The Nike Formula
1 John 5:1-5
Get Real: A Study of 1 John
Sermon #21
Long before the Nike symbol, that orange swoosh, became one of the most recognized logos in the world, Nike was a household word in an ancient time and culture. You may remember that in Greek mythology, Nike, was the goddess who personified triumph. The Greek word Nike means victory.
Today the Nike company advertises that if we run hard or play our guts out and do it consistently, we’ll be winners…victorious. Obviously, wearing their shoes and apparel are part of the formula for victory.
Two thousand years ago the Apostle John wrote about Nike or victory? It wasn’t an athletic victory, it was a spiritual victory. It wasn’t a temporal victory but one that left a mark on eternity. And it wasn’t just for top, talented athletes, it was for every single believer.
Turn to 1 John 5:1-5 (page 864). Let me read verse 4 again, adding in the
Nike “ everyone born of God overcomes (nika) the world. This is the victory
(nike) that has overcome (nikesasa) the world, even our faith.”
For the first time in history a world series game is being played in
Colorado. A Sporting News article had this caption, “Pitching will decide the Series.” Really? So if one team has great pitching, they’ll win? No, while pitching is important, without hitting and fielding to support it, a team could have the best pitchers in the world and still lose. It’s not just one thing that wins, it’s a combination. Brett Farve could throw touchdown passes all day but if his D-line stinks, the Pack will still lose the game. It’s not just one thing that wins, it’s a combination.
That’s also true of the Christian life. It’s not just one thing that gets you the Nike, it’s a combination. Many Christians are looking for the one secret to a victorious Christian life. There’s not “one” secret, it’s a combination.
That’s John’s point in these verses. It’s not one thing, it’s a combination that gives us the victory. It’s The Nike Formula for spiritual success.
And we’re not playing on a team that will win some and lose some. The team we play on, God’s squad, has already won the victory. We just need to live it out and enjoy the victory already won for us. The great thing about being on God’s team is the fact that God is the one who has provided the victory for us, He is the winning pitcher, the outfielder with the save and He hit the game winning homeruns!
Did you know that God wants you to be a winner, a victor, a success, even a conqueror? He wants you to experience Nike. A key to victory is
The Nike Formula. All of us want to be winners and win at something that truly matters. We want to be victorious, conquerors. That’s what we want to talk about today. Winning at something that really matters, that has real, eternal significance. It takes The Nike Formula to have spiritual success. First, though, John first tells us what we need to have victory over.
1. Believers are in a lifelong battle with the world , “everyone born of
God overcomes the world”
(v. 4). The world is our enemy. Our text indicates we’re in a vicious battle with this world. Since that’s true it’s vital we understand just what the world is.
When I was a teen worldliness was basically defined as long hair on men and short skirts on women. It was externalism. But is that really what worldliness consists of? Many believers teach that conformity to the world consists in an outward conformity. And there’s an element of truth to this.
People who adopt the philosophy of the world often reflect that in their appearance. But worldliness is much more than just the way you dress.
Tragically, many believers these days don't even seem to be aware that worldliness is a sin. Some Christians are guilty of a causal playing down of the devastating danger of adopting the philosophy of the world.
When John talks about the world, he sounds the battle cry. The apostle of love speaks often of combat and victory. Worldliness is not merely blatant sin, it’s anything that diminishes our dedication, our devotion, and our walk with God. A good definition of worldliness is when sin looks normal.
Earlier John wrote, “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever”
(1 John 2:15-17).
The philosophy of the world demands my allegiance and in so doing, it crowds out my trust in Christ, my love for Him, and devotion to Him.
Worldly thinking cools my heart and makes the commandments of God burdensome. This is the field of combat for the believer. That’s why it’s such a threat. It produces trust in things. It makes us self-centered, classconscious, self-exalting, and self-loving instead of other-loving, Godloving individuals.
