature in wills,
a last will and testament. It has to do with inheritance rites. The cowardly, unbelieving,
abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars,
shall have their inheritance in the lake
which burns with fire and brimstone…” In other words, their inheritance, their
rewards that they lost in 1 Corinthians 3 end up in the lake of fire. It is not
that they, the individual ends up in the lake of fire, it
is that their rewards end up in the lake of fire.
Inheritance is not entry into
the kingdom, it is ownership in the kingdom. This is
the same issue with
Then the Lord says, “I will
not blot out his name from the book of life, but I will confess his name before
my Father.” This is a figure of speech where you understate something, the
negative, or state the opposite in order to emphasize a positive. It is not
saying that there was a possibility that their name would be blotted out. It is
simply stating in a very positive way that these overcomers are going to get
white garments and they won’t blotted out of the book of life. They are going
to be in the book of life for sure and they are going to receive rewards. The
contrast to this isn’t loss of salvation but adds on to it, saying, “but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his
angels.”
There is a cultural analogy
to this in that in the ancient world every citizen that was born into a city
had their name on the city roll. Those who contributed in a special way, those
whom through some sort of meritorious endeavour that had benefited the city,
would have their name inscribed in gold. That is the idea that is going on
behind this. Not only is the name not going to be blotted out but it is going
to be confessed before God. So it is not a statement indicating that a name
could be blotted out, it is simply understating the issue to highlight the
positive, that their name is not blotted out but is indeed confessed and
praised before everybody.
The conclusion is, “He who has an ear, let him hear.” Don’t just hear, but respond.