LOVE NOT THE WORLD
by
Watchman Nee
Contents
Preface
7.
Detachment
10.
The
Powers of the Age to Come
Preface
The greater part of this book
derives from a series of addresses on the subject of "the world"
given by Mr. Watchman Nee (Nee To-sheng) of
The author sees the cosmos as a
spiritual entity behind the things seen, a force always to be reckoned with. He
deals with its impact upon the Christian and his impact upon it, with the
conflicting claims upon him of separation and involvement, and with the destiny
of the man in Christ to "have dominion." As always, Mr. Nee's studies
display original thinking and he is not afraid to be provocative, stirring both
heart and mind to a response. It is my prayer that, despite the inevitably
piecemeal construction of the book, its theme will prove to have coherence as a
picture of the man of God in the world, and further, that it may challenge us
all who name the name of Christ to move more courageously and positively
through this earthly scene, with thought always for our role here in God's
eternal purpose concerning his beloved Son.
ANGUS I. KINNEAR
1968
Chapter 1: The Mind Behind the System
“Now is the judgment of this
world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted
from the earth, will draw all men unto myself" (John
Our Lord Jesus utters these
words at a key point in his ministry. He has entered
Yet if his utterance destroyed
one set of illusions, it offered in place of them a wonderful hope, solid and
secure. For it announced a far more radical exchange of dominion than even
Jewish patriots looked for. "And I ..." - the expression contrasts
sharply with what precedes it, even as the One it identifies stands in contrast
with his antagonist, the prince of this world. Through the Cross, through the
obedience to death of him who is God's seed of wheat, this world's rule of
compulsion and fear is to end with the fall of its proud ruler. And with his
springing up once more to life there will come into being in its place a new
reign of righteousness and one that is marked by a free allegiance of men to
him. With cords of love their hearts will be drawn away from a world under
judgment to Jesus the Son of man, who though lifted up to die, is by that very
act lifted up to reign.
"The earth" is the
scene of this crisis and its tremendous outcome, and "this world" is,
we may say, its point of collision. That point we shall make the theme of our
study, and we will begin by looking at the New Testament ideas associated with
the important Greek word cosmos. In the English versions this word is, with a
single exception shortly to be noticed, invariably translated "the
world." (The other Greek word, aion, also so translated, embodies the idea
of time and should more aptly be rendered "the age.")
It is worth sparing time for a
look at a New Testament Greek Lexicon such as Grimm's. This will show how wide
is the range of meaning that cosmos has in Scripture. But, first of all we
glance back to its origins in classical Greek where we find it originally
implied two things: first a harmonious order or arrangement, and secondly
embellishment or adornment. This latter idea appears in the New Testament verb cosmeo, used with the meaning "to
adorn", as of the temple with goodly stones or of a bride for her husband
(Luke 21:5; Rev. 21:2). In 1 Peter 3:3, the exception just alluded to, cosmos
is itself translated "adorning" in keeping with this same verb cosmeo in verse 5.
1)
When we turn from the classics to the New
Testament writers we find that their uses of cosmos fall into three main
groups. It is used first with the sense of the material universe, the round world,
this earth. For example, Acts
2)
The second usage of cosmos is twofold. It is
used:
(a) for the inhabitants of the world in
such phrases as John 1:10, "the world knew him not"; 3:16, "God
so loved the world"; 12:19, "the world is gone after him";
17:21, "that the world may believe."
(b) An extension of this usage leads to
the idea of the whole race of men alienated from God and thus hostile to the
cause of Christ. For instance, Heb. 11:38, "Of whom the world was not
worthy"; John
3)
In the third place we find cosmos is used in
Scripture for worldly affairs: the whole circle of worldly goods, endowments, riches,
advantages, pleasures, which though hollow and fleeting, stir our desire and
seduce us from God, so that they are obstacles to the cause of Christ. Examples
are: 1 John
The Bible student will soon
discover that, as the above paragraph suggests, cosmos is a favourite word of
the apostle John, and it is he, in the main, who helps us forward now to a
further conclusion.
While it is true that these
three definitions of "the world," as (1) the material earth or
universe, (2) the people on the earth, and (3) the things of the earth, each
contribute something to the whole picture, it will already be apparent that
behind them all is something more. The classical idea of orderly arrangement or
organization helps us to grasp what this is. Behind all that is tangible we
meet something intangible, we meet a planned system; and in this system there
is a harmonious functioning, a perfect order.
Concerning this system there are
two things to be emphasized. First, since the day when Adam opened the door for
evil to enter God's creation, the world order has shown itself to be hostile to
God. The world "knew not God" (1 Cor.
This is because, secondly, as
the same verse makes clear, there is a mind behind the system. John writes
repeatedly of "the prince of this world" (
There is, then, an ordered
system, "the world," which is governed from behind the scenes by a
ruler, Satan. When in John 12:31 Jesus states that the sentence of judgment has
been passed upon this world he does not mean that the material world or its
inhabitants are judged. For them judgment is yet to come. What is there judged
is that institution, that harmonious world order of which Satan himself is the
originator and head. And ultimately, as Jesus' words make clear, it is he,
"the prince of the world," who has been judged (
This consideration may help us
to understand better the passage in 1 Peter 3 alluded to above. There the
apostle sets "the outward adorning (cosmos)
of plaiting the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on
apparel" in deliberate contrast with "the incorruptible apparel of a
meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price." By
inference, therefore, the former are corrupt and worthless to God. We may or
may not be ready at once to accept Peter's evaluation, depending upon whether
we see the true import of his words. Here is what he is implying. In the
background behind these matters of wearing apparel and jewellery and make-up,
there is a power at work for its own ends. Do not let that power grip you.
What, we have to ask ourselves,
is the motive that activates us in relation to these things? It may be nothing
sensuous but altogether innocent, aiming by the use of tone and harmony and
perfect matching merely to gain an effect that is aesthetically pleasing. There
may be nothing intrinsically wrong in doing this; but do you and I see what we
are touching here? We are touching that harmonious system behind the things
seen, a system that is controlled by God's enemy. So let us be wary.
The Bible opens with God's
creation of the heavens and the earth. It does not say that he created the
world in the sense that we are discussing it now. Through the Bible the meaning
of "the world" undergoes a development, and it is only in the New.
Testament (though perhaps to a lesser extent already in the Psalms and some of
the Prophets) that "the world" comes to have its full spiritual
significance. We can readily see the reason for this development. Before the
Fall of man, the world existed only in the sense of the earth, the people on
the earth, and the things on the earth. As yet there was no cosmos, no
"world," in the sense of a constituted order. With the Fall, however,
Satan brought onto this earth the order which he himself had conceived, and
with that began the world system of which we are speaking. Originally our
physical earth had no connection with "the world" in this sense of a
Satanic system, nor indeed had man; but Satan took advantage of man's sin, and
of the door this threw open to him, to introduce into the earth the
organization which he had set himself to establish. From that point of time
this earth was in "the world," and man was in "the world."
So we may say that before the Fall there was an earth; after the Fall there was
a "world"; at the Lord's return there will be a kingdom. Just as the
world belongs to Satan, so the Kingdom belongs to our Lord Jesus. Moreover it
is this Kingdom that displaces and that will displace the world. When the
"Stone not made with hands" shatters man's proud image, then the
kingdom of this world will "become the kingdom of our Lord and of his
Christ" (Dan.
Politics, education, literature,
science, art, law, commerce, music-such are the things that constitute the
cosmos, and these are things that we meet daily. Subtract them and the world as
a coherent system ceases to be. In studying the history of mankind we have to
acknowledge marked progress in each of these departments. The question however
is: In what direction is this "progress" tending? What is the
ultimate goal of all this development? At the end, John tells us, antichrist
will arise and will set up his own kingdom in this world (1 John
In the book of Genesis we find
in
The same thing applies to music
and the arts. For the pipe and the harp seem also to have originated with the
family of Cain, and today in unconsecrated hands their God-defying nature
becomes increasingly clear. In many parts of the world it has long been easy to
trace an intimate relationship between idolatry and the arts of painting,
sculpture, and music. No doubt the day is coming when the nature of antichrist
will be disclosed more openly than ever through song and dance and the visual
and dramatic arts.
As for commerce, its connections
are perhaps even more suspect. Satan was the first merchant, trading ideas with
Eve for his own advantage, and in the figurative language of Ezekiel 28, which
seems to reveal something of his original character, we read: "By thy
traffic thou has increased thy riches, and thine heart is lifted up"
(verse 5). Perhaps this does not have to be argued, for most of us will readily
admit from experience the Satanic origin and nature of commerce. We shall say
more of this later.
But what of education? Surely,
we protest, that must be harmless. Anyway, our children have to be taught. But
education, no less than commerce or technology, is one of the things of the
world. It has its roots in the tree of knowledge. How earnestly, as Christians,
we seek to protect our children from the world's more obvious snares. And yet
it is quite true that we have to provide education for them. How are we going
to solve the problem of letting them touch what is essentially a thing of the
world, and at the same time guarding them from the great world system and its
perils?
And what of science? It, too, is
one of the units that constitute the cosmos. It, too, is knowledge. When we
venture into the further reaches of science, and begin to speculate on the
nature of the physical world-and of man-the question immediately arises: Up to
what point is the pursuit of scientific research and discovery legitimate?
Where is the line of demarcation between what is helpful and what is hurtful in
the realm of knowledge? How can we pursue after knowledge and yet avoid being
caught in Satan's meshes?
These, then, are the matters at
which we must look. Oh, I know I shall appear to some to be overstating things,
but this is necessary in order to drive home my point. For "if any man
love the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John
The time has passed when we need
to go out into the world in order to make contact with it. Today the world
comes and searches us out. There is a force abroad now which is captivating
men. Have you ever felt the power of the world as much as today? Have you ever
heard so much talk about money? Have you ever thought so much about food and
clothing? Wherever you go, even among Christians, the things of the world are
the topics of conversation. The world has advanced to the very door of the
Church and is seeking to draw even the saints of God into its grasp. Never in
this sphere of things have we needed to know the power of the Cross of Christ
to deliver us as we do at the present time.
Formerly we spoke much of sin
and of the natural life. We could readily see the spiritual issues there, but
we little realized then what equally great spiritual issues are at stake when
we touch the world. There is a spiritual force behind this world scene which,
by means of "the things that are in the world," is seeking to enmesh
men in its system. It is not merely against sin therefore that the saints of
God need to be on their guard, but against the ruler of this world. God is
building up his Church to its consummation in the universal reign of Christ.
Simultaneously his rival is building up this world system to its vain climax in
the reign of antichrist. How watchful we need to be lest at any time we be
found helping Satan in the construction of that ill-fated kingdom. When we are
faced with alternatives and a choice of ways confronts us, the question is not:
Is this good or evil? Is this helpful or hurtful? No, the question we must ask
ourselves is: Is it of this world, or of God? For since there is only this one
conflict in the universe, then whenever two conflicting courses lie open to us,
the choice at issue is never a lesser one than: God ... or Satan?
Chapter 2: The Trend Away From God
Having every one of us been in
bondage to sin, we readily believe that sinful things are Satanic; but do we
believe equally that the things of the world are Satanic? Many of us, I think,
are still in two minds about this. Yet how clearly Scripture affirms that
"the whole world lieth in the evil one" (1 John
Yet our Lord's sentence of
judgment clearly implies that everything that constitutes "the world"
is out of line with God's purpose. His words, "Now is the judgment of this
world," clearly imply the condemnation of all that goes to make up the
cosmos, and would never have been uttered if there were not something radically
amiss with it. Further, when Jesus goes on: "Now shall the prince of this
world be cast out," he is stressing not merely the intimate relation
between Satan and the world order but the fact that its condemnation is linked
with his. Do we acknowledge that Satan is today the prince of education and
science and culture and the arts, and that they, with him, are doomed? Do we
acknowledge that he is the effective master of all those things that together
make up the world system?
When mention is made of a dance
hall or a night club, our reaction as Christians is one of instinctive
disapproval. To us that is "the world" par excellence. When, however,
to go to the other extreme, medical science or social service are discussed,
there may be no such reaction at all. These things command our tacit approval, and
maybe too our enthusiastic support. And between these extremes there lie a host
of other things varying widely in their influence for good or bad, between
which we should probably none of us agree on where to draw an exact line. Yet
let us face the fact that judgment has been pronounced by God, not upon certain
selected things that belong to this world, but impartially upon them all.
Test yourself. If you venture
into one of these approved fields, and then someone exclaims to you: "You
have touched the world there," will you be moved? Probably not at all. It
takes someone whom you really respect to say to you very straightly and
earnestly: "Brother, you have become involved with Satan there!"
before you will so much as hesitate. Is that not so? How would you feel if
anyone said to you: "You have touched education there," or "You
have touched medical science," or "You have touched commerce"?
