5. Who are the overcomers?
Last updated 20 June'98
This is an unveiling of how God will bring about a Glorious Church that is without the stigma of sin and failure. Who are those who stand as the Overcomers for the body of Christ?
The Church is not your assembly of believers or mine......
We saw that the Church (see What Is The Church) is not a group of Christians meeting here or there but it is the Body of Christ. Only what is of Christ Himself, can be Christ's Body. Therefore only that which is of Christ can be the Church. Eve is a great illustration of the Church. Eve was taken out of Adam. Only that which was taken out of Adam could be Eve. So it is also with the Church as the Body of Christ. Only that which is 'taken out of' Christ can be the Church. Going on from where we left off in our article 'His Church', we see today the Church, sadly lacking in the expression of spiritual life. Yet in Ephesians 5:27 it states that Christ will present to Himself a glorious Church. A Glorious Church is a Church that is ruling and reigning on the Earth, exactly the same as Jesus is ruling and reigning from Heaven. From our earthly point of view of the Church as it is today, we may well ask ourselves, how is this ever going to happen?.
The Church is Christ in another form.......
To understand the answer, we need to have a very clear picture of the Church, not being ourselves but only that in us which is Christ. It is that part of you and me, which is made of Christ, that is the Church. Just as Eve was Adam in another form, so also the Church is Christ in another form. When Jesus died on the cross, He not only paid the price for our sins, He also gave us His 'self' (Himself). It is the 'self ' part of Christ which gives us our new spirit and causes us to be a part of His body.
The Real Church is born of God.........
This is that which is the Church. It is something that is wholly of Christ and it has nothing of us in it. We become a member of Christ's Body the moment we are Born Again of the Spirit of Christ. If we do not have the Spirit of Christ, we are not in the Church at all because we are not one of His (Romans 8:10) The material that comprises the Born Again Spirit in man is solely the material that is of Jesus Christ. It is in us now only by exchange and not by our change. It replaces the dead independent spirit we inherited from Adam through our natural birth. The new birth gives us a new Life that is dependent on God's Life. We receive a new Spirit with God's Life built in. This is something that Adam never ever had. Not only are we redeemed by the death of the Lord Jesus, we are also made alive unto God by receiving from 'out of Jesus' this new spirit that is of Christ. This is His body. The spirit of Christ in us is the real Church. This is that Spirit which has no relationship with sin. It has never sinned because it cannot sin. It is born of God and that which is born of God does not sin.
A New way of knowing........
Isn't it good to know that there is at least one part in us that is Holy and without sin!. This part is the Christ part. This part joined with all others of the same spirit make up the fullness of His Body on earth. That is the real Church! From the weakest to the strongest we are united in this one same Spirit of Jesus Christ. Our growth, as individual members is measured according to the content of revelation we have received from the Lord Jesus. The religious Christian's source of knowledge is his Bible, backed up by his thoughts. The Spiritual Christian's source of knowledge is his content of the revelation of Jesus Christ, backed up by the Living word of God. One is of the flesh, the other is of the Spirit. One gives mental knowledge to the head and puffs you up, the other gives Life to the heart, sets you free and causes you to grow. One tries to believe, the other knows.
What is this so called revelation knowledge?......
Revelation knowledge can only come from the Lord Jesus directly in the person of His Holy Spirit. Revelation 'knowing' does not require mental reasoning or understanding initially. It is intuitional.
Revelation is intuitional hearing and seeing, from which comes faith. Faith is knowing and this type of knowing is not mental but spiritual knowledge. We grow by what we know in our spirit. Growth is content and content is Christ within. Faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by the word of God. When God gives you revelation, God has spoken something new into your heart and you just know! .........I cant explain it any other way. This then signifies that you have heard the Lord speak to you and as a result you now know it for the very fist time. This has now become an extension of your faith. We grow spiritually by faith increase. The more Revelation you receive the more faith you have. The more faith you have then the greater is your content of Christ.
Only type of knowledge that is really beneficial to the Christian.......
Therefore, the only type of knowledge or knowing that is of any benefit to a Christian is the revelation type. Revelation comes in two main forms. The first reveals to us what the Lord Jesus has achieved on our behalf as Man. The other reveals to us what God has made us to be in Him as a result. Because of what He is for us, therefore so are we in Him. Everything that God has done with Jesus, from the moment of His death, He has done also with us. Because He died for us, we are included in His death. Because He was resurrected from the dead for us, we have received a new Life born out of Him. Because He ascended for us, we are also ascended in Him and seated in Him in heavenly places. Because Jesus is Glorified and has received back the Holy Spirit from the Father, we therefore, as a result of that fact, have the promise of the Father. Therefore we have His Holy Spirit.
