Lecture XXXVII

FILIAL FAITH OVERCOMING THE WORLD

HERE again the apostle brings in “the world;” and he does so in the very midst of a singularly high estimate of the believer’s standing and character. He has placed him in a relation of close intimacy with God, and of serious responsibility as regards the special duty which that implies. For what is brotherly love, as John describes it? It is our letting the very love with which God has loved us go forth, through us, to all men; and our embracing all who accept that love as brethren in the Lord. John has associated this exercise of love on our part, not only with God’s exercise of love to us, but with our obligation of loving obedience to God. That loving obedience, if it is to be the obedience of persons accepting and transmitting the love of God, must be uncomplaining and ungrudging. It must be obedience counting none of God’s commandments grievous; because it owns freely God’s absolute right to command, and therefore confesses that nothing which he commands can be wrong.

But the world comes in; and it must be somehow disposed of, and got rid of. It must be disposed of, and got rid of, in its bearing on our position and our duty as now brought out. In this view I ask you to consider—I. What the world is, and how it is that the only way of dealing with it is to overcome it. And II. How the world is to be overcome by the new birth and through faith.

I. The indefiniteness,—the sort of unsatisfactory vagueness,—that is sometimes felt to attach to the scriptural idea of the world, is here somewhat obviated by the connection or train of thought, in which it occurs. The fact (ver. 4), that “whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world,” is given apparently as the reason why to such a one (ver. 3) “the commandments of God are not grievous.” The world, therefore, it might seem, must be characterised by an impression or feeling to the opposite effect;—that the commandments of God are grievous. Wherever that impression or feeling prevails, there is the world. Of course, there are other characteristic features by which the world may be recognised and identified; some of which are brought out elsewhere in this epistle, as well as in other books of the New Testament. For the most part, indeed, when the world is spoken of in any passage of scripture as the antagonist of God, of his kingdom, his cause, his people, his law, there is, in the passage itself, some clue to guide or help us to a right apprehension of what particular aspect of the world is meant. And it might serve to give point and precision to the teaching of any scriptural text on the subject of the world,—its relation to us as believers and our attitude towards it,—if instead of contenting ourselves with a general notion of it, as a system or society somehow opposed to godliness, we fastened on the exact sort of opposition which the text in question may be fitted to suggest. As to our present text, for instance, we can have little difficulty. What is the world which faith overcomes? It is whatever system or way of life, whatever society or companionship of men, tends to make us feel God’s commandments, or any of them, to be grievous.

Here then, at all events, we have no mere vague denunciation of some formidable, but somewhat dim and shadowy enemy; but a definition sufficiently intelligible, and sufficiently precise and practical. Ponder it for a little, and apply it as a test. What is the world to you? It is whatever, it is whoever, is apt to make you feel God’s commandments to be grievous. That is a searching test, if faithfully applied by one deeply conscious of that carnal nature in himself, even in his renewed self, which is ever ready to prompt or to welcome the suggestion. That carnal nature in you is not necessarily the world; but all that ministers to it is the world. The natural disposition in you to count the commandments of God grievous is very strong. Do you feel its strength? Are you sensitively alive to its continual and powerful working? Does it vex and distress you? If so, and in proportion as it is so, you are in a position to discern this mark by which the world may be known; whether as an order of things, or as a fellowship of men.

