your own thoughts, to forsake your pure doctrine for his
deceptions, you as a Christian are to resist the temptation,
remembering the blessings you have through faith received from Christ
in the Gospel; you have been liberated from darkness, blindness and
error; have learned rightly to know God; and have obtained the sure
consolation of grace and salvation, being aware upon what you must
depend in life and death. Why, then, yield to the devil, allowing
yourself to be robbed of salvation and eternal life? Why not much
rather let go every earthly thing than to deny the Word of God or to
permit this blessed consolation to be perverted, falsified and wrested
from you?

15. So, then, John says, "This is the victory that hath overcome the
world, even our faith." It is, indeed, saying very much for the
Christian faith to attribute to it such power over the devil and the
world--a power transcending all human ability. It requires an agency
greater and higher than human strength to triumph over the devil,
especially in the perplexing conflicts of conscience, when he vexes
and tortures the heart with terror of God's wrath in the attempt to
drive us to despair. At such times all our works must immediately sink
out of sight, leaving no help or victory except the faith that clings
to the word of Christ the Lord, believing that, for the sake of his
beloved Son, God will be merciful and will not condemn us for our sins
and unworthiness if we believe in him. Such faith as this stands fast
and gains the victory; neither the devil nor the gates of hell can
prevail against it.

16. The same is true in all temptations. Before we can resist and
overcome, we must have faith to believe that through Christ we have
remission of sins and the favor of God; that God gives us help and
strength to enable us to stand in the conflict and successfully resist
the devil, the world, the flesh and death; that we obtain the victory
by the divine power of the Holy Spirit, lacking whose help we all
would be far too weak to win. Without faith, we are under the power of
the devil and sin, being subject to them by natural birth. We can be
liberated in no other way than through faith in Christ.

17. That John has reference to faith in Christ is plainly evident from
his query, "Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth
that Jesus is the Son of God?" The apostle's purpose therein is to
make plain just what the true Scriptural faith is and what it