Will you please turn to 1 Timothy 6? We will read from verses 12 through 14.
Fight the good fight of the faith, lay hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called, and didst confess the good confession in the sight of many witnesses.
I charge thee in the sight of God, who giveth life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed the good confession;
that thou keep the commandment, without spot, without reproach, until the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Please turn to 1 John 5. We read verses 4 and 5.
For whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith.
And who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?
And finally, Romans 8. We read from verses 31 through 39.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth;
who is he that shall condemn? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Even as it is written,
For Thy sake we are killed all the day long;
We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Dear Lord, we do want to thank Thee for giving us this opportunity to be gathered before Thyself, to read Thy Word, to open our hearts, and to allow Thy Word to really sink deep into our hearts.
Lord, we do not want just to hear with our ears. Lord, we do want Thy Word to become life, operating, living, and working within us, that we may be transformed and conformed to the image of Thy beloved Son.
Do hear our prayer. We ask in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
In the very beginning, we said that what we want to do this time is to go back to the basics. And to me, eternal life certainly is very basic.
So we want to review, as it were, before the Lord, to see whether the foundation of our faith is sound, firm, and immovable. Because we certainly are living in a time when the wind is blowing, the rain is falling, and the storm is coming. Whether we are able to stand depends on how thorough our foundation is.
Eternal life is the gift of God. That is to say, after God has given us eternal life, He has nothing more to give, because eternal life is not something. Eternal life is a Person. It is the Person of the beloved Son of God, Christ Jesus our Lord.
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. Everything that God has is in that Son. So when He gave us His Son, He gave us all.
Thank God that eternal life is not something outside of us. We may think that when we believe in the Lord Jesus, our sins are forgiven and we have the assurance—the passport—to heaven. No, it is more than that.
Eternal life is God’s own life: His Son coming into us and dwelling in us. That is eternal life. It is the gift of God.
Now, do you agree with me, believers, that you have eternal life—the very Son of God, Christ Jesus, living in you? Can you think of anything more precious than that?
Furthermore, He not only comes and dwells in our human spirit to be our life; He also sends His Holy Spirit into us. The Holy Spirit is in us, managing, as it were, that life and taking care of that life, to see whether the life of Christ in us will really grow into fullness.
The purpose of God in Christ Jesus is that we may be fully transformed and conformed to His own image. Now think of that.
Because eternal life is a gift, and it is not a gift of man but a gift of God, it cannot be revoked. Once given, forever given. What a blessing that is.
But, dear brothers and sisters, oftentimes we think of eternal life and say, “Yes, it is a gift.” But we do not realize that when that gift is given, there is a calling.
We who receive eternal life, we who receive Christ Jesus in us—the very act of receiving Christ as our life—constitute a calling. So we find in 1 Timothy 6 the words, “Lay hold on eternal life.”
It is something that we should seize upon. It is something by which we should be seized. It is something that we should pursue after.
That call of God is the calling of being conformed to that life, being conformed to Christ. So it is not just something given and that is it. It is something given that is infinite, that is so rich, that God’s purpose is that we should be like Him.
That is a calling. And when we are able, by the grace of God, to fulfill that calling, it becomes our confession, our testimony, and what God has commanded us will be kept fully.
Then we go a little further and see the path of life. Every life has its nature, and with that nature there is a law, there is a way.
If you follow the law of that life, you grow normally and fulfill your purpose. But if you do not follow the law of life, you separate from it, and eventually death will come to you.
Thank God, this eternal life within us also has a law. That law is revealed in Romans 8:2: “the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” With the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, we are able to overcome the law of sin and death.
Now, this morning, we would like to fellowship together on this matter of the battle for life.
You know, as soon as we are born into this world, we begin a battle for life, because we are surrounded by death. Whether we are able to continue to live depends on the result of our fighting.
Unfortunately, no matter how we fight, there will be death. Why? Because the life that is in us naturally, which we receive from Adam, has been defiled, corrupted, and is fading.
So when you come to human beings, you come to human life. There is a battle going on daily, hourly, moment by moment. If you can overcome the death around you, you continue to live; you are healthy. But if you are not able to overcome the death around you, death will swallow you up. Sooner or later, that will happen to everyone.
But, brothers and sisters, have you ever thought that when God created us and gave us an animate life, a soul life, that we might become a living soul—would God give us a corrupted, faded, defiled life? Certainly not.
