In the beginning of Chapter 1 of this Epistle, so full of the divine energy of the Holy Spirit in the Apostle Paul, in contending for the faith he had once delivered to the Galatians, which had become clouded and dim, we find the purpose of God pressed from his burdened spirit. The purpose of God the Father to deliver us from this present evil age, exhibited in the greeting, “Peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil age.” Well did the Apostle personally know this purpose of God. He was the chief of sinners—the most wicked man in heart that ever trod the earth. One whose heart was filled with the stern purpose of blotting out if he could, the name of Jesus from the face of the earth; and on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus, he is stricken to the earth, and sees the Blessed One in the glory, and finds in one moment that he was the chief of sinners; and that as such, God had laid hold of him, and against his will, had separated him to Christ, delivering him from his sins and from this present evil age. Acts 9:1-22.
He speaks to the Galatians. They had been getting back into the world in its first form; instead of going on as he was, with a risen and ascended Christ. They had been getting under the Law, and the observation of days— “weak and beggarly elements,” as the spirit calls them, things that accredited the flesh. “When ye knew not God, ye did service unto them, which by nature are no Gods. But now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage.” (Gal. 4:8,9) He finds them again, he says, desiring to be in bondage to such things.
Then in the last chapter (Chapter 6:14,) he says, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, whereby the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” He found that the world to him was a judged thing; out of which he had been separated to Christ. That he was a Nazarite, as it were, separated to God. And he was keeping his Nazariteship practically and undefiled; and was for this reason suffering persecution for the Cross of Christ. Are we then, my readers, walking thus in fellowship with the apostle? Have we realized the delivering work of Jesus, and the purpose of God the Father as he did? And are we bringing the power of the Cross to bear upon all here? Christ tried if the world would be reconciled to God; and headed by a prince, a God of this age, it gave Him a cross! A cross to which attached a curse in the scriptures, which they who professed to be the exclusive people of God possessed. It was He who hung there, who possessed true value in the apostles eyes. His heart swelled within him at the thought of Him whom he loved being there. And the world which had placed Him there had its true value to him; it was a crucified thing. God had ordered the world aright at the beginning; but when man was driven from Paradise, another order of things came in under Cain:—an order to gratify the flesh, and make the world, thus departed from God, a comfortable place to live in and possess; Cain went out, and, with “vagabond” written on his brow, built a city, and embellished the world which was lying under a curse to make it a place of delight. (Gen. 4) The cross revealed all this; brought out all, and showed it in its true light. Is there anything there in it you can enjoy? Does not the cross of a rejected Christ cast a shadow of its approaching judgment across the world? Can a Christian be happy in its spirit, its pursuits, its aims. (He has his own full joy outside the world altogether) Could we be happy or comfortable going back into a house where a beloved friend had been murdered; and we had barely escaped? A place where Christ had no place to lay His head? Or are we sitting so lightly by all in it that we would not care to find that Satan had swept all away in the morning as we arose!
But there is still a deeper thing in the verse. One which judges us more deeply; the words of the apostle, “I unto the world.” Are we realizing that we are one with Him who was crucified there, and thus set free from every claim of the world which crucified Him could have on us? What fellowship has He with those of it now! Are we then walking there in the sense of our practical Nazariteship? Walking as those whom God has put apart, not only delivering us from our sins, and this present evil age, but from the world? We must live in it, and toil in it, and it may be suffer in it too; but we can learn to die TO the world; and if He wills, the OUT OF this as well; but we know that God has no part or lot in its aims or pursuits, no fellowship with it whatsoever. We are a people, as Christians, who have not to be separated; but who have been separated to God, like Jesus thus in character. He was the perfect One in its midst; with all His titles and glories He passed through it; and one to look at Him would say, “here is one who has no part or lot here.” His heart, His mind, His soul was above. One to see Him must know this.
Are we then realizing in its present power our fellowship with Him, and with Paul in Gal. 6:14? Are we practically freed from the spirit of a world, that would gladly never hear the mention of the name of Jesus? Learning to glory like Paul in bearing in his body those marks of reproach (Gal. 6:17.); “those beautiful initials of Jesus;” the marks which Satan had branded on the apostle for his name? Every mark of the world is a reproach to him who is heavenly. “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world;” and “O, righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee, but these have known that thou hast sent me” said the, divine Master. “And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” (John 2:17.)