Please not another Holy Book.......
When Jesus was Glorified, he did not send us the New Testament as another Holy book to be our life and our comforter on the day of Pentecost. He sent us His Life in the person of His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Life of God. It is His Spirit that He has given that is to lead us into all truth. Because the Lord Jesus has been glorified, we have received the promise of the Father. We have been baptised with His Holy Spirit; not baptised with His Holy Book! Every thing is because of His attainment, nothing is because of our effort. We don't attain anything but God invites us to obtain everything that His Son has achieved for us!
The Christian life is the faith life and Jesus is both the Author and Finisher of it. He will present to Himself a glorious Church because He has authorised it and He will complete it. Our part is simply to enter into what He has already provided. Yet how hard it is to acquire this in our experience because we don't really know Him! We need to look again at the purpose of God at creation to see the big picture and to understand that everything God has accomplished in Jesus, He has done for Mankind and that includes us. God never sent Jesus into the world to prove Himself as God. God sent Jesus into the world to be proven as a man. The Lord Jesus attained the throne on behalf of Man as our Representative. Today a Man is sitting on the throne, soon there will be many men sitting on the throne in Him. These will be they who are ruling and reigning with Him. These then are the Overcomers.
Our future position in the Kingdom of God is determined now while we are members of the Body of Christ. The whole purpose of the salvation of the soul, is one of pertaining to position in the Kingdom. The salvation of the soul has nothing to do with being saved from the penalty of sin. The salvation of the soul is to do with self denial by taking up our cross to follow Him (Matthew 16:25). Our soul is not our spirit. It is the outward faculty of our inner man. The faculty of our soul is composed of our mind and our emotions which are controlled by our will. We need to loose more of self so that we might magnify Him. We need more of His life flowing out of our born again spirits, to express itself in and through our soul, in place of self. We need to express His Life in place of our self life. Our emotional faculty should express 'His' feeling in place of 'our' feeling. Our mind should be governed by our will from our spirit and express what He has revealed. We need to know what is of 'Him' from what is of 'self'.
We need the Lord Jesus to act in His capacity as our high priest and dissect us internally with His Living Word as His sword of the spirit, dividing our soul from our spirit, so that we may know which is which. It is as members of His Body that He intends to encourage us to grow up into His fullness. Those who separate themselves from the religious thing and cleave to Him for revelation will grow and see themselves in Him and of Him. They will gain position and placement in His Kingdom by faith in Him alone. These are the Overcomers that will stand in for the whole Church as the new man created out of Christ Jesus, filled with His life, called by His name and bearing His likeness. Unfortunately, the history of the Church in experience shows clearly that she has not yet attained to Gods purpose, nor does she even really know Gods purpose; neither does she outwardly resemble His likeness. The Church so far has failed, she has not done her homework; she has not become what she was originally purchased to be; she has not taken up her responsibility, neither stood in her proper position. She may well have done much that has benefited man with the proclamation of salvation, but she will not have satisfied Gods heart until she rules and reigns with Christ on His throne! This is God's will for the Church!
However, Gods solution is not that every individual will attain to that kind of throne status, but that a minority group who represent the whole will rise up out of the Church. These are the overcomers as the man-child concept and principle of Revelation 12:5.
This is the same principle that God used with the Levites. Originally, all the Israelites were to serve God, but they failed Him. So God chose from all the Israelites a group who would stand for in for all. So also is it today with the Church. God is today raising up Overcomers to be to Him a people who will stand in for the rest and do the work of the Church so that His heart will be satisfied. The service of the Levites was counted by God as the service of the whole nation of Israel. In the same manner, the work of the overcomers stands for the whole Church. The principle of the overcomers is not that any talented individual or spiritual group receive crowns and glory at the end, but that they simply take up that position now (which the whole Church should take up but cant) and do the work of the Church, for and on behalf of the whole Church. What the overcomers achieve is attributed to the whole Church. What the overcomers overcome, will be accounted by God as for the whole Church having overcome. The whole Church benefits from the obedience and work of the overcomers.
