Crucified to the World
By John Fast
“But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.” – 2 Timothy 3:1
When it comes to living in a dangerous season perhaps no aspect is more serious for a Christian than the question of how we relate to the world. It is a question for which the answer is quite frequently, or inevitably becomes, self-evident. People whose hopes, trust, desires, security, happiness, heart, mind, and life that are tied to this world are repeatedly designated by the Book of Revelation as, “those who dwell upon the earth” (Rv 3:10; 6:10; 8:13; 11:10; 13:14; 17:2, 8). They are the ones upon whom the wrath of God will come (Lk 21:34, 35; Rv 3:10). They are friends with this world and are therefore enemies of God (Jm 4:4), and are thereby the subjects of God’s judgment. It is at this point that we are confronted with an inflexible and irreconcilable antithesis. Scripture declares in no uncertain terms that we are either of this world or we are aliens and strangers in it, either its friend or its foe, either alive to it or mortifying it, either under the dominion of darkness or in the kingdom of light, either under the power of the evil one or the power of God. All those who are born into this world are by nature of this world, belong to this world, are conformed to this world, and live by this world’s principles. Only those who have truly been born of God overcome the world (1Jn 5:4). Martyn Lloyd-Jones described this antithesis taught in the Bible when he stated,
“There are only two types of people in the world: there are those who belong to the world and who are men of the world, and who glory in that fact, and there are those who glory in the fact that they are no longer of the world. Though they are still in it, they glory that they are only strangers and pilgrims, travelers and journeyman, passing through this world of time. Now that is the fundamental proposition of the whole of the Bible. There is this great division of mankind, and any other divisions are quite irrelevant. It does not matter what the colour of your skin is, or what your native country is, or what your nationality is. It does not matter whether you are wealthy or poor, learned or ignorant, nothing matters but just this. Are you a man of the world or are you a man of God? It is one or the other…You are either like Abel or you are like Cain.”[1]
J.C. Ryle stressed the importance and seriousness of this subject when he wrote,
“In every age of the church, separation from the world has always been one of the great evidences of a work of grace in the heart. He who has been born of the Spirit, and made a new creature in Christ Jesus, has always endeavored to ‘come out from the world’, and live a separate life. Those who only wore the name ‘Christian’, without the reality, have always refused to ‘come out and be separate’ from the world….Everywhere we hear professing Christians declaring loudly that we must not be ‘too narrow and exclusive’, and that there is no harm in many things that the holiest saints of old thought would be bad for their souls. That we may go anywhere, and do anything, and spend our time in anything, and read anything, and keep any company, and plunge into anything, and all the while still be good Christians – this is what thousands are saying….It is not open sin, or open unbelief, which robs Christ of His professing servants, so much as the love of the world, the fear of the world, the cares of the world, the business of the world, the money of the world, the pleasures of the world, and the desire to keep in with the world…They do not object to any of the truths of the Christian faith. They do not deliberately choose evil, and openly rebel against God. They hope somehow to get to heaven in the end; and they think it is right to have some religion. But they cannot give up their idol; they must have the world…They begin with Abraham and Moses, and end with Demas and Lot’s wife.”[2]
At another time the same author wrote,
“There are thousands of baptized persons in our churches who are proof against immorality and infidelity, and yet fall victim to the love of the world. There are thousands who run well for a season, and seem to bid fair to reach heaven, but by and by give up the race, and turn their backs on Christ altogether. And what has stopped them? Have they found the Bible not true? Have they found the Lord Jesus fail to keep His word? No: not at all. But they have caught the epidemic disease; they are infected with the love of this world.”[3]
I could cite verse after verse of Scripture that describes and warns against the danger and evil of the world, but to anyone who has their eyes open and sees for themselves the condition of not just this nation in general, but of contemporary evangelicalism in particular, it should be self-evident. We live in a nation that has officially, by law and judicial ruling, cast off God and His Word and have instead chosen to be educated and governed by the principles and wisdom of this world, and it appears as if God has given this nation their own way and delivered them over to their own depraved minds. The effects and consequences are to be seen everywhere, in government, education, church, home, and business, but people refuse to see it. As a result, the world – its values, thinking, opinions, philosophies, wisdom, morals, fads, fashions, trends, music, and you name it – have thoroughly leavened not only our culture, but also the mass of modern evangelicalism. The Bible could not be clearer, the world is a minefield of stumbling blocks and snares (Mt 18:7); it is a constant source of great evil and danger to the soul. The fact that this truth rests on the divine authority of Scripture has not prevented it from being ignored, compromised, treated with contempt, ridiculed, and caricatured. The current state of contemporary evangelicalism bears witness to the truth that the highest attainments, honors, and position offer no immunity from the basest of the world’s seductions and temptations. There is no neutral ground, no truce, no demilitarized zone between this world and the kingdom of God. There is no safe amount of assimilation and fellowship with the world. There is no map that instructs us how to negotiate and pick our way through this minefield. The only guide which the Christian has is the Word of God and it instructs and warns us that this world is a great danger to our soul and that we are to avoid it, be set apart from it, and mortify it, or it will destroy us. The only protection lies in overcoming the world, “He who overcomes shall inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son” (Rv 21:7; cf. Rv 2:7, 11, 17, 26; 3:5, 12, 21). The Christian life is one of no longer being conformed to this world but of continuously having our minds and lives transformed into the likeness of Jesus Christ.
There have always been Demas’ whose love for this present world has resulted in their abandoning the true gospel of Jesus Christ and biblical Christianity, but in a dangerous season this worldly-mindedness is what characterizes professing evangelicalism. Men and women of the world are not necessarily atheists. Quite often they are very religious and are to be found in positions of spiritual leadership, power, and influence. They hold to a form of godliness but deny its life transforming power, not so much by what they say, but by what they do not say, and by their accommodating, compromising with, and assimilation with the world, all of which are cloaked in spiritual-sounding motives and Christian terminology. Therefore they “proceed from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived” (2 Tm 3:13), until, over time, they become virtually indistinguishable from the world. Unlike the world, however, their worldly-mindedness is veiled with seemingly Christian virtues and motives. Not until Christ returns to rule and reign on the earth will “The kingdom of this world…become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ; and He will reign forever and ever” (Rv 11:15). Until then “the whole world lies under the power of the evil one” (1 Jn 5:19). God is always right and the world is always wrong, and never more wrong than when, under the cover of and in the name of ‘Christianity’, worldly-minded people think that they can sin with impunity; that in the name of evangelism and church growth they can befriend the world and still remain faithful to God and His Word; and that they can sow to the wind and not reap the whirlwind.
Reap What We Sow
In a dangerous season the evidences and effects of the immutable principle of sowing and reaping are seen in their most negative, destructive, and devastating expressions, yet these expressions are consistently denied as being the inevitable consequence of corrupting and rejecting God’s Word; rather they are attributed to other factors, “Have you not done this to yourself, by your forsaking the Lord your God,….Yet you said, ‘I am innocent; surely, His anger is turned away from me.’ Behold, I will enter into judgment with you because you say, ‘I have not sinned.’” (Jer 2:17, 35). Sadly, this is the mindset and attitude endemic within contemporary evangelicalism that walks according to the course of this world and is governed by worldly, not biblical, principles. It is the attitude of those who defend, promote, and listen to women preachers, who deny and undermine, either in word or practice, the authority and sufficiency of Scripture and biblical standards of morality, who integrate, accommodate, and assimilate the wisdom, values, and practices of the world with Christianity, who cling to and propagate a false theology of regeneration, and who make no distinction between the holy and profane, nor do they teach the difference between the unclean and the clean (Ezk 22:26).
