I’m sure I’m going to have some interesting
responses from our last session together when we considered the difference between the superficial,
external kind of righteousness that characterized the lives of the scribes and the Pharisees
and the authentic kind of righteousness to which we are called. Some people are going to write in and say,
“RC, I was so involved in that lecture that for me time actually stood still.” Or others will write in and say, “You people
are as hypocritical as the Pharisees you were talking about because you use a clock up here
that’s obviously a phony because it reads the same time all the time.” Did you notice that? I’m sure all kinds of people will and will
send in letters. Well I want everybody to know that that’s
a real clock. It’s an authentic clock. It’s just a broken clock, that’s all. But this much we can say for it: It tells
the correct time twice a day every day. Martin Luther said that the Christian, in
his struggle for obedience has many obstacles to overcome, but basically we’re involved
in warfare that takes place not on one front or two fronts but on three fronts and that
the triad of enemies that confront the Christian are, as Luther maintained, the world, the
flesh, and the devil. That’s a very famous quotation from Luther,
and of course, Luther understood that when he made that list of the world, the flesh,
and the devil, that though he distinguished among those three particular enemies, he understood
that all three of them were intimately related one to the other – that the spirit of the
flesh of which the Bible speaks is that part of our nature that is enraptured by and seduced
by the spirit of this world, and this world is the arena over which Satan has a particular
level of influence and even, at times, a kind of dominion. And so though we distinguish among these three,
we don’t want to separate them one from the other, but we will look at each one of
these seriatim, and in this session we’re going to consider the Christian’s struggle
with what the New Testament calls “the world.” Now, obviously the term “world” in the
New Testament is used in more than one way and sometimes in some cases the term “world”
simply refers to this planet. There’s nothing pejorative, nothing negative
about the term when it’s used in that way. It’s simply a geographical location. This place is distinguished from Mars or Jupiter
or the heavens above; but also the term “world” is used in the New Testament to refer to the
fallen sphere of this planet, to a kind of standpoint, or perspective that is anti-God,
that is more man-centered than God-centered. Let me read a brief portion from the Gospel
according to Saint John to see how Jesus makes this kind of distinction with respect to the
world. I’m going to pick it up in John chapter
17 verse 12. By the way, as I read this brief portion of
John’s gospel, let me remind you that this comes from a very lengthy segment of the discourse
in the upper room that Jesus had with His disciples the night before He was killed,
and it also includes a passage of expressions that Jesus makes in the longest recorded prayer
that comes from Jesus in the New Testament. This is the record of what is called the “great
High-Priestly prayer of Jesus” or “Jesus’ prayer of intercession.” It’s the only time that you are prayed for
in the New Testament because Jesus prays not only for His disciples who are with Him in
that moment but speaks and prays and intercedes for those who would believe in future generations
through their teaching. And notice what He says in verse 11 of chapter
17. That’s where I’ll pick it up, and He said,
“Now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world, and I come to Thee.” Here you see “world” clearly refers to
this place, doesn’t it? He said, “I am about to depart from this
location, from the world, but now, Father, I’m praying for My friends and My disciples
who are going to stay behind here, active in this world.” But yet He goes on to say, “Holy Father,
keep through Thine own name those whom You have given me that they may be one as we are;
and while I was with them in the world, I kept them in Thy name, and those that You
gave Me I have kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition that the Scripture
might be fulfilled. And now I come to You, that these things that
I speak in the world, that they might have joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them Your word, and the world
has hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” Now, do you see how the term “word” – or
“world” – is beginning to take on that slightly different nuance to refer not simply
to geographical location, but to one’s standpoint or perspective with regard to the things of
God? The world is that sphere, or that group of
people, who has no affection for the things of God. The world exists in this regard in antithesis
and opposition and tension over against the kingdom of God, and so He says, “I pray
not that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not
of the world, so sanctify them through Your truth. Thy word is truth.” That is a loaded statement, isn’t it? Jesus said, “I’m not asking, Father, that
You take them out of the world.” Oh how I wish we would listen to the prayer
of Christ at that point because in every generation of Christian history there is always that
pull and that tug within the Christian community to so dissociate ourselves from anything that
smacks of this world that we withdraw into isolation in order to keep ourselves pure. If we would only read through carefully, for
example, the Gospel according to Saint Luke. For in Luke’s gospel we see a motif that
is hammered home again and again by Luke in terms of the teaching of Jesus over against,
once again, the Pharisees. One of the doctrines that emerged among the
Pharisees was this doctrine: salvation by segregation. Remember one of the things that the Pharisees
became so incensed about with Jesus was that Jesus, in their opinion, contaminated Himself
by spending time with publicans and tax collectors and sinners – the things that the Pharisees
wouldn’t go near. I remember once walking down the street in
conversation with a friend of mine who was an Anglican priest, and he was rather proud
of his consecration into the priesthood; and we were in the streets of Philadelphia, and
