Robert S. Candlish · 1 John 2:17
“And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”—1 JOHN 2:17.
THE expression here used concerning the world and its lust, is the same as that used in the eighth verse concerning the darkness: it is “passing away.” The world, with its lust, is in this respect identical with the darkness. They partake at least of a common quality or property; they pass, or are passing.
There is more meant here than merely that “the things which are seen are temporal.” The fleeting nature of this whole earthly scene is doubtless a useful topic of reflection; but it is not exactly what is suggested in this verse. The idea of the darkness being a vanishing element is still the leading thought. The prince of darkness, though he may keep up appearances for a while, is like a beaten foe, drawing off from the disputed territory. Through the shining of the true light, the darkness is passing; and in the same sense “the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.” “But he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever,” for he is one in whom, as in Christ, “the darkness is passing, and the true light now shineth.”
1. The characteristic of the world is that it does not “do the will of God;” it is the sphere or region in which the will of God is not done. The lust of the world is not doing the will of God. Take it in any of its forms. Let it be the lust of the flesh; as “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God,” you are doing your own will and not God’s. Let it be the lust of the eyes, envying others who prosper more than you; then it is the thwarting of their will, not the doing of God’s will, that your mind is bent on. Let it be the pride of life, hanging on opinion’s idle breath; you have no freedom to do the will of God, for you are at the mercy of the will of your fellow-men.
As not doing the will of God, the world and its lust must pass away; for it is identical with the darkness which is passing. Passing! Whence? and whither? Whence, but from off the stage of this redeemed earth, the final blessed meeting-ground of all the Lord’s children? And whither? I cannot tell. This only I know, it must be to where it shall do no harm any more for ever. I read of everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. Is that the final resting-place of the darkness?—of the world and its lust? There it is to be no longer passing, but permanent, abiding. “The worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.”
O ye lovers of the world, or of what is in the world, have you considered what the end is to be? It may well move you to be told that the whole of that economy with which you are mixed up is fleeting, transitory, evanescent. “What shadows you are and what shadows you pursue!” It is a deep knell that is rung over the grave of all merely temporal prosperity, all earthly hope and joy; “the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.” But it is a knell that, ringing out life’s present and precarious dreams, rings in a terrible reality. The world, with its lust, is passing here; passing and changing always. But it is passing to where it will pass no more, but stay; fixed unchangeably for ever. It is not annihilated; it does not cease to be; it only ceases to be passing.
Have you ever thought how much of the world’s endurableness; I say not its attractiveness but its endurableness; depends on its being a world that passes, and therefore changes? Is it not, after all, its being changeable that makes it tolerable even to you who like it best? Can you lay your hand, your memory’s hand, on any one feeling you have ever had of intensest worldly gratification, and say that you could be content, with that feeling alone, to spend eternity? Is there any sensation, any delight, any rapture of worldly joy, however engrossing, that you could bear to have prolonged, indefinitely, for ever, unaltered, unalterable?
But I put the case too favourably. I speak of your finding the world with its lust, not passing but abiding, in the place whither you yourselves pass, when you pass hence. True, you find it there. But you find it not as you have it here. There are means and appliances here for quenching by gratification, or mitigating by variety, its impetuous fires. But there you find it where these fires burn, unslaked, unsolaced; the world being all within, and the world’s lust; and nothing outside but the Holy One.
Again I ask—Have you ever thought how much of the world’s endurableness depends on the fact that, with its lust, it has its seat for a while here in the midst of a transition process, as it were, which is going on, “the darkness passing and the true light shining?” What keeps this earth from being, at this moment, hell, or a part of hell? What but its being a place of preparation for heaven; destined ere long to become to myriads of the saved heaven itself?
When in that heaven where the angels dwell, sudden darkness sought to dim the light, and wilful creatures would not do the will of God, not an instant was lost. Swiftly, summarily, the world is cast out, and its lust. There is no room for it there, no, not for an hour. The lovers of it, and of its lust; the doers of another will than God’s; their own, or their leader’s; are no more found there; but somewhere else in the universe of God, where they are “reserved in everlasting chains, under darkness, unto the judgment of the great day.” That holy heaven is full of light alone, and in it is no darkness at all. The will of God is always done there.
We are taught to pray that his will may be done on earth as in heaven; and we believe that it shall be so. But the time is not yet. The darkness is only passing, not past; “the world is passing away, and the lust thereof.” For it has pleased God not to deal with this earth where we dwell, as he dealt with that heaven where the angels dwell. If he had, he must have left it empty. The darkness must needs be tolerated; the world, with its lusts, not doing the will of God, must be allowed to continue; till the race for whom the earth was made, the family of man meant to fill it, is complete. But all is not to be darkness; a world lusting its own lust and not doing the will of God. There is to be light; there are to be children of the light. For the light and its children, as well as for the darkness and its world, the earth is to be adapted. Its order and laws; its arrangements and accommodations; must be such as suit its present mixed occupancy. And such also must be God’s general providence over it. Hence you who love the world and its lust, and do not the will of God, find yourselves in a position here, under these conditions, which does not give the world and its lust full swing; or, as it were, “ample scope and verge enough.”