It is inevitable that when people fail to heed the Bible’s warnings concerning the world, unless God in His mercy intervenes, their minds will always be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ and His Word, “O Timothy, guard what has been entrusted to you, avoiding worldly and empty chatter and the opposing arguments of what is falsely called “knowledge” – which some have professed and thus gone astray from the faith” (1 Tm 6:20, 21). To put it simply, “worldly empty chatter” is that which twists, distorts, misrepresents, and corrupts the Word of God, and “opposing arguments” are those that, under the pretense of some superior, esoteric knowledge, deny the truth of the Word of God. Both are products of this world’s futile way of thinking and darkened understanding (Eph 4:17, 18). When either one is “professed” (epangellomai – announced openly), it is because the mind which professes them has been led astray by the god of this world, resulting in their going astray from the truth as it is in Christ Jesus.
One of the more obvious ways in which modern evangelicalism has gone astray from the faith is to be seen in a particularly dangerous, worldly, yet widespread and popular conception of the church, namely, that the church is to strive to be a part of the local ‘community’. The obvious truth and danger which this conception fails to recognize is that the ‘community’ is the world from which the body of Christ has been called out of and from which it is to be separate. If the church is part of the ‘community’ then it is no longer distinct from the ‘community’ and is no longer the body of Christ, but simply the world with a religious veneer from which the true Christian is to come out from and be separate. This worldly philosophy and conception of the church has led to the church becoming indistinguishable from the ‘community’, and therefore indistinguishable from the world. Unquestionably the church is to evangelize the ‘community’, and to lovingly warn the ‘community’ of its danger and call it to repentance and faith, and announce to it the necessity and nature of a new birth, but it must never become part of the community. Besides, how many communities would want to be part of a church that testified of it, that its deeds are evil? Jesus made no secret of the fact that He came to expose the unfruitful deeds of darkness, to deal with sin and its horrible reality, and to testify of the world, that its deeds are evil, and to call out a people from the world to be a people for His own possession, so why should the church think it needs to conceal and redefine its God-given purpose and mission by trying to be a part of the ‘community’.
Despite manifesting all of the symptoms of a terminal disease, the mass of professing Christians consider themselves to be in no need of a physician, but live as if they were completely well. All the effects of rejecting God and corrupting His Word and worship are attributed to other causes. It has become off-limits to identify sin as the ultimate cause of anything. In the previous two studies we considered the ruinous consequences which a different theology of regeneration, introduced two-hundred years ago, has had on contemporary professing evangelicalism, as well as the blessing and necessity of possessing a true persevering faith in a dangerous season – a faith that is the result, not the cause, of a new birth. This is a doctrine, namely the doctrine of sovereign election, which worldly wisdom considers to be ‘unfair’, which is why “the world through its wisdom did not come to know God” (1 Cor 1:21), so it invents a god which is just like it, operates from its principles, shares its values, thinks like it thinks, reasons like it reasons, and loves what it loves, namely, the world.
Anyone who confesses to be a Christian yet fails to bemoan, expose, and correct the blatant errors, weaknesses, and defects of what proposes to be Christ’s body, and to warn of the dangerous consequences inherent in them, but instead defends, overlooks, and remains willingly ignorant of them, simply betrays their absence of love for Christ. They may love their system of religion and their own conception of Christ and their own version of the gospel and their own form of godliness and the approval of men and their life in this world, but they do not love Jesus Christ. If the efforts to expose and correct errors and defects are to be condemned as judgmental, narrow-minded, legalistic, intolerant, hypocritical, schismatic, exclusivistic, self-righteous, and attributed to a host of nefarious motives, then we must also place all of the Old Testament prophets, John the Baptist, most of Jesus’ teaching, including the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 5-7), and a considerable proportion of the New Testament epistles into the same category. Such thinking betrays a mind that is still conformed to this world, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 Jn 2:17). The reason given by Jesus for why the world hates Him was because He testified of it, that its deeds are evil (Jn 7:7). Jesus was not referring to deeds that are blatantly immoral and evil. Such deeds did not require any attestation to their being sinful; their evil was self-evident to any self-respecting Jew. Rather Jesus was referring to all of the world’s false, man-centered, works-based, self-righteous, and erroneous conceptions of what it means to be in a right standing with God.
Many evangelical leaders today are bemoaning the statistics that show an ever increasing number of people who once identified themselves as ‘Christians’ who are now leaving the ‘church’ and abandoning their ‘faith’ in which they were raised, ostensibly because they have come to find it impossible to reconcile their ‘faith’ with ‘science’, or with all the evil in the world, or with whatever conundrum seems to contradict the teaching of Scripture. Such statistics, however, merely reveal the extent to which the words ‘church’ and ‘Christian’ have come to be defined in terms so broad, and spread so thin, so as to include those who were never in the body of Christ. These people are not leaving Christianity; rather they are abandoning the system of religion to which they once adhered, and which just happens to go by the name of ‘Christian’. They are not ceasing to be Christians; rather they never were Christians, “They went out from us but they were not really of us;” (1Jn 2:19). They have always been and never stopped being men of this world even when they were professing and pretending to be ‘Christians’. The worldly-minded person says that ‘science’ and ‘scholarship’ have proven that all or parts of the Bible are not to be taken seriously, whereas those who have been given a renewed mind say, “let God be found true, though every man be found a liar” (Rm 3:4). True salvation is being transformed from seeking our happiness, contentment, security, fulfilment, prosperity, and acceptance from this world and self to seeking them from God alone. When this change in our source of happiness and security takes place, then our desires, hopes, fears, concerns, sorrows, joys, thinking, goals, affections, and attitude toward this world are also drastically changed. True salvation is to be spiritually-minded, not worldly-minded. It is to be in the world but not of the world.
The greatest barrier to people becoming true Christians is self-righteousness. They are blinded by the god of this world to their true moral and spiritual condition. Being of the world they listen to the world and accept the world’s explanations for all of the evil in the world, the world’s views of mankind and sin, the world’s approach to Scripture, the world’s remedies and solutions, the world’s conceptions of God and Jesus Christ, the world’s understanding of what it is to be a Christian, and the world’s opinion of what defines the church. The world has its own conceptions of love, grace, mercy, hope, faith, justice, unity, and every other Christian virtue which are based not on the authority of Scripture, but on its own authority independent of God’s Word, which it then foists on and substitutes for those taught by and described by the Bible, and by which it leads the minds of men astray. As a result the mass of professing Christians are secure and self-satisfied thinking themselves to be rich and in need of nothing, or at worse somewhat broken and in need of acceptance, admiration, affirmation, and some minor superficial repair. Being blind they think they see, and being sick they are convinced that they are basically, and for the most part, healthy. They are in need of forgiveness, but not a new nature. ‘Believing’ they assume they are ‘believers’, and are resolved to hope that all is well with them. Yet they never stop to consider if what they believe is what the Bible actually teaches, what they set their minds upon, what are the objects of their affections, what they spend their life pursuing, where their treasure lies, nor compare the tenor of their lives with the strict moral law of God. Consequently, they never see and feel their need for a new nature or how to prize and love a Savior, but convince themselves they are as good as or better than others.
We live in a season when erroneous beliefs and practices sown and secretly introduced in the past, many of which at the time were sown with the sincerest of intentions, have taken root, grown, gone to seed, cross-pollinated, mutated, and over the course of several generations have come to dominate the beliefs, thinking, and practices of the mass of contemporary evangelicalism until a generation of professing Christians has arisen that will no longer endure sound doctrine; rather it clings to a form of godliness that denies its power (2 Tm 3:5; 4:3, 4) – a form and pretense which many are now openly abandoning in preference for ‘faith’ in themselves and this world. Many, however, continue to cling because their own self and earthly interests have become too intertwined with their particular form of godliness. They have convinced themselves that eternal life is to be found in their system of religion (Jn 5:39). They have too much invested in it; therefore they are unwilling to come to the light (Jn 3:20; 5:40). This makes a season dangerous.