The first overcomer was the Lord Jesus Himself, but many others will now be 'caught up' by revelation from the Lord, to see themselves seated in Him on the throne in the heavenly places. These will be those who overcome Satan as accuser by the revelation they receive of the cleansing power of the precious shed blood of Christ. They will declare testimony to the victory and achievement of the Lord Jesus, not just for themselves, but for and on behalf of the whole Church. They will also be the ones who have revelation from the Lord Jesus of the division of soul and spirit; and have chosen to loose their self life through co-death at the cross so that their souls may express His life in place of theirs. These are they that are not only just clean and bright, but also they are the shining!
Allow me to elaborate here. (1) We are made to be clean because the Lord Jesus has died for us and shed His precious Blood at the cross. There is tremendous cleansing power in the shed Blood of Christ. His Blood cleanses us from all sin! All means all. Large or small, few or many. Past sins, present sins and future sins. All sins are paid for in His one act of shedding His precious blood. Once for all. (2) We are made bright because we have His Resurrection Life in us. This means that we have Him as our our new nature and our Righteousness. (3) But it is not enough just to be redeemed sinners by being content that Christ has made us white and bright. God desires us to be more than clean and bright, He wants us to be shining as well. We shine when God sees the life of His Son radiating out of us. When we shine God sees a reflection of His own Likeness expressed from us. This means that our mind expresses His thought. Our emotions express His feeling and our will is in harmony with His will and we have become His friends. We express His attitude towards Saint, Sinner and Satan. Now this is the New Man out of Christ that God has worked long and patiently for. This is the overcoming Christian that God is after, and this is the one that will stand for God on behalf of the whole Church. When God decides that the Church has made herself ready, then it will be at that time when the overcomers have done their work on behalf of the whole Church.
Please note that to be an overcomer you do not have to be a spiritual giant. An overcomer is just a simple believer who is dissatisfied with the traditional teachings of the organised church thing and discontent also with his own experience of the Christian life. This has forced him to go to the Lord Jesus for the real Truth and the real Life. By the revelation he has received from the Lord Jesus, the believer now knows the truth. He knows that because the Lord Jesus has overcome sin, Satan, self and the World, he has also. Because the Lord Jesus has ascended to the throne, he has also ascended, because he is in Him. His conscience is continually being cleansed by the blood of Jesus and he has access to boldly be on the throne in Christ, and enjoy the presence of God without fear or condemnation. His conscience does not remain accused by Satan, but is cleansed continually by the precious blood of the Lamb. The righteousness of the Overcomer is Christ alone and never ever his own success.
His secret lies in his secret identification in Christ, because he now understands that whatever God has done with Christ, God has also done it with him. He is a part of Christ because he came out of Christ. He knows that because Jesus has overcome for him and on behalf of him, he has also overcome too. His strength is in knowing his new identity which is his new name. His new name describes who he is now. For example, my name is no longer say Bill Smith, that is my old name that relates me to my earthly parents who are from the geneology of Adam. My new name is Bill 'of Christ'. This new name now relates me directly to the Lord Jesus, who is of God. Can we see this?. When Jesus apprehended Paul on the Damascus road, He made no distinction between the Christians Paul was persecuting and Himself. He said, Saul, Saul why are you persecuting Me!
Jesus makes no distinction between the Life He has in Himself in Heaven and His Life in the Christians that are on the Earth. We need a fresh perspective for our future as Christians if ever we are going to rise up as overcomers. We need to accept our new Born Again status as God sees us and not as we see ourselves. God has included us all in the death of Christ on the cross, that in newness of life we might all appear identified in Him on the throne! God has made us to be like Him by installing His own Life in us. And right now He is Reigning and Ruling over all the Earth from His throne on High. So also should we!!
We are still on this Earth but we have His Life in us. His Life in us is doing the same thing exactly as His Life in Heaven is. The question is are we co-operating with His Life that is in us ?. The proof of anything we claim for ourselves that is of God, has got to come to us by way of our identification in Christ. We are not suggesting that any one of us is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself; but we are saying that we are a part of Him because He has given His Life to us to make us a part. He is the head, but we are His body. That which makes Him the Head of the Body and us the Body of the Head is His Life. We are both identified and united as such by His Life ie we are one spirit not two. That which makes us Overcomers is our identification in Him. Overcomers are those who are immersed in Him, not just saved by what He has done for them. Their life has become His Life and His Life has become their life. As He is in Heaven so are we upon this Earth.
