Lecture XLIV

OUR BEING OF GOD—THE WORLD LYING IN THE WICKED ONE

INSTEAD of “wickedness,” in the nineteenth verse, we may rather read “the wicked one.” There is now a general agreement among critics and interpreters to that effect. There is no good reason for any change in this verse from the rendering in the verse before. There it must unavoidably be personal, “the wicked one toucheth him not.” It is quite unnecessary and unwarrantable to make it impersonal and abstract here, “the whole world lieth in wickedness.” It is the same expression and should be translated in the same way, “the whole world lieth in the wicked one.” For the change mars the sense, and destroys the obvious contrast that there is between the child of God, whom that wicked one does not touch, and the world which, so far from being safe from his touch, lies wholly in him.

We know this last fact, as knowing ourselves to be of God; and it is our thus knowing it that mainly contributes to our security.

For that is the precise point and purpose of the statement, “the whole world lieth in the wicked one.” It is a statement introduced for a purely practical end; an end or purpose personal to us, as begotten of God, and, in that character, “keeping ourselves.” It has no reference to any other persons besides ourselves; it is strictly applicable, and meant to be applied, to ourselves alone. There is no contrast intended between us and the rest of mankind. There is no emphasis in the “we,”—“we are of God,”—as in contradistinction to those of our fellow-men who may be classed as “the world.” In fact the “we” is not in the original at all. It is supplied, and of course necessarily supplied, in our translation. But its not being expressed in the original is plain proof, as all scholars know, that it is not intended to be emphatic, or to suggest any contrast between us and any other body of men. We have nothing here to do with any but ourselves; the text is written solely for our learning, for our warning. It bids us remember that we, being of God, are not of that world which lies wholly in the wicked one. It bids us do so, in order that, being begotten of God, we may so “keep ourselves,” as being begotten of God, that the “wicked one shall not touch us.”

Thus the world is here to be viewed rather as a system than as a society; with reference not so much to the question who constitute the world, as to the question what the world is; what is its character and constitution; what are its arrangements; its habits of thought, feeling, and action; its pursuits, occupations, and pleasures.

One common feature is brought out, helping us to identify and characterise it. The whole of it “lieth in the wicked one.”

It is a strong expression; going beyond any of John’s previous intimations on this subject. He makes early mention of “the wicked one” (2:13, 14). Believers are represented as, in the strength of their mature and vigorous spiritual youth, overcoming, or having overcome, “the wicked one.” Thereafter, when “the wicked one” comes up again (3:12), he is plainly identified with the devil (3:8– 10), in respect of his murderous hatred of God and of whatever is born of God; he kills or seeks to kill whatever and whoever is of God. Next, he appears as that “spirit of antichrist” which is in the world, as “the spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh” (4:3). Here it is said, not that he is in the world, but that the world lies in him. It lies, and lies wholly in him. He has got the world into his arms; the whole world.

I. “The world lieth in the wicked one.” The figure may suggest several different ideas. A stranded vessel lying embedded in the sand; a lost sheep lying engulphed in the treacherous swamp; a sow contented to lie wallowing in the mire; a Samson lying bewitched in Delilah’s lap; —these are the images called forth; and they are all but too appropriate.

Considered in its origin, this lying of the world in the wicked one may be taken in a very literal and personal sense.

The fall is a fall out of the arms of God into the embrace of the wicked one. He is ready to receive the fallen; and, in a measure, to break their fall. He has a bed of his own prepared on which the fallen may lie in him. It is shrewdly and plausibly framed. It is like himself. It is the embodiment of his mind and spirit; the acting out of his very self. It is a couch composed of the very materials he had before woven into the subtle cord of that temptation which drew the unfallen out of God’s hold into his. The same elements of unbelief which he turned to such cunning account in his work of seduction, he employs with equal skill in getting the seduced to lie, and to lie quiet, in him. For the most part, he finds this an easy task. The world listens willingly to its seducer, now become its comforter and guide; and frames its creed and constitution according to his teaching and under his inspiration. He is its doctor of divinity. Its faith, worship, discipline, and government are dictated by him. So “the world lies in him;” dependent on him and his theology for such assumed licence and imaginary peace as it affects to use and to enjoy.

