“Victory with Christ”. It sounds like a battle cry, a fight, a competition. Is that Christ-like? District Apostle Urs Hebeisen from the Philippines is the first contributor to our series on this year’s motto.
When you google “victory” on the Internet you get around 388,000,000 results within seconds. It must be an important word. Indeed, victory is part of life. The desire to be victorious starts with the first breath of life—the wish to survive and defeat death. It is a desire which is inborn. Everybody wants to be a winner. Nobody wants to lose or die.
A particularly difficult year?
Never have I heard a New Year’s message so clear and so true to the point. “Why did the Chief Apostle choose this motto?” the question was asked. “Does it mean it will become a particularly difficult year?” No, the Chief Apostle is just simply very realistic. That is what the New Year’s message tells us: victory over evil, over fear, and over ourselves. More realistic it cannot be said.
Life is a battle, always was. Life always fights against death. It is natural, and this has been the case ever since the first human beings had to leave Paradise and the perfect conditions of life God had created there. Victory was not needed in the Garden of Eden. Victory with Christ means to win eternal life.
A motto with many aspects
Every minister who has conducted divine services since the beginning of the year has probably referred to the new motto in the sermon in one or the other way. And each time a new aspect is awakened.
- “Victory with Christ” means to fight the same fight which Christ was fighting, in other words, overcoming ourselves.
- “Victory with Christ” simply means to do the will of God.
- “Victory with Christ” means to wash one another’s feet.
- “Victory with Christ” means to recognize the nature of the spirits, whether they are of God (1 John 4: 1)
- “Victory with Christ” means: we know that He who is in us is greater than He who is in the world (1 John 4: 4).
- “Victory with Christ” is thus to trust in God.
That is a list which is unending and I am already curious what the Holy Spirit will awaken in the next divine service. Divine service? That is also a victory with Christ.
Finishing the race
Let us go for it and fight with the weapons of Christ: weapons which always win and never hurt. We will make small victories on our way as a sign of progress, and this evolutionary process will lead us to the goal.
The words of Christ on the cross: “It is finished,” were Jesus’ words of victory over evil. Or think of Paul’s valedictory: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness” (2 Timothy 4: 7, 8). Wishing all a year of many victories.