When God breathed His breath into our nostrils and we became a living soul, that is, we had a human life, a soul life. That life, when it was created, was neither sinful nor holy. It was neutral.
God did not create a sinful life in us. God gave us a life, but that life is neutral. It is neither sinful nor holy; it waits to become either holy or sinful.
That is the reason why you find God put the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. In other words, now you are created with a life, and it is up to you to decide what kind of life you want to live.
If you eat of the tree of life, then the very divine life will come into your life and transform it, and the ending will be glory—eternal life. But if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, if you want to develop yourself, the result will be death.
What happened in the Garden of Eden is critical. When our forefathers sinned against God, the Lord said, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”
As we mentioned yesterday, Adam lived hundreds of years longer than any of us. He begot sons and daughters, many sons and daughters. Did Adam ever die? But did God’s word come true? What died? His spirit died.
If the human spirit is dead, it has lost its fellowship with God, who is Spirit. That is the reason why, when we are born of Adam, we inherit a sinful life, a selfish life, a fallen life.
With that kind of life in us, already defiled and corrupted, certainly it is fading. We fight a fight with no hope. It is destined that we should die, because the very life within us is already corrupted and fading.
That is the situation of human beings. That is the situation of what we were before we believed in the Lord Jesus: no God.
But thank God, in His mercy—we deserve nothing—in His mercy He looked upon us, and He sent His beloved Son into this world to save us.
He gave us eternal life. He Himself forgave us. So now, brothers and sisters, we have eternal life.
Even though we are still living on this earth, surrounded by death, and even within us there is this sinful, soulish part—the flesh—which is corrupted, defiled, and fading, thank God within us there is a life that overcomes.
But when that life comes into our being, that life has a fight. Why? Because that life is still surrounded by all the death in the world and, even inwardly, by that sinful, selfish life that we inherited from Adam, which is also defiled, corrupted, and fading.
So there is death around us and death within us. But thank God, this eternal life that God has given us fights the good fight. It is a fight, a battle for life.
To an unbeliever, the battle for life is for physical life. They do not have a spiritual battle because they have nothing spiritual in them. But with us believers, we have a spiritual battle. In our whole spiritual life, we are battling against the death around us and the death within us.
Brothers and sisters, we are told here, “Fight the good fight of the faith.” Every believer, from the day he or she is born from above, is in the battlefield.
It is not a physical battle; it is a spiritual battle, because death is still trying to swallow that life.
Now let us look at the life of our Lord, He who is eternal life. He came into this world. He took upon Himself human flesh. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.
This is the first time that eternal life came into this world. When Christ was born, you know what happened to Him: Herod the king wanted to kill Him. The world would not allow that life to live, but God kept Him.
Look at the life of our Lord Jesus. When He was twelve years old, He went up to Jerusalem for the feast. He stayed behind in Jerusalem, and after three days His earthly parents found Him.
He said, “Why were ye looking for Me? Knew ye not that I must be in My Father’s house?” He was conscious that He was the Son of God coming into this world, and He must be engaged in His Father’s business.
But being a minor, He learned to obey His earthly parents. There He became a carpenter, and the Bible called Him the carpenter. He must have been a perfect carpenter.
When He came out into public ministry at thirty years old, He was baptized by John. John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance.
As a matter of fact, for thirty years He had lived without any sin. He had no need to be baptized. But He said, “Suffer it now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.”
That was God’s way with the world at that time: “Repent ye; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” So He took our place and went into the water, which typifies death—buried. But He came out of the water, risen.
You find the Spirit of God coming upon Him as a dove and dwelling upon Him. That is the reason John the Baptist knew that this was the Son of God.
Life had come into this world, and life began to be manifested publicly. What happened? Immediately, you find He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan.
In other words, there was a fierce fight going on. Satan would not allow that life to live; he would not allow that life to accomplish its purpose.
What is temptation? Temptation is an attempt to stir up the lust of man. When lust is stirred up, it becomes sin; and where there is sin, there is death. Satan tried every means to tempt our Lord Jesus.
Our Lord Jesus was tempted in all things. Whatever temptations of man you can think of, He had been tempted: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
Satan challenged Him and said, “If Thou art the Son of God, Thou canst do this. Thou canst satisfy Thyself. Thou canst show forth Thyself. Thou canst gain the world and everything.” But He would have had to fall down and worship Satan.
We all know how our Lord Jesus overcame all these temptations: by the living Word of God. He began His ministry with a fierce battle behind Him, and then He was full of the power of the Holy Spirit and began to minister.