The world encourages us to take what we deserve, pamper ourselves, and amass material possessions, without which we just won’t be happy. The aim of the world system is to refocus our attention from the eternal God onto this temporal world. To be honest, all of us have experienced defeat at its hands. As we’ve struggled to follow Christ, we find that we’ve sometimes yielded to the world’s seductive sweetness. At times we’ve tried to live a self-giving lifestyle and found self-centeredness getting in the way. But thank God, we don’t need to despair! There is victory. John

promises,
“everyone born of God overcomes the world.”
By God’s power we can be victors, not victims.
2. God designed us for victory over the world
, “ “everyone born of God overcomes the world.” Williams translates this “every child of God continues to conquer.”
To overcome the world we need more than selfeffort. We need to become, by nature, overcomers. The strategy of General
Jesus is that is that He has given every believer an overcoming nature. This nature alone can undertake the contest with the world and can continue it.
The natural man wearies in the fray but our new nature is born to conquer.
It’s this new nature implanted in us at salvation that makes the difference.
The wonderful amazing truth is that we’ve been altered at the very core of our being. We’ve been turned, from a creature destined for defeat, into a creature destined for victory. We have been inextricably united with our
Savior, who has already overcome the world. And we begin to overcome by allowing this new nature to have its way in our lives. In our contest with the world we must learn to submit to the nature of God within us. We must choose to trust in God and claim the victory. Victorious Christians are to be the norm, not the exception. That’s because the victory is already ours in
Christ but this victory has to be appropriated to our daily experience.
Those born of God have nike over the world system they live in. They've won the victory and are to live as conquerors. Since John's friends felt nothing like conquerors, he reminds them that the basis of this victory is their faith in Christ. Jesus said,
“In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33). Christ conquered death on Easter Sunday when He rose from the grave. Anyone who's conquered death can conquer anything, no matter how big it seems to us.
Three times John uses this term “ overcome.
” That tells us that a real conflict is going on with the world. John uses two different tenses of the verb overcome.
The 1 st
and 3 rd
time it’s used in the present tense indicating this is a daily battle but the 2 nd
time it’s in the aorist tense, indicating that this is something that took place in the past and was settled once for all.
But just like in the World Series, the winning team needs pitching, hitting and fielding. John gives us several characteristics for the Nike believer,
The Nike Formula . a) Only Christians can be victorious over the world,
“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God”
(v. 1).
“Born of God” indicate this is only for those who have been born-again. They’re
Christians. This phrase is only found in 1 John and it occurs 6 times in the book. The word literally means, “ procreate
” and speaks of the life one has received from their parents. To be
“born of God”
means we have received life from God. While our physical life is received from our parents, spiritual life only comes from God. It’s what Jesus was talking about in
John 3 when he told Nicodemus that he needed to be
“born again.”
To have spiritual life, one must have a second birth and be born from above.
He/she must receive life from God. But the lost can’t overcome the world because they’re slaves to this world. Peter calls them “slaves of depravity”
(2 Pet. 2:19). Yet because we’re Christians (little Christs), this world is a conquered foe.
We’re told that there was a soldier in the army of Alexander the Great who was not acting bravely in battle. When he should have been pressing ahead, he was hanging back. The great general approached him and asked,
“What’s your name, soldier?” The soldier replied, “My name, sir, is
Alexander.” The general looked him straight in the eye and said firmly,
“Soldier—get in there and fight—or change your name!”
What’s our name?
“Children of God” — the born-again ones of God.
Alexander the Great wanted his name to be a symbol of courage, our name carries with it assurance of victory. To be born of God means to share
God’s victory. It’s an essential part of The Nike Formula that you must be in the family to have the victory. b) Belief is essential for spiritual victory ,
“Everyone who believes that
Jesus is the Christ is born of God (v. 1a)…
Only he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God”
(v. 5b). Throughout this letter John has stated that only the true child of God can really believe the truth about Christ. Remember
John is not talking about belief in the sense of mere intellectual assent to a bunch of facts but about a life changing belief or trust.
If an usher handed me a note right now and I stopped in the middle of this sermon and said, “Everyone get out now! Someone has planted a bomb in this building!” If you sat there on your duff and said, “Scott said it, I believe it,” that’s not real belief. Real belief would mean you nearly break your neck to get out of here.
