Before we proceed with the message, for the sake of any
young Christians who may read it, and who have not yet
studied the use of words in the New Testament, let us
explain the one which is now to occupy us - the 'World'.
There are three main ways in which this word is used:
1. As to the material sphere which we call the earth.
2. As to the people who live on the earth.
3. As to the spiritual and moral system, order,
economy, and principles which govern the people.
Peter has things to say as to the climax and destiny
of No. 1. John three sixteen relates to No. 2: "God
so loved the [people of this] world."
It is No. 3 that is the occasion of what follows here.
A reading of such passages of Scripture as John 17,
John's Letters, Colossians 2:20, 3:1-2, Galatians 1:4,
and many others such, will leave us in no doubt whatever
that the New Testament designates this world system as
evil, and that any spiritual relationship with it lies
under God's judgment. It has always been so since the
beginning, but we are now living in the full development
of the fact, so terribly and shockingly, that it is
ripening fast for final destruction. The following
message is very timely, and we trust that it will serve
the solemn purpose of leading many to save themselves
from "this present evil world", and will
explain the spiritual conflict through which many are
passing.
We shall gather up certain things which we find running
through the whole of the Scriptures, and what we find
throughout the Scriptures is, for our present purpose, an
eightfold thing:
1. AN ABIDING ANTAGONISM AND CLASH BETWEEN GOD
AND THIS WORLD
I think that needs very little enlarging upon for the
moment. Anyone who has any grasp of the Scriptures will
be able instantly to recognize that that is so. From Cain
- the man of the earth - right on through the whole of
the Scriptures, you are brought to recognize that abiding
antagonism and clash between God and this world.
2. AN ABIDING EXPRESSION OF THAT
ANTAGONISM BETWEEN THAT WHICH IS SPIRITUALLY RELATED TO
GOD AND THIS WORLD
Anyone, any company, or anything spiritually related
to God is found to be in the expression of that
antagonism and that clash between God and this world, and
that very relationship to God spiritually involves in the
clash, involves in the antagonism.
3. A NEW CONSTITUTIONAL AFFINITY
WITH THIS WORLD IS SEEN TO BE IN MAN'S NATURE
A new constitutional affinity with this world is seen
to be in man's nature, gravitating toward the world, like
the point of the compass to the magnetic North. There is
that which is in the very nature of man now as fallen
which has an affinity with this world, and gravitates
towards it, and the Scriptures reveal that that
gravitation is of an inveterate character.
May I stay to make a parenthesis? No one is thinking that
when I use the word 'world' I am just meaning the
geographical sphere. You understand that the word 'world'
is a very much bigger word as we use it spiritually than
this geographical sphere. We use that word in its fullest
meaning - an order of things here separated from God,
organized and controlled by the evil one. That is the
full meaning of 'kosmos'.
4. A SPIRITUAL SYSTEM OF
INTELLIGENCE
A spiritual system of intelligence as revealed by the
Scriptures to be bent with all its might upon maintaining
that affinity, and that relationship between man and this
world.
5. SPIRITUAL DEATH IS THE LAW
WHICH GOVERNS THAT RELATIONSHIP
Spiritual death is the law which governs that
relationship, and is the mainstay and master-hold of that
system of spiritual intelligences. Let me repeat that:
spiritual death is the law which governs that
relationship, the relationship between fallen man and
this world, and spiritual death is the mainstay and
master-hold of those spiritual intelligences which are
out to maintain that relationship between fallen man and
this world.
6. TO SEVER THAT BOND, TO DESTROY
THAT AFFINITY, TO INTRODUCE A COUNTER LAW OF GRAVITATION,
IS THE ESSENCE OF THE WORK OF CHRIST
If you get that you get the heart of everything. That
will explain everything. The work of the Lord Jesus in
coming from heaven and fulfilling His mission here is, in
its very essence, the severance of the bondage of man to
this world, the destroying of fallen man's affinity
therewith, and the introducing into man of another law,
which counters man's gravitation toward this fallen
world, another law of gravitation, which is not
world-ward spiritually.
