"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."
"I am not of the world."—John 17:14.
In one sense it was not so. Jesus did not seek to
maintain His holiness intact and unspotted by avoiding contact with the
world. He mingled familiarly in its busy crowds. He frowned on none of its
innocent enjoyments; He fostered, by His example, no love of seclusion; He
gave no warrant or encouragement to mortified pride, or disappointed hopes, to
rush from its duties—yet, with all this, what a halo of heavenliness encircled
His pathway through it! "I am from above," was breathed in His every look, and
word, and action, from the time when He lay in the slumbers of infancy in His
Bethlehem cradle, until He said, "I leave the world, and go to My Father!" He
had moved uncontaminated through its varied scenes, like the sunbeam,
which, whatever it touches, remains as unsullied, as when it issues from its
great fountain.
But though Himself in His sinless nature "unconquerable" by
temptation—immutably secure from the world's malignant influences, it is all
worthy of note, as an example to us, that He never unnecessarily braved
these. He knew the seducing spell that same world would exercise on His
people, of whom, with touching sympathy, He says, "These are in the
world!" He knew the many who would be involved and ensnared in its
subtle worship, who, "minding earthly things," would seek to slake their
thirst at polluted streams!
Reader! the great problem you have to solve, Jesus has
solved for you—to be "in the world, and yet not of it." To
abandon it, would be a dereliction of duty. It would be servants deserting
their work—soldiers flying from the battle-field. Live in it, that
while you live, the world may feel the better for you. Die, that
when you die, the world—the Church—may feel your loss, and cherish
your example! On its cares and duties, its trusts and responsibilities, its
employments and enjoyments, inscribe the motto, "The world passes away!"
Beware of everything in it that would tend to deaden spirituality of heart;
unfitting the mind for serious thought, lowering the standard of Christian
duty, and inducing a perilous conformity to its false manners, habits, tastes,
and principles. As the best antidote to the love of the world, let the inner
vacuum of the heart be filled with the love of God. Seek to feel the nobility
of your regenerated nature—that you have a nobler heritage to care for than
the transitory glories which encircle "an indivisible point, a fugitive atom."
How can I mix with the potsherds of the earth? Once, "I lay among the pots;"
now, I am "like a dove, whose wings are covered with silver, and her feathers
with yellow gold!" "Stranger—pilgrim—sojourner;"—"my citizenship is in
heaven!" Why covet tinsel honors and glories? Why be solicitous about the
smiles of that which knew not, (no, which frowned on) its Lord? "Paul calls it
a mere notion, and nothing in substance."—(Thomas Brooks.)
Live above its corroding cares and anxieties; remembering
the description Jesus gives of His own true people, "They are not of the
world, even as I am not of the world!"