The Victorious Life

A missionary convention was held in Rochester, NY, about eight years ago—the great Student Volunteer Convention that is held every four years, once in every college generation. Doubtless many of us who were there felt considerable satisfaction with ourselves at being at that convention. As we heard the wonderful addresses, and saw the vision of world-evangelization opened up before us, we felt that we were considerably beyond the rank and file of professing church members even to be there. We were “interested in missions;” we were not just nominal Christians, we were well beyond that. Some had gone at considerable expense of time and money. So it was a little disconcerting, in the face of that satisfaction, to be confronted as we were by speaker after speaker, with a certain question.

I do not believe there had been any agreement among the speakers to ask the question. I think the Spirit of God, unknown to them, laid it on one speaker after another. However, the hundreds of delegates there were confronted with this question: “Is your kind of Christianity worth carrying to the non-Christian world?”

After the question had been “thrown into” us hour after hour, and day after day, it began to “get in under the skin.” Toward the end of that convention some of us were not half so well satisfied with ourselves for being there as we had thought we were.

“Is your kind of Christianity worth carrying to the non-Christian world?” Not “is Christianity worth carrying,” but is your kind of Christianity, the kind we who were at that convention were living day by day in our homes, when we were carrying, at the expense of thousands an tens of thousands of dollars, across the oceans to the non-Christian world?

Some of us began to have pretty serious doubts as to the answer to that question, and so God brought us just where He wanted us. He brought us down into the dust, and the self-satisfaction of being “beyond the rank and file of ordinary church members” was pretty well gone; praise God for that!

I believe God wants us to face that searching, challenging query here tonight. Is our kind of Christianity worth carrying to the non-Christian world? Is it worth spreading even here in Chicago, the kind we are living twenty-four hours a day, sixty minutes an hour, sixty seconds a minute? Is our kind of Christianity really worth filling our Sunday-school scholars with?

May I suggest a few simple tests that perhaps God would like us to face here tonight in answer to that question?

What is our kind of Christianity? What is the kind we are living, not the kind we believe with our heads, or even with our hearts; not the kind we know is in the Word of God; but the kind that our lives are showing forth? For you know there is a kind of Christianity that is worth carrying to the whole world. There is only one kind; and that is the kind that Jesus Christ lives, and it is the only kind He wants any Christian to have. It is the kind that Christ Himself lives, not lived; but the kind He lives, right now, at this present moment, the kind He is living today. And that is the only kind of Christianity worth sharing, worth giving to others, worth propagating; and we can all have it. And not until we let Christ live our Christianity for us will our kind of Christianity be worth giving to anyone else.

In other words, “Christianity is Christ.” That is gloriously true. Our religion is Christ. It is a person. It is not merely a religion, it is not a blessing, it is not an experience; it is a HE, a person; and we can have—not it, but Him. But we cannot have Him as He wants us to have Him, until He has us.

I once heard Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman say at a great consecration meeting of the World’s Sunday School Convention, at which there were thousands of Christian workers, ministers and laymen, “God can never make a soul-winner of you until He has all there is of you; never.”

We can invert that sentence, and reverently say, “God can never make a victorious Christian of you, until you have all there is of Him.” It may startle us to put it in that way; but it is true. It is not meant that any one person can monopolize God. It is not meant that you can have all of God in such a way that your next door neighbor cannot have all of God; there is enough of God to “go round” for the whole world. But this is what is meant, that God, in Jesus Christ, offers us—not part of Himself—but all of Himself. How much of Christ, how much of God the Son, was held back when He went to the cross? Not one atom of Himself; He poured Himself out to the uttermost for us all.

God the Son, when He died on the cross, gave all there was of Himself to the world; and today He is offering us all there is of Himself, holding back nothing. So He not only wants all there is of you, but He wants you to have all there is of Him, and when you have all there is of Him, and He has all there is of you, I tell you something is going to happen! It is going to be a kind of Christianity that will be worth giving to other people, because it will be just Jesus Christ, in His fullness, as your life; and when you have Him in His fullness you cannot contain Him. He has to overflow, and others will know it; they are going to “catch” Christ from you. He is blessedly contagious, dear friends, when you have Him that way!