7. THIS SEVERANCE, THIS
INTRODUCTION OF THE NEW SPIRITUAL LAW OF HEAVENLY
GRAVITATION, IS ALWAYS MARKED BY A MOST INTENSE CONFLICT
AT EVERY STAGE AND POINT
It is always fraught with deep spiritual suffering.
You will never emancipate a people spiritually from this
world except by intense conflict and through deep
suffering.
8. THE METHOD IS THAT OF GOING
INTO DEATH IN ORDER TO DESTROY DEATH, AND BEING IN THE
WORLD IN ORDER TO OVERCOME THE WORLD
That is an outline, and if you were able
to sit down with that prayerfully I am sure you would see
that you have touched something which is of primary
importance. Within the range of that everything with
which you and I, as the Lord's children, have to do is
gathered up. Now I am going on to take up one point. The
work of Christ, the Cross in the work of Christ, and the
purpose of His coming. That again is gathered up into
eight things.
THE EFFECT OF CHRIST'S PRESENCE
Firstly: To once and for all register
in an absolute and pre-eminent way that collision, that
mutual antagonism between God and this world.
Christ's coming into this world, and Christ's work in
this world in a way unparalleled, unprecedented,
registered, made manifest, dragged out into the light,
threw up into clear relief that fact that there is a
mutual antagonism between God and this world. You can
trace it through the Old Testament. It is quite clear
there, but it is more or less local or localized in the
Old Testament. When you come to the Lord Jesus coming
into this world you have the universal factor, a
universal Person set down in the midst of the universe,
and universal forces focused upon Him. And because of who
He is, because God is there in Christ, because this is no
mere man, as in the case of the Old Testament, because
this is "God with us", you find that from the
very commencement of His career, His course, His time
here on the earth, there broke out that smouldering
volcano of antagonism: first through Herod, and then by
another, and another, and another means, until in the end
it seems that everything has conspired and converged to
cast Him out of this world, as having no place in it, as
being a menace to it.
Demons betrayed secrets, the full explanation of which is
not in the Word of God: "Art thou come to destroy us
before our time? I know thee who thou art, the Holy one
of God", betraying deep mysteries concerning the
destiny and the doom of that spiritual world, that world
of spiritual intelligences. Men and demons worked
together, and this hate showed itself. What a great deal
He had to say Himself about it, and to what lengths He
carried it, and into what realms - right into the heart
of Judaism and its spiritual, religious citadel, the
Scribes and the Pharisees: "Ye are of your father
the devil"; "The works of your father ye
do"; "Ye are from beneath; I am from
above"; "If ye had known the Father ye would
have known Me."
You see, He carried it right there into the highest realm
of religious life as this world knew it, and finding
there this deep-rooted antagonism, and dragging it out,
making it impossible for that thing to go on being
hidden, until at last, stung by His presence, it broke
loose, and from that realm came His doom, so far as his
course here on the earth was concerned as a man. Oh yes!
everywhere this universal focal point: God in Christ
making manifest as never before not locally, but
universally, not merely on the earth, but in that
spiritual realm - that there is a clash, a deep-seated
and terrible clash between God and this world. And His
coming was for that purpose. It is important for us to
realize that it was necessary to expose that thing. It
was essential that that thing should be dragged out, but,
oh, that the people of God had sufficiently recognized
and grasped and apprehended this thing!
Oh, dear friends, you and I, before we are through, will
see the utter impossibility of that contradiction called
'a worldly Christian', 'a worldly Church'. If we do not
see that now, well, the Lord help us! The very coming of
the Lord Jesus into this world was, firstly, to manifest,
as had never been manifested before in a universal way,
that there is, right at the very heart of things
spiritually, an antagonism between God and this world,
and that world can never be reconciled to God. You have
to use the word 'world' in another sense when speaking of
reconciling the world; that is a more limited usage of
the word, but that world of which we are speaking is
beyond reconciliation. We shall see that as we go on.