Would you react with the same degree of caution as you would if he had said,
"You have touched the Devil there"? If we truly believed that
whenever we touch any of these things that constitute the world we touch the
prince of this world, then the awful seriousness of being in any wise involved
in worldly things could not fail to strike home to us. "The whole world
lieth in the evil one" - not a part of it, but the whole. Do not let us
think for a moment that Satan opposes God only by means of sin and carnality in
men's hearts; he opposes God by means of every worldly thing. Oh, I agree with
you that the things of the world are all in one sense material, lifeless,
intrinsically without power to harm us; yet even that should itself suggest
that they are resistant to the purpose of God, as indeed is everything in which
there is no touch of divine life.
The recurring phrase "after
its kind" in Genesis 1 represents a law of reproduction that governs the
whole realm of biological nature. It does not, however, govern the realm of the
Spirit. For generation after generation, human parents can beget children after
their kind; but one thing is certain: Christians cannot beget Christians! Not
even where both parents are Christians will the children born to them
automatically be Christians, no, not even in the first generation. It will take
a fresh act of God every time.
And this principle applies no
less truly in the affairs of mankind more widely. All that belongs to human
nature continues spontaneously; all that belongs to God continues only for as
long as God's working continues. And the world is all inclusively that which
can continue apart from divine activity, that is, which can go on by itself
without the need of specific acts of God to maintain it in freshness. The
world, and all that belongs to the world, does this naturally - it is its
nature - and in doing so it moves in a direction contrary to the will of God.
This statement we shall now seek to illustrate both from the Scripture and from
Christian experience.
Let us take first the field of
political science. The Old Testament history of
Now even when this was clearly
God's doing, the natural trend of the kingdom proved to be, "like the
nations," away from him. For a kingdom is a worldly thing, and in keeping
with all worldly things it tends to come into collision with the divine
purpose. Wherever in the world a nation's government is left to itself, it
follows its natural course which is further and further away from God. And what
is true in secular national politics worked itself out equally surely even in
divinely chosen
It will scarcely surprise us
that the same thing proves to be true in the field of commerce. I can think of
no sphere where the temptation to dishonest and corrupt dealing is so great as
here. We all know something of this. We all know how hard it is to remain
straight and to conduct affairs honestly in the competitive world of trade.
Many would say that it is impossible, and certainly to do so calls for a life
that is cast upon God in an unusual way.
We recall that our Lord Jesus
tells us of two contrasting men, one who gained the whole world and forfeited
his life, and another, a merchant, who went and sold all that he had to buy one
priceless pearl. To the latter of these Jesus likened the kingdom of heaven
(Matt.
I think of one such enterprise
that, at the outset of its history, was the creation of a God-fearing business
man. Now godly fear is a quality that can only exist as it is sustained from
heaven, but business acumen and the efficient organization which it creates can
be self-perpetuating. In the first generation of this firm's history we find
divine life being mediated through its founder sufficient to hold what was even
then a worldly concern securely under the authority of God. But by the second
generation that restraint was gone and, as one would expect, the business
gravitated automatically into the world system. Godly fear had drained away,
but the firm itself is still flourishing.
Suppose we take now so
apparently innocent a matter as agriculture. Here Genesis, written in a
primitive world of flocks and husbandry, has something to tell us. After Adam's
fall God was compelled to say to him, "Cursed is the ground for thy sake;
in toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles
shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; in the
sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground,"
No one would suggest that in Eden, where the tree of life flourished, farming
or gardening was wrong. It was God appointed. But as soon as it was let go from
under the hand of God it deteriorated. Man was condemned to an endless round of
drudgery and disappointment, and an element of perversity marked the fruit of
his toil. The deliverance of Noah was God's great recovery movement, in which
the earth was given a fresh start. But how swift, how tragic was man's
reversion to type! "Noah began to be a husbandman, and planted a vineyard;
and he drank of the wine, and was drunken; and he was uncovered within his
tent." Of course agriculture is not in itself sinful, but here already its
direction is away from God. Just let it follow its natural tendency and it will
contrive to take a course diametrically opposed to him. Do we know something of
this today in such physical disasters as the drying out of continents?
How different is the Church,
God's husbandry! Through the grace of God and the indwelling Spirit she
possesses an inherent life power capable, if she responds to it, of keeping her
constantly moving Godward, or of recalling her Godward if she strays.
When we turn to education, both
the Bible and experience have something to say to us. Speaking allegorically we
might say that in rejecting Saul and choosing David God was passing over a man
distinguished by his head (for he was that much taller than his peers) in favor
of the man after his heart! But more seriously, the men such as Joseph and
Moses and Daniel, of whose wisdom God made public use, each received in a
direct way from God himself the understanding they needed. They took little
account of their secular education. And the apostle Paul clearly placed
scholarship among the "all things" that he counted to be loss for the
excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord (Phil. 3:8). He draws a
clear distinction between the wisdom of the world and the wisdom that comes
from God (1 Cor.
But it is experience that
demonstrates the essential worldliness of scholarship as such. Most of the
historic university colleges of the West were founded by Christian men with a
desire to provide their fellows with a good education under Christian
influence. During their founders' lifetimes the tone of those foundations was
high, because these men put real spiritual content into them. When, however,
the men themselves passed away, the spiritual control passed away too, and
education followed its inevitable course toward the world of materialism and
away from God. In some cases it may have taken a long time, for religious
tradition dies hard; but the tendency has always been obvious, and in most
cases the destination has by now been reached. When material things are under
spiritual control they fulfil their proper subordinate role. Released from that
restraint they manifest very quickly the power that lies behind them. The law
of their nature asserts itself, and their worldly character is proved by the
course they take.
The spread of missionary
enterprise in our present era gives us an opportunity to test this principle in
the religious institutions of our day and of our land. Over a century ago the
Church set out to establish in
In the early chapters of the
Acts we read how a contingency arose which led the Church to institute relief
for the poorer saints. That urgent institution of social service was clearly
blessed of God, but it was of a temporary nature. Do you exclaim, "How
good if it had continued!"? Only one who does not know God would say that.
Had those relief measures been prolonged indefinitely they would certainly have
veered in the direction of the world, once the spiritual influence at work in
their inception was removed. It is inevitable.
For there is a distinction
between the Church of God's building, on the one hand, and on the other, those
valuable social and charitable byproducts that are thrown off by it from time
to time through the faith and vision of its members. The latter, for all their
origin in spiritual vision, possess in themselves a power of independent
survival which the
The
But suppose alongside that
church there is a school or hospital or publishing house, or other religiously
founded institution, originating in the faith of the same church members.
Assuming that the need for its service continues still to exist ten years hence
and has not been met by some alternative private or State enterprise, then the
probability is that that work will still be operating then at a no less
efficient and commendable standard of service. For given ordinary
administrative know-how, a college or a hospital can continue efficiently on a
purely institutional level without any fresh influx of divine life. The vision
may have gone, but the establishment carries on indefinitely. It has become no
less worldly than everything else that can be maintained apart from the life of
God. And every such thing is embraced in the Lord's sentence: "Now is the
judgment of this world."
Suppose I put to you the
question, "What work are you engaged in?" You answer, "Medical
work." You say that without any special consciousness other than pride in
the compassionate nature of your calling, and without any sense of the possible
danger of your situation. But if I tell you that medical science is one mote
unit of a system that is Satan-controlled, what then? Assuming that as a
Christian you take me seriously, then you are at once alarmed, and your
reaction may even be to wonder if you had not better quit your profession. No,
do not cease being a doctor! But walk softly, for you are upon territory that
is governed by God's enemy, and unless you are on the watch you are as liable
as anyone else to fall a prey to his devices.
Or suppose you are engineering,
or farming, or publishing. Take heed, for these too are things of the world,
just as much as running a place of entertainment or a haunt of vice. Unless you
tread softly you will be caught up somewhere in Satan's snares and will lose
the liberty that is yours as a child of God.
How then, you ask, are we to be
delivered from his entanglements? Many think that to escape the world is a
matter of consecration, of dedicating themselves anew and more wholeheartedly
to the things of God. No, it is a matter of salvation. By nature we are all
entrapped in that Satanic system, and we have no escape apart from the mercy of
the Lord. All our consecration is powerless to deliver us; we are dependent
upon his compassion and upon his redemptive work alone to save us out of it. He
is well able to do so, and the means whereby he does it will be the theme of
our next chapter. God can set us upon a rock and keep our feet from slipping.
Helped by him we may turn our trade or profession to the service of his will
for as long as he desires it.
But let me repeat again that the
natural trend of all the "things that are in the world" is toward
Satan and away from God. Some of them may have been set going by men of the
Spirit with a goal that is Godward, but as soon as the restraint of the divine
life is removed from them, they automatically swerve around and take that other
direction. No wonder then that Satan's eyes are ever on the world's end, and on
the prospect that at that time all the things of the world will revert to him.
Even now, and all the time, they are moving in his direction, and at the end
time they may be expected to have reached their goal. As we touch any one of
the units of his system, this thought should give us pause, lest we be found
inadvertently helping to construct his kingdom.
Chapter 3: A World Under Water
"Go ye into all the world,
and preach the gospel to the whole creation. He that believeth and is baptized
shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned" (Mark
To many of us the form of that
second sentence comes as a surprise. Jesus did not say that he who believes and
is saved shall be baptized. No, he put it the other way round. He who believes
and is baptized, he said, shall be saved. It is only at our peril that we
change something that the Lord has said into something that he did not say.
Everything he says matters, and
he means every word of it. But if this is so, then it must be a fact that only
by having faith in him and being baptized are we saved. Some will be puzzled at
this. What do you mean? they will protest. But do not puzzle; and do not blame
me! I did not say that; my Lord said it. He it was who laid down the order:
faith, then baptism, then salvation. We must not reverse it to faith,
salvation, baptism, however much we might prefer it that way. What the Lord
said must stand, and it is for us only to pay heed to it.
(I make no apology for taking
these words of Mark
So I repeat, "He that
believeth and is baptized shall be saved." Do you mean to tell me, you will
now exclaim, that you believe in baptismal regeneration? No, indeed I do not!
The Lord did not say, "Believe and be baptized and thou shalt be born
again"; and since he did not say that, I have no need to believe in that.
His words are: "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved."
What therefore I do believe in is baptismal salvation.
So the question naturally
arises: What does this statement mean? And what does it mean when Luke tells us
that, in response to Peter's exhortation to "save yourselves from this
crooked generation," then they that received his word were baptized?
To answer this we must ask
ourselves first what we mean by the word "saved." I am afraid we have
a very wrong idea of salvation. All that most of us know about salvation is that
we shall be saved from hell and into heaven; or alternatively, that we are
saved from our sins to live henceforth a holy life. But we are wrong. In
Scripture we find that salvation goes further than that. For it is concerned
not so much with sin and hell, or holiness and heaven, but with something else.
We know that every good gift
that God offers to us is given to meet and counter a contrasting evil. He gives
us justification because there is condemnation. He gives us eternal life
because there is death. He offers us forgiveness because there are sins. He
brings us salvation-because of what? Justification is in terms of condemnation,
heaven is in terms of hell, forgiveness is in relation to sins. Then to what is
salvation related? Salvation, we shall see, is related to the cosmos, the
world.
Satan is the personal enemy of
Christ. He works through the flesh of man to produce this pattern of things on
the earth in which we have all become involved; not one of us is exempt. And
this whole cosmic pattern is peculiarly at odds with God the Father. I think we
all know how the three dark forces, the world, the flesh and the devil, stand
in opposition to the three divine persons. The flesh is ranged against the Holy
Spirit as Paraclete, Satan himself against Christ Jesus as Lord, and the world
against the Father as Creator.
What we are speaking of as the
cosmos always stands opposed to God as Father and Originator. His was the
eternal plan in creation hinted at in the words "It was very good," a
plan toward which he has not ceased to work. From before the foundation of the
world he had purposed in his heart to have on earth an order of which mankind
would be the pinnacle and which should freely display the character of his Son.
But Satan intervened. Using this earth as his springboard and man as his tool,
he usurped God's creation to make of it instead something centered in himself
and reflecting his own image. Thus this alien system of things was a direct
challenge to the divine plan.
So today we are confronted by
two worlds, two spheres of authority, having two totally different and opposed
characters. For me now it is no mere matter of a future heaven and hell; it is
a question of these two worlds today, and of whether I belong to an order of things
of which Christ is sovereign Lord, or to an opposed order of things having
Satan as its effective head.
Thus salvation is not so much a
personal question of sins forgiven or of hell avoided. It is to be seen rather
in terms of a system from which we come out. When I am saved, I make my exodus
out of one whole world and my entry into another. I am saved now out of that
whole organized realm which Satan has constructed in defiance of the purpose of
God.
That realm, that all-embracing
cosmos, has many strange facets. Sin of course has its prior place there, and
worldly lusts; but no less part of it are our more estimable human standards
and ways of doing things. The human mind, its culture and its philosophies, all
are included, together with all the very best of humanity's social and
political ideologies. Alongside these too we should doubtless place the world's
religions, and among them those speckled birds, worldly Christianity and its
"world Church." Wherever the power of natural man dominates, there
you have an element in that system which is under the direct inspiration of
Satan.
