🏆 Victory

The Virtue That Dwarfs the Rest

I keep going back to the Baltic Exchange Memorial Glass at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

It’s a First World War memorial — stained glass from the old Baltic Exchange building, designed by John Dudley Forsyth in nineteen twenty-two. The half-dome on the left is enormous, a winged figure stepping from a boat with a dove above her. On the right, five smaller windows, and you notice them first: Truth, Hope, Justice, Fortitude, Faith.

On my first visits I was drawn to those. The figures are beautiful. The virtues are good. Who doesn’t want Truth, Hope, Justice, Fortitude, Faith? I stood there admiring them, the craftsmanship, the quiet dignity of each one.

Then on the second visit I noticed the left side. The window there is bigger than all five of the others put together. It dwarfs them. And right in the middle of it, the word: Victory.

That landed differently than I expected. I’d never thought of Victory as a virtue. But the glass makes the argument for you — the virtues are good, well and good, but without Victory they’re just decoration. Fortitude without the win is just suffering. Faith without the win is just empty. Hope without the win is just wishful thinking. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:19, “If we have hoped in Christ only in this life, we are of all people most to be pitied.”

“But the fact is, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.” Yes, Jesus already won that victory for us on that Sunday morning, exactly on the day of the Feast of First Fruits. That’s the victory we rest on — which is exactly why Revelation points to the blood of the Lamb. “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives even unto death.” Overcame. That’s the word. Not endured. Not believed. Overcame.

Paul knew it too. At the end of that long chapter on the resurrection, he breaks into a mocking poem:

O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?

That’s the victory we must remember and anchor our whole lives as church saints of Jesus Christ in 2026.

Maranatha.