Secondly. His coming was, while to register in an
absolute and pre-eminent way that mutual antagonism, TO
RESCUE AN INSTRUMENT FROM THIS WORLD, to secure an
instrument in this world for this age, EMBODYING THAT
ANTAGONISM. Do you get the force of that? Did Christ
come, first of all, to make the antagonism absolutely
apparent? Yes! Then equally He came to secure an
instrument in this world, for this age, which would
embody that antagonism. That is, the instrument which
Christ secures in this age, in this world, is going to be
an age expression of the antagonism between God and this
world. That means that if you and I are a part of God's
instrument in this world, resultant from the work of the
Lord Jesus in His Cross, you and I are going to be the
embodiment of that antagonism; that is, there is going to
be something about us which can have no compromise with
this world, and which for ever stands in a position
similar to that which the Lord Jesus occupies in relation
to this world in the spiritual antagonism. And that
instrument is going to feel the antagonism which He met,
and is going to be conscious that this place, this world,
is by no means a place of rest and abiding. "In the
world ye shall have tribulation...". To get rid of
that is to undo the work of the Lord Jesus: to try to get
popularity in this world for Christianity, to escape the
world's bitterest antagonism, is to counter all that the
Lord Jesus came to do.
Now that is a terrific thing to say, but it is true. I
made a note in my Testament from Martin Luther. He had a
pictorial way, as you know, of presenting truth, and he
did it both for the devil and for the Lord. In speaking
about Matthew 5:10-12 he pictures the disciples of the
Lord, the believers, arriving at the gates of heaven and
being met there by the Lord Himself: and one of the
questions which He asks each one who arrives, with which
He interrogates every professed disciple, is this:
"Wert thou an abomination to the whole world as I
and Mine have been from the foundation of the
world?"
Well, the Lord's coming was to secure an instrument in
this world for the age which would embody that mutual
antagonism between God and this world. You see your
calling, brethren. Does that explain something? I think
it explains a lot. The writer of the Letter to the
Hebrews has a way of putting it: "Of whom the world
was not worthy." That is his verdict on the whole
matter.
Thirdly. His coming was to destroy for such (that is,
such instrument) that law of death. Note: firstly, to
bring out into the clear light, which He Himself was, the
reality, the depth of that mutual antagonism between God
and the world; secondly, to take out of the world a
people for Himself, yet to be in the world for the age as
a representation of that antagonism; then, thirdly, to
destroy for such that law, that mainstay, that
master-hold of the powers of evil, to destroy him that
had the power of death and to deliver them; to destroy
the power of death for His own. He came to do that. It
would be impossible for us to live here on God's side and
on God's behalf, to meet all that antagonism of hell to
God, unless Christ had accomplished the destroying of
that masterhold of the devil - spiritual death.
Dear friends, you and I are becoming more and more
conscious, are we not - many of us are - that the only
possibility of staying in this world and on the earth is
by the life which is triumphant over death, and unless we
know more of that, this place is going to be impossible
spiritually. Is that not true? It is! There is a real
spiritual world with which we are in touch, but which we
so dimly understand. What is the spiritual experience of
those who are really going on with God? It is, on the one
hand, of an intensified consciousness of death, and, on
the other hand, a growing emphasis on the power of His
resurrection. Is that true? I do not think there is any
doubt about it. And this is not something which touches
merely the spiritually aged and fully matured. I believe
that the Lord would teach the younger folk this thing:
those of you who would, perhaps, think that you are not
old enough to understand and enter into these great
spiritualities. I believe the Lord would teach you that
you can know deliverance and victory in the realm of
death by coming into a full apprehension of Him as your
life, and, while the phraseology, the terminology may be
difficult for you, the experience may be as clear and as
simple as anything could be. The fact that those who are
children of God - whether mature or immature - ARE
children of God brings them into experiences which they
might never have if they were not the Lord's children.
The Lord does not save from going into those experiences,
but in them draws out to Himself by a strong taking hold,
when something very critical is threatened, and then
Himself comes in, and it is something which is above what
man can do, and they have learned their lesson. They have
discovered that it is possible to live in this world,
where death reigns, and to know victory in Christ by
taking hold of Him as their life. He came that for His
own He might destroy that law of death by which the god
of this world, the prince of this world, holds his own in
bondage, and by which he operates against the saints to
try to bring them back into bondage, the bondage of
death.
