- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
WHY THE WORLD CANNOT RECEIVE
By A.W.Tozer.
“The Spirit of Truth. The world cannot accept Him” (John 14 v17).
The Christian faith, based upon the New Testament, teaches the complete contrast between the Church and the world.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 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 whitewashed just enough to pass inspection by blind men posing as believers, and those same believers are everlastingly seeking to gain acceptance with the world.
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.
“Because you are sons”, wrote Paul to the Galatians, “God sent the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, the Spirit who calls out, Abba, Father”. And to the Corinthians he wrote, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realise that Christ Jesus is in you - unless, of course, you fail the test?” And to the Romans, “You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ.”
That terrible confusion so evident in the 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 advice from sincere but unenlightened brethren, our Lord replied, “The right time for Me has not yet come; for you any time is right. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil.” 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. It is when the Spirit of God comes in that an alien element has entered. “If the world hates you”, said the Lord to His disciples, “keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you”.
So throughout the New Testament a sharp line is drawn between the Church and the world. There is no middle ground. The Lord recognises 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. It is the same gulf that divides the world of the ransomed from the world of the fallen.
I know and feel deeply how offensive such teaching must be to that great flock of worldlings which mills around the ‘sheepfold’. I cannot hope to escape the charge of bigotry and intolerance which will undoubtedly be brought against me by the confused who seek to make themselves ‘sheep’ by association. But we may as well face the hard truth that men do not become Christians by associating with church people, nor by religious education. They can only become Christians by an invasion of their nature by the Spirit of God in the new birth. And when they do thus become Christians they are immediately members of a new race, “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, an holy nation . . . now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now have received mercy” (1 Peter 2 v9-10).
The difficulty we Christians face is not misunderstanding the Bible, but persuading our untamed hearts to accept its plain instructions. Our problem is to get the consent of our world-loving minds to make Jesus Lord in fact as well as in word. For it is one thing to say, “Lord, Lord”, and quite another thing to obey the Lord’s commands. When faith becomes obedience then it is true faith indeed.
The world’s spirit is strong and it clings to us as close as the smell of smoke to our garments. It can change its face to suit any circumstance and so deceive many a Christian whose senses are not exercised to discern good and evil. It can play at religion with every appearance of sincerity. It can have fits of conscience and even confess its evil ways. It will praise religion and fawn on the Church for its own ends. It will contribute to charitable causes, only let Christ keep His distance and never assert His Lord-ship, this it will not endure, and toward the true Spirit of Christ it will show only antagonism.
The sons of this world and the sons of God have both been baptised into a spirit, but the spirit of the world and the Spirit which dwells in the hearts of the twice-born are as far apart as heaven and hell. Not only are they the complete opposite of each other but they are sharply antagonistic to each other. “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned”.
In the first epistle of John two words are used over and over, ‘they’ and ‘you’, and they designate two wholly different worlds. ‘They’, refers to the men and women of Adam’s fallen world, ‘you’, refers to the chosen ones who have left all to follow Christ.
The apostle does not bow to the little god Tolerance, he is bluntly intolerant, and it takes a vigorous faith to accept the teaching of John. It is so much easier to blur the lines of separation and so offend no one. Pious generalities and the use of ‘we’ to mean both Christians and unbelievers is much safer. The fatherhood of God can be stretched to include everyone from Jack the Ripper to the prophet Daniel. Thus no one is offended and everyone feels quite snug and ready for heaven. But the man who laid his ear on Jesus’ breast was not so easily deceived. He drew a line to divide the race of men into two camps, to separate the saved from the lost, those who shall rise to eternal reward from those who shall sink to final despair. On one side are ‘they’ that know not God, on the other ‘you’, and between the two is a gulf too wide for any man to cross.
