“I have overcome the world…”

That sounds good, right? The lame can walk, the blind can see, people saved from the brink of drowning? You could see how the author of Proverbs poetically described those longings fulfilled in these people “a tree of life.”

Who wouldn’t want that? Sure, of course we would. But how do we find ourselves in these stories? How do we find our own hearts buttressed, rescued? What does “take heart” mean for us?

Jesus gives us a five-word single answer, tacked onto the end of the sentence, five words that set the earth back on its proper axis.

“I have overcome the world.” I have captured your foe. I have defeated the one who dared to bring you harm. Because I have loved you from all time, I have destroyed your Enemy and mine. Or, in the words of Paul, “When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Colossians 2:13-15, NIV).  

“I have overcome the world.” I have captured your foe. I have defeated the one who dared to bring you harm. Because I have loved you from all time, I have destroyed your Enemy and mine.

Jesus does something we never expected with the weight of trauma and suffering – our trauma and suffering. He broke the teeth of death, the sting of the grave. He is reversing by the invasion of the Kingdom the losses we’ve endured, healing the injuries, closing the wounds, soothing the agonizing cuts. Yes, bones still break in this world. Abuses still happen. We taste the bitterness of tears and the heartsickness of longing for rescue when long nights turn into years and still we seem to be left alone in the dark. Yes, death still seems to get the final word for us all. And yet, the inbreak of the Kingdom has happened. Jesus has made a mockery of the Enemy and given us Himself in the midst of the suffering, until all death is finally and forever “swallowed up in life” (2 Corinthians 5:4).

In doing this, He transforms our suffering. He lets it be a united endeavor with Him, a collaboration of bringing the Kingdom through our own choice to love in vulnerability by entering into the broken places of this world and overcoming it at His side. 

In the slow healing and transformation of his own agony of loss, Wolterstorff came to understand that “…we all suffer. For we all prize and love; and in this present existence of ours, prizing and loving yield suffering. Love in our world is suffering love. Some do not suffer much, though, for they do not love much. Suffering is for the loving. This, said Jesus, is the command of the Holy One: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ In commanding us to love, God invites us to suffer.”

I can imagine Jesus saying to us, “Let me garrison you, dear heart. I will be your Safeguard, your Protector. I will barricade you with my Presence. I will shelter you with my scarred hands. Day is coming. Dawn is already rising in the East. I have counted every tear. I have held every broken piece of your fragmented heart, and I Am here to return the lost years, restore the losses, recover Your heart, provide the fulfillment of every ache and yearning of soul. And now come, join me in loving this world back to life, bit by bit, until the day dawns and the Morning Star rises in your heart.”