Fourthly. His coming was to set up His instrument,
redeemed from the world, that counter-law of a
heavenly life, to introduce something else into their
constitution. The constitutional law of the unredeemed
from the world, of those who are of this world, is
bondage to the world. They see nothing beyond the horizon
of this world, and all the time the world holds them and
carries them on. The tides of worldliness carry this
world on, and to try to stem those tides is an impossible
thing until something has happened by which there comes
about the realization of this: "Greater is he that
is in you than he that is in the world", the
introduction of that which is an adequate countering to
the mighty gravitating affinity in man's nature toward
the world. He came to set that up in His own, and here
that big difference is recognized, which has been so
often pointed out - that if you really do become begotten
of God, born from above, there is put into you the life
of God. You do not have to give up the world, there is
not a struggle to break with this anew that and something
else, and you never have to sit down and say: 'I suppose
now that I am a Christian I have to give up this and
that, and I must not go here and I must not go there.'
You never have that sort of thing at all: you find a
counter-gravitation, you find that something else has
come in which has made that kind of gravitation
comparatively weak, and your heart is now in other
directions, drawn to other things. You may test your
spiritual life by that.
Now, young people, let me say a word to you. Perhaps
sometime in your superficial thinking and imagining you
think the world has a better time than you do, and that
you would like to have a little more of what the world
has. I put it to you: make up your mind to go and have
it. IF YOU ARE A TRUE CHILD OF GOD, start off, and
see how far down the road you get. You will not get
there. You will turn round and come back. What is the
matter with you? Well, something has happened in spite of
your thinking and your imagining and those superficial
feelings - many of them, perhaps, the fruit of the severe
time which you have because of spiritual antagonism. In
spite of all that you cannot go very far in that way. You
know the parable of the squirrel; you know that the
gravitation is upward. Although you might just jump down
to get a nut, it is not your place. The Lord came to do
that, and it is the strategy of the Lord never to say
that you must not go there and you must not do this. He
puts something into you - a counter-gravitation, a mighty
work, which the Lord has accomplished.
Fifthly. To gather out from the world spiritually a
people for His coming Kingdom. Not to take them away
from the world. That would be very nice, but He would
take them out from the world spiritually, so that He has
here in the world His Kingdom spiritually represented by
them. And He is gathering out from the nations
spiritually now; a spiritual out-gathering, detachment, a
people for that coming Kingdom. He came to do that, and
He has made it perfectly clear that His Kingdom is not of
this world and is not of things seen and handled. "I
would have you know, brethren," said the apostle,
"that flesh and blood cannot inherit the
Kingdom." His Kingdom is now a spiritual thing in
the hearts of those who have been taken out of the
kingdom of darkness and translated into the Kingdom of
the Son of His love. That is a thing already done. A day
will come when He will translate them from this world
while He deals with the rest, and purges this world and
makes it fit for the habitation of saints, without any
antagonism. He came to do that. He is doing it. We know
it in our own hearts. That is exactly what has happened
with us. We are not of the world. Our life "is hid
with Christ in God." We look for a Saviour.
Sixthly. The whole course of spiritual experience is
progressive detachment from the world and attachment to
Christ. It is a course of spiritual history. It is a
progressive thing, and not that in the very commencement
of our spiritual life we were not severed from the world.
We were fundamentally and originally separated from the
world, but you and I know quite well that our experience
has been all in the direction of this world becoming less
and less, and Christ becoming more and more and more.
"Whom having not seen, we love." "Where
our treasure is, there our heart is also." We know
something of the words: "If ye then be risen with
Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ
is...". "Set your affections on things above,
not on things on the earth." We know that that is
going on in us.
Seventhly. The death, resurrection and ascension of
Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit are the
basic factors in this work of Christ. Let me repeat
it. The death, the resurrection, the ascension of Christ,
and the gift of the Holy Spirit are THE factors,
the basic factors, in this work of the Lord. His death is
basic, and we are told that His death is to be entered
into by us in faith. "Ye died...". That means
we were crucified to the world and the world unto us in
Christ. The resurrection of Christ is a basic factor in
this work. It means that we stand on resurrection ground
and are outside of the world. He never appeared
personally to the world again after His death. He will
one day, but He has not done so yet. So far as this age
is concerned, He is not on that level at all. He is
outside of the world, and for the age all His own,
standing with Him in resurrection, are there spiritually.