Part of our difficulty is that there just is not an adequate English word for believes or the Greek word pisteuo
. It’s usually rendered believe but that weakens it, in that we take it to mean mere intellectual assent. Pisteuo actually means to trust, to commit. That kind of trust in Jesus is essential for spiritual victory. Saving faith not only intellectually accepts but it actively commits itself to the fact that Jesus is the Christ. Jesus refers to
His humanity and the incarnation and Christ refers to His deity and that he conquered death.
It’s an essential part of The Nike Formula that you must believe or trust to have the victory.
c) Loving the Father and His children is essential for spiritual victory,
“everyone who loves the father loves His child as well. This is how we know that we love the children of God” (vss. 1b-2a). The pagan Greek writer Lucian (A.D. 120-200) upon observing the warm fellowship of

Christians wrote,
“It is incredible to see the fervor with which the people of that religion help each other in their wants. They spare nothing. Their first legislator [Jesus] has put it into their heads that they are brethren.”
Jesus not only put it in our heads but also in our hearts. We’re a family. We have a relationship one with another in Christ. With this relationship there comes responsibility. As John repeatedly states, we’re to love one another.
Historian and author Stephen Ambrose wrote
“Band of Brothers”
which later became a television mini-series. It’s the story of Easy Company, the
506 th
Regiment of the 101 st
Airborne, from their rigorous training in
Georgia in 1942 to their disbanding in 1945. In his book he takes his readers through World War II with Easy Company as they parachute into
France, early D-Day morning and knock out a battery of four 105 mm cannons looking down on Utah Beach; into Holland during the Arnhem campaign, Bastogne, the Battle of Bulge and when they captured Hitler’s
Bavarian outpost, his Eagle’s Nest at Berchtesgaden. They were men that in training and combat learned selflessness and found the closest possible brotherhood they ever knew. They discovered in war that men who loved life would give their lives for them. As brothers and sisters in Christ we are and are to be a “Band of Brothers and Sisters.” It’s a family life that results in love for one another. John’s point is that love for God and love for His children are inextricably bound together. If you love the Father, you must love the child born of Him. You can’t divorce the first and the second great commandments. While you should have feelings of love for God and for
His children, feelings are not the basis of such love. As we’ve seen, biblical love is primarily a self-sacrificing commitment to seek the other person’s highest good. This love doesn’t spring from seeing something loveable in the person but from our mutual paternity. Loving the Father and His family are essential for spiritual victory. d) Obedience to God’s Word is essential for spiritual victory,
“by loving
God and carrying out His commands. This is love for God: to obey His commands. And His commands are not burdensome” (vss. 2b-3).
A lady went to the Post Office to mail a gift to a friend. The clerk looked at the package and said, “Is there anything breakable in here?” The woman responded, “Yes, there’s a Bible with all its commands in that box.”
John uses the word “ commandments ” three times. He’s not saying that believers obey God perfectly, rather he’s looking at the overall direction of our lives. A Christian’s life should be marked by obedience out of a heart of love for God. When a child of God sins, he confesses his sin so that he can be restored to fellowship with God. Someone who claims to be born again yet is unconcerned about a lifestyle of disobedience to God’s Word, should examine themselves to see if they really are in the faith.
John adds an uplifting phrase at the end of vs. 3,
“And His commands are not burdensome.”
He doesn’t mean obedience to God’s commandments is always easy or effortless. The warfare terminology of “ overcoming
” and
“ victory
” shows that obedience is often a battle.
First, God’s commandments are not burdensome because we have a new nature that has the power to obey God.
That’s the implication of the word “ for
” at the beginning of verse 4. God’s commandments are not burdensome because “whatever is born of God overcomes the world.”
“
Whatever
” focuses on our new nature that overcomes the world. John’s not emphasizing “the victorious person,” but “the victorious power.” It’s not the man, but his birth from God, which conquers.
Then, God’s commandments are not burdensome because they are the commands of God, not of man.
Man’s commandments are burdensome.
