Jottings

by J. Miller | Category: Jottings | Mar 1960

The attitude of the world to the Lord, and the Lord's attitude to the world, are clearly defined in the Gospels. From the time in which the Lord was born outside normal human habitations, throughout His earthly ministry when He said, "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests; but the Son of Man hath not where to lay His head" (Luke 9.58), until He was crucified outside Jerusalem, the Lord was truly outside the world system. Men could find no place for Him who is the eternal Son of the Father, and Messiah the King of Israel, and the Lord could not accept a lesser place than His Divine Being and appointed office called for. Even at this day, after well-nigh twenty centuries have rolled by, is there a place found for Him in this world? We can as truly sing today, as the Christians were taught by the Lord and His apostles in the first century,

Our Lord is now rejected,

And by the world disowned."

The Jewish people made their awful decisions when they said, "Not this Man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber" (John 18.40). "Pilate saith unto them, Shall I crucify your King 9 The chief priests answered We have no king but Caesar" (John 19.15). "He (Pilate) took water and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this righteous Man, see ye to it. And all the people answered and said His blood be on us and on our children" (Matthew 27. 24 25) Morally they associated themselves with a robber; politically they associated themselves with Caesar and religiously they took the blame of the murder of the Lord and His blood lies upon that race to this hour. The Jewish people were hand in glove with the world in the Lord's death, even as the disciples said in Jerusalem "For of a truth in this city against Thy holy Servant Jesus, whom Thou didst anoint both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel were gathered together to do whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel foreordained to come to pass. " So manifest was the power of God in those persecuting times when the Lord's disciples stood against the wickedness of the world, that "when they had prayed, the place was shaken wherein they were gathered together and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they spake the word of God with boldness (Acts 4 27, 28, 31).

There could be no reconciliation of the world to God unless the blessed Man who was rejected and crucified was accepted as the Christ the Son of the living God. If men thought that the world and God could be reconciled by any other means than the acceptance of His Son the mask was torn from the face of the world by their attitude to Christ and there was revealed the awful innate hatred of

man to God.

Despite the world's hatred to Him in their ignorance of His love for them God nevertheless sent His Son into the world that the world might be saved through Him (John 3.17) Yet such is the profundity of the wisdom of God, that by the means of the rejection by the world of the Lord and by His crucifixion was the way by which salvation was to reach man. In connexion with the wisdom of God in this matter, the apostle wrote to the Corinthians, "For seeing that in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God's good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching (the thing preached, that is, Christ crucified) to save them that believe " (1 Corinthians 1.21).

The disciple of the Lord should quickly learn that the world's attitude to His Lord should be his attitude to the world. He cannot be a friend of the world that rejects his Lord. James puts the matter very sternly when he says, "Ye adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? Whosoever therefore would be a friend of the world maketh himself an enemy of God" (James 4, 4). James views the friendship of the world for the believer as spiritual adultery, that having become a member of Christ's Body, His Bride, the believer cannot link arms with the world and enjoy the world and its pleasures. John adds his word to that of James, and says, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John 2.15). This is one of the plainest teachings of the Scriptures.

The Greek word for world, Cosmos, which means "order, beauty", is the opposite of chaos, 'confusion." A dictionary description of the word chaos is, "That confusion in which matter is supposed to have existed before it was reduced to order by the Creator." This, of course, is quite incorrect in view of the testimony of Scripture. Genesis 1.2 tells us, "And the earth was waste (without form, A.V.) and void." But Isaiah 45.18 says, "For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens He is God; that formed the earth and made it; He established it, He created it not a waste (in vain, A.V.), He formed it to be inhabited." It is clear from this word of the LORD that when the LORD created the earth, as told us in Genesis 1.1, He did not create it a waste, a chaos. He created it a Cosmos, a thing of order and beauty. Something happened between verses 1 and 2 of Genesis 1, which, so far as the writer's knowledge goes, is not revealed in the Scriptures. What that was, resulted in the earth being in a state of chaos.

Despite the tragedy which has befallen the material world, God has in view, as revealed in the Scriptures, a dispensation in the future, called the dispensation of the fulness of the times " (Ephesians 1.10) when He will "sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth," that time we call the Millennium, the thousand years of the Lord's kingdom on earth (Revelation 20.6). For this time animated creation waits, for then shall be revealed the sons of God, and creation shall he delivered from the bondage of corruption in which it at present exists, into the liberty of the glory of the children of God (Romans 8.19-22). Then in this earth with all its confusion at present, there will be order and beauty, peace and harmony, as God had in His mind when He created the world. His purpose in this respect will not be for ever frustrated.

The world (Cosmos) has in the New Testament various applications: (1) the earth (Ephesians 1.4), (2) the people (John 3.16, 17, 19), (3) the system of evil (1 John 2.15.17), (4) the tongue (James 3.6), (5) women's adorning (1 Peter

3.3).There may be other applications of the word. The context in which the word "world" is used defines its meaning.

Our few remarks on the word "world" (Cosmos) now have to do with the world as to the people who form it, and the system of evil that is found in the people of the world. Some have found great difficulty in appreciating the light in which the Scriptures view the world, considering the good things therein, as they suppose. But a few references to what God says about the world may help to clarify the matter. Satan is called "the prince of this world" (John 12.31 ; 14.30), and "the whole world lieth in the evil one" (1 John 5.19). So long as the world is in this state, and that the evil one dominates the world as its prince, so long will the world be in the state of utter confusion in which it is. This state is worsening daily. Satan is assisted in his evil work in the world by the spiritual hosts under his control, called "the world-rulers of this darkness " (Ephesians 6.12). Against these, and not against men, the Christian soldier has to wage implacable warfare. There can be no appeasement of the enemy. The forces of evil dominate the world in all its activities, and the disciple of the Lord has in consequence to regard himself as a sojourner and a pilgrim in the world, and to use the world but not to abuse it or use it to the full (1 Corinthians 7.81 ; 1 Peter 2.11).

It is an awful fact that the world rejoiced at the crucifixion of Christ, as He Himself said, " Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice : ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall he turned into joy" (John 16.20). Their joy came in the resurrection of the Lord, like the sun emerging from behind a dark cloud. The natural hatred of the world towards God and His Son found vent at Golgotha in the crucifixion of the Lord. It has been well said, that as God's love was a causeless love for man, so man's hatred of God was a causeless hatred. The Lord said, "Now have they both seen and hated both Me and My Father. But this cometh to pass, that the word may be fulfilled that is written in their law, They hated Me without a cause " (John 15.24,25). Again lie said, "If the world hateth you, ye know that it bath hated Me before it hated you. 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" (John 15.19). Let the young Christian learn such truths off by heart and not be deceived by this very deceptive world.

J. Miller | Mar 1960
Jottings