Victorious Christian Living

For the next several weeks, we will be studying the book of Joshua. Joshua is the account of God’s faithfulness in bringing Israel to the promised land. As such, the book provides us with many parallels to living victorious lives today!

There are many common points between our story and theirs. To begin with, the children of Israel were called out of slavery in Egypt to go into the promised land. Likewise as Christians, we have been called “out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (1 Peter 2:9) Paul, writing about baptism in Romans 6:6 states, “Fore we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin - because anyone who dies has been freed from sin.”

Another commonality our story shares with Israel’s is God’s use of a man to lead his people into the promised land. The name ‘Joshua’ and the name ‘Jesus’ are the same name in Hebrew. Interestingly, while Joshua lead the people of Israel into Canaan, Jesus leads us “over the river” into the promised land.
We would be mistaken to consider the Israelites crossing into Canaan as representative of our crossing into heaven. It is in fact, symbolic of our crossing over into the kingdom of God! As the Israelites crossed the waters of the Jordan, we pass through the waters of baptism. Many challenges await on the other side but God is with us!

The study of Joshua is an exciting study for us as Christians because like us, the Israelites faced many “battles” and challenges yet God was always there leading them to victory. The words of “We Shall Overcome” state that “we’re on to victory someday.” The truth of the matter is that victory is ours today! Because of our God, we can truly live victorious Christian lives!