His ascension means that everything now for this age for
His own is heaven-ward and not of this world. The
anointing of the Holy Spirit will lead us progressively,
ever more and more, away from the world to Christ,
revealing His things. These are the basic factors in this
great work which He has come to do.
Eighthly. The Church is called to be the collective
embodiment of all that truth. The Church is called to
be the collective - the corporate - embodiment of that
full, absolute antagonism between God and the world. I
realize that is a tremendous thing to say in the face of
what is called the Church, in the face of what we know to
be associated with what is called the Church. One
hesitates in the almost hopeless situation that
immediately confronts you when you raise the standard
like that. Are we to conclude that what is called the
Church is not the Church? At any rate, let us challenge
ourselves on that. We can do no more than proclaim the
truth and seek that it shall be realized in ourselves. It
is not for us to go out and denounce or to judge, we must
proclaim. But, oh! it does raise some very serious
questions for many of the Lord's people. To be in any way
entangled with that thing, that awful thing spiritually,
against which God as in Christ has been revealed to be so
utterly set! To be entangled in that through religion,
through Christianity, through what is called the Church!
You know quite well that if you stand on that ground you
will meet the antagonism of the scribes and pharisees.
The Church is called to be the corporate expression of
that antagonism, of that impact, by which Christ has
destroyed the power of death, and living in the power of
His resurrection. The Church is called to reveal in
itself that it is not of this world and that it is moving
steadily further and further away from the world, because
Christ is becoming more and more its life; to be the
embodiment of all that is meant by the death of Christ,
the resurrection of Christ, the ascension of Christ, and
the gift of the Holy Spirit. There is no doubt but that
that is how it was at the beginning. Are we to say that
that is gone for ever, and that that can never be? No, we
cannot say that. We may have to come within a very
limited realm, but I verily believe that when the Lord
comes, and there is that blessed movement toward Himself
of the overcomers, He will have in them the embodiment of
all that. They will represent all that.
For myself I cannot see translation possible on any other
ground. Is the Lord going to translate this world to
heaven? Never! If you are spiritually bound up with it -
when I say 'spiritually' I mean bound up with it in
heart, a heart link - I do not know what will happen. It
seems to me to be so distinctly contradictory to the law
of Christ's work. The work of the Lord Jesus marks the
utter detachment from this world, and the consummation is
simply the crown of that which has already taken place
spiritually, the seal upon what has been done
spiritually. That is how I see it, but I know the many
difficulties that come up there.
Now let us close, so far as this broad survey is
concerned, by just putting our finger upon one or two
points. Do you see now why there must be no personal
interests on the part of the people of God? What are
personal interests? They are worldly in essence, in
nature. It is what Paul spoke of when he said: "All
seek their own, not the things which are Jesus
Christ's." That personal element runs out into so
many directions, and is so imperceptible in many things,
that only the Lord can bring it to light and destroy it.
Do you see, on the face of it, why there must be no
personal interest, and that there must be such an
utterness of abandonment to the Lord's interests, and
that anything other than that is a spiritual link with
this world? The enemy can come in and destroy your
testimony if you have any personal interests, even in the
work of the Lord. Deeper than we recognize there are
those things which represent our like and our dislike,
our want and our not want, our going to have and our not
going to have, all of which give rise to suspicion of
others, and then suspicion moves silently and
imperceptibly on to jealousy, and jealousy on to a
breakdown in fellowship. Tracked right down to its source
it was some personal element, wanting it as we want it,
wanting it ourselves, and not the utter emptying of self;
and in the long run, sooner or later, the enemy has made
an awful havoc because there was his link. Do you now see
why?
When the Lord really gets a complete mastery of the life,
He works to have everything carried on to resurrection
ground. That is, He takes everything through a depth and
a death, where we lose it, and then in a deep crisis, in
which we are brought to the point in heart of letting
that go to God, not reproaching God, not rebelling
against God, not refusing to accept God's way, but where
we come to the place where our heart is one with the
heart of God over that matter; then so often the Lord
gives that back, but it has come back in a new realm. It
has gone through death and it comes back by resurrection,
and there is something in it now which is not of this
world. It is not a time thing, nor merely an earthly or
natural thing. There is something about it now which has
God in it. It is on resurrection ground, and the world
factor in it has been destroyed. Now that is a true
spiritual law. Do you see why the Lord must have it that
way?