Here is the way John states it, “You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognise the Spirit of truth and the spirit of falsehood”. Such language as this is too plain to confuse anyone who honestly wants to know the truth. Our problem is not one of understanding but of faith and obedience. Am I willing to accept this and abide by its consequences? Can I endure the cold stare? Have I the courage to stand up to slashing attack? Dare I invite the hate of men who will be affronted by my attitude? Have I independence of mind sufficient to challenge the opinions of popular religion and go along with an apostle? Can I bring myself to take up the cross with its blood and is reproach?
The Christian is called to separation from the world, but we must be sure we know what we mean, or more important what God means, by the world. We are likely to make it mean something external only and thus miss its real meaning. Cards, liquor, gambling are not the world, they are merely an external manifestation of the world. Our warfare is not against mere worldly ways but against the spirit of the world. For man, whether he is saved or lost, is essentially spirit. The world, in the New Testament meaning of the word, is simply unregenerate human nature wherever it is found, whether in a tavern or in a church. Whatever springs out of, is built upon, or receives support from fallen human nature, is the world. The ancient Pharisees, in spite of their zealous devotion to religion, were of the very essence of the world. The spiritual principles upon which they built their system were drawn not from above but from below. They employed against Jesus the tactics of men. They bribed men to tell lies in defiance of truth. To defend God they acted like devils. To support the Bible they defied the teachings of the Bible. They gave rein to blind hate in the name of the religion of love. There we see the world in all of its grim defiance of God. So fierce was this spirit that it never rested till it had put to death the Son of God. The spirit of the Pharisees was actively and maliciously hostile to the Spirit of Jesus.
Those present day teachers who place the Sermon on the Mount in some other dispensation than this and so release the Church from its teachings little realise the evil they do. For the Sermon on the Mount gives in brief the characteristics of the Kingdom of renewed men and women. The blessed poor who mourn for their sins and thirst after righteousness are true children of the Kingdom. In meekness they show mercy to their enemies; with guileless candour they gaze upon God; surrounded by persecutors they bless and curse not. In modesty they hide their good deeds. They go out of their way to agree with their adversaries and forgive those who sin against them. They serve God in secret in the depth of their hearts and wait with patience for His open reward. They freely surrender their earthly goods rather than use violence to protect them. They lay up their treasures in heaven. They avoid praise and wait for the day of final reckoning in the Kingdom of heaven.
What can we say when Christians vie with one another? How can we excuse the passion for publicity? What about political ambition in Church circles? How can we explain the gross man-worship that habitually blows up one and another popular leader to the size of a colossus? What about the obsequious hand kissing of moneyed men by those purporting to be sound preachers of the gospel? There is only one answer to these questions, it is simply that in these manifestations we see the world and nothing but the world. No passionate profession of love for souls can change evil into good. These are the very sins that crucified Jesus.
It is true also that the grosser manifestations of fallen human nature are part of the kingdom of this world. Organized amusements with their emphasis upon shallow pleasure, the great empires built upon vicious and unnatural habits, unrestrained abuse of the normal appetites, the artificial world called high society. These all are of the world and from these things the Christian must flee. All these he must put behind him and in them he must have no part. Against them he must stand quietly but firmly without compromise and without fear.
So whether the world present itself in its uglier aspects or in its subtler and more refined forms, we must recognize it for what it is and repudiate it bluntly. We must do this if we would walk with God in our generation as Enoch did in his. A clean break with the world is imperative. “You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred towards God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God” (James 4 v4). “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world - the cravings of the sinful man, the lust of the eyes and boasting of what he has or does - comes not from the Father but from the world” (1 John 2 v15-16). These words of God are not before us for our consideration, they are there for our obedience and we have no right to claim the title of Christian unless we follow them.
I fear any kind of religious stir among Christians that does not lead to repentance and result in a sharp separation of the believer from the world. I am suspicious of any organized revival effort that is forced to play down the hard terms of the Kingdom. No matter how attractive the movement may appear, if it is not founded in righteousness and nurtured in humility it is not of God. If it exploits the flesh it is a religious fraud and should not have the support of any God-fearing Christian. Only that is of God which honours the Spirit and prospers at the expense of the human ego. “Therefore, as it is written: Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”
From ‘The Divine Conquest’.