Losing Victory
by Jared Johnson
Don’t misunderstand why I’ve come...
... I didn’t come to abolish the law of Moses or writings of the prophets. No, I came to fulfill their purpose.
... No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again. This is what my Father has commanded.
... Even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many.
... Those who are last now will be first then, and those who are first will be last.
... My Kingdom isn’t an earthly kingdom. If it were, my followers would fight to keep me from being handed over to the Jewish leaders. But my kingdom isn’t of this world.
Jesus’s words above came from: Matt 5.17 and 20.16, Mark 10.45 and 20.16, and John 10.18 and 18.36.
There’s an element interwoven into Scripture's concept of “victory” that’s easy to overlook because of our humanity. Victory typically evokes thoughts and emotions of prevailing, vanquishing, beating-back and subduing an enemy. Let’s be plain about it – that kind of victory draws up some ugly pride from deep down in our human nature.
For God Almighty, victory is prevailing, vanquishing and so much more, but not for us.
He wins. We don’t. All we do is sit back and watch in awe as it all unfolds.
He reigns. We don’t, though He welcomes us as participants into His Kingdom oversight, like toddlers sitting on dad's knee as He quite competently manages His realm, with or without us.
He, by His mere existence, banishes all darkness and evil. We don’t. In fact, we often slip from our good intentions – or step away from them deliberately – and welcome darkness (Romans 7.14-25).
His presence so overwhelms that “every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue admit that Jesus, God's Anointed One, is king...” (Philippians 2.10-11). Nobody bows to me – and thank God for that!
Even Jesus, King and Master of All, reigns above all precisely because He set aside all His entitlements and privilege, submitted to each and every God-honoring demand made of Him, and voluntarily took last place behind every atom of Creation. Because of that, He can redeem and remake it all (Philippians 2.5-11 alongside Rev. 21).
No wonder Paul exclaimed over and again “Thank God!”
“Victory,” biblically, belongs exclusively to Yahweh, God-Who-Is-God Almighty, Father-Son-Spirit, who, in His infinite, longsuffering and generous kindness, lets us tag along for the ride.
Who wants “shotgun?”
We can’t lose sight of the fact that, in His infinite wisdom, our Good Father has both demonstrated and told us that “victory,” for us, is loss. We set aside self to be fully ourselves in Him (“take up your cross daily” Luke 9.23, along with Mark 8.34, Matt 10.38 & 16.24). If we put others ahead and ourselves last, He will place us appropriately forward. We accept that, despite all appearances to the contrary, we’re merely “walking dead” unless and until we find real life in Him. We give up our priorities for His. We strive to fulfill His expectations, not our own.
I have been in more than one setting when a Christian speaker gets animated, excited, shouty, exuberant and builds to a rip-roaring mic-drop: “In the end, WE WIN!” Everybody roars their approval. I cringe. Brother/sister-friend, sorry, “we” do not “win.” Again, let’s be plain: crowds roar their approval that “we win” because said speaker just reminded us of being insulted, sidelined, passed over and marginalized, and the appeal of “WE WIN!” comes from getting it over on those who had inflicted said pain. That’s not godly.
“We” do not “win.” We simply get to ride the victor’s coattails. If vanquishing death, sin and darkness is up to me, if it’s up to us, it ain’t happnin’.
“We’re better together.” It’s true. We are better as a Christian community than we are as individuals. And yet, you and I can both tell true stories that would fit perfectly in a book, Christians Behaving Badly. Names and dates change but humanity doesn’t. Scripture is a soap opera precisely because we are in it! Just run a quick mental list with me:
Sister-wives
Enslaved wives
Dude had a baby with his daughter-in-law
Treason
Sibling rivalry turned murder
Sibling rivalry turned slavery
Talking animals
Audibly talking and visible spirits
Political assassinations
Would-be assassin stalking a makeshift bathroom stall
Too many affairs to tally
Slaps across cheeks
Street-corner preachers bellowing “y’all gonna burn like twigs!”
Cowering monarchs
Pouting monarchs
Posturing monarchs mid-party with ghost-hands writing on a wall
People dropping dead mid-sentence while lying about their donations
Sham trials in some guy’s living room during the wee hours
It gets crazy! We know that God’s Word is not a sanitized, sterilized, stultified tome of “shalls,” “shall-nots” and “thus-saiths.” It’s a living, breathing, incisive, rollicking record of Divinity rescuing the likes of us!
Samson was a train wreck. So am I. Please don’t tell me any “Christians behaving badly” stories. I know enough already.
For you and me, brother and sister, victory is loss, my loss. When “I” win, something else breaks; someone else loses.
Jesus is enough. His grace is sufficient. We can, we must, trust Him to see His own victory through. We can’t latch on mentally and emotionally to “WE WIN!” as if our attention to victory will bring it to fruition. No, “The passionate commitment of Yahweh of Heaven’s Armies will make this happen!” (2 Kings 19.31, Isaiah 9.7, Isaiah 37.32).
He wins. He is king. Victory oozes out of every divine-but-still-flesh pore of His resurrected and scarred body, so much that He literally glows from it all while palming stars (Rev. 1.12-18).
Don’t we understand even yet (Matt 16.9)? His power works best in our weakness, so we take pleasure in our weakness, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions and troubles (2 Cor 12.9-10), because ultimately, He wins, and we trust Him.
