“Who is he that overcometh the world?” The first thing I have to know is, what the world is, and in one verse this is summed up: “The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life is not of the Father, but of the world.” Of course, if I do not know what the world is, I cannot know what I ought to be delivered from. The world knew not Christ; whatever knows not Christ is the world, and whoever loves it, the love of the Father is not in him.
There are, I may say, four distinct ways in which we are delivered, or rather, in which the sense of deliverance is made known to the soul, as well as the power of it.
1. The first is stated as a principle in the passage before us. “That which is born of God overcomes the world;” and, therefore, every divinely new-born soul does in some degree overcome the world. Faith is the power by which it is effected, and the Son of God is the object for faith, by which the victory is consummated. If I, by faith, have my soul set on Jesus as the Son of God, apart from, and beyond the world, I receive the strength and sense of His victory over it. I am of good cheer, because He has overcome it. I am in His strength and with Him above it. I am not alone, buffetting the adverse activities here; but I see Him above them all, as having surmounted them, and from the very fact of my believing in Him, my soul is with Him, away and apart from all that is contrary to Him. I am above it, in the very action of life, the result of faith in Him. If the world besets me, or hampers or baffles me in any way, the moment my eye rests on Him, the Son of God, I am above it. I may not see my extrication, but I am in victory over it, I have a place and power superior to it.
2. The second way or power of deliverance is that my true place now is with Christ in heaven. That is the reach, if I may so say, of the Spirit of God now. It is the place where the soul by faith enters into the great result of the love of God; that inner circle of His presence where the prodigal shares in the joys of God, and knows that He is in intimate nearness in his Father’s house; where he is unencumbered, irreproachable, and irreprovable in His sight. My citizenship is there, and if known and enjoyed there, I must, in proportion, be dissociated in principle, taste, and interest, from the world. A really heavenly man could not be of the world, for the great power, or effect, of being in heaven now, even by faith, is an unconsciousness of the existence of that which connects me with the world, while abundantly conscious of the great blessedness into which I have been introduced. A man happy with Christ in heaven as his own place, could not be happy in the world as such.
3. The third is that I am dead — that God treats me as dead. Now if I am dead, the world is nothing to me, because it is only as a man I could enjoy the world. A man really dead has no interest whatever in it.
The place of death in which God sets us morally, effects varied blessings for us in respect to our deliverance from the world.
Let us note them seriatim. In Romans — I being dead through the body of Christ am freed from the law, and therefore I am to present my body a living sacrifice as my reasonable service, not conformed unto this world, but transformed by the renewing of my mind. How else could it be if I am freed from the law by being dead? What more grateful than to present it to Him who freed me from a world where I could only cry out, “Ο wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
In 1 Cor. 1, &c, the apostle shows how the cross of Christ sets aside the wisdom of the world; and therefore he determined to know among them only Jesus Christ, and Him crucified; for if there had been wisdom in the world, the prince of it would not have crucified Him, therefore the cross is foolishness to it. The cross — Christ crucified —delivers me from the wisdom of the world, as in 2 Cor. 5. I am an entirely new creation; “old things are passed away, all things are become new.”
In Galatians — I find that because I am crucified with Christ, the law has no place in perfecting me; and therefore the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.
In Ephesians — I am on the other side, through Christ’s death, and therefore above the prince of the power of the air, which otherwise I could not be.
In Colossians — I am not like the Gnostics, trying to detach myself from the world by not touching or tasting, but through Christ. I am dead to the rudiments of the world.
4. The fourth way in which I am loosened and detached from the world is by being impressed with the vanity and impermanency of it; but this is the lowest order of deliverance. It is only alluded to when there is distinct leaning of the heart to earth. St. Paul speaks of it in 1 Cor. 7, when writing on marriage; and again in Heb. 12; but he never speaks there of their being dead, though he connects all their blessings with resurrection. St. James speaks of the world being a vapor which passeth away; and St. Peter dwells largely on the present heaven and earth being dissolved, and argues there from what manner of persons ought we to he? Finally — St. John, in the Revelation, judges, afflicts, and by terrible strokes, crushes the whole of the present (κόσμος,) order of things, so that there is not a shred left for nature to cling to — the wrath of God devouring it all.