You will not have to be thinking, and straining, concentrating and working, to give Christ to other people then—you cannot help doing so. They will see Him in you when you are not even consciously thinking about Him; and they will see Him also when you are thinking about Him.

When your Christianity is worth carrying to the non-Christian world, whether that “world” is in a corner of Chicago, or a corner of the Moody Sunday school, or a corner of China there are three things that are true of you. You can remember them by the letter “F”; three Fs.

In the first place you are having, if your Christianity is Christ in His fullness, a new Fellowship with God. “New,” that is, as compared with any fellowship that we can have when we are simply nominal Christians, or fifty percent Christians, or three-quarter Christians. When you have Christ in His fullness, and He has all there is of you, you have a fellowship with God that no words can express. It is a continual fellowship. It is not for Sundays only, it is not only for a meeting like this one, it is not only when you are keeping your Morning Watch on your knees; it is all the time; just as much when you are doing the most commonplace, humdrum jobs in your everyday life, your fellowship with God then is just as sweet, just as satisfying, just as wonderful as when you are having the joy of leading a soul to Christ. Your fellowship with God is complete, is supernatural, is continual, unbroken.

I never knew what the meaning of fellowship with God was until one day seven years ago last summer, when, after twenty-five years of Christian life—sincere Christian life, too—God opened my eyes to the wonderful fact that I might take Jesus not only as my Savior from hell, as I had done, not only from the penalty of my sin, but as my life, my present life, my freedom from the power of sin as well as from the penalty. When Jesus Himself became my fellowship with God, I tell you, dear friends, I had a precious fellowship! Christ Himself has the most wonderful fellowship with the Father, doesn’t He? And when Christ is our life, “We walk with Him and we talk with Him,” and you the rest.

That is the first of these three things that come to pass when our Christianity is worth sharing. The second is this. You have a new Freedom from the power of sin. “If, therefore, the Son shall set you free, ye shall be free indeed.” You will be so free that God Himself could not add anything to your freedom. Your freedom is complete, unimprovable, perfect freedom, which enables you to say those words which, it seems to me, are the most daring words in the whole Bible: “As he is, even so are we in this world” (1 John 4:17). Not after we get to heaven—now. As God is, even so are we in this world. The miracle of the freedom that Christ accomplishes!

No man ever dared say that. God dared say it, because God knows what the blood of Jesus Christ can do, and God is satisfied with the work that His Son did, not only in paying the penalty of our sin, but in breaking the power of our sin. “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and of death” (Romans 8:2). It is a two-fold freedom now, sin not having dominion over us, because we are not under law, where we are unable to do it ourselves, but we are under grace, where it is all done for us (Romans 6:14); and "My grace is sufficient for thee," that same Christ says to us (2 Corinthians 13:9).

So you will have a new freedom; and that freedom does not need to be interrupted, or intermittent, or fluctuating—we have a freedom that is freedom indeed. And it is effortless freedom; freedom from the power of sin without working for it. What does “grace” mean? Work for it? No; grace means that God does it all. “The battle is not yours, but God’s.” “Be still, and know that I am God.” I had supposed (during those twenty-five years of wilderness-traveling out of Egypt, trying to get into Canaan, scared to death of the giants most of the time) that my only way of victory now and here over the power of sin lay in clenching my fists, and setting  my teeth, and nerving myself, and concentrating my mind, and using all the willpower I had as I said, “I won’t yield, I won’t yield; O, Lord Jesus, help me now, and I won’t yield,” and getting victory that way. But now, after twenty five dreary years of that kind of traveling, I had found that was not the way for a Christian to travel at all. That is not walking in “newness of life”; that is not the resurrection life as we may have it in spirit here, and shall have it in body hereafter.