There is an order, or, if you will, a disorder, of things; a way of occupying the mind, amusing the fancy, gratifying the taste, stimulating the passions, warming the imagination, interesting the heart; which, if you are spiritual, and honest in your spirituality, you must feel, when you try it by this touchstone, to be the world. Ask yourself, at the close of an hour or two, or half an hour, spent in reading, or in musing, or in walking abroad, or at table, or at any sort of work, or recreation, or elegant accomplishment that you like:—Has the occupation left you less inclined than you were before to comply with a call of duty, to submit to a sacrifice of inclination, to engage in prayer, to go forth on an errand of pious love? Are you more disposed than otherwise you might have been to feel any such demand upon you to be a sort of interruption, and as such to be somewhat irksome? I am not concerned to maintain that absolutely and always this is of itself proof positive that what you have been occupied about is the world. But this I say; it is at least a very strong presumption. And when you find that upon your being occupied in the same way a second time, or a third, the effect is much the same, the presumption rises into certainty. Whatever it may be as regards others, so far as you are concerned, to all practical intents and purposes, that is the world. So also, in the matter of your intercourse with men, this rule of judgment will often help you to separate the precious from the vile. Who are they from whose company, however otherwise pleasant and profitable, you come, a little, just a very little, more apt than is your wont, to think that God is pressing rather hard upon you, or upon some other child of God whose case you pity? You are tempted slightly to lose patience and temper. You may be at a loss to explain how this comes about; for you cannot perhaps lay your finger on anything particular in what has been going on that may explain it. But you feel it; and that should be enough for you. Do not hesitate to acknowledge that such meetings and companionships are to be regarded and treated by you as the world. Let it be fixed in your minds as a great truth, that the world to be overcome comprehends all that you come in contact with which has any tendency to awaken in you the feeling that “God’s commandments are grievous.”

If this is a true account of the world, as here presented to us, it must be very evident that it is a world to be “overcome.” We cannot deal with it, if we would avoid its deleterious and deadly influence, in any other way. We cannot escape from it, or put it aside. As regards some of its forms and manifestations we may do so. Where we have freedom of choice, we may shun its occupations and companionships. And when these are of such a nature in themselves, or have such influence upon us,—or upon any brother whom we are called to love,—as to foster the impression of God’s commandments being grievous, we are bound to shun them. We are under no obligation whatever to frequent the theatre, the ball-room, the racecourse; to court the friendship of dissolute hunters after pleasure or frivolous votaries of fashion; to expose ourselves to the contamination of unprofitable reading and discourse. So far we may and must “come out and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing, if we would be the sons and daughters of the Lord God Almighty.” But we do not thus get rid of the world. It still presses hard upon us, with its suggestions from every side that the service of God is not perfect freedom. All the ongoings and arrangements of its necessary business, even the customary usages of the home circle itself, are but too ready to convey impressions to that effect. Nay, in the loneliest desert, in the remotest cell hermit ever dwelt in, we cannot shut out airy voices whispering in the ear that something we have to do or bear is hard; we cannot lay an arrest on ideal fascinations shedding a gloom on the cloister’s austere devotion, or on the real trials of life. No; the world cannot be shunned. Neither can it be conciliated. We cannot make any compromise with it. The only effectual, the only possible, way is to overcome it.

And the manner of overcoming it must be peculiar. It must be such as thoroughly to meet and obviate that tendency to minister to a rebellious frame of mind which constitutes the chief characteristic, and indeed the very essence, of what is here called the world.

II. Two explanations accordingly, of this overcoming of the world are given; the one having reference to the original source, the other to the continued following out of the victory (ver. 4).

1. “Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.” So the victory begins; that is its seed or germ. And as to its seed or germ, it is complete; potentially complete, though not so in actual result, fully and in detail. Being born or begotten of God implies the overcoming of the world. For whatever is born of God necessarily, ipso facto, overcomes the world. The statement is very wide; and it seems evidently to imply that there is positively no other way of overcoming the world except by our being born or begotten of God: that God himself could not enable us to do this otherwise. There is that in our being born or begotten of God which secures, and which alone can secure, our overcoming the world. And what can that be but the begetting in us of a frame of mind which cuts up by the roots the whole strength of the world’s hold over us;—the idea, namely, of God’s commandments being grievous?

Consider, in this view, what it is to be born or begotten of God. It is more than being created, or even created anew. It is not our being made anew, or made over again; as if the simple fiat of omnipotence went forth: Let what has made itself corrupt be re-made, pure as at the first. That would not be begetting on God’s part, or being begotten on ours. The new birth is indeed a new creation; but it is something more; at least it is a new creation of a very special sort. Christ’s birth was a creation. In his birth there was created for him a body, a holy humanity, in the Virgin’s womb. But the angel said, “That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” He was to be called the Son of God in a higher sense than any sense in which the first man might have been so called; and that with reference even,—nay with reference especially,—to his human nature and condition. He was made man, not by a mere creative act as Adam was, but by generation; being “conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost.” So also in us the new creation is a new birth. When the Holy Ghost makes us new creatures, we are “begotten of God;” “his seed is in us,” the divine germ of a new nature and a new life.

