Victory Comes Only with God’s Help

The lawgiver likewise warns us not to be puffed up by our victories over them. He says: “Lest, after you have eaten and are full, and have built fine houses and live in them, and have herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, and plenty of gold and silver and of everything, your heart be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, and who led you through the great and terrible wilderness.” Solomon also says in Proverbs: “When your enemy falls, do not be glad, and do not be lifted up at his ruin, lest the Lord see it and be displeased, and turn his anger away from him.” That is, lest he see the pride of your heart and stop attacking your enemy, and you begin to be forsaken by him, and so be troubled once more by the passion that you had earlier overcome by God’s grace. For the prophet would not have prayed in these words, “Do not hand over to the beasts, O Lord, the soul that confesses to you,” unless he had known that because of their pride of heart some people were handed over again to the faults they had overcome, so that they might be humbled. [a]

So it is good for us both to be convinced by actual experience and to be taught by countless passages of Scripture that we cannot possibly overcome such mighty foes in our own strength, unless we are supported by the help of God alone. We ought always to give God himself the credit for the whole of our victory each day, as the Lord himself instructs us through Moses on this very point: “Do not say in your heart, when the Lord your God has destroyed them before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ while these nations are destroyed for their wickedness. For it is not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart that you will go in to possess their lands; but because they have acted wickedly they are destroyed as you come in.” I ask you, what could be said more clearly against that impious and impertinent notion of ours, by which we want to credit everything we do to our own free will and our own efforts? “Do not say in your heart,” he tells us, “when the Lord your God has destroyed them before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land.’” To those whose eyes are open and whose ears are ready to listen, does this not plainly say the following? When your struggle with the faults of the flesh has gone well for you, and you see that you are free from their filth and from the ways of this world, do not be puffed up by the success of the conflict and the victory, and do not credit it to your own power and wisdom. Do not imagine that you have won the victory over spiritual wickedness and the sins of the flesh by your own efforts and energy and free will. For there is no doubt that you could not possibly have succeeded in any of this unless the help of the Lord had strengthened and protected you.