For the essence of worldliness is at bottom the feeling that “God’s commandments are grievous;” that his service is hard, and himself austere; but yet that somehow his indulgence may be largely reckoned upon in the end. It is as “lying in the wicked one,” that the world so conceives of God, and acts upon that conception of him. It is as “lying in the wicked one,” that it peevishly asks, “Who is the Almighty that we should serve him, and what profit shall we have if we bow down unto him?”—while at the same time it confidently presumes, “The Lord seeth not, the Lord regardeth not.”

II. “The whole world thus lieth in the wicked one;” he has it all in his embrace. There is nothing in or about the world that is not thus lying in the wicked one; so lying in the wicked one as to be infected with the contagion of his hard thoughts of God, and his affected bravery in defying God’s righteous judgment.

Take the world at its very best; all its grossness put away; no vile lust or passion polluting it; much pure virtue adorning it; many pious sentiments coming forth from it, not altogether insincerely. What trace is there here of the wicked one’s poisonous touch? What necessity for your being warned to be on your guard against it or him?

Nay, but look deeper into the heart of what is so seeming fair. Do you not see, do you not instinctively feel, that there is throughout its sphere of influence a sad want of that entire surrender of self to God, that unreserved owning of his sovereignty, the sovereignty of his throne, his law, his grace, that full, loyal, loving trust, which alone can baffle Satan’s wiles? Instead of that, is there not a hidden fear of coming to too close quarters and too confidential dealings with God; a disposition to stand aloof and make terms of compromise; a willingness to be persuaded that some questionable things may be tolerated and some slight liberties allowed? Is not all this what “lying in the wicked one” may best explain?

We are not safe unless we realise it as a fact that “the whole world lieth in the wicked one;” all of it; the best of it as well as the worst of it. Only thus can we “so keep ourselves that the wicked one shall not touch us.” It is a sad fact, but we must realise it. And in the firm and full realisation of it, we must “keep ourselves.”

For it is not with a view to our condemning or judging the world, but only in order to our “keeping ourselves,” that we are to have this fact always before our eyes; it is in order to our so “keeping ourselves that the wicked one shall not touch us.” For it is through the world which is lying in him that he seeks to touch us. We are coming constantly into contact with the world; we cannot help it; and yet we are to keep ourselves “unspotted from the world.” How better may we hope, through grace, to do so, than by knowing, in the sense of always and everywhere acting upon the knowledge, that “we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the wicked one”?

Let us recognise our own standing in God, and the world’s lying in the wicked one. We are of God, born of God; his sons in his Son Jesus Christ. That is our character and position. It is in that character, and with reference to that position, that we are to “keep ourselves.” Let us be ever mindful of our high and holy calling. And that we may be ever mindful of it, let us be ever sensitively alive to the risk of the wicked one’s contamination. True, “the wicked one toucheth us not.” But “the whole world lieth in him.” And the world touches us, for we are in the world.

Ah! does not our danger spring from our practically forgetting that the world in which we are lieth wholly in the wicked one? Have not we found it so? We begin to think, or to live as if we thought, that after all the world does not lie absolutely and altogether in the wicked one; that it is not so thoroughly evil as that would imply. We find, or fancy that we find, some of it at least, such as we would not choose to characterise so offensively. The world may be mostly, or for the most part, lying in the wicked one. But surely some exception may be made in favour of this or that about it that looks so harmless and so good.

O child of God, beware. The wicked one is touching you very closely, through the world that lieth in him, when he gets you thus to plead. The Spirit teaches you a safer and better lesson when he moves you to say: “We know that we are of God, and the whole world”—all of it —“lieth in the wicked one.”

This teaching of John, concerning the world as lying in the wicked one, is in striking accordance with that of Paul in two remarkable passages of his Epistle to the Ephesians (2:1; 6:12). One would almost think indeed that John had Paul’s teaching in his view. At all events, it may be interesting and useful to notice the parallelism and harmony between the two apostles.