Let me put that in another way. This is why everything
must be brought through to the place where it is wholly
for God. Everything has to be wholly for God. The apostle
had something to say about the shortness of the time, and
those who had wives being as those who had none. Do you
think he meant that literally? Ignore your domestic
responsibilities, or ignore something which was of God,
or ride rough shod over it for what you call spiritual
things? Never! A thousand times, never! What the apostle
meant was this: you have to hold everything in the light
of God's interests, and if you are holding domestic
relationships, or anything else here on this earth, on a
natural level, where they are for yourself, for time, and
for what they mean to you merely in this life - and that
is the range of things - well, that is wrong. Everything
has to be held for God, in the light of the Lord's
interests. Why? To have that link with this world and the
natural life absolutely destroyed so that the power of
spiritual death cannot operate there. Do you not know
that when you as a believer, as a spiritual person, or I,
touch things naturally we touch spiritual death? Have you
no experience of that? The power triumphant over death is
in having everything wholly for the Lord and not for
ourselves, not for this world, not for this life.
Everything has to be held for the Lord.
It is so easy to sing hymns of consecration. We can sing
about being all for the Lord, and having everything for
the Lord, and we can answer to such challenges, but now
let us face it. Are we holding everything for the Lord?
Have we got something which, if we would only let that
go, would in some other life give the Lord larger
interests? Are we taking this attitude: 'Now, while this
thing means much to me, while in a natural way I have
deep sentimentalities with this, and it is not easy to
let things go, nevertheless, if the Lord is going to get
more by my letting go, giving up, well, that is the thing
that counts and that matters.' That is holding things for
the Lord. Are we holding things for the Lord? If we are
holding things for ourselves, if we are holding things in
this life before those heavenly interests of the Lord, we
are opening the door to spiritual death. We cannot grow
spiritually; we become earthbound, and our spiritual
progress is delayed, if not utterly arrested. Everything
must be carried over on to resurrection ground, and be
wholly for the Lord, wholly for heaven. "Set your
affections on things above, not on things on the
earth." There is so much bound up with this.
Now do you understand the meaning of suffering? I ask
you, those of you who have suffered as the Lord's
children, what has been the effect of your suffering?
That is, inasmuch as you have not been persistently
rebellious and hard because of the suffering, but
inasmuch as you have sought to be one with the Lord in
your suffering, what has been the effect of it? Answer
me: has it been to make this world much less and the Lord
much more, the things of heaven much more? Is that not
true? This world has lost its grip, perhaps its charm,
its hold. The things which are above have become far more
to you through your suffering. Well, do you see the
meaning of suffering? Do you see what the Lord is doing?
Why does He empty us out? Why does He pour us out to the
last drop? Just so that He can pour in, that is all. Just
so that heavenly things may take the place of natural,
earthly things. The Lord permits His people to suffer in
order that that gravitation world-ward might be weakened,
and that that power of death might be destroyed: that
they may become a heavenly people, living by a life which
is His own life, and which it takes full spiritual
intelligences to appreciate.
That is the testimony of Christ triumphant, but you
cannot recognize that with the human mind. You need a
full spiritual intelligence to grasp that. It is only
principalities and powers who are able adequately to
register the power of His resurrection. They recognize
it. So the Church goes on in suffering, in weaknesses, in
infirmity, "in deaths oft"; but the Church will
finish its course, and the issue will be that the full
measure of that law of death operating in this world was
taken by Christ in His Church and triumphed over. He is
doing something through our weakness. We do not see it
nor feel it, and we very often forget all about it in the
presence of the suffering, but He is doing something,
that now unto the principalities and powers in the
heavenlies should be displayed this manifold wisdom of
God. That is the meaning of suffering - the raising of a
heavenly testimony: getting us away from the world and
making us live by a life which is hid with Christ in God.
Do you see the utter impossibility of being all the
Lord's and having any kind of heart association with this
world? That ought to come home to us in a new way.
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony" magazine, Nov-Dec 1968 Vol 46-6