When you read the accounts of the Gospels, do you sometimes wonder why it is that, when our Lord Jesus was on earth, it seems as if He always met people who were blind, deaf, lame, crippled, leprous, or even dead?
Wherever He went, you find all these signs of death confronting Him. There you find how life overcame them: how He touched the eyes of the man born blind and made him see; how He healed the man infirm for thirty-eight years and let him walk; how He even called Lazarus out of death.
You find it is a battle of life. He said, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on Me, though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth on Me shall never die.”
When you look at the life of our Lord Jesus, every moment it is this very life that is given to us. It is this very life that dwells in us.
When you look at the life of our Lord Jesus on earth, this is a battle—a battle all the way.
When He was crucified—no, as a matter of fact, you remember when He told His disciples, “I am going to Jerusalem. I will be rejected, condemned, and die; but on the third day I will be raised from the dead.”
You remember Peter, how he took hold of the Lord Jesus and said, “Lord, this shall never be unto Thee. Be kind to Thyself.” In other words, even His beloved disciple was used by the enemy to try to persuade Him from obeying His Father.
Our Lord Jesus, with spiritual discernment, said, “Get thee behind Me, Satan: thou art not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men.”
In the beginning, Satan tried to persuade Him from going to the cross. But later, when he found that he could not do that, he tried to push Him to the cross.
But no matter what Satan did, on the cross the prince of this world was cast out. The seed of the woman crushed the head of the serpent.
Through death, He entered into death, robbed it of its power, and came out victorious. This is the story of the life of Christ.
Brothers and sisters, the life of Christ is recorded in the Gospels not merely for a historical reason. The story is told that we may see what kind of life we have received.
Now, is that not amazing? We are surrounded by death, and as we try to live as Christians, the more we try, the more we are frustrated; the more we are defeated. Are you tired of living?
To the world, the gospel is, “You need not die; you can live.” But to the Christian, it is, “You do not need to live, because Somebody lives for you.”
Yet we as believers have eternal life within us, and we do not know how to use that eternal life. We do not know how to live by that eternal life. We are still trying to live by our old, fallen, selfish, Adamic life. No wonder our life is miserable.
The more you try to love the Lord with your old man, the more miserable you become. So I often say, a good Christian is a nervous Christian, because he gets very nervous about it.
If you are not nervous at all, it means that you do not mind. You are still living like the people in the world. But if you are really in earnest with the Lord, and you really want to live as He lived, you get nervous about it.
But we are still trying. Have we come to the point of seeing that the secret of a victorious life is within us, and yet we are trying to look everywhere else?
So, brothers and sisters, this eternal life that is in us is for us today. With that life within us, yes, the battle will be fierce.
Just as when our Lord Jesus was on earth, He fought the fiercest battle that the world has ever known, and He gained the victory. So we as believers will be faced with a spiritual battle, and we are fighting it every day.
But remember, this is not you or me fighting against the death around us. This is Someone else within you who fights. This is the reason why it is called the fight of faith: “Fight the good fight of the faith.”
There is no way for us to fight a spiritual battle except by faith. So what do you mean by faith?
Sometimes we think faith is something within us. The disciples cried to the Lord and said, “Lord, give us more faith.” Yes, we have a little faith in us, but we need more faith to do more things.
But the Lord said, “If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove.”
What is faith? Where does faith come from? Can we manufacture faith by ourselves? Sometimes we try to hypnotize ourselves and say, “I believe, I believe, I believe, I believe.” As we repeat it, we think that we do believe. But when the test comes, it does not work.
We have to cry out and say, “Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.”
What is faith? Faith is not something you look for within yourself. It is not there.
Faith is like an anchor. When the boat is under a storm and tries to steady itself, you may have the anchor in the boat. But if you keep the anchor in the boat, that boat will be shipwrecked.
You throw the anchor outside of the boat into the deep. You do not see it anymore, but it is anchored, and you are steady.
This is given by God. We are saved by grace through faith, and that is not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.
How does this faith come? We remember in Hebrews 12 the words, “Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith.”
We cannot look within ourselves to find faith there. We cannot even look outside, around us, to people, to get faith. No. Our Lord Jesus, He is the Originator of faith. It comes from Christ.
Not only that, He is also the Finisher of it. He is the beginning and the end of all things. If we want faith, we have to look away from everything and look to Jesus. When you look to Jesus, faith rises.