In contrast to this prevailing complacency and indifference, some professing Christians today instinctively see and know that there is something horribly wrong with the ‘Christianity’ that dominates modern evangelicalism, but exactly what that ‘something’ is they are not at all sure. Some point to one symptom, some point to another, but very few ever diagnose the real disease, therefore it continues to grow worse and worse. Because they have never been exposed to truly sound doctrine, never been given any biblical instruction beyond the emotional, trendy, entertaining, and superficial, been left to themselves and to the conflicting, mixed, and often erroneous and false theology of various parachurch ministries, the Charismatic movement, and popular ‘Christian’ teachers, and therefore suffer from a profound lack of discernment and an acute biblical and theological ignorance, they are made to think that the problem lies not with the state of professing Christianity, but with them. Their expectations are mistaken. After all, so many others could not be wrong. No one else seems to share their concerns, or if they do, their concerns are not with their particular denomination, church, beliefs, or practices. The problem must lie elsewhere. Or, they are easily led astray into some other false system of religion by false teachers who promise a more ‘authentic’ Christianity and that seems to rest on the teaching of Scripture and the practices of ‘ancient’ Christians. Or, they are convinced that what is needed is some ‘new’ method, model, or message that will appeal to the modern mind and connect with the culture. Or, they are convinced they need to ‘rethink’ certain historic understandings of Scripture. Or they fall for the idea that parts of the Bible – especially those parts that conflict with the wisdom of this world – are not to be interpreted as meaning what they actually say. The stumbling block which the true meaning of Scripture presents to the worldly-minded can be easily dispensed with simply by saying that the offending truth can be brushed aside. The Bible, we are reminded, is not a science, psychology, or any other book of superior human knowledge; rather our understanding of the Bible needs to adapt itself to fit the ‘facts’ revealed by new discoveries, new information, ‘scholarship’, and superior modern wisdom if its message of salvation is to remain credible and relevant. After all, if the human authors of Scripture had been privy to what we know today, then they undoubtedly would not have written what they wrote. In such a season those who take the time and effort to honestly, diligently, accurately, and prayerfully compare the teaching, beliefs, and practices of contemporary evangelicalism against those clearly taught in the Bible they cannot help but discover vast and serious discrepancies between what the Bible teaches (or does not teach), and the teaching, practices, and lifestyles of what professes to be modern evangelicalism.
The Christian life as described in the New Testament is not one of status quo; rather it is described as a life of growth. We must be careful not to confuse mere change with growth. Change is by no means the equivalent of growth. People can exchange one sin for a less obvious and more respectable sin, and one form of godliness for another form, and one kind of worldliness for another kind without any real spiritual growth. They might exhibit some positive change, but they remain conformed to this world. All living things grow. It is spiritual growth that is both positive and negative in nature; it includes both putting on the new man and taking off the old; it is walking by the Spirit, and by the Spirit “putting to death the deeds of the body” (Rm 8:13); it is being transformed by the renewing of our mind and no longer being conformed to this world – its tastes, values, habits, opinions, wisdom, morals, spirit, lifestyles, practices, principles, and reasoning; it is both sanctification and mortification. Just as we must be actively involved in mortifying the remaining sin within us, we must just as actively work to mortify ourselves to the world without us and in which we live. It is a mark of all who are still dead in trespasses and sin that they also walk according to the course of this world (Eph 4:1, 2). And it is a mark of all true Christians that they walk by the Spirit and in newness of life (Rm 6:4), not conforming themselves to this world, but continuously dying to it and its lusts.
2 Corinthians 6:17 – “Come Out and be Separate”
The mortification of sin has as its goal the cleansing of “ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God” (2 Cor 7:1). Nothing less than the total elimination of this defilement is compatible with the ultimate aim of every true believer, namely, to be holy as God is holy (1 Pt 1:14-17), and to be progressively conformed to the image of Christ who is Himself “the exact representation of His (i.e. God’s) nature” (Hb 1:3). Only deity can be the exact representation of the nature of deity. While the believer can never hope to achieve perfect holiness in this life, nevertheless that is their ambition and the goal which they unrelentingly pursue, namely, to “purify himself, just as He is pure” (1 Jn 3:3). The elimination of this defilement involves the mortification of all that tempts, fosters, and contributes to it, chief among which is the world, because to befriend it is to make oneself an enemy of God (Jm 4:4), “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world” (1 Jn 2:16). The one thing that most characterizes the world is lust, or what the psychologist calls urges or drives. It is a life that is controlled by strong desires, which as anyone can see covers a very wide range. The people of this world are “enslaved to various lusts and pleasures” (Tit 3:3). It may be a strong desire for pleasure, for power and influence, for fame, praise, honor, or recognition, for money, for acceptance, for ‘success’, for self-importance, for comfort and security; the list of desires is endless, and according to the course of this world, happiness is the result of having these various desires fulfilled and gratified. This is why the world has invented a god whose ultimate will for mankind is that they be happy and self-fulfilled, not holy. The true Christian, however, is “to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God” (1 Pt 4:2). They still have desire, and their life is still controlled and governed by desire, but unlike the man of the world it is a desire to know and do the will of God, a desire which wars against and is opposed by the desires of the flesh, “For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another,” (Gal 5:17). An unbeliever does not feel this tension at work in themselves. They have no desire or ability to mortify the world; instead they work to assimilate and integrate the world with their religion, and give their worldly desires respectable names.
The world is the very antithesis of what the Christian is to be conformed. It is impossible to be conformed to the image of Christ if our mind remains conformed to that of this world; to be crucified to the world and yet pander to it and strive to be accepted by it; to be imitators of God as beloved children (Eph 5:1) while trying to imitate and accommodate the world in its values, fads, trends, tastes, reasoning, fashions, lifestyles, and morality. Since the entire goal of God’s redemptive purpose is to purify for Himself a people for His own possession (Tit 2:14), no small part of this purifying consists in our dying to the world. To turn from darkness to light is the same thing as turning from the dominion of Satan to God (Ac 26:18). We become like that which dominates our thoughts, desires, interests, and ambitions; either the things that are above where Christ is, or the things of this world.
When the Bible speaks of the world which the believer is to mortify, it does not mean this physical and material creation – the grass, trees, necessities of life – but of that realm which is under the power of the evil one, “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 Jn 5:19). It is this world that the truly regenerate believer overcomes, “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world;” (1 Jn 5:4). The verb translated “overcomes” (nika), means “to conquer; to come off victorious”, and is in the present tense and active voice, indicating an ongoing and habitual activity on the part of the believer. It implies a battle and struggle to the death. Either the world must die to us or we will die with the world. We either overcome the world or the world will overcome us. It was not just the unbelieving Jews who were of their father the devil, and therefore wanted to do the desires of their father (Jn 8:44), but this is the natural condition of all unregenerate mankind. Their mind is blinded by the god of this world – the same world and dominion from which the Christian has been delivered, “For He delivered us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son,” (Col 1:13); a kingdom that is not of this world, that is, it derives nothing from it, has nothing in common with it, bears no similarity to it, and is utterly opposed to it, and it is utterly opposed to the kingdom of God.
The world lives life independent of God and His Word. People of the world may honor God with their lips but their hearts are far from Him; He is “near to their lips but far from their mind” (Jer 12:2). They rarely if ever give Him a thought in their day to day life unless hit with some personal trial or calamity, or when taking His name in vain. The world sets itself up as a judge of God’s Word, and lives as if God does not see or care how they live and what they do, Why has the wicked spurned God? He has said to himself, “You will not require it” (Ps 10:13; cf. Ps 94:7-9; Is 29:15; Jer 23:24; 2 Pt 3:3, 4). It is a principle of life that is governed by human thinking and human ability; one that places man at the center of everything, including salvation, and makes man the ultimate authority. The life and mind of the believer is to no longer be conformed to this world, but mortified to it. They are in the world but not of the world, “If you were of the world, the world would love its own;” (Jn 15:19); “Do not marvel, brethren, if the world hates you” (1 Jn 3:13; cf. Jn 15:18); whereas, those who are from the world, speak as from the world, “and the world listens to them” (1 Jn 4:5). It is this last verse that describes the bulk of contemporary evangelicalism which in this dangerous season walks according to the course of this world, takes its cues from this world, patterns itself after this world, panders to this world, reasons like this world, sets its mind on the things of this world, values what this world values, shares this world’s opinions, interprets the Bible in a way suited to accommodate this world and its lusts, and goes out of its way to make the people of this world feel right at home in their places of worship.
