“[Jesus] humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name” Phil. 2:8-9
“Jesus is victor!” Johann Blumhardt heard these words permeate the air as two years of prayer culminated in a powerful deliverance. Blumhardt, one of the first Protestant ministers of the 1800s to begin a ministry of praying for the sick, developed a healing ministry that drew crowds from surrounding churches. One of these many people was a demonized woman who came for help and finally received freedom. When the demon was overcome, its scream of, “Jesus is victor!” could be heard up to a mile away. The woman’s deliverance led to an outbreak of revival, and for years after, Blumhardt would say that while there were many things about healing and deliverance that he did not know, the one thing he did know was that Jesus was victor.
The rulers of darkness have been disarmed and put to open shame (Col. 2:15), and Jesus has been exalted far above them all. Christ triumphed over the enemy through the cross, which is the very power of the Gospel. Athanasius spoke of the “marvelous and mighty paradox” of the cross in which “the death which they thought to inflict on Him as dishonor and disgrace has become the glorious monument to death’s defeat.” Jesus reversed the death blow and turned it into the avenue of His victory. By living a sinless life, dying on the cross in our place, resurrecting to a glorified body, and being exalted to heavenly places, Jesus effectively destroyed the works of the devil and set us free from the curse (1 John 3:8, Gal. 3:13).
After conquering death and resurrecting in triumph, Jesus declared, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18). Jesus has all authority in heaven and earth and the devil now has no authority! Jesus is the name above every name (Phil 2:9). No other name brings salvation. No other name brings healing. No other name makes darkness flee. There is power in His name. There is victory in His name. Whatever we may be facing today, Jesus is victor!
P.S. Would you like to celebrate the victorious, exalted King? We want to invite you to join us at our “First Love Retreat” in January 2024. It will be a time of rest and communion with our First Love, our King Jesus. We can’t think of a better way to start the new year and we hope you’ll join us.
Randy Clark, The Essential Guide to Healing: Equipping All Christians to Pray for the Sick, (Bloomington, MN: Chosen Books, 2011), 104. Dr. Clark notes that the story is told in Freidrich Zuendel’s The Awakening (Plough Publishing, 2000).
St Athanasius, On the Incarnation: The Treatise De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, trans. Sister Penelope Lawson (Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc, 1946), 19.