If that is the world, what then
is salvation? Salvation means that I escape from that. I go out. I make an exit
from that all-embracing cosmos. I belong no more to Satan's pattern of things.
I set my heart on that upon which God's heart is set. I take as my goal his
eternal purpose in Christ, and I step into that and am delivered from this.
He that believeth and is
baptized shall be saved. What Jesus said he plainly means. I take that step of
faith: I believe and am baptized, and I come out a saved man. That is
salvation. So never let us regard baptism as of small concern. Tremendous
things hang upon it. It is no less a question than of two violently opposing
worlds and of our translation from the one into the other.
There is in Scripture another
passage which brings baptism and salvation together to illustrate this theme. I
allude to Chapter 3 of 1 Peter. There the apostle tells us how "the
long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a
preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water"
(verse 20). The water, he says, is a figure or likeness, or (as the R.V. margin
reads) an antitype, of something else. "Which also in the antitype doth
now save you, even baptism." So baptism, he reasons, saves us now. Clearly
Peter believed in our salvation through baptism as firmly as he believed in
Noah's salvation through water. Please remember, I am not saying regeneration,
and I am not saying deliverance from hell or from sin. Understand clearly that
we are talking here about salvation. It is not just a question of terms; it
concerns our being fundamentally severed from today's world system.
To understand better what Peter
means we should turn back to his source in Chapters 6 to 8 of Genesis. The
picture is instructive. There in Noah's day we find a wholly corrupt world.
Created first by God, the earth had become corrupted by man's act on that day
when he placed himself under Satan. Sin, once introduced, had developed and run
riot, until even God's Holy Spirit cried “Enough!” Things had reached a state
where they could never be remedied; they could only be judged and removed.
So God commanded Noah to build
an ark, and to bring his family and the creatures into it, and then the flood
came. By it they were "lifted up above the earth" upon waters that
covered "all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven."
Every living thing, both man and beast, perished and those only who rode the
waters in the ark were saved. The significant thing here is not just that they
escaped death by drowning. That is not the point. The real point for us is that
they were the only people to come out from that corrupt system of things, that
world under water. Personal life is the inevitable consequence of coming out,
personal perdition of staying in, but salvation is the coming out itself, not
the effect of it. Note this difference for it is a great one. Salvation is
essentially a present exit from a doomed order which is Satan's.
Praise God, they came out! How?
Through the waters. So today when believers are baptized they go symbolically
through water, just as Noah passed in the ark through the waters of the flood.
And this passage through water signifies their escape from the world, their
exodus from the system of things that, with its prince, is under the divine
sentence. May I say this especially to those who are being baptized today.'
Please remember, you are not the only one who is in the water. As you step down
into the water, a whole world goes down with you. When you come up, you come up
in Christ, in the ark that rides the waves, but your world stays behind. For
you, that world is submerged, drowned like Noah's, put to death in the death of
Christ and never to be revived. It is by baptism that you declare this.
"Lord, I leave my world behind. Thy Cross separates me from it for
ever!"
Speaking figuratively,
therefore, when you go through the waters of baptism everything belonging to
the former system of things is cut off by those waters never to return. You
alone emerge. For you it is a passage into another world, a world where you
will find a dove and the fresh leaves of olive trees. You go out of the world
that is under judgment, into a world that is marked by newness of divine life.
I want to emphasize again that
you were not the only one that went down into the water; your world went down
with you. And there it stayed. From the standpoint of your new situation you
will find that the water always covers the world to which you belonged before.
The same flood which saved Noah and his family drowned the world in which they
had once lived their lives-the very same flood. So the same water on the one
hand puts you and me on salvation ground in Christ, and on the other hand
buries Satan's whole system of things. Not only does your own history as a
child of Adam end in your baptism; your world also ends there. In both cases it
is a death and a burial with nothing resurrected. It is an end of everything.
This means that you cannot carry
over anything from that former world into the new one. What belonged to that
former realm of things in Adam stays there and may never be recalled. Formerly
perhaps you were an employee in a shop, or a servant in a house. Or perhaps you
were the master, or the manager, or director of a business. Still today you may
be a master, or still a servant, but you will find that when coming to divine
things, when coming to the
You ask me now whether it
matters if we are not baptized. My only answer is that the Lord himself
commanded it (Matt. 28:19). And it was a step from which he himself refused to
be dissuaded (Matt.
This helps to explain why in
Scripture we find passages concerning salvation which are hard to interpret if
we relate salvation only to hell or to sin. It illumines, for instance, the
apparently difficult words of Paul and Silas to the jailer at
That is what it means to be
saved. You declare that you belong to another system of things. People point to
you and say, "Oh, yes, that is a Christian family; they belong to the
Lord!" That is the salvation which the Lord desires for you, that by your
public testimony you declare before God, "My world has gone; I am entering
into another." May the Lord give us that kind of salvation, to find
ourselves uprooted entire out of the old, doomed order of things and firmly
planted in the new, divine one.
For, praise God, there is a glorious
positive side to all this. We are saved "through the resurrection of Jesus
Christ, who," Peter goes on to say, "is on the right hand of God,
having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being made subject
unto him" (verse 22). God has set his Son supreme above everything, and
made all authorities his subjects. A God who can do this is well able to bring
me, body and soul, into that other realm.
So, to recapitulate, we have
here two worlds. On the one hand there is the world in Adam, held fast in
bondage to Satan; on the other hand there is the new creation in Christ, the
sphere of activity of God's Holy Spirit. How do you and I get out of the one
sphere, Adam, into the other sphere, Christ? If you are uncertain how to answer
that question, may I ask you another? How did you get into Adam in the first
place? For the way of entry indicates the way out. You entered the sphere of
Adam by being born into Adam's race. How then do you get out? Obviously by
death. And how, in turn, do you enter the sphere of Christ? The answer is the
same: by birth. The way of entry into the family of God is by new birth to a
living hope, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Pet.
1:3). Having become united with him by the likeness of his death, you are
united with him also by the likeness of his resurrection (
Finally, what occupies the gap?
What is the steppingstone between those two worlds? Is it not burial? "We
were buried therefore with him through baptism into death" (Rom. 6:4).
From one point of view there is a grim finality about those words "buried
into death." My history in Adam has already been concluded in the death of
Christ, so that when I walk away from that burial I can say I am a
"finished" man. But I can say more, for, praise God, it is no less
true that there is the other side. Since "Christ was raised from the
dead," when I come out of the water and walk away, I may walk "in
newness of life" (6:4).
This double outcome of the Cross
is implied too in the preceding words of Romans 6:3. "Are ye ignorant that
all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?"
Here in a single sentence the two aspects of baptism are again hinted at. It is
baptism into two things. First, we who believe were "baptized into his
death." This is a tremendous fact, but is it all? Not by any means, for in
the second place the same verse says that we were "baptized into Christ
Jesus." A baptism into the death of Christ ends my relation with this
world, but a baptism into Christ Jesus as a living Person, Head of a new race,
opens up for me a new world of things altogether. Going into the water I simply
act the whole thing out, affirming publicly that the "judgment of this
world" became real to me from the day when the "lifted up" Son
of man drew me to himself.
What a Gospel to preach to the
whole creation!
Chapter 4: Crucified Unto Me
Separation to God, separation
from the world, is the first principle of Christian living. John, in his
revelation of Jesus Christ, was shown two irreconcilable extremes, two worlds
that morally were poles apart. He was first carried away in the Spirit into a
wilderness to see
Whether we be a Moses or a
Balaam, in order to have God's view of things we must be taken like John to a
mountain top. Many cannot see God's eternal plan, or if they see it they
understand it only as dry-as-dust doctrine, but they are content to stay on the
plains. For understanding never moves us; only revelation does that. From the
wilderness we may see something of
The harlot
Thus it comes about that the
wall is the first feature John mentions in his description of the city itself.
There are gates, making provision for the goings of God, but the wall takes
precedence. For, I repeat, separation is the first principle of Christian
living. If God wants his city with its measurements and its glory in that day,
then we must build that wall in human hearts now. This means in practice that
we must guard as precious all that is of God and refuse and reject all that is
of
Nehemiah in his day succeeded in
rebuilding the wall of
For build we certainly must.
Most of us would agree that to
the apostle Paul was given a special revelation of the
In his first epistle John
writes: "All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of
the eyes, and the vainglory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the
world" (
Every success therefore that we experience
(and I am not suggesting that we should be failures!) calls in us for an
instant, humble confession of its inherent sinfulness, for whenever we meet
success we have in some degree touched the world system. Whenever we sense
complacency over some achievement we may know at once that we have touched the
world. We may know, too, that we have brought ourselves under the judgment of
God, for have we not already agreed that the whole world is under judgment? Now
(and let us try to grasp this fact) those who realize this and confess their
need are thereby safeguarded.
But the trouble is, how many of
us are aware of it? Even those of us who live our lives in the seclusion of our
own private homes are just as prone to fall a prey to the pride of life as those
who have great public successes. A woman in a humble kitchen can touch the
world and its complacency even while cooking the daily meal or entertaining
guests. Every glory that is not glory to God is vainglory, and it is amazing
what paltry successes can produce vainglory. Wherever we meet pride we meet the
world, and there is an immediate leakage in our fellowship with God. Oh that
God would open our eyes to see clearly what the world is! Not only evil things,
but all those things that draw us ever so gently away from God, are units of
that system that is antagonistic to him. Satisfaction in the achievement of
some legitimate piece of work has the power to come instantly between us and
God himself. For if it is the pride of life and not the praise of God that it
awakens in us, we can know for certain that we have touched the world. There is
thus a constant need for us to watch and pray if we are to maintain our
communion with God unsullied.
What then is the way of escape
from this snare which the Devil has set to catch God's people? First let me say
emphatically that it is not to be found by our running away. Many think we can
escape the world by seeking to abstain from the things of the world. That is
folly. How could we ever escape the world system by using what, after all, are
little more than worldly methods? Let me remind you of Jesus' words in Matt.
11:18, 19. "John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He hath
a devil.' The Son of man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Behold, a gluttonous
man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!' " Some think
that John the Baptist here offers us a recipe for escape from the world, but
"neither eating nor drinking" is not Christianity. Christ came both
eating and drinking, and that is Christianity! The apostle Paul speaks of
"the elements of the world," and he defines these as, "handle
not, nor taste, nor touch" (Col. 2:20, 21). So abstinence is merely
worldly and no more, and what hope is there, by using worldly elements, of
escaping the world system? Yet how many earnest Christians are forsaking all
sorts of worldly pleasures in the hope thereby of being delivered out of the
world! You can build yourself a hermit's hut in some remote spot and think to
escape the world by retiring there, but the world will follow you even as far
as that. It will dog your footsteps and find you out no matter where you hide.
Our deliverance from the world
begins, not with our giving up this or that but with our seeing, as with God's
eyes, that it is a world under sentence of death as in the figure with which we
opened this chapter, "Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!" (Rev.
18:2). Now a sentence of death is always passed, not on the dead but on the
living. And in one sense the world is a living force today, relentlessly
pursuing and seeking out its subjects. But while it is true that when sentence
is pronounced death lies still in the future, it is nevertheless certain. A
person under sentence of death has no future beyond the confines of a condemned
cell. Likewise the world, being under sentence, has no future. The world system
has not yet been "wound up," as we say, and terminated by God, but
the winding up is a settled matter. It makes all the difference to us that we
see this. Some folk seek deliverance from the world in asceticism, and like the
Baptist, neither eat nor drink. That today is Buddhism, not Christianity. As
Christians we both eat and drink, but we do so in the realization that eating
and drinking belong to the world and, with it, are under the death sentence, so
they have no grip upon us.
Let us suppose that the
municipal authorities of
And we may justly say of the
world that it is under a decree of closure.
A revelation of the Cross of
Christ involves for us the discovery of this fact, that through it everything
belonging to the world is under sentence of death. We still go on living in the
world and using the things of the world, but we can build no future with them,
for the Cross has shattered all our hope in them. The Cross of our Lord Jesus,
we may truly say, has ruined our prospects in the world; we have nothing to
live for there.
There is no true way of
salvation from the world that does not start from such a revelation. We need
only try to escape the world by running away from it to discover how much we
love it, and how much it loves us. We may flee where we will to avoid it, but
it will assuredly track us down. But we inevitably lose all interest in the
world, and it loses its grip on us, as soon as it dawns upon us that the world
is doomed. To see that is to be automatically severed from Satan's entire
economy.
At the end of his letter to the
Galatians Paul states this very clearly. "Far be it from me to glory, save
in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world hath been
crucified unto me, and I unto the world" (
Like so much else in the
Christian life, the way of deliverance out of the world comes as a surprise to
most of us, for it is so at odds with all man's natural concepts. Man seeks to
solve the problem of the world by removing himself physically from what he
regards as the danger zone. But physical separation does not bring about
spiritual separation; and the reverse is also true, that physical contact with
the world does not necessitate spiritual capture by the world. Spiritual
bondage to the world is a fruit of spiritual blindness, and deliverance is the
outcome of having our eyes opened. However close our touch with the world may
be outwardly, we are released from its power when we truly see its nature. The
essential character of the world is Satanic; it is at enmity with God. To see
this is to find deliverance.
