1509. The Believer's Attitude Toward This Cosmos

The Believer's Attitude Toward This Cosmos

"I have manifested Thy name unto the men that Thou gavest me out of the cosmos" (Joh_17:6).

There are three statements taken from the record of the Lord's prayer in John 17, which present the correct attitude of the believer toward the cosmos.

1. "The men thou gavest me out of the cosmos" (Joh_17:6). The cry of Peter is in line with this prayer of Christ. Peter said: "Save yourselves from this untoward generation" (Act_2:40). Abram was called the "Hebrew" because he was a "come-outer." He came out of Ur of the Chaldees; he reckoned himself a stranger and a pilgrim, he journeyed toward a city whose builder and maker was God.

God has called us out. The saints are formed into an "ecclesia"–they are God's "called-out-ones."

2. These are in the cosmos (Joh_17:11). Our coming out from the cosmos is not physical. We are compelled in the nature of the case, to be constantly rubbing up against the people of this cosmos, else we would needs go out of the cosmos (see 1Co_5:10).

The believers are in the cosmos, but the cosmos must not be in them. They are to love not the cosmos, neither the things that are in the cosmos (see 1Jn_2:15).

Even when believers are compelled to use this cosmos, they are not to use it to the full; for the fashion of this cosmos passeth away (see 1Co_7:31).

Christ did not pray that we should be taken out of the cosmos, but that we should be kept from the evil one (see Joh_17:15).

3. "I have sent them into the cosmos" (Joh_17:18). The believer must watch himself, lest in a sanctimonious and unwarranted separation from the cosmos, he finds himself wholly failing God in witnessing to this cosmos.

Hear the word of the Lord:

"Ye are the light of the cosmos" (Mat_5:14). To be sure the world's condemnation lies in this, that "light is come into the cosmos, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil" (Joh_3:19). In all of this, however, the believer is responsible to God to shine as lights (luminaries) in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation.

"Go ye into all the cosmos, and preach the Gospel to every creature" (Mar_16:15). The believer must not cease his toil until he has carried the message of Christ and saving grace to the last man in earth's remotest bound.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR