and \u201ccannot receive\u201d the Spirit of truth (14:17). \u201cIts works are evil\u201d (John 7:7) and \u201cthe friendship of the world is enmity with God\u201d (James 4:4). Hence Jesus says, \u201cMy kingdom is not of this world\u201d (John 18:36). He has \u201covercome the world\u201d (16:33) and \u201cthe victory that hath overcome the world\u201d is \u201cour faith\u201d in him (1 John 5:4). For, as the verse of John 12 that heads this study affirms, the world is under judgment. God\u2019s attitude to it is uncompromising.<\/span><\/p>\n This is because, secondly, as the same verse makes clear, there is a mind behind the system. John writes repeatedly of \u201cthe prince of this world\u201d (12:31; 14:30; 16:11). In his Epistle he describes him as \u201che that is in the world\u201d (1 John 4:4)and matches against him the Spirit of truth who indwells believers. \u201cThe whole world,\u201d John says, \u201clieth in the evil one\u201d (5:19). He is the rebellious kosmocrator, world ruler-a word which, however, appears only once, used in the plural of his lieutenants, the \u201cworld rulers of this darkness\u201d (Eph. 6:12).<\/span><\/p>\n There is, then, an ordered system, \u201cthe world,\u201d which is governed from behind the scenes by a ruler, Satan. When in John 12:31 Jesus states that the sentence of judgment has been passed upon this world he does not mean that the material world or its inhabitants are judged. For them judgment is yet to come. What is there judged is that institution, that harmonious world order of which Satan himself is the originator and head. And ultimately, as Jesus\u2019 words make clear, it is he, \u201cthe prince of the world,\u201d who has been judged (16:11) and who is to be dethroned and \u201ccast out\u201d for ever.Scripture thus gives depth to our understanding of the world around us. Indeed, unless we look at the unseen powers behind the material things we may readily be deceived.<\/span><\/p>\n This consideration may help us to understand better the passage in 1 Peter 3 alluded to above. There the apostle sets \u201cthe outward adorning (kosmos) of plaiting the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on apparel\u201d in deliberate contrast with \u201cthe incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.\u201d By inference, therefore, the former are corrupt and worthless to God. We may or may not be ready at once to accept Peter\u2019s evaluation, depending upon whether we see the true import of his words. Here is what he is implying. In the background behind these matters of wearing apparel and jewelry and make-up, there is a power at work for its own ends. Do not let that power grip you.<\/span><\/p>\n What, we have to ask ourselves, is the motive that activates us in relation to these things? It may be nothing sensuous but altogether innocent, aiming by the use of tone and harmony and perfect matching merely to gain an effect that is aesthetically pleasing. There may be nothing intrinsically wrong in doing this; but do you and I see what we are touching here? We are touching that harmonious system behind the things seen, a system that is controlled by God\u2019s enemy. So let us be wary.<\/span><\/p>\n The Bible opens with God\u2019s creation of the heavens and the earth. It does not say that he created the world in the sense that we are discussing it now. Through the Bible the meaning of \u201cthe world\u201d undergoes a development, and it is only in the New. Testament (though perhaps to a lesser extent already in the Psalms and some of the Prophets) that \u201cthe world\u201d comes to have its full spiritual significance. We can readily see the reason for this development. Before the Fall of man, the world existed only in the sense of the earth, the people on the earth, and the things on the earth. As yet there was no cosmos, no \u201cworld,\u201d in the sense of a constituted order. <\/span><\/p>\n With the Fall, however, Satan brought on to this earth the order which he himself had conceived, and with that began the world system of which we are speaking. Originally our physical earth had no connection with \u201cthe world\u201d in this sense of a Satanic system, nor indeed had man; but Satan took advantage of man\u2019s sin, and of the door this threw open to him, to introduce into the earth the organization which he had set himself to establish. From that point of time this earth was in \u201cthe world,\u201d and man was in \u201cthe world.\u201d So we may say that before the Fall there was an earth; after the Fall there was a \u201cworld\u201d; at the Lord\u2019s return there will be a kingdom. Just as the world belongs to Satan, so the Kingdom belongs to our Lord Jesus. Moreover it is this Kingdom that displaces and that will displace the world. When the \u201cStone not made with hands\u201d shatters man\u2019s proud image, then the kingdom of this world will \u201cbecome the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ\u201d (Dan. 2:44, 45; Rev. 11:15).<\/span><\/p>\n
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