Let me ask you: What is your
occupation? A merchant? A doctor? Do not run away from these callings. Simply
write down: Trade is under the sentence of death. Write: Medicine is under the
sentence of death. If you do that in truth, life will be changed for you
hereafter. In the midst of a world under judgment for its hostility to God you
will know what it is to live as one who truly loves and fears him.
Chapter 5: Distinctiveness
May I now invite your attention
to words Jesus dressed to the Jews in John 8:23. "Ye are from beneath; I
am from above: ye are of this world; I not of this world." I wish us to
note especially here the use of the words "from" and "of”. The
Greek word in each case is ek, which
means out of" and implies origin. Ek
tou kosmos is the expression used: "from”, or “of”, or “out of” this
world." So the sense of the passage is: "Your place of origin is
beneath; my place of origin is above. Your place of origin is this world; my
place of origin is not this world." The question is not: “Are you a good
or a bad person?” but, WWhat is your place of origin?” We do not ask, “Is this
thing right?” or, “Is that thing wrong?” but, “Where did it originate?” It is
origin that determines everything. "That which is born of the flesh is
flesh: that which is born of the Spirit is spirit" (John 3:6).
So when Jesus turns to his
disciples he can say, using the same Greek preposition, "If ye were of the
world (ek tou cosmos), the world
would love its own: but because ye are not of the world, but I chose you out of
the world, therefore the world hateth you" (John
There is this double ek in the life of every believer. Out of
that vast organization called the cosmos, out of all the great mass of
individuals belonging to it and involved in it, out, clean out of all of that,
God has called us. Thence comes the title "Church," ekklesia, God's "called-out
ones." From the midst of the great cosmos God calls one here and one
there; and all whom he calls he calls out. There is no such thing as a call
from God that is not a call "out of" the world. The church is ekklesia. In the divine intention there
is no klesia which lacks the ek.
If you are a called one, then
you are a called out one. If God has called you at all then he has called you
to live in spirit outside the world system. Originally we were in that Satanic
system with no way of escape; but we were called, and that calling brought us
out. True, that statement is a negative one, but there is a positive side also
to our constitution; for as the people of God we have two titles, each of them
significant according to the way we view ourselves: If we look back at our past
history we are ekklesia, the Church;
but if we look to our present life in God we are the Body of Christ, the
expression on earth of him who is in heaven. From the standpoint of God's
choice of us we are "out of" the world; but from the standpoint of
our new life we are not of the world at all, but from above. On the one hand we
are a chosen people, called and delivered out of the world system. On the other
we are a regenerate people, utterly unrelated to that system because by the
Spirit we are born from above. So John sees the holy city coming down "out
of heaven from God" (Rev. 21:10). As the people of God, heaven is not only
our destiny but our origin.
This is an amazing thing, that
in you and me there is an element that is essentially otherworldly. So
otherworldly is it indeed that no matter how this world may progress, it can
never advance one step in likeness to that. The life we have as God's gift came
from heaven and never was in the world at all. It has no correspondence with
the world but is in perfect correspondence with heaven; and though we must
mingle with the world daily, it will never let us settle down and feel at home
there.
Let us consider for a moment
this divine gift, this life of Christ indwelling the heart of regenerate man.
The apostle Paul has a great deal to say about this. In an illuminating passage
in 1 Corinthians he makes a striking twofold statement: (a) that God himself
has placed us in Christ, and (b) that Christ has been "made unto us wisdom
from God: righteousness and sanctification and redemption" (1:30). Here
are examples of the whole range of human need that God has met in his Son. We
have shown elsewhere how God does not distribute to us these qualities of
righteousness, holiness and so on in installments "to be taken as
required." What he does is to give us Christ as the inclusive answer to
all our needs. He makes his Son to be my righteousness and my holiness, and
everything else I lack, on the ground that he has already placed me in Christ
crucified and risen.
Now I would draw your attention
to the last word, "redemption." For redemption has a great deal to do
with the world. The Israelites, you will recall, were "redeemed" out
of Egypt, which at that time was all the world they knew, and which is for us a
figure of this world under Satanic rule. "I am Jehovah," God said to
Israel, "and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm." So God
brought them out, setting a barrier of judgment between them and Pharaoh's
pursuing host, so that Moses could sing of Israel as "the people which
thou has redeemed" (Exod. 6:6; 15:13).
In the light of this, let us now
take Paul's double statement. If (a) God has placed us in Christ, then since
Christ is altogether out of the world, we too are altogether out of the world.
He is now our sphere, and being in him, we are by definition out of that other
sphere. The Father "delivered us out of the power of darkness, and
translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son; in whom we have our
redemption" (Col. 1:13, 14, A.V.). This transfer was the subject of our
last two chapters.
Furthermore, if also (b) Christ
is "made unto us redemption"-if that is to say, he is given to us to
be that-then that means that within us God has set Christ himself as the
barrier to resist the world. I have met many young Christians trying to resist
the world, trying in one way or another to live an unworldly life. They found
it very hard and, moreover, such effort is of course wholly unnecessary. For by
his own essential "otherness" Christ is our barrier to the world, and
we need nothing more. It is not that we must do anything in relation to our
redemption, any more than the people of Israel did anything in relation to
theirs. They simply trusted in God's redeeming arm outstretched on their
behalf. And Christ is made to us redemption. In my heart there is a barrier set
up between me and the world, the barrier of another kind of life, namely that
of my Lord himself, and God has set the barrier there. And because of Christ,
the world cannot reach me.
What need therefore have I to
try either to resist or to escape the system of things? If I look within myself
for something with which to meet and overcome the world, I instantly find
everything within me crying out for that world, while if I struggle to detach
myself from it I simply become more and more involved. But let the day once
come when I recognize that within me Christ is my redemption, and that in him I
am altogether "out." That day will see the end of struggling. I shall
simply tell him that I can do nothing at all about this "world"
business, but thank him with all my heart that he is my Redeemer.
At risk of monotony let me say
again: the character of the world is morally different from the Spirit-imparted
life we have received from God. Fundamentally it is because we possess this new
life of God's gift that the world hates us, for it has no hatred for its own
kind. This radical difference leaves us indeed with no way of making the world
love us. "If ye were of the world, the world would love its own: but
because ye are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore
the world hateth you."
When the world meets in us a
natural human honesty and decency, it appreciates this, and is ready to pay us
due respect and place in us its confidence. But as soon as it meets that in us
which is not of ourselves, namely the divine nature of which we have been made
partakers, its hostility is at once aroused. Show the world the fruits of
Christianity and it will applaud; show it Christianity and it will oppose it
vigorously. For let the world evolve as it will, it cannever produce one
Christian. It can imitate Christian honesty, Christian courtesy, Christian charity,
yes, but to produce one single Christian it can never aspire. A so-called
Christian civilization gains the recognition and respect of the world. The
world can tolerate that; it can even assimilate and utilize that. But Christian
lifethe life of Christ in the Christian believer: that it hates, and wherever
it meets it it will assuredly oppose it to the death.
Christian civilization is the
outcome of an attempt to reconcile the world and Christ. In Old Testament
figure we see that represented by Moab and Ammon, the fruit indirectly of Lot's
involvement and compromise with Sodom; and neither Moab nor Ammon proved any
less hostile to Israel than were the heathen nations. Christian civilization
proves that it can mix with the world, and may even be found taking the world's
side in a crisis. There is one thing, however, that is eternally apart from the
world and can never mix with it, and that is the life of Christ. Their natures
are mutually antagonistic and cannot be reconciled. Between the finest specimen
of human nature the world can produce and the most insignificant Christian
there is no common ground, and thus no basis of comparison. For natural
goodness is something we had by natural birth and can by our own resources
naturally develop; but spiritual goodness is, in John's words, "begotten
of God" (1 John 5:4).
God has established in the world
a universal Church; and in one place and another he has planted many local
churches. God, I say, has done this. It would be unreasonable therefore to
expect that his way of deliverance from the world would be by physical
separation from it. But as a consequence many sincere Christians are greatly
perplexed by the problem of absorption. If God plants a local church here, will
it, they ask, one day be reabsorbed by the world?
That in fact presents no problem
to the living God. Inasmuch as its origin is not of the world, there is in the
family of God no correspondence whatever with the world and thus no possibility
of the world absorbing it. This is of course no credit to us, his children. It
is not because we earnestly desire to be heavenly that the Church is heavenly,
but because we are born out of heaven. And if, by our heavenly origin, we are
absolved from trying to work our way there, we are absolved also thereby from
studying to keep ourselves physically clear of this world.
How can the world possibly mix
with what is otherworldly? For all that is of the world is empty dust, whereas
all that is of God has the miraculous quality of divine life. Some of our brothers
in Nanking were once assisting in relief work after the bombing of the city by
Japanese planes. Suddenly, as they stood before a shattered house wondering
where to begin, there was a violent upheaval of bricks and timbers, and a man
emerged. Shaking the dust and rubble from him he rose and struggled to his
feet. The fallen beams and rafters fell back into place behind him and the dust
settled again, but out he walked alive! While there is life what fear is there
of mixture?
The prayer of Jesus to his
Father which John records in Chapter 17 contains a plea that is most arresting.
Having repeated the statement that "the world hated them, because they are
not of the world, even as I am not of the world," Jesus continues: "I
pray not that thou shouldest take them from (ek) the world, but that thou
shouldest keep them from (ek) the evil one" (verses 14, 15).
Here we have an important
principle which will occupy our next chapter. Christians have a vital place in
the world. Though saved from the evil one and his system they have not yet been
removed from his territory. They have a part to play there for which they are
indispensable. Religious people, as we saw, attempt to overcome the world by
getting out of it. As Christians, that is not our attitude at all. Right here
is the place where we are called to overcome. Created distinct from the world,
we accept with joy the fact that God has placed us in it. That distinctiveness,
our gift from God in Christ, is all the safeguard we need.
Chapter 6: Lights In The World
Without fear of challenge Jesus
could say: "I am the light of the world" (John 8:12). His claim does
not surprise us in the least. What is surprising, however, is that he should
then say to his disciples, and so by implication to us: "Ye are the light
of the world" (Matt. 5:14). For he does not exhort us to be that light; he
plainly says that we are the world's light, whether we bring our illumination
out into places where men can see it, or hide it away from them. The divine
life planted in us, which itself is so utterly foreign to the world all around
it, is a light source designed to illumine to mankind the world's true
character by emphasizing through contrast its inherent darkness. Accordingly
Jesus goes on: "Even so let your light shine before men, that they may see
your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven." From this it
is clear that to separate ourselves from the world today, and thus deprive it
of its only light, in no way glorifies God. It merely thwarts his purpose in us
and in mankind.
It is true that, as we saw
earlier, the career of John the Baptist was rather different. He did in fact
withdraw from the world to live austerely in desert places apart, subsisting,
we are told, on locusts and wild honey. Men went out there to seek him, for
even there he was a burning and a shining light. Yet we are reminded that
"he was not that Light." He came only to bear witness to it. His
testimony was the last and greatest of an old prophetic order, but it was so
because it pointed forward to Jesus. Jesus alone was "the true Light which
lighteth every man, coming into the world"; and he certainly "was in
the world," not outside of it (John 1:9, 10). Christianity derives from
him. God can use a John crying in the wilderness, but he never intended his
Church to be a select company living by the principle of abstinence.
Earlier we saw how
abstinence-"handle not, nor taste, nor touch"-was merely one more
element in the world system, and as such was itself suspect (Col. 2:21). But we
must go a stage further than this, and once again the apostle Paul comes to our
help. In Romans 14:17 he shows how the Christian life is something removed al.
together from controversy about what we do and what we don't do. "The
kingdom of God is not eating.and drinking"-not, that is to say, to be
conceived in those terms at all-"but righteousness and peace and joy in
the Holy Ghost," which are in a realm wholly different. The Christian
lives, and is guided, not by rules specifying just how far he may mix with men,
but by these inward qualities which are mediated to him by God's Holy Spirit.
Righteousness and peace and joy
in the Holy Ghost: It may be good for a moment to direct our attention to the
second of these. For peace, we find, is a potent element in God's answer to his
Son's prayer that he would keep us from the evil one (John 17:15).
In God himself there is a peace,
a profound undisturbedness of spirit, which keeps him untroubled and
undistressed in the face of unspeakable conflict and contradiction. "In
the world ye have tribulation," Jesus says, but "in me ye may have
peace" (John 16:33). How easily we get troubled as soon as something goes
wrong! But do we ever pause to consider what went wrong with the great purpose
upon which God had set his heart? God, who is light, had an eternal plan.
Causing light to shine out of darkness he designed this world to be the arena
of that plan. Then Satan, as we know, stepped in to thwart God, so that men
came to love darkness rather than light. Yet in spite of that setback, the
implications of which we appreciate all too little, God preserves in himself a
quite undisturbed peace. It is that peace of God which, Paul tells us, is to
garrison our hearts and thoughts in Christ Jesus (Phil. 4:7).
