The Believer and the World They are not of the World-- John 17:14.
Four portions of Scripture, taken together, form a complete guide to the child of God as to his relations to this world. First, the whole of John 17:1-26, our Lord’s Intercessory Prayer, then 1 John 2:15-17, James 4:4, and Revelation 17:1-18; Revelation 18:1-24. In the first of these, we are indirectly taught our position and mission in the world; in the second, the danger of loving the world and lusting after it; in the third, the essential hostility of the world to God; and in the fourth, the final doom of the world and the necessity of separation from it. In many other Scriptures various hints are given of the Believer’s duty or danger, with reference to the world; but these four testimonies are unusually complete and comprehensive, and leave little if anything else needful in the way of warning or teaching. Though they closely intertwine they are distinct. In each there is a special emphasis. Christ, in His prayer, teaches us that we have a definite witness to the world, and John shows us how that witness is annulled by the worldly spirit. James sharply reveals the irreconcilable enmity between God and the world, and in the Apocalypse we are warned of the risk of being involved in its plagues and destructive judgments. There is thus an increasingly loud and alarming voice of admonition and protest. Our Lord speaks as in a gentle whisper, as becomes a prayer; John’s words are like the mutterings of distant thunder; James speaks more sharply, as though the danger were more present, and imminent, and threatening, and the appeal more intense; and in the awful words about Babylon we seem to hear the trump of doom sounding in our very ears, as though the angels once more bade us “Haste! Escape for your life!” In our Lord’s Intercessory Prayer there are seven expressions that together teach a complete lesson.
We are chosen and given to Him out of the world,
And by Him sent back into the world.
We are in the world,
But not of it.
Hated by the world,
But kept from the evil that is in it.
And, finally, through us the world is to believe.
Here our whole relation to the world is outlined by a few strokes of the Divine pencil; our election, our mission, our position, our separation, our opposition, our preservation, our witness.
