I have come to conclude that we Christians either live victoriously or we don't because we do not do what Jesus did. That may seem rather obvious, but I'm specifically referring to something that is often not even taught today.
In Isaiah 11:2-4 we read these words regarding the Messiah who would be coming to deliver Israel.
The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord.
His delight is in the fear of the Lord, And He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, Nor decide by the hearing of His ears; 4 But with righteousness He shall judge the poor, And decide with equity for the meek of the earth; He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, And with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked.
I've italicized two lines to emphasize a point. Jesus not only had the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD, but He also delighted in the fear of the LORD!
When we consider the many people mentioned throughout the Scriptures and we see their failures or victories, it seems that it all boils down to whether or not they were fearing the LORD at the time. I'm not trying to oversimplify things, but it would seem that the concept of fearing the LORD is an extremely important concept if it is something that Jesus Himself delighted in doing.
Can you or I say that we delight in fearing the LORD? I look back over my life at some of my faux pas and I realize that those faux pas exist because I had not been fearing the LORD.
In Job 1:1, 8, God tells us that Job "feared God and shunned evil." It appears that there is a concrete connection between fearing God and being able to live victoriously even though we continue to live in sinful bodies that are corrupted by our fallen flesh.
It seems that with salvation, God has given us a way to overcome temptation so that we can avoid sin. He put the fear of the LORD within us the moment we received salvation (Jeremiah 32), and it is our job to cultivate it as long as we live in these corrupt, mortal bodies.
When we cease focusing on fearing the LORD, those are the times we fail, often miserably. When we work from the perspective of fearing the LORD, victories seem to happen more easily.
Do you fear the LORD? You're supposed to and if Jesus delighted in it, we have no excuse not to fear God. When I say fearing the LORD, I am not referring to fearing God's judgment on our lives (Romans 8). I am referring to a growing, deep, profound, reverential awe and respect so that we become like Job, who in Job 40, realized that he could not answer God. After God had asked Job how He (God) had done things, Job's only response was:
Behold, I am vile; What shall I answer You? I lay my hand over my mouth. (Job 40:4)
Remember, this was from a man whom God labeled as "...blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil."
Job shunned evil (deliberately turned away from it), because he feared the LORD. That is the secret to living in victory for the Christian. We must cultivate this same fear of the LORD!