What does "garrison"
really mean? It means that my foe has to fight through the armed guard at the
gates before he can reach me. Before I can be touched, the garrison itself has
first to be overcome. So I dare to be as peaceful as God, for the peace that is
keeping God is keeping me. This is something that the world knows nothing
about. "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you: not as the world
giveth, give I unto you" (John
How utterly men failed to
understand Jesus! Whatever he did was wrong in their eyes, for the light that
was in them was darkness. They even dared to identify the Spirit that was in
him with Beelzebub the prince of devils. Yet when they accused him of gluttony
and drunkenness, what was his response? "Father, I thank thee!"
(Matt. 11:19,25). He was unmoved, because in Spirit he abode in the peace of
God.
Or recall that last night before
his passion. Everything seemed to be going wrong: a friend going out into the
night to betray him, another drawing a sword in anger, people going into
hiding, or running away naked in their eagerness to escape. In the midst of it
all Jesus said to those who had come to take him, "I am he," so
peacefully and so quietly that instead of him being nervous it was they who
trembled and fell backwards. This was an experience that has been repeated in
the martyrs of every age. They could be tortured or burned, but because they
possessed his peace, the onlookers could only wonder at their dignity and
composure. It is no surprise to us therefore that Paul describes this peace as
beyond understanding.
How striking is the contrast
Jesus draws between "in the world" where we are to have tribulation,
and "in me" where we may have peace. If God has placed us in the one,
to be thronged by its pressures and claims and needs, he has placed us also in
the Other, to be held by him undisturbed amid it all. Jesus himself once asked,
"Who touched me?" The believing touch of one in that Capernaum
multitude registered with him. It matched his own heart of compassion, whereas
the pressure of the rest crowding upon him had no such effect. All their
impatient jostling did not touch him in the least, for there was little in
common between them and him. "Not as the world giveth, give I unto
you." If our life is the life of men, we are swayed by the world. If it is
the life of the Spirit it is unmoved by worldly pressures.
"Righteousness and peace
and joy": with such things is the kingdom of God concerned. Never let us
be drawn away, therefore, into the old realm of "eating and
drinking," for it is neither the prescription of these things nor their
prohibition that concerns us, but another world altogether. So we who are of
the kingdom need not abstain. We overcome the world not by giving up the
world's things but by being otherworldly in a positive way: by possessing, that
is, a love and a joy and a peace that the world cannot give and that men sorely
need.
Far from seeking to avoid the
world we need to see how privileged we are to have been placed there by God.
"As thou didst send me into the world, even so send I them into the
world." What a statement! The Church is Jesus' successor, a divine
settlement planted here right in the midst of Satan's territory. It is
something that Satan cannot abide, any more than he could abide Jesus himself, and
yet it is something that he cannot by any means rid himself of. It is a colony
of heaven, an alien intrusion on his territory, and one against which he is
utterly powerless. "Children of God," Paul calls us, "in the
midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom ye are seen as lights in
the world" (Phil. 2:15). God has deliberately placed us in the cosmos to
show it up for what it is. We are to expose to the divine light, for all men to
see them, its God-defying rebelliousness on the one hand and its hollowness and
emptiness on the other.
And our task does not stop
there. We are to proclaim to men the good news that, if they will turn to it,
that light of God in the face of Jesus Christ will set them free from the world's
vain emptiness into the fullness that is his. It is this twofold mission of the
Church that accounts for Satan's hatred. There is nothing that goads him so
much as the Church's presence in the world. Nothing would please him more than
to see its telltale light removed. The Church is a thorn in the side of God's
adversary, a constant source of irritation and annoyance to him. We make a heap
of trouble for Satan simply by being in the world. So why leave it?
"Go ye into all the world
and preach the gospel" (Mark
So there is no need for us to
give up our secular employments. Far from it, for they are our mission field.
In this matter there are no secular considerations, only spiritual ones. We do
not live our lives in separate compartments, as Christians in the Church and as
secular beings the rest of the time. There is not a thing in our profession or
in our employment that God intends should be dissociated from our life as his
children. Everything we do, be it in field or highway, in shop, factory,
kitchen, hospital or school, has spiritual value in terms of the kingdom of
Christ. Everything is to be claimed for him. Satan would much prefer to have no
Christians in any of these places, for they are decidedly in his way there. He
tries therefore to frighten us out of the world, and if he cannot do that, to
get us involved in his world system, thinking in its terms, regulating our
behaviour by its standards. Either would be a triumph for him. But for us to be
in the world, yet with all our hopes, all our interests and all our prospects
out of the world, that is Satan's defeat and God's glory.
Of Jesus' presence in the world
it is written that "the darkness overcame it not" (John 1:5 margin).
Nowhere in Scripture does it tell us of sin that we are to "overcome"
it, but it distinctly says we are to overcome the world. In relation to sin
God's word speaks only of deliverance; it is in relation to the world that it
speaks of victory.
We need deliverance from sin,
because God never intended we should have any touch with it; but we do not
need, nor should we seek, deliverance from the world, for it is in the purpose
of God that we touch it. We are not delivered out of the world, but being born
from above, we have victory over it. And we have that victory in the same
sense, and with the same unfailing certainty, that light overcame darkness.
"This is the victory that
hath overcome the world, even our faith. And who is he that overcometh the
world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" (1 John 5:4,
5). The key to victory is always our faith relationship with the victorious
Son. "Be of good cheer," he said. "I have overcome the
world" (John 16:33). Only Jesus could make such a claim; and he could do
so because he could earlier affirm: "The prince of the world ... hath
nothing in me" (John 14:30). It was the first time that anyone on earth
had said such a thing. He said it, and he overcame. And through his overcoming
the prince of the world was cast out and Jesus began to draw men to himself.
And because he said it, we now
dare say it too. Because of my new birth, because "whatsoever is begotten
of God overcometh the world," I can be in the same world as my Lord was
in, and in the same sense as he was I can be utterly apart from it, a lamp set
on a lampstand, giving light to all who enter the house. "As he is, so are
we in this world" (1 John 4:17). The Church glorifies God, not by getting
out of the world but by radiating his light in it. Heaven is not the place to
glorify God; it will be the place to praise him. The place to glorify him is
here.
Chapter 7: Detachment
We have seen the Church as a
thorn in Satan's side, causing him acute discomfort and reducing his freedom of
movement. Though in the world, the Church not only refuses to aid in the
world's construction but persists in pronouncing judgment upon it. But if this
is true, if the Church is always a source of irritation to the world, then
equally the world is a source of constant grief to the Church. And because the
world is always developing, its power to distress God's people is ever
expanding; in fact the Church has to meet a force in the world today with which
in the early days she was not confronted at all. Then the children of God met
open persecution in the shape of outward physical assault upon their persons
(Acts 12; 2 Corinthians 11). They were always coming into collision with
material, tangible things. Now the chief trouble they meet in the world is more
subtle, an intangible force behind its material things, that is not holy but
spiritually evil. The impact of that spiritual force today is far greater than
it was then. And not only is it greater; there is an element present now that
was not there formerly.
In Revelation 9 we read of a
development which, to the author of that book, lay far in the future. "The
fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star from heaven fallen unto the earth: and
there was given to him the key of the pit of the abyss. And he opened the pit
of the abyss; and there went up a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great
furnace.... And out of the smoke came forth locusts upon the earth; and power
was given them, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was said unto
them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing,
neither any tree, but only such men as have not the seal of God on their
foreheads" (verses 1-4). This is figurative language, but the star falling
from heaven obviously refers to Satan, and we know that the bottomless pit is
his domain, his storehouse, we might say. Thus it appears that the end time is
to be marked by a special release of his forces, and men will find themselves
up against a spiritual power with which they had not before to contend.
Surely this accords with
conditions in our day. While it is true that sin and violence will be greater
than ever at the close of this age, it is apparent from God's Word that it is
not specifically these with which the Church will have to grapple then, but
with the spiritual appeal of far more everyday things. "As it came to pass
in the days of Noah, even so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.
They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day
that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came and destroyed them all.
Likewise even as it came to pass in the days of
And yet Scripture warns us that
"the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness"
and so on. It bids us first of all seek the kingdom of God and his
righteousness, and assures us that as we do so, all these things will be added
to us. It bids us be carefree regarding matters of food and clothing, for if
God cares for the flowers of the field and the birds of the air, will he not
much rather care for us, his own? Yet to judge by our anxieties it would almost
seem that they are cared for, but not we!
Now here is the point that needs
special emphasis. This condition of things is abnormal. The undue attention to
eating and drinking, whether at the extremes of subsistence or luxury,' that
characterizes so many Christians these days is far from normal; it is
supernatural. For it is not just a question of food and drink that we are
meeting here; we are meeting demons. Satan conceived and now controls the world
order, and is prepared to use demonic power through the things of the world to
lure us into it. The present state of affairs cannot be accounted for apart
from this. Oh that the children of God might awaken to this fact! In past days
God's saints met all sorts of difficulties; yet, in the midst of pressure, they
could look up and trust God. In the pressures of today, however, they are so
confused and bewildered that they seem unable to trust him. Oh, let us realize
the Satanic origin of all this pressure and confusion!
The same is true in matrimonial
affairs. Never have we met so many problems in this field as today. There is
confusion abroad as young people break with old traditions but lack the
guidance of any new ones to replace them. This fact is not to be accounted for
naturally, but supernaturally. Marrying and giving in marriage are wholesome
and normal in any age, but today there is an element breaking into these things
that is unnatural.
So it is with planting and
building, and so too with buying and selling. All these things can be perfectly
legitimate and beneficial, but today the power behind them presses upon men
until they are bewildered and lose their balance. The evil force that energizes
the world system has precipitated a condition today where we see two extremes;
the one extreme of utter inability to make ends meet, and the other extreme of
unusual opportunity to amass wealth. On the one hand many Christians find
themselves in unprecedented economic difficulties: on the other hand many are
faced with no less unprecedented opportunities of enriching themselves. Both of
these conditions are abnormal.
Enter any home these days and
listen in on the conversation. You will hear remarks such as these: "Last
week I bought such-and-such goods at such-and-such a figure, and I have thereby
saved so much." "Happily I purchased that a year ago, otherwise I
would have lost badly." "If you want to sell, sell now while the
market is good." Have you not noticed the way people are rushing here and there,
feverishly making business deals? Doctors are stocking up with flour, cloth
manufacturers are selling paper, men and women who have never touched such
things before are being swept off their feet by the current of speculation.
They are caught up in a marketing maelstrom that is whirling them madly around.
Do you not realize that this state of affairs is not natural? Do you not see
that there is a power here which is captivating men? People are not acting
sanely; they are beside themselves. Today's buying and selling spree is not
just a question of making a little money-or losing it. It is a question of
touching a Satanic system. We are living in the end time, a time when a special
power has been let loose which is driving men on, whether they will or no.
So the question today is not so
much one of sinfulness as of worldliness. Who would' dare to say you do wrong
to eat and drink? Who would dare to disapprove of marrying and giving in
marriage? Who would question your right to buy and sell? These things are not
in themselves wrong; the wrong lies in the spiritual force behind them, which,
through their medium, presses relentlessly upon us. Oh that we might awake to
the fact that, whereas these things are so common and so simple, they are yet
being used by Satan to ensnare God's children into the great net of his world
order.
"Take heed to yourselves,
lest haply your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and
cares of this life, and that day come on you suddenly as a snare" (Luke
For let us realize who we are!
We are the Church, the light of the world shining amid the darkness. As such
let us live our lives down here.
There was a time when the Church
rejected the world's ways. Now she not only uses them; she abuses them. Of
course we must use the world, because we need it; but let us not want it, let
us not desire it. So Jesus continues, "Watch ye at every season, making
supplication, that ye may prevail to escape all these things that shall come to
pass and to stand (literally `be set') before the Son of man" (Luke
The book of Revelation suggests
that Satan will set up his kingdom of antichrist in the political world (Ch.
13), in the religious world (
Are we sensitive to
For we are in a perilous realm
when we touch commerce. If by reason of our calling we engage in pure trade,
and if we do so in fear and trembling, we may with God's help escape the snare
of the Devil. But if we are overconfident, then there is no hope of escape from
the unscrupulous self-seeking that such business engenders. So the problem that
confronts us these days is not how to refrain from buying and selling, from
eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage; the problem now is to
avoid the power behind these things, for we dare not let that power triumph
over us.
What, then, is the secret of
holding our material things in the will of God? Surely it is to hold them for
God, that is to say, to know we are not hoarding useless valuables, or amassing
vast bank deposits, but laying up treasures to his account. You and I must be
perfectly willing to part with anything at any moment. It matters not whether I
leave two thousand dollars or merely two. What matters is whether I can leave
what ever I have without a twinge of regret.
I am not suggesting by this that
we must try to dispose of everything; that is not the point. The point is that
as God's children you and I may not accumulate things for ourselves. If I keep
something it is because God has spoken to my heart; if I part with it it is for
the same reason. I hold myself in the will of God and am not afraid to give if
God asks me to give. I keep nothing because I love it, but let it go without
regret when the call comes to leave it behind. That is what it means to be
detached, free, separated to God.
Chapter 8: Mutual Refreshing
In John's Gospel there is
recorded an event which only he has preserved for us. It is an event full of
divine meaning and one which greatly helps to illumine for us this problem of
living in the world. I refer to the incident in Chapter 13 in which our Lord
Jesus girds himself with a towel, and taking a basin, washes his disciples'
feet. This action of Jesus has lessons to teach us which I do not propose to go
into fully here. Instead I want us to look in particular at his command which
follows it. "Ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given
you an example, that ye should also do as I have done to you.... If ye know these
things, blessed are ye if ye do them" (verses 14-17). What is this mutual
feet washing? What does it mean that I should wash my brother's feet and that
my feet should be washed by my brother?
The aspect of truth specially
emphasized here is refreshment. As we shall shortly see, it is something very
dear to the Lord that we as his children should learn to minister refreshment
to our brethren, and that they in turn should be a means of refreshment to our
spirits.
Let me say at once that this passage
does not concern sins. Whether I go barefoot or wearing sandals, or even shoes,
the dust that gathers on my feet is something inevitable. I cannot avoid it.
But for me to have a fall, and having fallen to roll in the dust so that it
collects on my body and on my clothes-that is not inevitable; it is altogether
wrong! I have to walk from one place to another, but it is quite unnecessary
for me to roll along the street in order to get there. I can do so without
floundering in the mud!
Equally in the Christian life,
to stumble and fall and then to flounder in the dust is sin, certainly. It
calls for repentance and it needs God's forgiveness. For it is not necessary
for me to walk with the Lord like that, hiding behind the excuse that "I
must fall once in a while; it is inevitable!" That, we all agree, is
wrong.
But the point about the dust on
our feet is this, that in walking through the world, no matter who we are or
how careful we may be, it is inevitable table that our feet will collect
something. Of course if we do not touch the earth at all, we certainly pick up
nothing, but to achieve this we should have to be carried around. If we do
touch the ground - and who seriously expects not to? - we are certain to pick
up what is there. Even our Lord Jesus rebuked his host with the words:
"Thou gavest me no water for my feet" (Luke
So let us come now to the
practical outworking of this. Some of you brothers and sisters in Christ have
to go out to work in offices or shops for, say, seven or eight hours a day. It
is not wrong that you do so. It is not sin to work in a shop or a factory. But
when you come home from your place of employment, do you not find yourself
tired and dispirited and out of tune with things? You meet a brother, but you
cannot slip easily and directly into speaking with him of divine things. It is
as though there were a coating of something contaminating you. I repeat: that is
not necessarily sin at all; it is just that your contact with the world has
deposited upon you that film of tarnish. You cannot help feeling it, for there
seems to be an inability to rise up to the Lord at once. The luminous touch
which you had with him in the morning seems to have been darkened; its
freshness has gone from you. We all know that experience.
Or again, some of our sisters
have to attend to domestic duties. Let us suppose a young mother is preparing
dinner and has something cooking on the stove. All at once the baby cries, the
door bell rings, the milk boils over - everything comes upon her together in a
rush. She runs to one and misses the other! After everything is eventually
settled she sits down, and it seems as if she needs a power to lift her up to
God again. She is conscious of something there - not sin, but as it were a
deposit of dust over everything. It clings like a film, coming between her and
her Lord, and she feels tarnished, soiled. There is not that clear way which
takes her through to God at once. This I think illustrates for us the need of
feet washing.
Many a time we are tired and
jaded by our secular duties. When we get down to pray, we find we have to wait
for awhile. It seems to take us ten or twenty minutes to come back to that
place where we can really get through to God. Or we sit down to read the Word,
we find it requires a determined effort to restore again that openness to his
speaking. But how good it is if on the road home we meet a brother with an
overflowing heart, fresh from communion with God! Without meaning to do
anything he just spontaneously shakes our hand and says, "Brother, praise
the Lord!" He may not know it, but somehow it is as if he has come with a
duster and wiped everything clean. Immediately we feel that our touch with God
has been restored.
Sometimes you may come into a
prayer meeting with a heavy spirit, through the effect of your work during the
day. Someone may pray, and you still feel the same; and another prays, and
there is no difference. But then another brother or sister prays, and somehow
you immediately feel the lifting power. You are refreshed; your feet have been
washed. What, then, does washing mean? It means to restore to the original
freshness. It means to bring things back to a point of such clearness that it
is once again as though they came out of God's immediate presence, new from his
hand.
I do not know how many times I
personally have felt low like that, when it was not exactly sin that was
troubling, but that feeling of a coating of the world's dust; and then I have
met a brother or a sister, one who may have known nothing at all of my
condition, but who has just passed on a remark that has brightened everything.
When this happens you simply feel all the darkness gone, the film swept away.
Praise God, you are refreshed and put back at once into the condition where you
can directly enjoy touch with him again. That is feet-washing to refresh my
brethren in Christ; to bring a brother again to the place where it is as though
he had just come out from the very presence of God. It is this ministry to one
another that the Lord desires to see among his children.
If we are walking with God there
is not a day when we may not, if we wish, be a refreshment to our brethren.
This is one of the greatest ministries. It may be no more than a handshake. It
may be a word of encouragement almost casually spoken. It may be just the light
of heaven on our faces. But if the Lord has got his way with us and we are in
the state of having no cloud between ourselves and him, we shall find that we
are quietly being used. We may not know it, for it is better not to seek to
know it-indeed it may be better never to know it. But whether we know it or
not, we are constantly being used to refresh our brother. When he is low and in
darkness, when he has a burden on his heart or a film before his eyes, when he
has been tarnished and stained, then to us he will come. He may not stay long,
perhaps only for a few minutes. Seek for that ministry. Find grace from God to
help him. Often we think it would be good if we could give long sermons that
command a wide hearing, but few have that gift, and many are not reached by
those few who have. To refresh the hearts of the saints is the kind of ministry
which everyone can fulfil and which can reach everywhere. In the valuation of
God it is without price.
But to serve others in this way
we must fulfil the conditions. If we are really going on with the Lord there is
of course no question that we shall be used, for there are no limitations with
him. If we ourselves are untarnished, with hearts brimming with his joy and
peace, there is bound to be an overflow. So the simple question I put to you is
this: Is there any point of controversy between you and God? I refer of course
to real, known issues. If there is nothing special, then there is no need for
you to search around to find something; the Lord himself will always discover
it. When he wants to bring to light something you are overlooking, he will
always point his finger there, and you will know it. There is no need for you
to turn your eyes within and by checking up and analyzing every feeling to try
to dig it out. Just praise him! It is the Lord's business, not yours, to shine
into your heart and show you when you are astray from him.
But one thing is certain. If you
do have a controversy with God, you can only tarnish others. You can never wash
their feet. When they are low, you will bring them lower. When they feel heavy,
you will come to them and make them heavier still. Instead of refreshing them
and restoring to them the newness that comes out from God, you can only plunge
them into deeper gloom. To be at odds with God is the sure way to be a drain
upon the life of his Church, whereas the greatest manifestation of power is, I
believe, to be able constantly to refresh others. It is a priceless thing, that
touch of heaven that lifts, cleanses, renews.
"Ye also ought to wash one
another's feet." Of all his commandments to his disciples this is-and I
use the expression in its purest sense-the most dramatic. To impress on them
its importance he himself acted it out before them. It was an expression of his
love for "his own which were in the world" (verse 1). He set himself
to show his disciples what he meant by ministry. It is not platform work. It is
serving one another with a basin and a towel. There will always be a need of
restoring people who have fallen, of bringing back to repentance the weak ones
who have sinned; but the greatest need of the saints today is of refreshment,
by which I mean recalling them afresh to what is original and of God. That is
power. Jesus himself "came forth from God" (verse 3) to do this. I do
not know how it strikes you, but I think there is no greater power for God than
to be fresh from him before the world. Do you not find it to be the greatest
manifestation of the power of divine life? In a world system darkened with the
smoke of the pit, how we rejoice to meet saints who are fresh with the clean
air of heaven. Such freshness brings anew to you and me the divine breath of
life.
I thank the Lord that in my
younger days I had the great privilege of knowing one of the rarest of saints.
I knew her for many years, and found her to have many spiritual qualities; but
I think the thing that impressed me above them all was the sense of God. You
could not for long sit in her presence, or even walk into her room and have a
handshake, without feeling a sense of God coming over you. You did not know
why, but you felt it. I was not the only one who felt this. Everyone who had
touch with her gave the same testimony. I have to confess that in those days
many a time I was feeling downhearted, and it seemed as though everything had
gone wrong. I walked into her room, and immediately I felt rebuked. Immediately
I felt I was face to face with God, I was refreshed.
Why should this thing happen,
this immediate restoration? Surely not because it is just the ministry of a
privileged few. The Lord would like every single one of us to be like that, to
impart that power to brighten our brothers and sisters when they have become
tarnished. Please remember - dare I say this? - that sometimes being tarnished
does more to hurt the impact of the Christian's life upon the world than do his
actual, conscious sins. Once in a while we may sin, any of us, but because we
are sensitive to that, we know at once that we have done so and will seek and
find forgiveness. But many a time we have been tarnished for hours with the
world's tarnish, and because it is not actual sin we remain unconcerned. Then
it is that our impact for God upon the world becomes blunted. How good it is at
such a time to have around a brother or sister through whom we are lifted once
more to a renewed communion with God!
What, then, are the rules? They
are two. First, as we have seen, there must be no known discord between me and
my Lord that is not at once cleared up; for if there is, that effectively puts
me out of this ministry altogether. Whatever the matter be, it is to be settled
at once or I am useless. Far from being an asset to the
Secondly - and to avoid
misunderstanding this needs stating plainly: please remember that this refreshing
is mutual. "Wash one another's feet," Jesus said. The refresher must
expect also to be refreshed by others. Many a time the Lord may use you, but
equally, many a time he may use someone else to refresh you. There exist no
chosen few set apart for a spiritual task as "refreshers," just as
none of us are absolved from walking through this world and needing therefore
to be refreshed. As with Peter, no single one of us is entitled to say of
himself: "I have gone beyond that stage. I am now in such touch with God
that I am above tarnish, and can pray or preach without the need of such a
ministry. Thou shalt never wash my feet!"
No superior class of brothers
exists in the Church that has no need to be refreshed. It is something every
servant of God depends on. Employed in a workshop or a kitchen all day, you may
well need brightening up; but some of us have been working all day in churches,
and we too need to be brightened! Our need of restoration is often just as
great, though we may well be lulled into overlooking that fact. Whether we work
in any obviously secular sphere or are engaged in so-called spiritual things,
the world is all around us, closing in. Ever and anon therefore we need the
help of some brother or sister to lift us again to that fresh touch of God,
that renewal of divine power.
Thus the principle of the Body
is, quite simply, refreshing and being refreshed. The more we go on with the
Lord the more we need the brethren. For in this ministry not one of us is
insignificant, and not one of us ever reaches the point where he has no need to
be ministered to by another. My prayer for myself is that God may once in a
while use me to refresh someone else's spirit when it is jaded, and that
likewise he may once in a while use someone else to touch my flagging spirit
and refresh me. If by that brother the tarnish of the world is wiped off me, so
that coming weary I go away renewed, then his has been a ministry of Christ to
me.
What I have thus sought to
describe in simple terms amounts to a united front against the world. This is
no small thing. If we will believe it enough to practice it, it possesses, I am
convinced, the power to make Satan's mightiest strongholds tremble. In Jesus'
words: "If ye know these things, blessed are ye if ye do them."
Chapter 9: My Laws in Their Hearts
In earlier chapters we have been
building up a picture of this world, not just as a location, nor as a race of
people, nor indeed as anything merely material, but rather as a spiritual
system at the head of which is God's enemy. "The world" is Satan's
masterpiece, and we have thought of him as directing all his strength and
ingenuity into causing it to flourish. To what end? Surely to capture men's
allegiance and draw them to himself. He has one object: to establish his own
dominion in human hearts worldwide. Even though he must be aware that that
dominion may last only briefly, that, without question, is his goal. And as the
end of the age approaches and his efforts increase, so does the distress of
God's people intensify. For as aliens and sojourners, their position-in the
world and yet not of it-is an uncomfortable one. They would fain seek relief
from the spiritual tension in physical distance. How good it would be to escape
from this world completely and be forever with the Lord!
But clearly that is not his
will. As we saw, he prayed the Father not to take his own out of the world but
to preserve them there from the evil one. And Paul takes a similar line. Having
in a particular instance exhorted the Corinthian believers not to have
fellowship with a certain class of sinner, he immediately takes steps to guard
against possible misunderstanding. They are not to isolate themselves. They are
not to sever connections with all sinners in the world, nor even with those in the
category described, for to do so would involve their leaving the world
altogether. "I wrote unto you in my epistle to have no company with
fornicators; not altogether (i.e. not at all meaning) with the fornicators of
this world, or with the covetous and extortioners, or with idolators; for then
must ye needs go out of the world" (1 Cor. 5:9, 10).
