Everyone loves a winner, unless of course you’re on the losing side. As “March Madness” ends, those who tried to predict winners and losers throughout the whole series are either celebrating or mourning the results of the actual games. If you back a winner in the World Series, the Super Bowl, or the World Cup, you party in the streets with your fellow fans. If your team lost one of these events, you skulk off and hope no one remembers that you backed a loser.

One afternoon, a couple of thousand years ago just outside Jerusalem, a man was dying. His body was torn and bloodied. He was hanging on a cross where everyone could see him. People walked by and mocked him. His followers and fans mostly disappeared from the scene, dismayed and defeated. All the forces arrayed against the man crushed him; they killed him.

Who would back such a man? Who in their right mind would want to even be associated with one so weak and helpless? While his accusers and captors went home to celebrate their victory, two men came to carry that beaten, lifeless body away to a tomb to give him a little dignity after his humiliating defeat. Certainly, by every indication, he was a loser.

But, while he was still alive, struggling to breathe, he said some things; uttered some phrases. The most important thing he uttered that day was, “It is finished!” By that he did not simply mean that his life was over. No, in saying, “It is finished!” He was announcing to the universe that his task was accomplished. The deadly grasp of sin that holds the world was broken, once for all time. The penalty for sin had been paid in full, and everyone who puts their hope and trust in Jesus has a receipt written on his soul in indelible ink. Every believer is now and forever on the winning side.

I’ve been asking myself this week, why I often act like a loser. I burn with anger at the increasingly decadent culture in which I presently live. I moan when I hear lies presented as truth. I whine when my freedom to express my faith or worship my God is restricted. I feel helpless sometimes. Why?

John Piper, in his book Life As A Vapor refers to us Christians as exiles when he writes, “The greatness of Christian exiles is not success but service.” “We don’t own the culture, and we don’t rule it. We serve it with brokenhearted joy and long-suffering mercy, for the good of man and the glory of Jesus Christ.”

Jesus said, “It is finished!” Absolute, declarative and decisive is this statement of truth. The war is over, not with a peace treaty, but with the complete defeat of the enemy. Skirmishes remain; the enemy will not go quietly, but the winners are assured of victory.