Not to speak of the direct shining of the light, in gospel means and ordinances, which tells upon you in spite of yourselves, in some vague way, for your partial respite from the pangs of conscience; I point to the elements of good that there are in the institutions which God has sanctioned, and which he blesses, for alleviating pain and giving happiness on this earth on which he suffers you to dwell for a season with the righteous; healthy labour, alternating with such sleep as God gives his beloved; family relationships; social ties; domestic endearments; spheres also of public activity and usefulness and generous ambition; outlets for native energy and amiability, and lofty thought and fine feeling, and the stirrings of kind pity, and the flights of genius. Do not imagine that these form part of the world or its lust, which you are to carry with you when it and you together pass hence. This earth is not furnished with these conveniences for your sakes, but for their sakes who find in them the choicest apparatus and machinery for doing the will of God. You have the use, you have the benefit of them, for a brief space. Your world, with its triple lust, is permitted for a little to have to do with these contrivances of God for making earth a school for heaven. Alas! what harm does it often work among them; blighting what is pure, blasting what is peaceful, desolating hearths and homes and hearts. Still your loved world, and you who love it, are the better and the happier for your contact with what on earth is even now allied to heaven.
But have you ever thought what it will be to pass hence and go where nothing of all that can follow you? No holy beauty; no virgin innocency; no guiltless, guileless love of parents, spouse, child, brother, friend; no virtue; no decency even; none of the decorum which at least serves to make vice less hideous; no soothing balm of pure hand laid on the fevered brow; no faintly-whispered hope or wish of pure lips blessing you in your despair; nothing of the sort of comely veil which, down to the last breath of the dying sinner’s godless career, may hide the real truth from his view.
Let that real truth burst upon you. Place yourself, with your loved world and its cherished lust, where you and it and God are alone together, with nothing of God’s providing that you can use or abuse for your relief. Your creature comforts are not there with you. Nothing of this earth, which is the Lord’s, is there; nothing of its beauty or its bounty; its grace or loveliness or warm affection; nothing of that very bustle and distraction and change which dissipates reflection and drowns remorse; nothing but your worldly lust, your conscience, and your God. That is hell; the hell to which the world is passing, and its lust; and whence it never passes more; a dreary monotony of banishment from all that God has made to be chosen and enjoyed. It is yourselves, ye lovers of the world, filled with the lust of the world, its vulture appetites and stormy passions; shut up for ever in the darkness, as it were, of empty space, the desolate unfurnished prison-house of eternal justice.
II. But now let us turn to a brighter picture. “He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.” Suppose that the world has passed away and the lust thereof. Does it follow that the earth is dissolved or perishes? Nay, it remains. And whatever in it or about it is of God remains. There may be a temporary baptism of fire, to purge away the pollution contracted while the world has been tolerated in it and the world’s lust; to regenerate it and transform it into the “new heavens and new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.” But the earth thus cleansed and renovated does not pass away. It surely must continue, under the condition of the petition, at last fully answered; “Thy will be done in earth as in heaven.” For surely that is a petition which is yet to be fully answered; and not in time only, but for eternity. This abode of men is to be assimilated thoroughly to yonder abode of angels, in respect of the will of God being alike done in both. That at all events is the heavenly state, let its localities be adjusted as they may; that is its eternal crown and joy; angels and men together doing the will of God; they in their heaven, we in our earth. That is the blessed consummation to which the apostle would have us to look forward when he urges this encouragement and motive: “he that doeth the will of God a bideth for ever.
But the precise point of his statement is not adequately brought out unless we connect and identify the future and the present. It is not merely said that he who doeth the will of God may hope to be hereafter in a place or in a state in which he shall abide for ever. It is plainly implied that he is in it now. The world, with its lust, is passing; but he is in possession. The world, as it were, has forfeited its title, and is tolerated on sufferance merely, for a time and for a temporary purpose; he is a proprietor, having a good and valid right to remain for ever. The world must go, he stays; it has notice to quit, he abides. Doing the will of God, therefore, you are already in your abiding state; in the state in which you are to abide for ever. No essential change is before you. There may be stages of advancement and varieties of experience; a temporary break, perhaps, in the outer continuity of your thread of life, between the soul’s quitting the body to be with Christ where now he is and its receiving the body anew at his coming hither again. But substantially you are now as you are to be always.
For there is this difference between you in whom the love of the Father is, and those in whom there is only the love of the world. The world which they love, with its lust, is a foreign element in this earth, considered as the creation of God, and an element, therefore, which must be cast out, as the land of Canaan is said to have “vomited out” its inhabitants when their “iniquity was full.” There is really nothing of hell in this earth viewed as the creation of God, or in its arrangements viewed as God’s ordinances; however much there may be of hell in the world with its lust, which is not God’s creation or God’s ordinance, but fallen man’s, or his tempter’s. From all that is of God’s making or of God’s ordaining in the earth, they who love the world must pass, with the world and its lust; carrying no good of it hence; quitting it all, and going to be with devils in eternal, unquenchable fire. But in this earth as God’s creation, and in its arrangements as God’s ordinances, what may there not be of heaven? And whatever of heaven is in it, and in them, is yours, if you are doing the will of God. Neither does it pass from you nor you from it. You and it together abide for ever.
