There are two reasons why God does not take His people out of the world, but rather keeps them in it and preserves them from the evil. One reason respects themselves the other, the world.
I. And first, it is for a good and salutary work on themselves that they are thus brought into contact with temptation, and face to face with evil. None really stands firm but he who has assured his footing. A man may seem to stand, may think he stands, but it may be only because he has never been assailed. His position may be erect, his attitude apparently safe; but the first shock shall dislodge him, because he has never learned how to withstand it; on which side, and how with best effect, resistance may be offered. We are made perfect by trials and conflicts; they are to us as the winds of heaven are to the tree, trying its root exercising its weak parts one after another, that they may be excited to growth and strength. Our heavenly Father does not take us out of the world, but keeps us in it, within reach of all its allurements and vanities and ungodliness, that we may grow up, by combating and resisting these, into a perfect man in Christ, armed at all points against enemies whom we well know, and with whom we have contested every foot of the ground and painfully won it for Him.
II. If all God's people were to seclude themselves and fly from temptation, where would be the work of the Church on earth? where our Lord's last command, Go ye into all the world and evangelise every creature? The kingdom of heaven is as leaven. Where does leaven work? From without? No but from within. And if the leaven is kept out of the lump, how shall the lump become leavened? We must not take ourselves out of the world; for the world's sake, if not for our own. Christ's work is often done, and done most effectually by those who range apparently at a distance from the direct subject itself; who by the influence of ordinary conversation, in which Christian principles are asserted and upheld, impress and attract others, without the use of words to them unusual and repulsive. It is to multitudinous droppings of such unseen and gracious influences, rather than to any great flood of power, in books or in ministers, that we must look for the Christianising of society here and through the civilised world.
H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons,vol. v., p. 109.
Much of our modern religious teaching favours withdrawal from the world, and even encourages the wish for an early death. In many of our popular hymns the ruling thought is safety in the arms of Jesus, rest in Paradise. Nothing is said of labour, which they must undergo who claim rest; nothing of that conflict with the world, which alone makes it a place of probation. It needs little argument to prove which is the more correct to pray to live, or to pray to die. When Moses, Elijah and Jonah requested for themselves to die, they erred; and if it still be a doubtful point, Christ's prayer that the apostles should be kept in the world for its good and His glory, that they should mix in its society, and yet be free from its contamination through the sanctification of His Spirit, is conclusive, as it agrees with the feelings of nature and the dictates of reason. It being then a necessity, as well as part of our religion, to be in the world, a right adjustment of claims has to be made between the extremes of overmuch fondness for it, and entire neglect of it.
I. The first principle of safety I would lay down is the recognition that the world for which I might read polite society is still full of danger for those who devote themselves to it in earnest. Though we soften the Bible sentences, and allow for a gradual leavening of modern society by the Gospel, yet its tone is distinctly irreligious, and quite removed from the New Testament ideal. God is not in all its thoughts. Christ is not the object of its faith or its love. The Holy Spirit does not dictate its conversation or moderate its fashions. And yet this is the world, though so manifestly in opposition to God, that we court.
II. You are not doing enough for Christ, if merely you shun the world; rather you must go into it, pass as one of it for the Lord knoweth them that are His possibly be much occupied with it, yet without imbibing its spirit. It will come to be attractive to you in a sense that you would not expect until you approached it with the deeper insight into Christ's purposes concerning it; for it is His creation. He is the light of it, and you a light-bearer. He has loved it and redeemed it, to reconsecrate it to Himself; and you, who know it, are to proclaim that love is the ministry of reconciliation. As Christ came not to condemn the world, but to save the world; so you must not scold it or judge it, but do what you can to improve it.
C. E. Searle, Oxford and Cambridge Journal,May 13th, 1880.
Note:
I. What Our Lord asks for His followers. To be kept from evil in the world means (1) to be engaged in the world's business and have it rightly directed; (2) to suffer under its trials and be preserved from impatience; (3) to be exposed to its temptations and preserved from falling into sin.
II. Why our Lord asks for His friends that they should not be taken out of the world. He asks it (1) for the benefit of the world; (2) for the good of Christians themselves; (3) for the honour of His own name.
References: John 17:14-15; Good Words,vol. iii., p. 317. John 17:15. J. Vaughan, Church of England Pulpit,vol. x., p, 401; Ibid.,vol. xiii., p. 73; E. D. Solomon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvi., p. 164; J. G. Rogers, Ibid.,vol. xxvii., p. 104; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. i., No. 47; Ibid., Morning by Morning,p. 123; J. N. Norton, Every Sunday,p. 274; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iii., p. 216; H. Batchelor, The Incarnation of God,p. 155; J. M. Neale, Sermons to Children,p. 21. Joh 17:16. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. ii., No. 78; J. Miller, Pulpit Analyst,vol. ii., p. 481; T. H. Thom, Laws of Life after the Mind of Christ,p. 295; Good News,vol. iii., p. 379; Homilist,3rd series, vol. iii., p. 90.