Why the World Can Not Receive

It is no more than a religious platitude to say that the trouble with us today is that we have tried to bridge the gulf between two opposites, the world and the church, and have performed an illicit marriage for which there is no biblical authority. Actually no real union between the world and the church is possible. When the church joins up with the world it is the true church no longer but only a pitiful hybrid thing, an object of smiling contempt to the world and an abomination to the Lord.

The twilight in which many (or should we say most?) believers walk today is not caused by any vagueness on the part of the Bible. Nothing could be clearer than the pronouncements of the Scriptures on the Christian’s relation to the world. The confusion which gathers around this matter results from the unwillingness of professing Christians to take the Word of the Lord seriously. Christianity is so entangled with the world that millions never guess how radically they have missed the New Testament pattern. Compromise is everywhere. The world is white-washed just enough to pass inspection by blind men posing as believers, and those same believers are everlastingly seeking to gain acceptance with the world. By mutual concessions men who call themselves Christians manage to get on with men who have for the things of God nothing but quiet contempt.

A Christian is what he is not by ecclesiastical manipulation but by the new birth.

This whole thing is spiritual in its essence. A Christian is what he is not by ecclesiastical manipulation but by the new birth. He is a Christian because of a Spirit which dwells in him. Only that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. The flesh can never be converted into spirit, no matter how many church dignitaries work on it. Confirmation, baptism, holy communion, confession of faith—none of these nor all of them together can turn flesh into spirit nor make a son of Adam a son of God. “Because ye are sons,” wrote Paul to the Galatians, “God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:6). And to the Corinthians he wrote:

Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?  (2 Corinthians 13:5)

And to the Romans:

But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. (Romans 8:9)

That terrible zone of confusion so evident in the whole life of the Christian community could be cleared up in one day if the followers of Christ would begin to follow Christ instead of each other. For our Lord was very plain in His teaching about the believer and the world.

On one occasion, after receiving unsolicited and carnal advice from sincere but unenlightened brethren, our Lord replied:

My time is not yet come: but your time is alway ready. The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil. (John 7:6–7)

He identified His fleshly brethren with the world and said that they and He were of two different spirits. The world hated Him but could not hate them because it could not hate itself. A house divided against itself can-not stand. Adam’s house must remain loyal to itself or it will tear itself apart. Though the sons of the flesh may quarrel among themselves they are at bottom one with each other. It is when the Spirit of God comes in that an alien element has entered. The Lord said to His disciples:

If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. (John 15:18–19)

Paul explained to the Galatians the difference between the bond child and the free: “But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now” (Galatians 4:29).

So throughout the entire New Testament a sharp line is drawn between the church and the world. There is no middle ground. The Lord recognizes no good- natured “agreeing to disagree” so that the followers of the Lamb may adopt the world’s ways and travel along the world’s path. The gulf between the true Christian and the world is as great as that which separated the rich man and Lazarus. And furthermore it is the same gulf, that is, it is the gulf that divides the world of ransomed from the world of fallen men.