When I saw that Christ was offered to me as my life if I simply “let go and let God,” then the victories became effortless so far as I was concerned. I stood by and watched Him do it. It was fun, the greatest fun I ever had in my life! To come into a room—I, with one of the meanest, lowest-down natural dispositions that you have ever known, irritable, snappy, easily losing my temper—and hear someone say one of those things that used to be perfectly good match, applied to a perfectly good powder mine; and then find to my amazement and joy that Jesus Christ, who was my life now, was “on the job,” and that I was positively laughing in my heart (I didn’t dare laugh out loud, because they would think I was making for of them); just to keep still and say, “Praise the dear Lord, He is working a miracle,” and without any effort, or clenched first, or set teeth, or willpower, to look with love shining out of my face at that person who had said the “irritating” thing—do you wonder I say it was a new experience for me, an utterly new kind of freedom, and that God did it all?

A man asked me one time, in an after-meeting where this subject was under discussion, “Where does any credit to us come in, if we do not have to use any effort in winning these victories?”

And I answered quickly, “It does not come in. There isn’t any credit to us at all in winning the victory. We have no merit in the matter. That is not what grace means. Grace means that the merit, the credit, is all God’s. It is all Jesus Christ. There is no flattering of our pride in this thing at all.” There is no credit belonging to a poor, helpless, powerless, wretched creature who is flat on the ground, when Jesus Christ comes and puts both His arms under him and lifts him up, and puts him on the throne in the heavenlies! That poor creature has no merit in this experience, nor do I have, or ever expect to have.

“If the Son shall set you free,” not, “If you help the Son to set you free.” He not only does not need your help, but He cannot set you free if you try to help Him. He must do it all Himself, if you are ever to have freedom and victory.

There is a third “F” God can give us, and that is Fruit-Bearing. If ye abide in me,” He says, “ye shall bear much fruit, for apart from me ye can do nothing.” The branch and the vine!

Though I had been a Sunday school teacher, and a Sunday school superintendent, and a personal worker, one who was studying my Bible, taking an hour before breakfast for my Moring Watch, who was “going through the motions” and had, for years, been trying to do the Lord’s work, still, I was seeing almost no results. Once in a while, to be sure, somebody “joined the church” because I asked him to; but lives revolutionized—I never knew such a thing as the result of my service until I had gone to God heart-sick, and hungry, and discouraged because there was no fruit-bearing in my life. Yet within a few months after God took the scales from my eyes and let me see that  Jesus was ready not only to be my Savior but my life—that it was God’s business to produce the fruit, and all I had to do was to be still and abide in the vine—He had let me see more fruit, more results in the way of revolutionized lives, through my simple testimony, telling what Jesus was able to do, than I had seen in thirty years before. There was a new fruit-bearing.

You can take “fruit-baring,” in either of two ways. In the once sense, it is the personal life—love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control. That is the fruit of the Spirit, that is a part of the life which Christ, by the Holy Spirt produces in the abiding Christian. On the other hand, we may think of fruit-bearing legitimately, I believe, in the sense of service: results in the lives of others, which is fruit that the Lord brings to pass through us—not with our help, but as we let him do the whole work, speak the Word and give the testimony.

So there are the three Fs that I believe you will all agree God intends shall characterize the Christianity which is worth sharing because it is Christ, and Christ is worth sharing; a new Fellowship with God; a new Freedom from the power of sin; a new Fruit-Bearing. Not one of these three things can we do of ourselves; and not one of those three things can we help God to do. It is not even a joint work; it is exclusively the work of grace—all three of them. They are done without effort on our part. They are done as only God can work. They are ours if we will take them. And they do not have to be taken gradually, either. The victorious life does not have to be taken gradually. Victory is not a growth, it is a gift.