this little boy came up. He was selling newspapers or something. He was kind of like a street urchin. He was filthy-dirty. You know, he had ice cream or something all
over his face, and his shirt was dirty, and he had tattered clothes on; and he came on,
and he grabbed a hold of the priest’s sleeve and began to tug at it saying, “Mister,
mister,” and you know, he was trying to sell him a magazine or something, and he was
tugging on his sleeve. And suddenly the priest turned around and
threw the boy’s hand off his hand and said, “How dare you touch the arm of a priest
of God!” And I wanted to stop right there and look
at my friend the priest and say, “How dare you act as if the arm of a priest were untouchable
by a human being!” I mean Jesus would have embraced that boy
on the street. He would never buy into this idea of so radical
separation from the world that one sort of manifests a spirit of contempt to the very
arena that is the focal point of God’s redemption. Jesus said, “I don’t ask that You take
them out of the world.” Jesus was not starting a new community of
Essenes. Do you remember the Essenes that were – whose
work were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls? These were people who drew apart from civilization
to live in total isolation so that they could keep themselves pure for the coming of the
Messiah, and while they’re hiding down there in the caves along the Dead Sea, the Messiah
came, and they missed Him. They were so busy keeping themselves out of
the world that they missed the Messiah when the Messiah came to the world to redeem the
world, and so Jesus said, “I don’t ask that You take them out of the world but that
You keep them from evil” – that is that you preserve them while they are living out
their faith and living out their lives in the midst of the world. Now, I think that’s consistent with what
the apostle Paul teaches in his grand climax in the practical application of the book of
Romans after this expanse of development of heavy doctrine and theology. You remember how he begins the twelfth chapter
where he said, “I beseech you therefore, my brethren, by the mercies of God that you
present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable
service”? And then what does he say? “And do not be conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewal of your mind.” Let’s take a look at those two words – conformity
and transformation. We see the same root in both of them – the
word “form,” which refers to structure or system, and the only difference really
that we find in these words is with the prefix, right? The prefix “con” means what? “Chile con carne” means “beans with
meat,” right? So that “con” here means “with,” so
that “to conform” is literally “to be with it” – to be a part of the leading
acceptable structures of the current world system.” Now, I remember when I was in about sixth
grade, I think, my mother took me downtown Pittsburgh to buy a pair of shoes. I don’t know why this sticks in my mind,
but while the clerk was trying on these fancy shoes for me, and I – you used to get to
look in that little green x-ray machine. You go down and see your toes at the end of
the shoes. I don’t think they have those things anymore,
but that was a big deal when I was a kid. That was high-tech; and this shoe salesman
was very nice, and he was talking to me about school and sixth grade, and I looked at him,
and he said, “Well, how’s everything going at school?” And I half came out of my chair. I said, “Well,” I said, “I’m the most
popular boy in my class.” My mother was absolutely horrified! I mean as soon as that man went away, she
took me aside, and she said, “You can’t talk like that to people!” She said, “That’s terrible! That’s so egotistical and arrogant and rude. You must never, never talk like that.” And she gave me this big lecture on the virtues
of humility, but you know what? I didn’t care because my goal in life when
I was in sixth grade was not to be humble. My goal when I was in sixth grade was like
every other sixth-graders goal in this world, and that was to be what? The most popular person you could possibly
be because when we enter into adolescence and into our teenage years where we finally
realize that there’s a world out there beyond our parents and our uncles and aunts and so
on, and that there’s a society where we are being evaluated and judged and accepted
or rejected. Popularity with our peers at about age 13
becomes one of the most important passions of our lives, and if we don’t receive a
certain measure of popularity, that is so crushing to the human spirit that it can carry
in our psyches the rest of our lives. Everybody wants to be liked by other people,
but we learn as children – as I learned when I was in the sixth grade – that if
I was going to be popular there was a price tag to be paid, and the most important price
for popularity was conformity. Did I – if I was going to be Mr. Popularity
in my school I had to know all the words to the latest songs, the latest hits on the hit
parade. I had to know the batting averages of the
Pirates and so on. I had to be able to do the things that you
do to prove that you’re really a man. I had to listen to the dares and accept the
dares and see if I could swipe something from the drugstore without getting caught and get
involved in the games that you play at night where you get chased through the town by the
police and make sure that the police don’t catch you. And I went through all those games because
that’s what you had to do to be popular, and I can remember that the lecture I would
get from my father all the time as a teenager was, “Son,” you know, “it takes more
courage to say ‘No,’ than it does to say, ‘Yes.’” Did you ever get a lecture like that? Or the one the principal used to always give:
“Young man, don’t you know that you’re stabbing your mother in the back?” You know, and all this kind of stuff. And I said, “But don’t you understand,
I’m not trying to please my mother. I’m not trying to conform to what my mother’s
values are. This is where I’m being judged, this arena
of my peers.” And so as kids we play all of these games
in order to achieve the great sought-after goal of popularity. But of course, you know, that’s only one
of those short-term adolescent phenomenon that as soon as we become adults we put away
childish things, and we don’t worry anymore about being popular, do we? You know, they say the only thing that’s
the difference between men and boys is what? The price of their toys. The games change, and the price tags change,
but the goal of being accepted by our peers is something that pulls at us every day of
our lives. And so the seductive power of this world is
to conform – to conform to it. Well what is it that we’re being drawn to
conformity? The Germans have a word for it. You know how the Germans say – the Germanic
language is. They’ll just take two good concrete nouns
and just squash them together and make one word out of them. No offense, Olha, to the Dutch language that
would never think of doing anything like that; but the Germans take two words and stick them
together and get the word “Zeitgeist.” You’ve all heard the word “Geist,” I’m
sure in the English language because you’ve heard of poltergeists. Poltergeists are kind of little ghosties that
go bump in the night. Well “Zeit” is the German word for “time”
and “Geist” is the German word for “spirit,” and so this compact word “Zeitgeist” means
literally “the spirit of the times,” or “the spirit of the age.” And what the Germans mean by the Zeitgeist
is basically this: What’s in right now? What is fashionable? What is acceptable? What is it that we do? Now, in the nineteenth century a man became
very important, not only as a literary figure in Germany, but as a philosopher, and he emerged
as one of the most important critics of his own generation, and his name was Friedrich
Nietzsche, and you know that Nietzsche is famous for his declaration of the death of
God and for his advocacy of what he called biological heroism where – which he would
seek for the construction of a super race, and Hitler ran with that and took it to an
extreme. But Nietzsche complained of the decadence
of nineteenth century Europe, and in that complaint said that basically the vast majority
of people live, what he called, “by the dictates of a herd morality.” That is, Nietzsche’s criticism was this:
he said, “For the most part, people are like sheep, and they just follow uncritically
and without any courage whatever is expected from them in their contemporary situation.” In other words, they become slaves to the
Zeitgeist or the spirit of the age, and that’s why he called for superman, the “Ubermensch.” He said, “The Ubermensch will be known as
a person who will leave the herd and dare to think for himself.” In other words, the superman of Nietzsche
would be the ultimate non-conformist. Now, at least that much the New Testament
has in common with Nietzsche’s nihilism. Both call us to a kind of non-conformity. It’s not the same kind of non-conformity,
I hasten to add, but Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world.” Now, if ever there was a passage of Scripture
distorted by Christians, that’s it because we look at that and we only read half of the
passage, and we say, “Oh, well what God wants from us is, if we’re going to be really
righteous, we’re going to be known for our non-conformity.” Do you realize on the one hand how difficult
it is to be a non-conformist, as I’ve already indicated? We’re so pulled to acceptance by the group,
and so on. On the other hand, do you realize how easy
it is to be a non-conformist of a kind? What happens – what tends to happen among
Christians is they say, “Well we’re going to show the world that we’re different,
and what we’re going to do is that we’re going to show how different we are from the
world by refusing to participate in the world’s worldliness, which means we won’t dance,
and we won’t wear make-up, and we won’t go to movies, and we won’t play cards. I remember when I went to my first job to
teach at a Christian college. I was hired to teach the Bible, and before
the school opened, they had a picnic on the beach, and some students pulled out a deck
of cards and started playing Bridge, and the dean came over and confiscated the cards;
and that was my initiation to discover, to my horror, that the only card game that this
group of Christians was allowed to play was Rook, the Christian card game. I said, “Rook?” I said, “Rook? I quit playing Rook when I was eight,” and
I said, “What are they going to do when they find out that their Bible professor plays
in duplicate Bridge tournaments?” It never occurred to me that there was anything
spiritual or unspiritual about contract Bridge. Imagine it! It’s absolutely incredible that that kind
of thing emerges in a subculture, but what happens is we look around and we see things
that people in the secular world do, and we want to make sure that we don’t appear in
any way like secular people, so we set up these artificial forms of non-conformity. Ladies and gentlemen, the kingdom of God has
nothing to do with Rook. Those are superficial types of non-conformity. If you want to be a non-conformist in the
biblical sense, be somebody whose word can be trusted. Be somebody who will do what’s right even
if it costs them money. That’s different. It’s not that if everybody in the world
is wearing white hats, we start to wear red ones. That’s not the non-conformity that the New
Testament is talking about, but we read the rest of the verse and we see that we are not
simply to be non-conformists for non-conformity’s sake, but we are to be transformed. And here the prefix means everything. To be transformed means to “go over, above,
beyond” the structures of the present world. When I first became a Christian, the fellow
that led me to Christ made a statement to me in the first two weeks. I said, “What does it mean to you to be
a Christian?” He said, “What it means to me is to be a
Christian is that I’m going to outwork you, I’m going to outfight you, and I’m going
to outlove you.” You know, he understood that to be a Christian
meant a call to excellence – a call to excellence that went beyond the standards of what was
acceptable in the world. Most Christians today take their ethical guidance
from what’s legal or what’s accepted in the rest of the world; or we want to have
the civil magistrates enforce the Christian ethic. See wait a minute! The Christian ethic is the same no matter
what the Supreme Court does or what the Supreme Court says! I don’t march to that drumbeat. We have a Lord who gives us our ethic and
His commandments. He said, “Obey My commandments.” That’s our responsibility.