It is clear from Paul's words
therefore that we may, and indeed must, associate with the world to a certain
extent, for is it not the world that God so loved? But here is the question: To
what extent? How far may we go? All of us agree that we are obliged at some
points to touch the things of the world. But presumably there is a limit
somewhere. Keep within that limit and we are safe; exceed it and we risk becoming
implicated by Satan.
I do not think we can exaggerate
this problem, for it is an acute one and the dangers are real. If the time
should come when you are acutely ill and in great pain, and the doctor should
prescribe for you heroin or morphine, you would instantly be alive to the
danger of developing a craving for the drug. You would obey him and take the
treatment, but you would take it fearfully and prayerfully, for you know there
is a power in it, and you know you are liable to come under that power. This
would be especially so if the treatment had to be prolonged.
Every time you and I touch the
world through the things of the world-and we must do so repeatedly-we should
feel much as we would feel about taking morphine, for there are demons at the back
of everything that belongs to the world. Just as I may, if seriously ill, be
prescribed opium as a treatment, so also, because I am still in the world, I
have to do business with the world, follow some trade or employment, earn my
livelihood. But how much treatment with dangerous drugs I can safely take
without falling a prey to the opium craving I do not know; and how many things
I can buy, or how much money I can make, or how close can be my business or
professional associations, without my becoming hooked, I likewise do not know.
All I know is that there is a Satanic power behind every worldly thing. How
vital therefore for every Christian to have a clear revelation of the spirit of
the world in order to appreciate how real is the danger to which he is
continually exposed!
Perhaps you think I am going too
far. Perhaps you say: Oh yes, that may be a good sermon illustration, but I
find it hard not to feel you are overstating the case. But when you see, then
you will say of the world, as you say of opium, that there is a sinister power
behind it, a power designed to seduce and to captivate men. Those whose eyes
have been really opened to this world's true character find they must touch
everything in it with fear and trembling, looking continually to the Lord. They
know that at any moment they are liable to be caught in Satan's entanglements.
Just as the drug which, in the first instance, is welcomed to relieve sickness
may ultimately become itself a cause of sickness, so equally the things of the
world which we can legitimately use under the Lord's authority may, if we are
heedless, become a cause of our downfall. Only fools can be careless in
circumstances like these.
No wonder we look with envy upon
John the Baptist! How easy, we feel, if like him we could simply withdraw into
a safe place apart! But we are not like him. Our Lord has sent us into the
world in his own footsteps, "both eating and drinking." Since God so
loved, his command to us is to go "into all the world" and proclaim
his good news; and surely that "all" includes the folk with whom we
must rub shoulders daily!
So a serious problem faces us
here. As we have said, presumably there must be a limit. Presumably God has
drawn somewhere a line of demarcation. Stay within the bounds of that line and
we will be safe; cross it and grave danger threatens. But where does it lie? We
have to eat and drink, to marry and bring up children, to trade and to toil.
How do we do so and yet remain uncontaminated? How do we mingle freely with the
men and women whom God so loved as to give his Son for them, and still keep
ourselves unspotted from the world?
If our Lord had limited our
buying and selling to so much a month, how simple that would be! The rules
would be plain for any to follow. All who spent more than a certain amount per
month would be worldly Christians, and all who spent less than that amount
would be unworldly.
But since our Lord has
stipulated no figure, we are cast on him unceasingly. For what? I think the
answer is very wonderful. Not to be tied by the rules, but that we may remain
all the time within bounds of another kind: the bounds of his life. If our Lord
had given us a set of rules and regulations to observe, then we could take
great care to abide by these. In fact however our task is something far more
simple and straightforward, namely, to abide in the Lord himself. Then we could
keep the law. Now we need only keep in fellowship with him. And the joy of it
is that, provided we live in close touch with God, his Holy Spirit within our
hearts will always tell us when we reach the limit!
We spoke earlier of the kingdom
of antichrist, soon to be revealed. John, in his epistle, writing to his
"little children" about the world and the things of the world (1 John
The answer John gives them is so
simple that today we are afraid to believe it. "Ye have an anointing from
the Holy One, and ye know all things.... The anointing which ye received of him
abideth in you, and ye need not that anyone teach you: but as his anointing
teacheth you concerning all things, and is true, and is no lie, and even as it
taught you, ye abide in him" (2:20, 27). This is certainly an allusion to
the Spirit of truth, who, Jesus promised his disciples, would both convict the
world and guide them into all the truth (John 16:8-13).
In any given instance there must
be safe limits known to God beyond which we should not go. They are not marked
out on the ground for us to see, but one thing is certain: He who is the
Comforter will surely know them, even if perhaps Satan knows them too. Can we
not trust him? If at some point we are about to overstep them, can we not
depend on him at once to make us inwardly aware of the fact?
In 1 Corinthians 7 the apostle
Paul offers us some further guidance on the same theme. "This I say, brethren,
the time is shortened, that henceforth both those that have wives may be as
though they had none; and those that weep, as though they wept not; and those
that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and those that buy, as though they
possessed not; and those that use the world, as not abusing it; for the fashion
of this world passeth away. I would have you to be free from cares"
(verses 29-32). Here several matters are in turn touched upon, but the
governing factor in them all is clearly this, that "the time is
shortened," or, as some translators render it, "straitened." We
are living, the apostle says, in days of peculiar pressure, and the principle
that must guide us for such days is this, "that they who have ... be as
not having."
Does Paul, we wonder, contradict
himself? In Ephesians 5 he enjoins husbands to love their wives with as perfect
a love as that with which Christ loved the Church-no less. Yet here he tells
them to live as though not having wives at all! Does he honestly, we exclaim in
dismay, expect us at one and the same time to reconcile such complete
opposites?
Here at once it must be said
that such a paradoxical life is a life that none but Christians can live.
Perhaps the expression "as not having" affords us a clue. It reveals
that the matter is an inner matter, a question of the heart's loyalty. In
Christ there is an inner liberation to God, not merely an outward change of
conduct. They have, and having, they rejoice in Ephesians 5; but they are not
bound by what they possess, so that having not, they equally rejoice in 1
Corinthians 7. Notwithstanding all they "have," they are so truly
delivered in spirit from the world's possessiveness that they can live "as
not having."
The natural man lives at one
extreme or the other-either having, and being wholly taken up with what he has,
or if he is religious, putting away what he has so that he no longer has it,
and so being no longer concerned with it at all. But the Christian way is
utterly different from the natural way. The Christian way to solve the problem
is not by removing the thing, but by delivering the heart from the grip of that
thing. The wife is not removed, nor the affection for the wife, but both wife
and husband are freed from the overweening dominance of that affection. So,
too, the trouble that caused weeping is not removed, but the life is no longer
controlled by that trouble. The cause of joy still remains, but there is an
inner check against vain abandon to the thing that caused it. Buying and
selling go on as before, but an inward deliverance has loosened the personal
grip upon them. We have them all, but we have them "as not having."
We talk sometimes about our
desire to maintain, like John, the testimony of Jesus in the earth. Let us
remember that that testimony is based, not on what we can say about this or
that, but on what Satan can say about us. God has put us in the world, and
often he locates us in some especially difficult places, where we are tempted
to feel that worldlings have a much easier time than do Christians. That is
because Christians are indeed aliens, living here in an element that is not
naturally theirs. A swimmer may dive deep into the sea, but without special
clothing and an airline to the atmosphere that is his own, he cannot stay
there. The pressure is too great and he must breathe the air of the world to
which he belongs. He stays deep as long as there is a task to do and as long as
he is supplied with the power to overcome the element around him, but he does
not belong to the element and it has no part in him.
Thus it is that the problem of
our touch with the world is not solved by any change of outward action. Some
think that, at a time like this in which we are living, it is a sign of
spirituality to make no provision for the coming days. That is not
spirituality, it is folly. What we may do with the provision we make is a
question we shall consider in our final chapter, but God's word makes it plain
that we are to use the world. We are to eat and drink, to trade merchandise and
grow crops, to rejoice, yes and if need be to weep, and yet not to use any of
these things to the full. We have learned what is at stake in all our
relationships with the world. It is no wonder therefore that we have learned
also to tread softly, heedful all the while of the Comforter's gentle
constraining.
Jesus came "from
above." He could claim without fear of challenge: "The prince of this
world cometh and hath nothing in me." The line of demarcation was drawn,
not on the ground at his feet but in his own heart. But just as truly,
everything in this world that is "from above" is as safe as he is.
God is at the head of the airline working the pumps, as it were. A life that
belongs above is being sustained and provided for down here by him. Thus it
comes about that if a thing is spiritual and "of God," we need not
worry about it nor contend for its preservation. "My kingdom is not of
this world, else would my servants fight." They have no need to.
God does not worry about us,
simply because he has no anxiety about his Holy Spirit. There is a sense in
which poor quality spiritual life is impossible, because spiritual life is
God's life; and just as truly, spiritual life can only be overwhelmed if God
himself can be overwhelmed. God does not argue about this fact. He is content
to leave it to the Comforter to make it real in us. "Ye are of God, my
little children, and have overcome them; because greater is he that is in you
than he that is in the world" (1 John 4:4).
Again, the same verse which
tells us that the whole world lies in the lap of the evil one - yes, the very
same verse! - assures us once more that "we are of God" (1 John
Put very simply, Satan's power
in the world is everywhere. Yet wherever men and women walk in the Spirit,
sensitive to the anointing they have from God, that power of his just
evaporates. There is a line drawn by God, a boundary where by virtue of his own
very presence Satan's writ does not run. Let God but occupy all the space
himself, and what room is left for the evil one?
Are we thus utterly for God? Can
Satan testify of you and me: "I cannot entrap that man!"?
Chapter 10: The Powers of the Age to Come
What does the writer to the Hebrews
mean when he says of Christians that they have "tasted ... the powers of
the age to come" (Heb. 6:5)? We would all readily agree that there is a
splendid future age to which we look forward. In it the kingdom that is now
"in the midst" of us in terms of the mighty acts of the Spirit of God
(Matt.
We could list a number of such
things to which Scripture looks forward. There is a salvation to be revealed in
the last time (1 Pet. 1:5). There is a fresh aspect of eternal life in the age
to come (Luke
More directly related to our
present study are the following considerations. The Epistle to the Hebrews applies
to our Lord Jesus the words from Psalm 8: "Thou didst put all things in
subjection under his feet," and then goes on quite frankly to express what
experience generally must compel us to admit, namely, that "we see not yet
all things subjected to him" (Heb. 2:8). But alongside these two
contrasting statements we must place also that of Jesus in Luke 10:19, where he
already gives to his disciples "authority ... over all the power of the
enemy." Surely this promises to us a present foretaste of that future day
that we do not yet see.
Again, in the same Gospel
passage, Jesus is recorded as saying, "I beheld Satan fallen as lightning
from heaven" (
These are significant
statements; for surely if we possess salvation and eternal life in the present,
as we most certainly do, then we should also be knowing some foretastes today
of the rest of these future "powers." For though not yet manifest
universally, they are quite evidently fruits of the Cross and resurrection of
Christ that must be, at least in principle, the Church's present possession.
God's eternal purpose is bound
up with man. "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," he
said, "and let them have dominion." God intended man to wield power,
to reign and rule, to control other created things. We cannot say that redemption
was God's design - or even a part of it - for man was never intended to fall,
still less to perish. Genesis 3 represents man's history, not God's purpose for
him. A workman may fall from the fifth story of a building under construction,
but that was never in the architect's plan!
No, God's plan is concerned with
man's dominion, and it is well to note the special sphere of this, namely,
"all the earth" (Gen. 1:26). Heaven has no problem; the problem is on
earth. Man is told to "subdue it" (verse 28) and we ask ourselves
why. If there were no forces to be subdued, why this need? Furthermore we are
told that the Lord God took the man and put him into the Garden of Eden to
dress it and "to keep it" (
It is interesting to note the
wording of Genesis 1:26. Man is to have dominion "over all the
earth," and the clause is expanded to cover, among other things,
"every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." But in the event
the first thing that man failed to control was a creeping thing, a worm. And by
man's failure Satan obtained, in a new way in man himself, legal rights on the
earth. True, the dust of the earth was the lowly sphere appointed to him.
"Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat" (
If Satan is to cease to act in
us, then his ground in us must be taken from him. So God meets the situation in
redemption, not by dealing with Satan directly but, as we have seen, by taking
the whole of the old creation-the man himself, his world, everything-clean out
of the way, and thus removing from Satan his legal stand. Satan's overthrow is
compassed not by a direct blow aimed at him, but indirectly by the removal from
him in the death of Christ of all that gives him the moral right of control.
"Our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done
away, so that we should no longer be in bondage to sin" (
Praise God, Satan has therefore
no longer any rights in us. But that is a merely negative fact. There is a
positive one also. God has not only removed all that was in the way of his
eternal purpose by removing the old creation; he has also secured all that is
necessary to realize that purpose by bringing in a new creation-his new Man.
"Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath
dominion over him" (verse 9). The purpose revealed in Genesis 1 and lost
in Genesis 3 is not lost for good. What God could not secure in the first man
he obtained in the second; and that second Man is on the throne. No wonder the
New Testament writer dares to reapply the psalmist's words: "What is man,
that thou art mindful of him? Or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou
crownest him with glory and honor." Thus he quotes the psalm, and then he
exclaims: "We behold him ... even Jesus ... crowned!" (Psalm 8:4-6;
Heb. 2:69). If the creation of mankind was intended to meet the need of God,
that need has now at last been met. God has got his Man.Genesis 1, Psalm 8 and
Hebrews 2 are thus uniquely linked. Psalm 8 is of course poetry and sings of
God's plan for mankind, but the significant thing is that in spite of the Fall
the singer does not deviate. He only reaffirms the original plan of Genesis 1:
"Thou madest him to have dominion." It has not changed. Moreover, he
not only begins but ends his chant with the exclamation of praise: "How
excellent is thy name in all the earth!"
The enemy has done his worst;
man has been trapped into blaspheming God, and if you or I had composed this
Psalm we would surely have followed the eighth verse with a cry of distress:
"But alas, man has fallen; all is lost!" Not so the psalmist. It is
as though he had forgotten the Fall completely, for he does not even allude to
it. He leaps in thought across the whole history of redemption, and cries
again, "How excellent!" Adam and Eve could fall, but they could not
alter God's purpose that man should eventually overthrow Satan's power. His
purpose stands unaltered and this excellence is to be known where? In all the
earth.
Nor is it in the Son of man
merely that this purpose is realized, but in the sons of men those "many
sons" whom God is bringing to glory. The psalmist is at pains to underline
this fact. Though the enemy do his worst, the rights he has gained through the
Fall have not proved inalienable. Still among men there are those he cannot
touch. "Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings halt thou established
strength, because of thine adversaries, that thou mightest still the enemy and
the avenger" (verse 2). God does not depend on great military leaders.
Little children, yea, very babes, are sufficient to quell the hosts of his
foes.
As we saw, Hebrews 2 draws its
inspiration from this Psalm. Yet it goes a step further. While reaffirming God's
purpose in creation and the goal to which it points, it does more than this.
Looking back realistically over the course of fallen man's dark history it
establishes now that God's purpose in redemption and recovery is directed to
the identical end. In all the new circumstances that redemption has called into
being, the plan is still unchanged. God has not abandoned his goal. Moreover,
from the writer's viewpoint beyond the triumph of the Cross he can confidently
reaffirm the psalmist's affirmation of faith. So, far from all being lost, it
is true to say that in Christ the end has been secured.
Oh, yes, it is still the same
plan: "He left nothing that is not subject to him" (verse 8).
Appearances would tend to deny this, so that "we see not yet all things
subjected to him." Yet true as this is, the writer disregards it and at
once proceeds triumphantly: "But we behold him who hath been made a little
lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death, crowned
with glory and honour, that by the grace of God he should taste death for every
man" (verse 9). And then, almost defiantly he adds: "that he might
bring to nought ... the devil" (verse 14).
What man was to do on earth for
God, and failed to do, our Lord Jesus has accomplished. He "tasted death
for everything" (as the original Greek implies-not just "for every
man"). That is to say, it was not for man's redemption alone that he died
but for that of the whole creation, and, going back further, for the recovery
of the Father's purpose in the complete oversetting of the Satanic world order.
Thus it comes about that today
the Church has a definite responsibility before God to register the victory of
Christ in the devil's territory. If there is to be a testimony to the
principalities and powers, if the impact of Christ's sovereignty through his
Cross is to be registered in the spiritual realm, it can only be as the
judicial foothold in our hearts of the "pretender" in the race is met
and, by the same Cross, removed and repudiated. For God's object is still that
man should "have dominion." Our work for him does not stop with
proclaiming a Gospel that was designed merely to undo the effect of Genesis 3,
marvellous as was that undoing. God wants also to take us back further to Genesis
1 itself. He wants us in Christ to regain the moral dominion over his foe that
was there in view, and thus effectively to restore the earth to him. This is
surely why, as Paul tells us, "the earnest expectation of the creation
waiteth for the revealing of the sons of God" (Romans
The Gospel of salvation is
necessary and vital in order to meet man's need. But if as God's servants we
are only labouring for others we are missing God's first aim in creation, which
was to supply not merely man's need but his own. For as we have said already,
the creation of man was to meet the need of God. Thus if today we are going to
meet God's need we must go a step further and deal with Satan himself. We must
steal back from him his power, evict him from his territory, spoil him of his
goods and set free his captives-for God. The question is not merely, Of what
account are we in the winning of souls? Rather is it, Of what account are we in
the realm of principalities and powers? And for that there is a price to pay.
It is often possible to move men
when it is quite impossible to move Satan. The plain fact is that it costs much
more to deal with Satan than to win souls. It demands an utterness of spirit
Godward that in itself effectually deprives Satan of any moral ground in us he
may claim to possess. This is the costly thing. God in his merciful love for
the lost can often bypass and overlook in his servants what one might justly
feel to be appalling weakness and even failure. But while he may do this for
the soul-winner, when it comes to our dealing with the devil it is another
matter.
Evil spirits can see right
through the witness of man. They can tell when it is compromised by being
half-hearted or insincere. They are aware when we are holding back a part of
the price. Looking at us they are under no illusions as to whom they can safely
defy or ignore; and conversely, they know perfectly well against whom they are
powerless. "Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye?" (Acts
But the price of this witness to
the principalities and power is, I repeat, an utterness of allegiance to God
that is unqualified. To entertain our own opinions or desires, or to prefer our
own variant and contrary choices, is simply to present the enemy with his
advantage. It is, in short, to throw the game away. In any other sphere there
may perhaps-I do not know-be room among our motives for something of
self-interest, without appreciable loss. But never, and I repeat never, in
this. Without such utterness for God nothing can be achieved, for without it we
make even God powerless against his enemy.
So I say it once again: the
demand is very high. Are you and I here on earth, utterly committed, utterly
given to God himself? And because this is so, are we tasting even now the
powers of that future glorious age? Are we reclaiming territory from the prince
of this world for the One whose alone it rightly is?
Chapter 11: Robbing the Usurper
"Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners." Since in the eternal purpose of God it is man (and
not some other being) who is to have dominion, it is natural and right that our
compassion should be drawn out to those sinners. Notwithstanding anything said
hitherto, we might well feel that in this brief day of grace the winning of
souls to the Saviour of the world is perhaps the supreme means available to us
of robbing Satan of his spoils. Certainly were "man" himself our
theme, we should give a big place at this point to the subject of soul-winning.
But we have dealt with
evangelism already elsewhere. Instead, therefore, I propose in closing these studies
of "the world" to take another and more materialistic area of Satan's
dominion by way of practical illustrations of the art of "despoiling the
strong man." I refer to the field of finance.
Money is opposed to God. The
Word of God speaks of it as the mammon of unrighteousness (Luke 16:9). Since
Jesus says, "Make to yourselves friends by means of the mammon of
unrighteousness," he clearly cannot mean to describe it as the mammon that
you have obtained through unrighteous dealings. He is therefore saying that the
mammon itself is unrighteous. What is being brought before us here is not the
unrighteous means by which money is procured, nor the unrighteous use to which
money is put, but the unrighteous character of money. Money in its essential
character is evil. We talk of "clean money" and "dirty
money," but in God's sight there is only dirty money. The man who knows
God knows the character of money. He knows that money in itself is evil.
If you would test the character
of anything, you only need to enquire whether that thing leads you to God or
away from God. Money invariably leads away from God. Jesus lays down clearly in
verse 13 the principle that it is impossible to serve God and mammon, though I
think that even without his statement, most of us would be convinced that this
is so. For experience tells us that God and mammon are never on the same side;
mammon is always set over against God.
Of course it would be possible
to interpret Jesus' words more widely, and to see "mammon" as representing
everything in general that opposes itself to God. But the apostle Paul helps us
to pinpoint money as the means the world uses most successfully to draw us away
from God. "They that desire to be rich," he says, "fall into a
temptation and a snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts, such as drown men in
destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of
evil: which some reaching after have been led astray from the faith, and have
pierced themselves through with many sorrows" (1 Tim. 6:9, 10). In other
words, if anything can lead us astray from God, money will.
The essence of the world is
money. Whenever you touch money you touch the world. The question arises, how
can we take a thing which we know assuredly to be of the world, and yet not
become involved with the world system? How can we handle and do business with
money, that most worldly of worldly things, and not, in doing so, become
implicated with Satan? Still more to the point, since nothing can be done today
without paying for it, how is it possible for us to take money, that thing
which is a supreme factor in building up the kingdom of antichrist, and use it
to build up the
The widow who dropped her mite
into the temple treasury did something so acceptable to the Lord that she
received from him special commendation. What in fact she did was just this: she
took something out of the
On every Roman denarius there
was an image of Caesar. In Jesus' words, all such coins "are
Caesar's." How could the connection between Caesar and that coin be
severed? Money is a thing of the world. It is an essential part-of the world
system. How then can it be taken out of the world that claims it and devoted to
God for his use?
In Old Testament times a rigid
principle was laid down. "No devoted thing, that a man shall devote unto
the Lord of all that he hath, whether of man or beast, or of the field of his
possession, shall be sold or redeemed: every devoted thing is most holy unto
the Lord" (Lev. 27:28). In other words, there is no true devotion without
destruction. If in those days a sheep was devoted to God, it was not placed
before him to remain there a living sheep and to bring forth lambs; it was
placed before him to be sacrificed. "It shall certainly be put to
death" (verse 29). Its destruction was the sign of its acceptance.
All money that is truly devoted
to God must come under the principle of destruction; that is to say, it must
cease to exist as far as the world is concerned, and it must cease to exist
also as far as I am concerned. When our Lord commended the widow for putting
her two coins into the treasury, he observed that she had put in herbios, that
is, her life. "She of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her
living" (Mark
If your money is to come out of
the world, then your life will have to come out of the world. You cannot keep
your self back and contribute anything significant to God. You cannot send your
money out of the world at all: you can only bring it out of the world!
Thus it is no easy matter to
transfer money from the realm of Satan to the realm of God; it involves
travail. To convert souls from Satan to God is in fact easier than to convert
money from Satan to God. By the grace of God men and women may be won to him
whether or not we ourselves are devoted in any utter sense; but this is not so
with money. It takes great spiritual power to convert our shekels, which in
their character are evil, into shekels of the sanctuary. Money needs converting
as truly as men need converting; and the money can, I believe, be made anew (if
in a rather different sense) as truly as souls can be made anew. But your
bringing of an offering of money to the treasury will not in itself change the
character of the money you offer. Unless your life goes out with your money it
cannot be released from the
To Paul the principle was very
plain: We want you, not yours. Of the Macedonian saints, who out of their
poverty contributed so liberally, he said that "first they gave their own
selves to the Lord," then they gave their money (2 Cor. 8:5). Paul had his
training in the Old Testament, where the consecration of material gifts was
always connected with the consecration of those who brought the gifts. His
reasoning may have had its roots there.
For it may sound startling, but
it is true, that God has a limited supply of money, whereas Satan's supply is
unlimited. You wonder perhaps how this statement can be reconciled with that
other one, that all the silver and the gold are his. Yet our Lord Jesus himself
says that there is that which belongs to God and that which belongs to Caesar.
Ultimately no doubt all material things belong to God as Creator, but the
amount of
If I had lived in Old Testament
times I could have calculated immediately the amount of money in the sanctuary.
I should have inquired the total number of the children of
Here, then, is a vital question
for each one of us to answer: Does the money I am touching today represent
shekels of the sanctuary or the mammon of unrighteousness? Whenever I receive a
dollar, or whenever I earn a dollar, let me make sure that that dollar is
instantly converted from world currency into the currency of the sanctuary.
Money can be our destruction, but money can also be our protection. Do not
despise money; its value is too real for that. It can be of great account to
the Lord. If you yourself come heart and soul out of the world, then you can,
if God so wills it, bring many precious things out of the world with you. When
the Israelites came out of
If you can find that reality in
Old Testament times, how much higher still must be the standard set in the New!
The New Testament key to all finance is that we hold nothing to ourselves.
"Give, and it shall be given unto you," those were our Lord's words
(Luke
This is because the real secret
of spoiling Satan is, as we saw, personal dedication. For us to be redeemed
from the world and not as a consequence offer ourselves to God is an utterly
impossible thing. "Ye are not your own; for ye were bought with a
price" (1 Cor.
We are all equally dedicated to
God and we are all his witnesses. It is simply not true that preaching the
Gospel in itself is clean and business unclean, so that those who engage in the
latter must become so tainted as to be of less account to God. What matters is
simply that God, and not our business, must be the center of our lives.
"Love not the world,
neither the things that are in the world." You have an anointing from the Holy
One: live by it! Give yourself to God; live for him wholly and utterly; see to
it that, where you personally are concerned, the things of this world are
scored off Satan's books and transferred to God's account. For "the world
passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth
for ever."