Recovering and reclaiming the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ involves not only the recovery of sound doctrine, but also the mind which has been led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ by the god of this world (2 Cor 11:3, 4). One of the most effective means of leading the mind astray is to introduce thoughts that change the way people view and think about something other than what God has revealed in His Word, thereby seducing them to think and act independent of God and His Word. This was how Satan deceived Eve, by introducing a different conception of the forbidden fruit. The same means has been a major contributor to the increasing worldliness of the church and professing evangelicalism. I have already mentioned two, namely, that the church is to be a part of the ‘community’, and that God just wants us to be happy. Allow me to mention another. When defining the church it has become customary to use the terms ‘invisible’ and ‘visible’, and to create definitions for the church by which this distinction can be sustained. By ‘invisible’ is meant all true believers everywhere, and by ‘visible’ is typically meant the church in its visible entity, which includes both true believers and those who are ‘Christian’ in name and profession only. The problem with this distinction is that it allows for a conception of the church that is decidedly unbiblical; one that is broad enough to encompass people who are not truly part of the body of Christ. The spiritual realities that make a person a part of the body of Christ are without question invisible, mysterious, and imperceptible to human observation (Jn 3:8), but their fruit and effects are always visible and observable. Otherwise how are we to know the tree by its fruit? Such an artificial distinction poses the real danger of instilling the belief that people can be a part of the body of Christ who in their daily lives still walk in darkness and according to the course of this world. This is a dangerous error that is contrary to the conception of the church taught by the New Testament, and which has contributed to the outrageous worldliness of modern evangelicalism and led to the steady and appalling defection from the truth of the gospel and what it means to be a Christian. No less a theologian than John Murray declared,
“The case is rather that there is no evidence for the notion of the ‘church’ as an invisible entity distinct from the church visible…there are those aspects pertaining to the church that may be characterized as invisible. But it is to ‘the church’ those aspects pertain, and ‘the church’ in the New Testament never appears as an invisible entity and therefore may never be defined in terms of invisibility.”[4]
No evidence exists in the New Testament for the idea of two types of churches – an ‘invisible’ entity that is distinct from the visible body of Christ – anymore than it allows for the notion of two types of Christians, those who are carnal and worldly, and those who are spiritual; those who submit to the Lordship of Christ, and those who do not; those who have come out from the world, and those who refuse to come out and be separate.
All we need to do is look at how Paul addressed the various churches to which he wrote his epistles. To the church in Corinth he wrote, “Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, to the church of God which is at Corinth, to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling,” (1 Cor 1:1, 2). The juxtaposition is obvious. Paul’s address does not allow for the possibility that some who were part of the church were not sanctified in Christ Jesus and saints by calling. The same association is to be found in other Pauline epistles. In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul does not consider the “old leaven” to be part of the church; rather it is to be cleaned out of the church (1 Cor 5:7). The local church was never thought of as a visible entity that is to be composed of both old and new leaven. In his letter to the Thessalonians Paul never conveyed the impression that the church included people who were still in darkness; rather just the opposite is true, “for you are all sons of light and sons of day” (1 Thes 5:4-5). The same holds true in Paul’s letter to the Ephesian church, “for you were formerly darkness, but now you are light in the Lord;” (Eph 5:8; cf. 4:17-22). Only the church defined biblically can be a holy people for God’s own possession (1 Pt 2:9), and only the church so understood can be thought of as the body of Christ (Eph 5:25-32). It is this conception of the church from which contemporary evangelicalism has been led astray, and which it desperately needs to recover.
If we are to have any hope of recovering the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ, we must begin by avoiding the established practice of granting and affixing the name ‘Christian’ to those whose doctrine, opinions, habits, tastes, principles, thinking, reasoning, values, morals, philosophies, and lifestyles are dictated by and conform to those of this world rather than according to Christ, and who show no signs of mortifying, but instead tenaciously cling to the world and its toys. There always has been and always will be Judas’, Ananias’ and Sapphiras, Demas’, Hymenaeus’, Alexanders, Philetus’, Jezebels, and Nicolaitans within the church. There is always chaff among the wheat, but when such people made themselves known by their beliefs and actions they were put out of the church, and those who were in the church were commanded to “not even eat with such a one” (1 Cor 5:11), and “that you keep aloof (stello – “to avoid; keep away from; have nothing to do with”) from every brother who leads an unruly life and not according to the tradition which you received from us” (2 Thes 3:6).
Jesus severely rebuked and warned the churches of Pergamum and Thyatira for their toleration of and indifference toward those in their midst whose life and doctrine was unquestionably that of this world. In the church in Pergamum there were “some who hold to the teaching of Balaam”, which was to encourage the people of God to relax their standards, assimilate the world’s practices, and adopt its values and principles of morality (Num 31:16). Balaam might be considered the father of religious syncretism. In the same church there were also “some who in the same way hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans (Rv 2:14, 15), which was a form of antinomianism that tried to strike a compromise between the demands of Christianity and the norms and customs of the Greco-Roman culture, with a special emphasis on including as much as possible from the world and culture. The church in Ephesus hated the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which were also hated by Jesus (Rv 2:6), but the church in Pergamum tolerated and permitted them. Jesus condemned the church as a whole not because they had bought into these two heresies, but because of their indifference and toleration of those in their midst who had, a toleration and indifference the cause of which was arrogance and contempt rather than ignorance.
In Thyatira the problem was similar, but much worse, “you tolerate the woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess, and she teaches and leads My bond-servants astray,” (Rv 2:20). Here the heresy was not only tolerated, but propagated within the church, a fact that was widely known among churches in other cities (Rv 2:23). In other words, these two churches had failed to “remove the wicked man from among yourselves” (1 Cor 5:13), and were instead promoting the false notion that someone who is still of this world can be considered a part of the body of Christ simply because they call themselves a Christian and identify with a local church. Neither church was making a distinction between the clean and the unclean, between true and false doctrine, or between a genuine Christian and the person who was still of this world.
This recovery from overt and unashamed worldliness will require the forsaking of all that is blatantly false, sinful, unbiblical, worldly, and for which no support can be found in Scripture; in other words, virtually all that the mass of professing evangelicalism today depends upon for its ‘success’. Once a lump of dough becomes leavened, you cannot get the leaven out; rather it becomes a part of the dough itself. Its influence becomes systemic. There must be a new, clean lump of dough. In the New Testament, when a Jew became a Christian they had to first submit themselves to the righteousness of God and forsake seeking to establish their own righteousness (Rm 10:3). In other words, they had to make a radical and permanent break with the form of godliness in which they and generations of their family and culture had been raised. This required a drastic change in their thinking. The same was true of Gentiles who “turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God,” (1 Thes 1:9). In both instances, Jew and Gentile, such a break incited the hostility and opposition of people within the system of religion they forsook, and whose minds remained blinded by the god of this world. To the believers in Thessalonica who had forsaken their ancient and ancestral forms of pagan worship and its accompanying lifestyle, the Apostle Paul wrote, “For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you also endured the same sufferings at the hands of your own countryman, even as they did from the Jews” (1 Thes 2:14). The Reformers suffered at the hands of Pope and priests. Jonathan Edwards suffered at the hands of his own congregation. George Whitefield and Daniel Rowland suffered at the hands of the national church. Charles Spurgeon suffered at the hands of his own denomination. Before any change can occur on a corporate level it must first begin in the heart and mind of individual professing Christians. Our emotional, historical, traditional, and narcissistic attachment to a corrupted, false, unfaithful, and worldly system of religion, whether that system goes by the name of ‘Christian’ or not, must be mortified. We must, like the Apostle Paul, die to all that is of this world, including its worldly systems of religion, if we are to live and suffer as a Christian in a dangerous season (Gal 6:14).
Most professing Christians would agree that when a Jew, Roman Catholic, Muslim, Hindu, or cultist becomes a Christian there must necessarily be a break with their past way of life as well as a radical alteration in their conception of God, Jesus Christ, sin, self, salvation, and in how they relate to the world from which they have been called out. Very few, however, realize that a change no less drastic must take place in the heart and mind of someone who has been born and raised in a ‘Christian’ culture and grown up believing they are a Christian and part of the body of Christ, and that the worldly form of godliness in which they were raised is representative of the Christianity taught in the New Testament. Coming out of false Protestantism requires no less radical a break and transformation than coming out of atheism, paganism, Judaism, or Roman Catholicism, and the hostility and indifference to the truth is no less from a Southern Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Church of Christ, or Charismatic, than from a Muslim, Buddhist, Jehovah’s Witness, or Mormon. The mind, any mind, which is set on the flesh and this world is hostile toward God and His Word (Rm 8:7).
While the attempt to recover an unfaithful and erstwhile Christian church or denomination may be admirable, history has proven that it is rarely if ever successful, especially when those in power have become unfaithful to the Word of God. Many people today equate leaving a denomination with leaving ‘the church’. Iain Murray observed, “It may seem trivial and quibbling to question whether the name ‘Church’ rightly belongs to any denominational grouping of churches. I agree it may not always matter, but the danger is that the use as part of a denominational title can unconsciously encourage an attitude that equates the denomination with the New Testament church.”[5] There can be no question that leaving a local church, or a local church withdrawing from a denomination where those in power are unfaithful and unsound teachers, is a biblical duty. In no instance can a case be made for Christians to remain in, listen to, or support unfaithful teachers, belong to an unfaithful church, or remain loyal to an unfaithful denomination. If it is disobedient for a Christian to remain in an unfaithful church, then it is equally disobedient for a church to remain in an unfaithful denomination. John Murray stated it this way,
“We cannot consider our own individual witness to Christ as independent of the witness which is born by the branch of the church to which we belong….We must face the implications of the principle that the corporate witness of the…church to which we belong is also our witness….We can never take the position that we can segregate ourselves and bear witness in our own congregation, disregarding what may be happening in the denomination as a whole. This is the resort of too many in churches that have become unfaithful to Christ in their corporate witness.”[6]
There is a true unity and devotion and there is a false unity and devotion which all too often leads professing Christians into remaining in and supporting false and unfaithful ministries. Some well-meaning but misguided people stay in unfaithful churches hoping to be an ‘evangelist’ to the church. Regardless of the reasons for remaining, unity without true, vital, and practical faith is worthless. The principle of unity that is lacking is unity of mind, heart, and spirit in those truths essential to salvation and biblical Christianity. The only devotion that matters is devotion to Christ and His Word. Typically the attempt at unity begins with things that are external such as worship style, shared values, or common backgrounds, demographics, tastes, self-interests, and even denominational affiliation, instead of in those things which true unity consists – unity in doctrines, principles, and spiritual experience. In their misguided attempts to foster unity many churches invert the priorities of devotion to Christ, devotion to His Word, and devotion to one another – priorities which in their proper order are to characterize the people of God – and in so doing will often sacrifice devotion to Christ and His Word, especially those parts that are deemed ‘too controversial’, in order to maintain the superficial appearance of being devoted to one another. To try and foster unity by accommodating and blending contradictory beliefs is a vain and misguided effort. Unity at the expense of truth is a delusion. The true church is composed of faithful and true Christians who are first and foremost devoted to Christ and His Word, and these alone can unite successfully in true unity and devotion to one another. True unity requires unity of doctrine and faith in the entire Bible without which there can be no true unity, as John Murray emphasized,
“What a travesty is assembly in Jesus’ name when the confession is as diverse as every wind of doctrine. Oh, let us not tolerate the corruption of the confession! When we do so we are lacerating the body of Christ and we are making our assemblies the synagogue of Satan. We must have unity of faith in the whole counsel of God.” [7]
It is a gross perversion of Jesus’ prayer for unity and oneness found in John 17 to make it the license and justification for the kind of affiliation practiced by professing evangelicals who partner with women preachers, false teachers, and Word of Faith media outlets; who promote ecumenical cooperation between Protestants and Catholics; who join with cults and false religions for political purposes; who stay in and support unfaithful churches and denominations; who in the name of ‘oneness’ refuse to make any distinction between the holy and profane and between the clean and the unclean and between truth and error; who call for dialog, understanding, and cooperation between Christians and Muslims; and by that represented by the World Council of Churches. This is not the spiritual unity called for by the Bible and for which Jesus prayed, but a spurious unity that is according to the course of this world, “They are from the world; therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them” (Jn 4:5). We cannot isolate John 17:21 from John 17:20 and 17:22. To isolate the oneness for which Jesus prayed from all that genuine faith in Jesus entails, and from the model and pattern for unity, the unity that exists between the Father and the Son, is to separate what Jesus has joined together. There can be no spiritual unity between a believer and an unbeliever nor between a believer and the world, especially if either one or both professes to bear the name of ‘Christian’; rather the believer is to “avoid such men as these” (2 Tim 3:5; cf. Rm 16:17). Light can have no fellowship with darkness, and a believer has nothing in common with an unbeliever (2 Cor 6:14, 15). It is hard to believe that the radical diversity of beliefs, the different definitions of ‘faith’, and the multitude of opinions concerning what it is to be a Christian found within modern evangelicalism, and even within denominations and congregations, has any relation to the unity for which Jesus prayed. The only unity that can exist among such divergent beliefs and opinions is a spurious, not a spiritual unity; a unity that is based on the pragmatic and self-serving principles of this world, not on the prayer of Jesus.
The reasons for emphasizing the necessity of having a heart and mind mortified to all temporal and earthy comforts, pleasures, self-interest, and to all that is in the world are not unlike those which the great Puritan, John Owen, gave for writing his timeless work on the mortification of sin,
“The consideration of the present state of and condition of the generality of professors, the visible evidences of the frame of their hearts and spirits, manifesting a great disability of dealing with the temptations wherewith, from the peace they have in the world and the divisions that they have among themselves, they are encompassed, holds the chief place among them…This was seconded by an observation of some men’s dangerous mistakes, who of late days have taken upon them to give directions for the mortification of sin, who, being unacquainted with the mystery of the gospel and the efficacy of the death of Christ, have anew imposed the yoke of a self-wrought-out mortification on the necks of their disciples, which neither they nor their forefathers were ever able to bear. A mortification which they cry up and press…which constantly produces the deplorable issues of superstition, self-righteousness, and anxiety of conscience in them who take up the burden which is so bound for them”.[8]
In other words, not unlike Owen’s time, we live in a season when professing Christians and churches are commonly found to be friends with, comfortable in, and at peace with the world, yet are divided among themselves, thereby rendering them incapable of dealing with the temptations with which they are surrounded. Secondly, this leaves them vulnerable to dangerous mistakes concerning holiness, separation from the world, the mortification of sin, and what it is to be a Christian that produce nothing but superstition, self-righteousness, and lack of assurance. Ignorance in the realm of spiritual truth is always bad for the Christian, which is why the primary modus-operandi of the god of this world and of his servants who disguise themselves as servants of righteousness is, through confusion, inaccuracy, shallowness, and deception, to keep people in the dark while giving the impression they are in the light, and that being blind they see.