I do not mean that we do not grow—God forbid! Don’t let anyone misunderstand that point. We do grow in a thousand and one ways after we have “let go and let God”; but we do not have to grow in victory over sin. We can have that completely and now. When I say “completely,” I do not mean we can have it now for the rest of our life; but we can have it now complete for the present moment. We cannot have it now for tomorrow; but moment by moment, we can have God’s own complete freedom from the power of sin; and we can have complete fellowship with Him; and we can have all the fruit of the Spirit produced in us at once. When we “let God do it all,” He produces all the fruit of the Spirit in us simultaneously. You do not have to think, “I am going to have ‘love’ today, and probably tomorrow, God will add ‘joy’ to that love, and next day, I shall have ‘love, joy, and peace, and by the following day, I shall have ‘longsuffering,’ and after a time, I shall have pretty nearly the whole list.” No, praise God, you can have love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control, all of them today; and we can have them all, all the time, moment by moment, the whole fruit of the Spirit. These are not the “fruits” of the Spirit, though often misquoted as “fruits.” The fruit of the Spirit is that entire wonderful list in Galatians 5:22–23. God does not cut it up with a knife and give it to us in pieces; He offers it all to us now.

All this is a miracle; but it will be done when God has all there is of you, and when you have all there is of Him. You know that those two sentences, “All there is of you,” and “All there is of Him,” are only another way of saying, “Let go and let God.” When you let go, He has all there is of you; and when you let God, He gives you all there is of Himself. Surrender and faith; that is all there is to the life of victory.

Have you seen those victory posters around the city? I saw one in Philadelphia the other day on my way to a meeting of the mid-winter Victorious Life Conference there; and I saw one of the same posters in Chicago this afternoon. The big word “VICTORY” caught my eye. Then I saw in smaller letters with it, “Save and Buy—for Victory.”

It is an advertisement of the War Savings Stamps. “Save and Buy for Victory.” I studied that sign curiously as I was walking along. “Victory”—that is what we are all after. But by changing some of the letters in that sign, you can change the words a little. Still using the letters S and B, let us say, not “Save and Buy for Victory,” but “Surrender and Believefor Victory!”

Notice the difference. “Save” means “hang on to,” but “surrender” means “let go.” And instead of “buying” for victory, this that we want is without money and without price. All you have to do is to “believe.” You don’t have to pay any price for this victory at all; it has all been paid for by the precious blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.

On the lower corner, the sign said, “Start now.” Why not? I don’t know whether the man who got up that sign ever studied his Bible; but there is something in the Bible that speaks of starting now, right now; “Now is the acceptable time.”

Have you joy in your life? Joy, you know, is not a feeling. There are times when our feelings are not happy, though we cannot account for it at all. We may wake up in the morning feeling dead and cold, and as though the Lord were a thousand miles away, and not be able to account for it by any known sin or feeling on our part; yet we can have joy in that moment of feeling dead and cold and even without any consciousness or realization of Christ at all.

You have heard this word of warning many times before, but it cannot be said too often, “Don’t confuse feelings with victory and power and the Christ-filled life.” “The life that is Christ” is not a matter of feeling. Our feelings, and the feeling of the most consecrated, Spirit-filled Christians I have ever heard of or met or talked with, are as variable as the waves of the sea. But, as Dr. Griffith Thomas said at our conference in Philadelphia, “Joy is not a feeling; joy is a fact,” and there is all the difference the world between a feeling and a fact.

Suppose you have made certain plans for the day, and have decided to clear up a lot of duties that have been piling up; you have wondered when you could get at them, and now you see a clear day ahead, and by nightfall you will have all these things done.

Just after breakfast, the telephone bell rings, and a neighbor asks if you can do this or that to help someone out. “Why, yes,” you say; and it takes an hour and a half to get that done.

Then another interruption comes. And another. All day long, the interruptions pile in, until by eight or nine o’clock at night you look back over the day, and you have not done a single one of those many things that you had so happily planned to do.

Are you at the end of that day, praising God with joy for His wonderful goodness in replacing your poor plans with His marvelous plans for you? Is your heart just overflowing with joy and gratitude for God’s unexpected goodness at the close of that day in which your plans were knocked into a cocked hat? Because if it is, you know what the Victorious Life is; and you have a Christianity that is worth sending around the world. But if not, there is something the matter. For joy never depends on circumstances.

You remember that Christian who met a fellow Christian and said, “Well, how are you getting along?”

“Oh, as well as I can under the circumstances,” was the reply.

