At the creation there was no such thing as “the world” as the Lord spoke of it in the Gospel of John, and as John speaks of it in his writings. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” is what we read. But “the world” is a vast system in which every man is bent upon doing the best he can for himself, and God is really unknown: a system which Satan uses to ruin man, and to destroy the power of God.
The presence of the Son of God in it brought out the fact that all that was of the world was not of the Father, whom He revealed. He overcame the world; and Satan, who led it against Him, for the first time received definitely the title “the prince of this world.” The judgment of the world was on the rejection of the Son of God—not yet executed, ‘tis true, but sure. The presence of the Holy Ghost now convinces the world of sin in one common lump. It is the evidence that the world did not believe on the Son of God, but cast Him out, and He has no more to say to it, and never will till He judges it.
The man, therefore, who believes that “Jesus is the Son of God” overcomes the world—(1 John, 5.)—not merely that He is the Son of David, or the Christ. The world is that in which the flesh finds its place when the soul is not with God. We find it more than seventy times mentioned in the writings of John. It is that system which comes to light between the first coming of Christ and His appearing, and is only then used in this moral sense.