Elementary Principles of the World
As I have already stated in previous studies, in regeneration the Holy Spirit creates a new nature that loves God, loves Christ, loves His Word, loves holiness and obedience, hates sin, and loves others who do likewise. However, He does not totally expel the old nature. There are still many conflicts we must have with sin, much of the old nature that remains to be crucified, much of self left to deny, and much of the world to which we must continue to die. Those who believe and teach that because works and obedience play no role in a believer’s justification, therefore they have no place in their sanctification, mortification, holiness, and assurance, are in dire and dangerous error. Faith and works are incompatible in justification, but inseparable from and indispensable in sanctification, holiness, mortification, and in what it means to be a Christian. True salvation includes two things: a changed status before God – Christ for us; and a changed nature – Christ in us. One without the other is not the salvation taught by the Bible. A ‘Christian’ without the indwelling Savior that is changing and transforming their life, mortifying the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and crucifying them to the world and the world to them, is no ‘Christian’ at all. To invent a ‘Christianity’ that is all forgiveness without any practical holiness and mortification of the flesh and the world is to inflict upon ourselves a mortal disease, and to cling to a form of godliness that denies its power. Dying to the world does not consist in submitting ourselves “to decrees such as, “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!” (which all refer to those things destined to perish with the using) – in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men…These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence” (Col 2:21-23). Self-made religion, no matter what name it goes by or how it expresses itself, is a direct product of the “elementary principles of the world” to which the Christian has died by virtue of their union with Christ (Col 2:20).
The opposite of worldliness is not asceticism, self-sacrifice, philanthropy, religious activity, or humanitarianism, but holiness, obedience, submission, spiritual-mindedness, and separation from all that is unholy, chief of which is this world and the principles which govern its thinking, reasoning, and actions. The vessels and instruments used by Israel’s priests in the worship of God were holy because they were set apart for a special and unique purpose. They were devoted to be used solely in the worship of God and not to be used for any common purpose. This is the sense in which the Christian is to be holy, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellences of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;” (1 Pt 2:9). This is why Christians are to live as aliens and strangers in this world (1 Pt 2:11). This is why they are “to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God” (1 Pt 4:2); “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires, and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age,” (Tit 2:11, 12). The Apostle Peter defined, both negatively and positively, the extent to which the Christian is to be set apart from the world, “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves in all your behavior; because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1Pt 1:14-16).
The holiness of God is our pattern for holiness, not that we ever can or will be holy as God is holy. We must be careful that we do not forget the vast gulf that separates God as Creator from man as creature. God is holy by His very nature, and all other holiness is derived from Him. We must be made holy, become holy, and be holy, in distinction to God who is holy. It is God’s revelation that must define what it is to be a holy person. To be holy is, among other things, “to keep oneself unstained by the world” (Jm 1:27), that is, unstained by the world’s fallen and sin-corrupted wisdom, ways, values, thinking, opinions, morals, principles, and philosophies. Christians are to be people set apart from the world, devoted to God, His glory, His will, to serve Him, obey Him, submit to Him, love Him, and fear Him. Israel was chosen of God to be a holy people, but instead they “mingled with the nations, and learned their practices” (Ps 106:35). They failed to keep themselves unstained by the world; rather they assimilated and integrated the world into their life and worship; they failed to maintain a strict distinction between themselves and the culture in which they lived; therefore they were not holy, but corrupted. Any distinctions were only superficial. They honored God with their lips but their heart was far from Him. Outwardly they appeared righteous to men, but inwardly they were full of corruption. They operated from the same principles as the world. They were lovers of money (Lk 16:14); they loved self-importance and craved power and influence (Mt 23:6, 7); they were self-righteous (Lk 18:9); they acted and dressed in a way calculated to attract attention to themselves (Mt 23:5); they sought the praise and glory of man (Jn 5:44); they manipulated and corrupted the Word of God for their own ends (Mt 23:24); they were swayed by public opinion and followed the crowd (Lk 23:20-23); they loved the approval of men rather than the approval of God (Jn 12:43).
Outwardly the church in Sardis also appeared righteous to men, but inwardly it was spiritually dead. It had “a name that you are alive, but you are dead” (Rv 3:1). There was a lot of religious activity, excitement, talk, and probably much numerical growth. Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success. By all outward appearances they were a vibrant, booming, and energetic church, so much so that they had acquired a reputation for being ‘alive’. But they had one fatal flaw; they were asleep (3:2). They were insensitive and indifferent to spiritual truths and realities and had given in to sin, spiritual sloth, and worldliness until despite their reputation for being alive, they were spiritually dead. In sleep the senses are lethargic or inoperative, not alert and watchful, especially the sense of sight. They were so self-confident, had such an invincible false security, and were so sound asleep that they were completely blind to their own fatal spiritual condition. In sleep a person dreams, and sometimes in their sleep the dream seems so real that the body reacts as if what they were dreaming were real. The church in Sardis, being asleep, dreamed that it was alive, and truly believed they were alive, when in fact it was just a dream. The truth of the matter was that the church had only a few people who had not soiled their garments (Rv 3:4), and it is to be feared that the same is true of contemporary evangelicalism. There is precious little that remains unstained by the world and has not been led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ, yet it lives in a dreamy false security out of which no amount of shaking seems able to arouse it. Yet, to those who judge such things by worldly standards, it seems to have every indication of being vibrant, thriving, exciting, and alive. Nevertheless, a few true believers do not make a dead church alive. Despite its outward appearance and reputation, it remains a dead and worldly ‘church’.
The world and the elementary principles by which it operates sink in the estimation of all those who set their minds on the things above and of the Spirit instead of on the things of this world and of the flesh. As John Newton expressed in the words of one of his lesser known hymns, “Let worldly minds the world pursue; it has no charms for me; once I admired its trifles too; but grace has set me free. Its pleasures now no longer please, no more content afford; far from my heart be joys like these, now I have seen the Lord”. Our little flock sings this hymn to the tune of ‘I Sing the Mighty Power of God’. This is the most desirable thing which anyone can possess – to have the world be dead to them, and they dead to the world. This alone enables us to be in the world, but not of it; to live in it and above it as aliens and strangers, not live for it and have our joy, happiness, hope, security, and contentment dependent upon it, and to keep ourselves unstained by it. This alone allows a minister to preach not as pleasing men but God, who examines our hearts (1 Thes 2:4). This alone enables us to count all things as loss compared to the surpassing greatness of truly knowing Christ Jesus. This alone will enable us to resist allowing the culture, ‘science’, and conventional wisdom to determine the meaning of Scripture. This alone teaches us to look to God as our loving Father to be our constant provider and protector against all want and danger, our counselor to whom we go in every difficulty, our support in every trial and temptation, our strength under every burden, our comforter in every fear and sorrow, our help in every struggle, our hope when all earthly hope is removed. This alone will prevent us from being overcome and taken “captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ” (Col 2:8; cf. 2:20-23). This alone will allow us to reject the world’s standards of success, morality, and modesty for which the world will “slander you as evildoers” (1 Pt 2:12). It calls us off of vanity and vice and gives us things that are so much better – things which the world can neither receive nor understand – that no sooner do we experience them that we lose our desire for and are disgusted with those things we are called to renounce and forsake. It calls us to crucify evil habits and to do things that to the world are incomprehensible – things like plucking out a right eye and cutting off a right hand – which no sooner do we begin to do it, that we find a divine help to enable us to not only pluck out and cut off those things we held so dear, but to throw them away from us in disgust as something abhorrent, and of which we are now ashamed (Mt 5:29, 30; Rm 6:21).