“Under the circumstances?” said the first. “You have no business to be under the circumstances. It is a Christian’s place to be always on top of the circumstances!” And that is true. We are in the heavenlies, you know, seated there with Christ, above all circumstances. Our joy is a matter of Christ’ and Christ is never depressed by circumstances.

Nine o’clock that night, with your plans all upset, you may have the joy of the Lord; for He says, “Not as the world giveth, give I unto you,” but only as God can give. If you are trusting and believing Him at the end of that day with all your plans blessedly “spoiled,” you will be just as undisturbedly joyous as you were in the morning.

I must not go on with these things; God will go on with them for us the rest of our lives, if we will let Him.

Has every one of us surrendered absolutely to the Lord Jesus Christ? That is all we can do after we have accepted Jesus as our Savior. I hope there is no one here has not done that. Is there anyone here who has not accepted Jesus Christ and His shed blood as their Savior? If there is, right now take Him into your heart as your Savior from sin.

But after we have done that, we cannot go on into this life we have been speaking of until we say, “Now, Lord, you have saved me from the penalty of my sin, and I want you to have all there is of me. I put myself into your hand’s, and am ready to have your whole will done in my life at every point, no matter what it costs.”

Have you all said that to him? I know that some have. I pray that all of you have let go entirely, giving him all that you are, and all that you have, your plans, your money, your ambitions, your loved ones—everything. And how long does Christ delay in doing His duty? Not a fraction of a second. The instant we have let go, the Lord Jesus Christ will take our load for us, and do the rest. So there is nothing to do, after you surrender, but to say, “Thank you, Lord; I have done my little part; now I thank you, I praise you, that you are doing your big part.” That is faith. That is simply recognizing that His grace is (not “will be”) sufficient now.

I have heard so many Christians on their knees seeking for all this, and praying, “Now Lord, I know you are able to do this for me, and I do ask you to do it for me, in Jesus’ name, Amen”; and then they can get up from their knees and go on and live for another year or ten years and not have one particle of the blessing we are talking about. Why? They have only asked Christ to do it for them; they have only said, “He is able to do it.”

So over and over again, I have urged upon such seeking Christians, “Don’t get up from your knees yet. You have asked Him to do it. How long is He going to delay doing what He promises? Now won’t you thank Him that He is doing it?

And when they say, in half surprise, “Why, yes, Lord, I know you are faithful; I do thank you that you are working the whole miracle,” then the miracle takes place. We must put faith in the present tense. Don’t say, “I know you can do it, Lord.” Demons know that, but it doesn’t get them anywhere. Don’t say, “I know you can do it; I know you will do it”; but say, “Lord Jesus, I know you are doing it.” Then comes the life that is Christ.

Prayer

O, Lord Jesus, we do thank Thee that Thou art this present moment doing it all; that Thou didst break the power of sin as well as the penalty of sin on the cross, and art now on the throne, at the right hand of God, interceding for every believer, ever living to make intercession for us, Lord; and thy prayers get answered.

We thank thee, O, Holy Spirit of God, that Thou art right here in our hearts telling us about Jesus, and taking the things of Jesus and making them known to us, lifting up Jesus before us, satisfying us with Him; and so, Lord Jesus, as we do let go, oh, if there is anyone in this room who as yet has not surrendered, wilt Thou lovingly deal with that one! Do not give those of us, who have not surrendered everything, any peace, any rest, until they have let go all things that are hurting and hindering their lives and keeping them out of their liberty and freedom, and have surrendered. Lord Jesus, bring them to a full surrender here and now.

And if there is anyone here who somehow has not realized how simple it is, wilt Thou now, as no man’s wisdom can do it, show them that Jesus is doing it all; that His grace is sufficient.

We ask Thee to work this miracle. It is a miracle, to take the blindness from our blind eyes and show us Jesus; but Lord Jesus, we do say in our hearts this moment, “We thank Thee that Thou art meeting all our needs now, because Thy grace is sufficient for us.” In Thy dear Name, Amen.

Stenographically reported on January 26, 1918, Sunday school Teachers’ Meeting at The Moody Church.