This, let it be noted also, is something more than God’s consenting to reckon us his children, by a gracious act of adoption. It is his making us really, in our very nature, his children. It is not merely that he takes us to be on a new footing with him, as I might take a houseless orphan to be to me as a son. Literally and truly he begets us as children to himself. The houseless orphan whom I desire to have for my son may never be really a son to me. I may fail in all my attempts to make him, in any true or valid sense, my son. He will be my servant, because he cannot help it; he will render to me punctual, and even punctilious, obedience. But alas! it is not such obedience as I care for. I see too clearly that he often looks on me still as a hard master, and feels my commandments to be grievous. No such disappointment can a wait the Almighty Father. He begets by his Spirit those whom he adopts in his Son. They are begotten of God; begotten by the agency of his Spirit, as his incarnate Son was; begotten, to be to him what he is; to feel towards him as he feels. That ensures their overcoming whatever might tempt them to count God’s commandments grievous; or, in other words, their overcoming the world.

“Look unto Jesus.” Was ever any servant of God,—for such he was,—placed in circumstances more likely to make the commandments of God be felt as grievous, such commandments especially as he had to fulfil? Go with him through all his experience in the world. The commandments of God laid on him; the things he had to do, the things he had to suffer; were surely capable of being represented to him as grievous, and regarded by him as grievous. They were so represented to him by the world and its prince. Were they so regarded by him? And if not, why not? Because he was “begotten of God; “begotten of God, not merely as to his divine nature, but as to his human nature also; as “God manifest in the flesh;” “Jesus Christ come in the flesh;” “the man Christ Jesus.” In respect of his manhood, as well as his Godhead, he is the only begotten Son of God; occupying a son’s place in the heart of God; having a son’s affection towards God in his own heart. Therefore no commandment of God, whatever tears and groans and cries it might exhort from his feeble flesh, could ever be grievous to his filial spirit. So, in virtue of his being born of God, he overcame the world.

And so also we in virtue of our being born of God, overcome the world; the world which is ever insinuating that the commandments of God are grievous; that the things he requires us to do, and the things he requires us to suffer, are hard. We never can withstand these insinuations of the world, fitting in so well into our own carnal disposition, unless we stand in a filial relation to God, and are possessed of a filial frame of mind, a filial heart, towards him; being not only adopted by him, but begotten of him. But being his children indeed; standing to him in the relation of sons, and having our whole inner man renewed into harmony and correspondence with that relation; being to him all that his only begotten Son is, and feeling towards him as his only begotten Son feels; we have such personal knowledge of him as our Father, such loving acquaintance with him, such insight into his character and plans, such cordial sympathy with him in the great work which he is carrying on in the earth, as must convince us that nothing he can demand of us as his ministers and servants, nothing he can lay upon us, can be anything else than what we ought to welcome in the words and in the spirit of Jesus: “I delight to do thy will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my heart.

2. This implies faith; and faith in constant and lively exercise. Our overcoming the world is not an achievement completed at once, and once for all, in our being begotten of God. It is a life-long business; a prolonged and continuous triumph in a prolonged and continuous strife. We are to be always anew, all our days, overcoming the world; “and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” Our being born of God does indeed give us the victory; it puts us in the right position, and endows us with the needful power, for overcoming the world. But we have still before us the work of actually, from day to day, all our lifelong, in point of fact, overcoming the world. And it is by faith that we do so. Our being born of God is the source of the victory; our faith is the realisation of it, or the acting of it out. Our being born of God fits and qualifies us for overcoming the world; our faith really overcomes it.