Should anyone think that I am advocating an understanding and application of separation and holiness different than that taught by the Bible, I have to wonder how else we are to understand the commands to be holy as God as holy, to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect, to purify ourselves as He is pure, and to come out from the world and be separate. But if anyone should say that they know that this is their duty, that they desire to keep themselves unstained by the world and to die to it, and in part do attempt to live a holy life; yet despite their most concerted and sincere efforts, the cares and worries of this world and worldly thoughts and desires, whether they will them or not, often crowd into their mind, distract, and preoccupy their thoughts even when praying and reading the Bible, then I would not be surprised. While these things are undoubtedly sinful, and we must take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor 10:5), they are nevertheless what every other genuine, honest, and humble Christian in the world will admit to being true of themselves, which makes them trust all the more in the perfect righteousness of Christ, and not in the least in their own imperfect, sinful, and poor works, to put no confidence in the flesh, and to frequent the throne of grace to receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hb 4:16). This need for divine enabling to mortify the world is never greater than in a season where the number of Demas’ and Lot’s wives continues to multiply. In its attempt to stop the defection of worldly-minded people from its ranks, rather than come out from among them and be separate, the mass of contemporary evangelicalism continues to pursue its love affair with the world. When what professes to be the body of Christ refuses to come out from the world and be separate, God Himself will often intervene to separate the wheat from the chaff by means of the strong winds of persecution. Ease, comfort, accommodation, and worldliness will fill the church with the chaff of pseudo-Christians, but persecution drives them from it. This is how God purifies His church (1 Pt 1:6-9; 4:12-19). This is why we must be mortified to the world.
Mortifying the World
All that is of the world, the lust of the eyes and the lust of the flesh and the boastful pride of life is to the soul what disease is to the body, and mortification is to the soul what medicine is to a disease. To do nothing or to merely treat the symptoms of a disease only allows the disease itself to grow worse; to deny the existence of the disease in the face of its obvious symptoms is to be blinded by the god of this world; to continue to feed and sow to the disease hoping it will get better is self-deception; reveling in, indulging, and accommodating the disease is nothing short of being given over to a depraved mind. The world is the source of all false religion, all counterfeit gospels, all erroneous conceptions of God, all hostility and opposition to the law of God and the true gospel of Jesus Christ, all false hopes, all spurious unity, all forms of godliness, and the very life of temptations. The Apostle Paul was once proud of the fact that he was a man of the world, and boasted of his position in the world (Phil 3:4-6), but by the time he wrote his earliest epistle, the epistle to the Galatians, he was proud of the fact that he had been delivered from that way of living and thinking (Gal 6:14). He declared that he was dead to the world’s values, thinking, reasoning, principles, priorities, fears, false conceptions of God and salvation, and to its opinions of him and the truths which he preached. Consequently this made Paul, in the estimation of the world, to be dead and totally irrelevant to it. The message preached by Jesus and taught and preached by the apostles and proclaimed in the Bible emphasizes the exact opposite of what the world emphasizes, namely, self-gratification, self-fulfillment, self-importance, self-salvation, self-determination, and self-deification, and as a result this made Paul dead to the world. The world only loves its own and only listens to those who are of this world; therefore it loves and listens to any number and any manner of false teachings, false gospels, false religions, worldly philosophies and principles, and false conceptions of God, just as long as they are not a direct threat to their idols of self and the world, nor exposes their deeds as being evil. Marvin Lubenow made this observation when he wrote,
“The real issue in the creation/evolution debate is not the existence of God. The real issue is the nature of God. To think of evolution as basically atheistic is to misunderstand the uniqueness of evolution. Evolution was not designed as a general attack against theism. It was designed as a specific attack against the God of the Bible, and the God of the Bible is clearly revealed through the doctrine of creation. Obviously, if a person is an atheist, it would be normal for him to also be an evolutionist. But evolution is as comfortable with theism as it is with atheism. An evolutionist is perfectly free to choose any god he wishes, as long as it is not the God of the Bible. The gods allowed by evolution are private, subjective, and artificial. They bother no one and make no absolute ethical demands. However, the God of the Bible is the Creator, sustainer, Savior, and judge. All are responsible to him. He has an agenda that conflicts with that of sinful humans. For man to be created in the image of God is very awesome. For God to be created in the image of man is very comfortable.”[9]
Those who attempt to harmonize and integrate the wisdom and ways of the world with Christianity, be it evolution, psychology, corporate principles, philosophies of parenting, feminism, the world’s entertainment, or any other human innovation, seem to be blind to the fact that to be a friend with the world is to be an enemy of God. This is why we must be mortified to the world, the need of which is evident from the following five considerations.
First, unless we are mortified to all earthly comforts, honors, positions, fears, possessions, opinions, philosophies, securities, and dependencies, they will hold a place in our hearts and minds which will make it very difficult, if not impossible to deny and leave them all in a time of suffering and persecution; a time when we might be confronted with the choice of being faithful to Christ and His Word and losing everything or making some concessions and compromises with the world to preserve them. If John the Baptist had not been mortified to the world’s values and the fear of man he could not have boldly rebuked Herod for having his brother’s wife (Mt 14:3, 4), nor said to the proud, self-righteous religious leaders, “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” (Mt 3:7). It is the indwelling sin within us that makes the lusts of this world seem not only appealing, but essential. It is the high estimation that we place on them, or rather that the world and our lusts place on them, that makes them seem so indispensable to our temporal safety and well-being. If they have not lost all their worth and appeal in our eyes, which they never will until we crucify those lusts within us that places such importance on them, then we will find it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to deny them. The rich young ruler came to Jesus seeking salvation, but he came with his riches unmortified and so was unable to comply with Jesus’ demands of discipleship. Many Jewish rulers ‘believed’ in Jesus, but their unmortified love for the approval of men kept them from confessing Him (Jn 12:42, 43). All sorts of seemingly plausible reasons will come into our minds to justify preserving our life in this world. Not until our pride is mortified will the good opinion of the world cease to be highly regarded, but to a soul that is mortified, “it is a very small thing that I should be examined by you, or by any human court;” (1 Cor 4:3). Paul was willing to be regarded “as the scum of the world” (1 Cor 4:13). Only a soul that is mortified will preach the Word of God not as pleasing men but God (1 Thes 2:4), and will risk becoming an enemy of men rather than conceal, compromise, or alter the truth (Gal 4:16). The same can be said for riches, comfort, acceptance, liberty, position, honors, and security. How much are they desired and highly prized until our lust for them is mortified, and they are counted as no better than dung (Phil 3:8)? It is our own desires and worldliness that makes these other things seem so important and essential, but when these are mortified, then those other things will be lightly esteemed, “if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rm 8:13).