I. Consider the first of the two passages (Ephes. 2:1): “You hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” Writing to the Ephesians as now believers, Paul reminds them of their former walk. It was “according to the course of this world.” But “the world, the whole world, lieth in the wicked one.” Therefore, walking according to the course of this world, they walked according to the wicked one in whom the world lies. How the world lies in him, so that walking according to the world’s course is really walking according to him, is explained in two ways.

1. He is “the prince of the power of the air.” He rules, as a powerful prince, the world’s atmosphere; its moral and spiritual atmosphere; impregnating it with his own venom; the poisonous vapour of his own dark and godless hell. The air which the world breathes is under his control; he is the prince of the power of it; its powerful prince. It is, as it were, compounded, concocted, and manufactured by him. Very wisely does he use his power; very cunningly does he compose the air which he would have his subjects and victims to breathe. He mingles in it many good ingredients. For the worst of men he does so; and indeed he must do so, if he is to make it palatable and seductive even to them. For the lowest company, he must needs prepare an atmosphere with something good in it; good fellowship at the least, and a large measure of good humour and good feeling. Then, as he rises to higher circles, how does he contrive, in the exercise of his princely power, to make the air that is to intoxicate his votaries, or lull them to unsuspecting sleep, all redolent, as it might seem, of good; good sense, good taste, good temper; good breeding and behaviour; good habits and good-heartedness! Many noisome vapours also that might offend he carefully excludes; so that the inhaling organ perceives nothing but what is pure and simple in what it imbibes and absorbs. But it is the wicked one’s air or atmosphere after all; he is the prince of the power of it. He contrives to have it all pervaded with the latent influence of his own ungodliness; his godless spirit is in it all through. The whole world is lying in that subtle atmosphere of his; the air of which he is the powerful prince.

Have you not felt something of what it is to breathe the air of which the wicked one is thus the powerful prince, to breathe it at the time almost unconsciously, and afterwards to find the fruit of your having breathed it all but inexplicable? You come home from a business engagement, or a party of pleasure. You feel an unwonted indisposition to serious thought; you are less inclined than usual to prayer and meditation; anxious calculations or frivolous fancies, and vain if not vicious imaginations, intrude into the sanctuary of your inner worship; you are not so much at home as you were before in your closet-fellowship with your Father in heaven. You are at a loss to account for this. You have not been anywhere, or done anything, in known or conscious opposition to his will. But you have been living in an unwholesome atmosphere. You have been in scenes or societies; all decent and proper no doubt; but yet imbued with as thorough a spirit of indifference or alienation as the wicked one would care to inspire. You have forgotten that “the whole world lieth in the wicked one” as “the prince of the power of its air.”

2. Nor is this all. He is “the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience.” He is not content with exercising his power in concocting and compounding the world’s atmosphere; he is busily moving to and fro, and up and down, in the ranks of those who breathe it. He prepares for them the air he would like them to inhale, making it as soothing and seductive as he can. And then, while they are inhaling it, he deals with them personally; going in and out among them; whispering his suggestions; speaking low into their ears; insinuating into their hearts such thoughts of God, and of his service, and of his gospel, as fit into the pervading godless spirit of the region into which he has got them to venture. In this view, he very specially works among them as “the children of disobedience.” He takes advantage of every rising feeling of distrust and disaffection; he watches for the first beginnings of discontent. Wherever there is any disposition to count any of God’s appointments or commandments grievous, he is at hand; to fan the flame; to irritate the sore; to widen the breach between the loving Father and his undutiful child, beginning to question and rebel.

So the whole world doubly, or in a double sense, lies in the wicked one; inasmuch as he is the prince of the power of its air on the one hand, and inasmuch as, on the other hand, he is ever working in it among the children of disobedience. And in both views, it concerns you deeply, as “knowing yourselves to be of God,” and called to keep yourselves accordingly, to know that “the whole world lieth in the wicked one.” Know this, that you may beware of its seductive atmosphere, of which he is the powerful prince. Know it, that you may beware of the first rising in you of that insubordinate and impatient spirit of which he avails himself so skilfully in his “working among the children of disobedience.” If you would keep yourselves, as being of God, so that in respect of your being begotten of God the wicked one may not touch you, you must be ever alive to this double risk; the risk of your forgetting how thoroughly he controls the world’s atmosphere; and the risk also of your forgetting how busily and persuasively he works among the children of disobedience in it.