Invariably they stem from an attempt to earn standing with God or status before men through some system of human works. God’s commandments come from an all-wise, loving heavenly Father, designed for our good. Our gentle Savior said,
“My yoke is easy and My burden is light”
(Mt. 11:30).
Finally, God’s commandments are not burdensome because they are given and received in the context of love.
A loving father does not tell his child to stay away from a busy street because he wants to take away his fun but because he loves him and wants to protect him from injury or death. An immature child may think that his father’s commandment is restrictive, but he needs to trust his father’s love and obey anyway. An immature believer may view God’s commands as restrictive, but our heavenly Father knows that sin will damage and destroy us. If we have come to know His love in
Christ through the new birth, then we must trust His love and obey His commandments. When we see that God’s commands stem from His love for us as His children, they’re not burdensome. You can’t plug into His power if you are not living in obedience.
Obedience to God’s Word is part of the Nike Formula and essential for spiritual victory .
e) Faith is essential for spiritual victory, “This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith” (v. 4b). One old writer said, “Faith is the foot of the soul; so it comes to Christ. Faith is the hand of the soul; so it receives Christ. Faith is the arm of the soul; so it embraces Christ. Faith is the eye of the soul; so it looks upon Christ. Faith is the mouth of the soul; so it feeds on Christ. Faith is the lips of the soul; so it kisses Christ.” F.B.
Meyer said,
“Unbelief puts our circumstance between us and God, but faith puts God between us and our circumstances.”
Friend, whatever the circumstances, choose to trust God. Sometimes that means you’ll have to take a risk. Faith is not walking only where you can see the way.
Vance Havner used to tell of an elderly lady who was greatly disturbed by her many troubles both real and imaginary. Finally, she was told in a kindly

way by her family, “Grandma, we’ve done all we can do for you. You’ll just have to trust God for the rest.” A look of utter despair spread over her face as she replied, “Oh, dear, has it come to that?” Then Havner would say, “It always comes to that, so we might as well begin with that!”
Oddly enough while John uses the word believe some fifty times in his writings, this is the only time that he uses the word “ faith
.” John makes two critical points about faith.
1) Faith has a clearly defined object (5:1, 5). Faith in faith itself or faith in some vague, “I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows,” is not saving faith. Saving faith believes in the person of Jesus. Specifically it believes that He’s the Christ, the Son of God (5:5). To believe that Jesus is the Christ means that the historic person, Jesus of Nazareth, is God’s
Anointed One or Messiah, the One promised and prophesied of in the Old
Testament. He’s the one who would
“save His people from their sins”
(Mt.
1:21). To believe that Jesus is the Son of God means that He’s the eternal
God, the 2 nd
person of the Trinity in human flesh. The Jews of Jesus’ day clearly understood that His references to Himself as the Son of God were a claim to deity. When Jesus stated “My Father is working until now, and I
Myself am working” (John 5:17), the Jews sought to stone Him because He was
“calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God.”
Jesus responded to these charges, not by correcting their understanding as being wrong, but by affirming His equality with God.
John affirms that the purpose of his Gospel was
“that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31). To believe in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of
God, means that you entrust your eternal destiny and your right standing before God not to anything in yourself, including your faith, but entirely to
Jesus and His substitutionary death on the cross for your sins. You believe that He paid the debt to God that you owe. Your faith rests completely upon the person and work of Jesus Christ.
Faith has a clearly observable result, overcoming the world (5:4, 5).
Three times John mentions “overcoming the world.” It’s warfare or battle language. The Christian life is an armed combat against the enemy of our souls. The emphasis is not on our faith, but on the object of our faith, Jesus
Christ. If we put the emphasis on our faith, we take away from God what is really His.
John’s point is that the faith that God imparts to us in the new birth results in a life of consistent victory over the evil forces of this world. While none of us will be completely untainted by worldly influences or values in this life, John’s point here is the same one he made in 2:15, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” Those born of God should consistently and progressively overcome the world. The new birth is the basis of the Christian life. Faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God, is essential for us to be victorious.