This is the fight of faith. So, brothers and sisters, in our daily life, as we are living among death, with death around us trying to swallow us up, how can we overcome? We can only overcome by faith.
It reminds me of a story. There was once a little girl, and she believed in the Lord Jesus. In her simplicity, she was so happy and joyful.
But one day a man came to tempt her and said, “Little girl, did you believe in the Lord Jesus?” She said, “Yes.” “Are you happy?” “Yes.”
“Well,” he said, “if Satan should come to your door, knock, and say, ‘I want to come in,’ what would you do? Would you put your whole shoulder, your whole body, against the door?”
“Well,” he said, “Satan is stronger than you are. He will push it open and get you.”
That little girl thought for a little while and said, “Now, if Satan came and knocked at my door, I would turn to Christ Jesus and say, ‘Lord, will You please open the door?’”
“So our Lord Jesus would go to open the door, and as the door opened and Satan looked at Christ, he would say, ‘Excuse me, I knocked at the wrong door,’ and he would go away.”
Now, brothers and sisters, this is the good fight of faith, because you trust Him.
Do not think that we can overcome. We cannot. Satan is much wiser and stronger than we are.
We overcome because of Christ. Christ in you, the hope of glory. Surely it is the good fight of faith.
Brothers and sisters, I believe that throughout our Christian life we are learning this secret. This is the principle. This is the law of eternal life, and we all have that life within us. There is no reason why we should live defeated.
Now let us try to apply it and see how it works. For instance, our sin nature.
Thank God, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all our sins. But though the sins have been cleansed, the sinner is still there.
So we find that even after we believe in the Lord Jesus, we are tempted and continue to sin. We do not want to sin, but unfortunately it happens.
Among Christians, there is the teaching of a second blessing—of uprooting the sinful nature in us. As a matter of fact, I was saved among those holiness people.
After I was saved among those holiness people, the founder of that group lost her temper in public. But they said, “It is not sin; this is just a weakness.” But I know it is not true.
Our sin cannot be eradicated. Our sinful nature will remain with us as long as we live in this body.
But thank God, He saves us not by eradicating the sinful nature so that you cannot sin anymore.
Now, it is true according to 1 John that he who has the holy seed within him cannot sin, because Christ cannot sin. But you still can sin.
So what did God do? If you read Romans 6:6, He tells us the secret: our old man was crucified with Christ, so that the body of sin might be done away, that we should no longer be in bondage to sin.
The picture is this: our sinful nature is the master; our old man is the steward; and our body is the slave.
The sinful nature within us, as a master, gives orders to the steward—our soul life—and the soul life tells the body to work it out. Then we sin.
What God does is that He uses the principle of isolation. Our sinful nature is still in us, but the old man was crucified. So the sinful nature gives commands, but there is no way through to the body. The body is unemployed, with nothing to do.
But then we have a new Master. Christ becomes your Master, and He re-employs our formerly unemployed body to be an instrument of righteousness.
So you find it is not by ourselves that we are able to overcome temptation. It is by isolating it from our old self and replacing the old master with the new Master, Christ. By that, we are delivered from practicing sin.
The same thing is true with our flesh. If we live by our flesh, the mind of the flesh is death; but the mind of the Spirit is life.
The Spirit fights against the flesh. If you read Galatians 5, you find how the Spirit within us fights against the flesh within us, so that we are not able to do what we should not do, and we are able to do what He wants us to do.
Those who are in Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts.
So, brothers and sisters, all along, if you apply this principle to everything, how do we overcome the accuser? Not by ourselves. We overcome the accuser because of the blood of the Lamb.
Because His life is in us, His life overcomes and swallows up death. Brothers and sisters, we are engaged in a battle daily, hourly, all the time.
But if we know how to fight the fight of faith—not depending upon ourselves, but totally looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith—then we will begin to overcome from victory unto victory.
You find the Apostle Paul, before he died, saying:
I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith:
henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give to me at that day; and not to me only, but also to all them that have loved His appearing.
So I want to conclude this with a shout of victory. You find Romans 8:
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us?
He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.
Who is he that shall condemn? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Even as it is written,
For Thy sake we are killed all the day long;
We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers,
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Dear Lord, we do commit Thy Word into Thy hands, and pray that Thou wilt make it clear and make it work in each and every one of our lives.
May Christ truly be the very life by which we live, to the glory of God and to His preciousness. Amen.
Would you just have a few moments for reflection on that? Then we will close.