Nor is it difficult to harmonise these two things; our being born of God and so overcoming the world, and the victory which overcometh the world being our faith. For our being born of God, which is the secret of our overcoming the world, is itself intimately connected with faith; it originates faith and culminates in faith; its immediate outgoing in activity is faith. And therefore faith, continually exercised, constantly acting, is the instrument of victory. Nor is it merely faith apprehending a past event in our moral history, an accomplished change in our spiritual condition, our being “born of God.” It is faith exercised upon a present object; not looking back or looking in, but looking out; “looking unto Jesus.” For “who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?” Jesus is the ever-present object of this ever acting faith; Jesus considered as the Son of God. For it is the sonship of Jesus that our faith grasps, embraces, and appropriates. And it is because it does so that it is “the victory which overcometh the world.” Who is he who is at any given moment, and with reference to any given trial or temptation, really overcoming the world? Is it not he who, at that very moment, and with special reference to that very trial or temptation, is “believing that Jesus is the Son of God;” so believing as to be one with him in his being so; of one mind and of one heart, then and there, as to the precise matter in hand or the particular question raised; of one mind and heart with Jesus the Son of God; judging the case as he, the Son of God, would have judged it; feeling as he, the Son of God, would have felt; acting as in the circumstances he, the Son of God, would have acted?

Jesus himself had to overcome, and did overcome, the world. How? Was it not by faith? by faith in his own sonship, or rather faith in God as his Father, faith ever intensely and vividly realising it as a truth that God was his Father? It was as the Son of God that he looked out upon the world; from his Father’s point of view. It was as the Son of God that he met the world’s attractions; the consciousness of his Father’s love stripped them in his eyes of all their charms. It was as the Son of God that he was tempted; trust in his Father’s faithfulness kept him without sin. It was as the Son of God that he suffered, and suffered willingly, that his Father might be glorified. Into his pure, calm, filial spirit, there never did, there never could, enter the very faintest shadow of a suspicion that anything his Father ordered or ordained could be otherwise than just, and right, and good. Therefore the world had no hold over him; “the prince of the world had nothing in him.” There was not in him any latent or lurking element of possible impatience under the yoke, to which the world might appeal, and by means of which, persuading him that God’s way was harsh, the world might subdue him. For though he became the servant of the Father, he was still the Son; and therefore in serving the Father, being still the Son, he overcame the world. So we also, believing that Jesus is the Son of God, and being ourselves sons of God in him, may find that in this way we can overcome the world. At all events, we may be very sure that there is no other “victory that overcometh the world” but only this faith; this filial faith in God our Father; giving the lie to all the world’s aspersions on his character, and all the world’s complaints against his government and law.

O child of God, wouldest thou overcome the world? Is it thine earnest, anxious, longing desire so to overcome the world that it shall never have power any more to make thee feel any one of thy God’s commandments to be grievous? Is it a distress to thee that such a feeling still prevails so much and so often in thy secret soul; that thy walk before God, thy fellowship with God, thy service of God, are all so marred, tainted, cramped, and hindered, by the ever-recurring suggestion that this or that thing required of thee is hard? Yes; it is hard to cut off a right hand and pluck out a right eye; hard to deny self and take up the cross; hard to crucify the flesh with its affections and lusts; hard to go forth unto Christ without the camp bearing his reproach; hard to forego a seemingly harmless pleasure; hard to part with one dearly beloved; hard to bear excruciating pain; hard to die by premature decay; hard to lay down life for a brother! Ah! is it a grief to thee, a sore mortification and disappointment, that thou art so easily moved by the world; for it is thy love of the world, or the world’s power over thee, that moves thee; thus to think, thus to feel, if not even thus to speak? Here, and only here, is the remedy. Believe, be always believing, that Jesus, so called because he saves his people from their sins, is the Son of God; that it is as the Son of God that he saves thee; and that he saves thee so as to make thee a son; being himself the first-born among many brethren. Rise to the full height of that great position. Realise its greatness; the greatness of its freedom; “the glorious liberty of the sons of God.” That is “the victory which overcometh the world,” even such faith as that.