Roy Laurin wonderfully summarizes this,
“the new birth gives us the potentials of victory, but actual overcoming depends on faith. The new birth implants within us all the necessities for overcoming life, but faith puts these things to work. It takes birth plus faith. It takes power plus personality. This means that both God and man must work together. God does not do it all for us nor can we do it all for ourselves.”
A schoolboy, just a little kid, was constantly being antagonized by a big bully. This bully made the little fellow’s’ life just miserable. Every day he’d get out of school and here would come that big bully. One day he saw the bully and he took off for home as fast as he could. As he ran he looked ahead and there was his big brother, a senior in high school. He wheeled around right behind his brother, got a hold of his knees and then stuck his head out between his big brother’s legs, and said to the bully, “All right, now, come on, come on!” What a picture: little brother, big bully, big brother. That’s what we’re to do, come to the Lord Jesus Christ, our big brother, hide ourselves in Him, appropriate His conquest and then we can say to the world, “Come on, come on!”
Faith in Jesus Christ is part of the
Nike Formula and essential for spiritual victory.
Conclusion: Miss Jones, an elderly spinster, lived in a small mid-western community. She had the notoriety of being the oldest resident of the town.
One day she died and the editor of the local newspaper wanted to print a little caption commemorating Miss Jones’ death. However, the more he thought about it, the more he became aware that while Miss Jones had never done anything terribly wrong, she had actually never done anything of note. In despair, the editor decided to assign the task of writing the obituary to the first reporter he came across. The only one around was the sports editor, so he gave him the assignment. This is the result:
Here lie the bones of Nancy Jones,
Her life held no terrors.
She lived an old maid. She died an old maid.
No hits, no runs, no errors.
Let God do something substantial with your life. We’re in a violent battle against a godless world. Only Christians can be victorious over the world.
Belief is essential for spiritual victory. Loving the Father and His children is essential for spiritual victory. Obedience to God's Word is essential for spiritual victory and faith is essential for spiritual victory.
That’s the Nike Formula.
So choose to believe God. Choose to place your

faith in His miracle working power. Choose to take an active step of faith based upon your trust in Him. Remember, Christ has already won the victory. By faith we enter into His victory as we come to know Him better.
By faith we experience that victory as we allow Him complete control of our lives. It’s this overcoming faith which pulls it all together. It’s faith that makes the difference. It’s faith which causes it all to work.
Someone who works in the field of Chemistry pointed out that if you just mix hydrogen and oxygen, the well-known components of water, you get no reaction — and no water! But if you add a small amount of platinum to this stable mixture, things begin to happen rather rapidly. The hydrogen and oxygen unite and a chemical change occurs which produces H2O. Just as platinum is needed as a catalyst to achieve the desired result so each ingredient must be present in our walk with the Lord to pull together everything else we do. Our church attendance, Bible reading, prayer, and faithful deeds bring us to a place of victorious overcoming only as they are mixed with faith. We need to understand the "chemistry" of the Christian life. It’s explosive!
James Stewart said, “We are more than conquerors, not through our own valor or stoic resolutions, not through a creed or code or philosophy, but through Him who loved us – through the thrust and pressure of the invading grace of Christ.”
Jesus is our victory!
As you consider carefully what John says, you find that overcoming the world is more than a suggestion or recommendation. It’s the standard of the
Christian life. He clearly stated
“for everyone born of God overcomes the world” (v. 4). One who has been born of God will overcome the world. It’s not a maybe, but will overcome.
Victory is something that’s expected in the Christian. It is as Watchman
Nee called it, a normal Christian life. To live a defeated life and continually be overcome by the world is an abnormal Christian life. I once heard someone say that we live such subnormal lives that are abnormal that it has become normal. Being conquered by the world is not normal. Being conquerors is normal. It is the standard of the life we have in Christ!
Victory is our spiritual birthright. All we need for overcoming the world, we already have in Jesus Christ. The question is, are we drawing from this resource and resting in Christ for victory? As John reminds us, victory is the standard of the Christian life. Remember, we have a Nike Salvation but we must apply The Nike Formula.