World

 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 7
This may be taken in two senses, as meaning the earth and nature, or as meaning the inhabitants of the earth; and hence more limited since the fashions and customs of civilization. In Scripture, wherever the word is used to mean the inhabitants of the earth, the meaning invariably is evil, as John 7:7, 16:20, &c. Sometimes it is spoken of as the object of God’s love, sometimes of His judgment (1 John 4:1414And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. (1 John 4:14); 1 Cor. 11:3232But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world. (1 Corinthians 11:32)). Of this world, not of nature, Satan is the god and prince, and all of it are his subjects. Believers are not of this world, although in it (as a sphere). This world, as such, will never be improved, and such is not the object of Christianity; on the contrary God is calling a people for Himself out of it. The believer is looked as crucified to the world (Gel. 6.), he is not to love it, for the love of the Father and of the world cannot go together. In all this, however, it must be clearly under stood that it is man’s world, and not God’s earth that is referred to. Some, from not seeing this, have wrongly considered that to love the works of God in nature is to love the world.