2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

Of those commandments that are recognised though not acted on, it will not be in place here to speak. That God should be loved and served; that men should be true, just and kind; that our neighbour's interests should have as high a consideration at our hands as our own, no man considering himself a member of Christendom would deny, however little able he might be to give practical effect to these commandments in his life. These commandments are such as are beautiful in themselves, and commend themselves to the moral instincts of all men (not degraded to the very level of the brute) as the dictates of the highest wisdom.

It is of the commandments whose excellence is not so self evident that there is need to speak; commandments whose aim is not to make the present life agreeable, but to subject obedient believers to a discipline that will subdue and mould them to the divine pattern in preparation for the perfectly agreeable state of existence to be established by Christ upon the earth in the day of His coming.

Be not conformed to this world (Rom. xii, 2). There is not much danger of mistaking the meaning of this. The world is the people, as distinguished from the earth which they inhabit. Peter puts this beyond doubt in calling it "the world OF THE UNGODLY" (2 Peter ii, 5). Jesus also makes it plain in speaking of the world as a lover and a hater, "If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own" (John xv, 18).

This could only apply to the people. The command is to be not conformed to the world of people upon the earth as it now is. Jesus plainly laid it down that he did not belong to such a world, and commanded his disciples to accept a similar position in relation to it. "The world to come" is the world of their citizenship. Of their position in the present world, Jesus said in prayer, "They are not of the world even as I am not of the world" (John xvii, 16).

By John he commanded them, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life; is not of the Father, but of the world" (1 John ii, 15). By Peter, he indicates their position in the world as that of "strangers and pilgrims" (1 Peter ii, 11), and their life in it as a "time of sojourning" (i, 17), to be passed in holiness and fear (verses 14 and 17).

The world that hated Jesus was the Jewish world. Consequently, we are saved from the mistake of supposing that by the world is meant the extremely vile and immoral of mankind. The Jews were far from being such: they were a very religious and ostentatiously professing and ceremonially punctilious people, among whom the standard of respectability was high in a religious sense. All their conversations with Christ shew this.

That which led to the complete separation indicated in Christ's words and precepts, is indicated by Jesus himself, in his prayer to the Father, so wonderfully recorded in John xvi: "O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee" (verse 25). It is the world's relation to God that cuts off the friends of God from the world (if the friends of God are faithful). The world neither loves, nor knows, nor considers God.

They care for Him in no sense. His expressed will - His declared purpose - His intrinsically sovereign claims, are either expressly rejected or treated with entire indifference. His great and dreadful and eternal reality is ignored. Daniel's indictment against Belshazzar is chargeable against them all. "The God in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified" (Dan. v, 23).

Christendom Astray - Lecture 18

5 So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.

"THE ISRAEL OF THE DEITY," consisting of Jews and Greeks in other lands, or sections of the habitable, who were Jews in Christ, was still an organized and flourishing community, styled also by Paul, "the Ecclesia, his Body," of which Jesus Christ is the Head; and the "One Body."

This new community figures in symbolic writing, as "The Seven Ecclesias which are in Asia;" these seven being representative of all Israelites, "circumcised with the circumcision made without hands," in all the habitable. This Israel was rooted in Jacob's twelve sons, as the patriarchs of the tribes. "First that which is natural," says Paul, "and then that which is spiritual."

This is the order of the Deity's developments in relation to body, world, and nation. Hence, the spiritual body is developed out of the natural; the spiritual world out of the natural; and the spiritual Israelitish nation out of the natural, we Gentiles coming in by adoption through the King of Israel, who himself was first natural before he became spirit. The principle is fundamental, and perceived in the generation of all things -- first, the naked grain, or body; then that which shall be fruit-bearing in the field.

Jacob was the wall of Israel, and his sons his twelve gates, in the beginnings of things. Jesus and the Apostles emerged from Jacob through these gates; being descended from Jacob in their line. But said the Spirit in Jesus, "before Abraham was I am." He was "the Root" of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and David; and when He came to be manifested in Jesus, in this combination of flesh and spirit, he was "the Offspring" of those patriarchs.

While, therefore Jacob was a wall enclosing the whole future nation in his loins, "the Root and Offspring of David," and therefore of Jacob (Apoc. v. 5; xxii. 16), is the Jasper Wall, great and high, "in whom" is contained all "the Israel of the Deity."

At the natural gates of the twelve tribes, the apostles stood as so many Angels or messengers (xxi. 12). They went forth inviting Jews and Gentiles to "enter in through the gates into the city," enclosed within the Jasper Wall (xxii. 14) -- to enter into Christ through adoption into the commonwealth of Israel; that in so entering, they might, as precious stones, garnish the twelve foundations which represent the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

Eureka 7.4.

19 Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.

Avenge not yourselves

Consider the incentive to obedience which God places before us in the matter. It is not only the fact of his giving us the command; though that, at last, is in itself sufficient incentive with every man of God; for he at last so profoundly recognises the Divine prerogative, and the perfect wisdom of God, and the utter inadequacy of man, as to feel a command of God, because it is such, to bring with it a sufficient motive for obedience; so that, like Abraham, he believes and offers up his Isaac readily, accounting that God is able to put all things right, and willing and wise to do it.

But there is more than the command; there is the promise of vindication. He says,

"Vengeance belongs to me, I will inflict it."

He therefore tells us that the injustices inflicted upon us will all be rectified by Him, and that those who do us wrong will not go unpunished; but the condition is, that we abstain from avenging ourselves.

How sweet will be the infliction of Divine vengeance, I mean to those on whose behalf it is inflicted; for there will be the certainty that no wrong will be done, and at the same time that injury will be repaired, and the wrongs of many a dark day, to which we have patiently submitted for God's sake, will be avenged.

Sunday Morning 277