Keep yourselves, in both views, unspotted from the world. Keep yourselves, as born of God, in the atmosphere into which your new birth introduces you; the atmosphere of pure light and love; the Father’s own light; the Father’s own love. And keep yourselves, as “obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance; but as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy.”

II. Look now for a little at the second of the two passages in Ephesians (6:12): “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” There is a double view here given of the influence which the wicked one, with his principalities and powers, exerts. On the one hand, he “rules the darkness of this world.” On the other hand, he is “spiritual wickedness in high places.”

1. He rules the dark world which lies wholly in him; rules it as the prince of the power of its air, and as the spirit now working in the children of disobedience. If he finds you there, he finds you within his own territory; at once breathing the worldly atmosphere he has mixed; and open at the same time to his influence as he is busy in his vocation, plying all his wiles among those whom he finds harbouring thoughts of insubordination. He has an advantage over you on his own ground; you cannot there cope with him; your only safety is in flight. “Come out and be separate.” Flee to the stronghold; “the heavenly places.” The wicked one’s world is not your home. You are not to know it at all; or to know it only as lying wholly in the wicked one; to beware of it; to renounce it; to keep yourself unspotted from it. Your home is in “the heavenly places,” in which “you sit with Christ.” Abide there, and “the wicked one toucheth you not.”¹ 2. Nay, but even into “the heavenly places” the wicked one may find access; and even in “the heavenly places” he may seek to touch you. But he does not, he cannot, really touch you there. He crept indeed into Paradise, which was “the heavenly places” before the fall; and touched fatally our first parents there. But in “the heavenly places” now, in your “heavenly places,” you have a defence which they had not. You “sit with Christ in the heavenly places,” being “begotten of God in his Son.” You “know that you are of God,” in a sense and to an effect that Adam and Eve, with all their innocence, could not realise. By redemption, by adoption, by regeneration; as bought and begotten; you are of God; his own very sons, as Jesus is. The wicked one may come to you in your heavenlies, as he came to them in theirs. He may come as “spiritual wickedness;” plying his old wicked spiritual arts of temptation; suggesting his old doubts of the love and equity and truth of God. But he “touches you not.” He could touch you only by appealing to something in you of what he finds in the children of disobedience among whom he works in the world; something in you of their disobedience, some incipient leaning towards insubordination, some aptness to count the commandments of God grievous.

Is there at any time anything of that spirit in you? Is there any rising within you of the old feeling of impatience, of suspicion, in a word, of unbelief? Ah, then, even “in the heavenlies,” you are not safe from the touch of the wicked one. Remember that you have to “wrestle against him even in the heavenlies;” to wrestle against him, not only as “ruling the world’s darkness,” but as “spiritual wickedness in the heavenlies.”

For he comes into the secret place where you dwell with God as his children; transformed perhaps into an angel of light; insinuating his old doubts, surmises, questionings again; putting in his old cavils between your Father’s loving heart and your simple trust. Let him not, O my brother! let him not succeed in his attempt. Stand against him by faith. Bid him begone. He has no right to be in your heavenlies, whatever right he may have to “rule in the world’s darkness.” If you have faith you may cast him out. Keep yourself, as “born of God;” keep yourself in the vivid realising sense of all that your “sitting with Christ in the heavenlies” involves. So keep yourself in the heavenlies, and that wicked one touches you not.

What shall I say, in closing, to you who are not of God, but of the world; of the world that is altogether lying in the wicked one? Ah! do you not know that the prince of the world is judged; that for this purpose the Son of God was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil? Are you still listening to the gospel of the wicked one: “Ye shall not surely die”? Nay rather, hear another gospel: “God is love; in this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his Son into the world, that we might live through him.”