Second, mortification is what gives health to our souls. All that is of the world, namely, its lusts, are to the soul what disease is to the body, and mortification is to the world and its lusts what medicine is to a disease. Those who are only mortified to a little of the world and its lusts are only a little healthy. However, standing firm, persevering, resisting temptations, and enduring hardships requires a heart and mind that are spiritually healthy. We are to be of “sound judgment and sober spirit” (1 Pt 4:7); we must “not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Eph 5:17); we are not to “sleep as others do, but let us be alert and sober” (1 Thes 5:6); we are to “lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind” (Eph 4:22, 23). It was for want of sober-mindedness that some in Corinth were Christians in name only; they had no knowledge of God (1 Cor 15:34). A physically weak and sickly person cannot endure strenuous burdens and hardships, and a person who is mortified to only a little of the world cannot resist strong temptations, the pull of the world and its lusts, nor the burden of prolonged suffering and trials, but will, like Lot’s wife, shrink back to destruction; thus Jesus’ warning to His disciples, “Remember Lot’s wife” (Lk 17:32). What was her sin? She looked back! In his exposition of this text J.C. Ryle explained what this look revealed,
“That look was a little thing, but it told of secret love of the world in Lot’s wife. Her heart was in Sodom, though her body was outside. She had left her affections behind when she fled from her home. Her eye turned to the place where her treasure was, as the compass needle turns to the pole. And this was the crowning point of her sin. “The friendship of the world is enmity with God” (Jas. 4:4). “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15).”[10]
Third, we must mortify the world and its lusts or else in a time of temptation our own lusts and desires will rage and storm within us and wash away all our convictions, resolutions, and good intentions. Peter’s emphatic denial and determined conviction that he would never deny Christ, much less three times, was swept away in a moment when actually faced with the temptation to deny Him. It is unmortified lusts that make the heart like a keg of gunpowder, so that when the sparks of temptations are flying around us – and they fly thick and hot in a dangerous season – it only takes one to land and ignite it. It took but one innocent question from a little servant girl to ignite Peter’s fears and blow away all his convictions. This is why Peter was eminently qualified to speak of escaping “the corruption that is in the world by lust” (2 Pt 1:4); because he knew how easily we could be swept away by it. If anyone knew what it is to be ashamed to suffer as a Christian it was Peter (1 Pt 4:16). If John the Baptist had not mortified his pride he could not have resisted the vile temptation to jealousy and envy when his disciples came to him and reported, “Rabbi, He who was with you beyond the Jordan, to whom you have born witness, behold, He is baptizing, and all are coming to Him” (Jn 3:26). John’s humble reply was, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (Jn 3:30). Contrast John’s attitude with King Saul’s when he heard the women singing, “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands” (2 Sam 18:7). Pride and self-interest ruled Saul’s heart and mind. It was his own glory and honor that he desired, not God’s. What a disaster. What a tragedy. See how helpless, how impotent, how enslaved Saul was to his lust for power, prestige, honors, influence, and self-importance. Saul was a man of the world, whereas John had overcome the world, “for by what a man is overcome, by this he is enslaved” (2 Pt 2:19). Compare John’s attitude with the disciples of Jesus who argued among themselves as to which of them was the greatest (Lk 22:24). It is these internal lusts of the world that the devil uses to sift us like wheat, and they are the traitors that deliver up our souls to his temptations. Every lust is a deceitful lust that is only waiting for an opportune time to lead our minds astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ, and into compromising with, accommodating, and assimilating this present world.
Fourth, unless we are careful, persistent, watchful, and diligent in this work of mortification, we will not be able to suffer as a Christian and follow the example left for us by Jesus to follow in His steps (1 Pt 2:21-23). Instead we will dishonor, disgrace, and deny the truth for which we have been called by God to suffer. It is not simply patient suffering that brings honor and glory to God, “But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God” (1 Pt 2:20; cf. 3:17). What is ‘right’ is the will of God revealed in His Word, and He has revealed that there are seasons when it is His will for true believers to suffer for doing what is right (1 Pt 3:17). Therefore, if our pride, fear, revenge, ambition, desire for ease and comfort and the good opinion of others are not first mortified, then most certainly our suffering will dredge up every unmortified and ungodly passion which will dishonor the cause, truth, and Person that we profess to believe. True faith, true obedience, true love, fear, and mortification must be prepared to willingly and joyfully accept their practical consequences, “For you…accepted joyfully the seizure of your property,” (Hb 10:33). It is one thing to accept suffering and persecution for the cause of Christ and another to accept it joyfully, “Rejoice, and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you” (Mt 5:12). If someone as mortified to the world as the Apostle Paul could give in to the temptation to revile his persecutors, “God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall!” (Ac 23:1-4), how careful and diligent must we be in this work of mortification, especially in a dangerous season, the age of social media, and when the vast majority of even professing Christians will not endure sound doctrine.
Finally, self-examination must be dutifully practiced, and mortification must be diligently studied and performed or else we will find many desires, longings, worries, and loves for earthly comforts and treasures that will be a snare and stumbling block to us. Some people have such a longing for numbers, programs, entertainment, convenience, and activities for their children that they will deign to worship only where such things are to be found. They very often have a higher regard for these things than they do for sound doctrine. We seem to have forgotten that it is “the desires for other things” that “enter in and choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful” (Mk 4:19). Their desires are placed on the wrong objects. A regenerate and mortified heart and mind, however, does not find the pleasure in these that others do. Set the world before Demas and see how readily he gravitates toward it. Set money before Judas and watch how he snatches at it. Set reputation and the admiration of men before Ananias and Sapphira and observe to what lengths they will go to be regarded more highly than they ought. Set fleshly enticements, comfort, ease, security, self-importance, false gospels, false teachings, carnal wisdom, and any such bait before an unmortified heart and mind and see how impotent they are to resist them, especially when offered in a temptation cloaked in a religious veneer. A mortified Christian can see all this and more set before them, even offered to them, and refuse to be seduced by them, “You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world” (1 Jn 4:3). As the old man is crucified so are its desires, “Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24). Mortification weans the soul from all these worldly desires and enables us to live not only comfortably, but contentedly and joyfully without them because we are no longer living for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.
Satan made the accusation that Job’s love, fear, devotion, and piety were motivated by self-serving and worldly motives; that Job feared God only because of the earthly wealth and prominence which ensued from it; that Job would forsake God if there was nothing of worldly benefit to be gained from fearing God; that Job would curse God to His face if his fear and devotion resulted in pain, suffering, and the loss of all the earthly joys, honors, family, friends, and comforts that he had accumulated. The divine purpose behind Job’s sufferings was to demonstrate that his fear, trust, love, and devotion for God were in no way connected with the temporal blessings which God in His providence had bestowed upon him. If Job could have had the least insight into the divine purpose behind his sufferings, it might have made his suffering more bearable, but such was not the case. As far as Job was concerned his suffering seemed to be arbitrary and meaningless, thereby making his endurance, integrity, devotion, fear, and trust that much more laudable. If Job had not been mortified to the world before his season of suffering, such patient endurance would have been much more difficult of not impossible. Unless Job was already mortified to the world he could not have said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). Satan makes the same accusation today, and God in His providence will pick a season when He once again demonstrates that the devil is wrong; that God has His true people who are mortified to the world and who serve Him out of no other motivation than love, trust, fear, and devotion to Christ and His Word. In such a season it is the will of God that His true people suffer for doing what is right. In such a season it is to be feared that the bulk of contemporary evangelicals will be found to be Demas’ and Lot’s wife rather than a Job. Modern evangelicalism’s shameless and untarnished friendship with and love of the world are indisputably self-evident, but most refuse to see. I trust no more needs to be said to show the necessity of being mortified to the world, and the influence it has on our readiness to suffer in a dangerous season.
In the next study we will consider the unique advantage and insights that suffering provides to a mortified Christian into the methods and strategies of Satan’s temptations, and some principles for avoiding their danger. A dangerous season and abundant temptations typically go together.
[1] Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Cross (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1986), 88-89.
[2]J.C. Ryle, Practical Religion (Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 2001), 289-290, 294.
[3] J.C. Ryle, Holiness (Moscow, ID: Charles Nolan Publishers, 2001), 202.
[4] John Murray, ‘The Church: Its Definition in Terms of ‘Visible’ and ‘Invisible’ Invalid, in Collected Writings of John Murray, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1976), 234.
[5] Iain H. Murray, The Old Evangelicalism: Old Truths for a New Awakening (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2005), 207.
[6] John Murray, ‘Corporate Responsibility’ in Collected Writings of John Murray, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1976), 276, 277.
[7] John Murray, ‘Christ in All the Assemblies of His People’ in Collected Writings of John Murray, Vol. 3 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1982), 196.
[8] John Owen, ‘The Mortification of Sin in Believers’ in The Works of John Owen, Vol. 6 (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1967), 3. For an easier to read and abridged version of this important and timely work see the Puritan Paperback edition of John Owen’s The Mortification of Sin.
[9]Marvin L. Lubenow, Bones of Contention: A Creationists Assessment of Human Fossils (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1992), 192.
[10] J.C. Ryle, Holiness (Moscow, ID: Charles Nolan Publishers, 2001), 201.