Here, therefore, is the great alternative between “loving the world and its lust” and “doing the will of God.” Here is the solution of what we are sometimes apt to regard as a hard problem in Christian morals. What is that separation from the world which I must keep up, if I would prove myself to be one who does not love the world, but who does love the Father? A hundred minute points of detail may come into discussion here. Is it lawful? is it expedient? might be asked to weariness, of this or that pursuit, this or that pleasure, this or that party, or company, or occupation. I meet these and all similar inquiries with the broad appeal to consciousness and conscience: Are you doing the will of God? It is not—Are you doing what, as to the matter of it, may be consistent, or not altogether inconsistent, with the will of God? But are you, in doing it, doing the will of God? You may be where the will of God would appoint or allow you to be. Are you there because it is the will of God that you should be there? Are you there on set purpose, there and then to do the will of God? This test will carry you through all entanglements, and raise you above all compromises. Only be sure that you apply it fairly. For, in this matter, the prince of this world is very wily. If possible, he will have you to substitute something of God’s instead of what is his, as being what you are not to love. He will allow and encourage you to abstain from meats and from marriage; to withdraw from your fellows and retire into the desert; to abandon the affairs of active life; to assume an ascetic severity, frowning on the ordinary ongoings of society. He is pleased when he sees you counting that to be coming out from the world. For he knows that all the while it is really God’s creation and God’s ordinance, and not his world with its lust, that you are putting away.
Ah! it is a great thing to draw the line clear and sharp between what here and now is “of God,” and what is “of the world and its lust.” And if the line is to be drawn clear and sharp, it must be drawn, not from without, but from within. It must be drawn, not by external routine or regulation, but by a living spirit in the inner man; the spirit of love and loyalty to the Father; the spirit that moved Jesus to say, “I came not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me.” He had no perplexities, no misgivings, in going in and out among his fellow-men. He moved freely where the Pharisees were censorious and straitlaced. For everywhere and always, wherever he was, in the house, on the road, at the hospitable table, beside the open grave; with whomsoever he met, publicans, sinners, harlots, as well as Scribes, and Sadducees, and Herodians; he was doing the will of God; he was about his Father’s business; doing his will. It was not with him—Where shall I go? whom shall I meet? so much as,—Go where I may, meet whom I may, what business would my Father have me to be about? Something surely bearing on the great work for which I came into the world; something to glorify my Father; something for the saving of lost sinners; something for the comfort of weary souls. Ah! let this same mind that was in him be in you. Let it become a delight with you, as well as a business, to be everywhere and always doing the will of God. That, and that alone, is “not loving the world, nor the things of the world.”
For the world which, with its lust, is passing away, is just the darkness whose passing you are to apprehend as a thing true in you as in Christ. And the doing of the will of God, which is your abiding for ever, is just the true light now shining; which shining of the true light, as well as the passing of the darkness, you are also to apprehend as true in you as in Christ.
There is a twofold movement going on in the earth; the moving off of the darkness, or of the world and its lust, and the moving in of the true light and its gracious, glorious kingdom. Christ, and all of you in whom, as in Christ, “that thing is true, that the darkness is passing and the true light is now shining,” are engaged in the advancing movement and identified with it. It is the movement that is regaining, reconquering, recovering the earth for God. Into that movement you are to throw yourselves. With all who are in it you are to have a common brotherhood, and to make common cause. That is the will of God which you are to do. With the other movement, the moving off from the stage of the darkness and the prince of darkness, with his trappings and troops, you have nothing to do, save only to rescue, in the Father’s name, all whom you can reach, ere that movement carries them away. For yourselves you have no concern with it. You love not the darkness, nor anything in it or about it. Your whole soul is bent on doing the will of God, and so falling in with the advancing march and movement which is to issue ere long in the universal shining of the true light over all the earth.
Surely that is a noble course for you, and one that must ensure your abiding for ever. It may seem indeed that you have no abiding place here. You may be called hence quickly at any time, while the darkness may seem to be passing very slowly; and the world with its lust may be still holding its ground stoutly, and showing an imposing front. But you lose not the fruit of your doing the will of God. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord; they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.” You have cast in your lot with a cause which does not pass away, but abideth for ever; and a leader who does not pass away, but abideth for ever,—“the same yesterday, and today, and for ever.” It is but a little while. Lo, he comes quickly, and you who have departed to be with him come in his train. He comes, and you come, to triumph over the complete and final passing away of the darkness, of the world and its lust, of all doing of any will but the will of God; and to abide for ever in the earth, in which thenceforth for ever the will of God is to be done, even as it is in heaven.
