Revival

Andrew Murray

Ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. The world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world I pray that thou shouldest keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.
John 15:19; 17:1-16

We have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God
1 Corinthians 2:12

In this world there are two kingdoms contending for the mastery. Each kingdom has its animating spirit in which its strength lies, by which all it does is guided, and through which it holds rule among men. Everything we are or do derives its character and its worth in the sight of God from the spirit in which it is done. This spirit is in each kingdom, not a blind force or an unconscious tendency, but an intelligent power working toward a definite goal. The spirit of the world and the god of this world hold rule over every child of Adam. The spirit that is of God is the power of the living God, working as a divine life in the hearts of those who have received Him.

The terrible sin of the Fall consisted in this: that man chose the visible—that which this world offered of beauty, and enjoyment, and wisdom—in preference to the unseen, spiritual good of God’s will and favor. And the ruin and punishment of the Fall is that man became subject to the power of the seen and temporal, that worldliness became a second nature to him so that this world was nearer and dearer to him, and affected him far more than the God of all glory and blessedness, who had created him. However little it may be thought or taught, the greatest danger to a child of God is from the spirit of this world secretly and unconsciously influencing his judgment and conduct. And one of his greatest needs is to have his eyes opened to see what the world and its spirit is, and how nothing can free him from it but being entirely possessed by the Spirit of God.

The great power of the world lies in the very fact of its having and working in us by a spirit. The things of this world—whether we use the expression of what is God’s immediate creation in nature, or of all that complex duty and power, of possession and pleasure which, under the rule of God’s providence, make up life— have their origin from God and their legitimate claim upon us. They in themselves are not sin. But with the Fall we and they alike came under the power of the god of this world. We are made into the kingdom of this world, with its all-pervading spirit breathing in us and leading us, all unconsciously, to act in accordance with its principles. Under the influence of this spirit we are born and bred. Our whole human nature is under its subtle dominion. The whole of society around us, as far as it is not ruled by the Spirit of God, constitutes an environment, an atmosphere from which, at every pore, we breathe in the infection of a life that is estranged from God. And yet, because it is a secret, hidden spirit, because it has accommodated itself to the teaching and the worship of Christ, we may be utterly unconscious of the evil that is hindering and weakening our spiritual life.

It is to conquer and cast out and entirely dispossess the spirit of this world that the Spirit of God is sent into the hearts of God’s children. With Pentecost the kingdom of God came in power, the kingdom of heaven was begun on earth. Men and women were to live an unworldly, an other-worldly, a heavenly life, superior to all the good the world can offer and to all the evil it can threaten, free from all its modes of thought and motives of action. The altogether, even externally, unworldly life of Christ was to perpetuate itself in the inner circle of His chosen disciples and friends. They were to be so wholly given up to fellowship with the heavenly world—to wait and labor patiently and perseveringly to receive the light and leading, the joy and strength their Lord could give—that they might be able to communicate to their brethren about that heavenly life and power which would enable them in their earthly calling to live the unworldly life.

Some of my readers have already been saying: But how can we influence our fellowmen if we withdraw ourselves from them, if we are to live such an unworldly life? Let us remember, the power of this world lies in its deceit. It is a kingdom of darkness. “The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine unto them.” Satan comes as an angel of light; he can hide the spirit of the world under the garb of scriptural truth or Christian duty. It is because of this terrible blinding influence of the world even in believers that they cannot see what God’s Word teaches so clearly—that it is only those who separate themselves most entirely in spirit from the world who will be able to influence it the most. As long as the separation ends in the desire for our own safety, it cannot attain the object for which God calls us. But when we yield to the Spirit of God to cast out the spirit of the world, we shall understand that the deliverance from its self-pleasing and self-seeking, which entire devotion to Christ and the heavenly life give, is the very power that will fit us for sacrificing ourselves to others and gaining power over evil.

When I have spoken to believers, the most advanced will be the first to admit how subtle, how deep, the spirit of the world is—and how utterly beyond our own powers of watchfulness or victory. It is only a heart fully possessed by the Spirit of God that can know its subtlety or escape its power. If it be true that it is difficult to bring home this conviction to individual believers, how much more is it when we speak about the church as a whole? And yet, I am very deeply persuaded that it is the spirit of the world in the church that alone hinders the Spirit of God and makes a revival so absolutely necessary. And such a revival is wholly impossible until the worldly spirit is cast out. Therefore, it will only be by a deep work of the Spirit, convicting the world in the church, that a true revival can come and the church be fitted for doing God’s work in and for the world.

And wherein does this spirit of the world show itself, and wherein does its sinfulness consist? “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” As the great and first commandment is “Love the lord thy God with all thy heart,” so the great and first sin is the love of the world that makes the love of God impossible. It was so with the sin of our first parents. And when John defines what the things of the world are, and what the love of them is, we are at once led to think of that first sin. He speaks of the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. Man has a body, soul, and spirit. Eve saw that “the tree was good for food.” That was the seed of all the lust of the flesh, the desire for the gratification of the body with its appetites. “And that it was pleasant to the eyes.” That was the beginning of all that delights in the visible world, its God—created beauty and treasures, in which the powers of the soul and mind are occupied and drawn off from God as effectually as by more sensual pleasures. “And to be desired to make one wise.” Man has a spirit capable of knowing and enjoying God. That spiritual nature was turned to the world to seek in it and its wisdom the knowledge of good and evil. And so the wisdom of this world, with its boasted reasoning about God and good, has become the great enemy of the love of God and the chief source of that pride of life in which men content themselves without God.

In our Lord’s temptations we have exactly the same three tendencies illustrated. First came the satisfying of the bodily hunger by His own power without waiting for God’s will. Then there was the lust-of-the-eyes temptation in the kingdoms of the world shown to Him, and then the appeal to the pride of life in the call to prove himself the Son of God.

And how is it now that these three great manifestations of the spirit of the world are in the church? I do not even speak of the power of the flesh as seen in the terrible reign of drink and lust in the midst of our modern Christian civilization. But I do speak of the selfish desire for rich and abundant living, for comfort and luxury, that marks our Christian society as a whole and the great majority of our professing Christians. How it keeps from all true self-denial and spirituality! How it hinders everything like true self-sacrifice for our fellow creatures around us, or God’s kingdom in the world! I do not speak of the lust of the eyes as it is seen in the greed for money that treads down the poor, or in the materialism that measures happiness by riches, or progress only by that which is seen or temporal. But I speak about the subjection to the spirit of the world around Christians that makes them just as keen in the pursuit of the possessions and enjoyment of this world as others are. And this pursuit makes a life of self-renunciation or heavenly-mindedness to be regarded as equally impossible and unnecessary.

I speak of the wisdom constantly sought in this world. Does not the church of Christ give abundant proof that the wisdom of words and Excellency of speech has very largely usurped the place, and received the honor and glory, that belongs only to the wisdom that comes from above? The wisdom, God reveals by His Spirit to men who are heavenly-minded, not worldly-minded? Self-pleasing, whether in its more obvious or more refined forms, whether in those who are wholly given to it or only give it a partial submission, leads inevitably to that, often unconscious, pride of life, which makes the love of God with all the heart impracticable. “If any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him.”

Our Lord Jesus was not of the world. He knew it and acted under the consciousness of it. He spoke about it to the disciples and the Jews; if they were to know Him aright, they must know this as one of the secrets of His inner life. He said to the disciples that they were as little of the world as He was. He wanted them to know it. Without this knowledge their life could not possibly be what He meant it to be. Without their readiness they could not be prepared for the great revival that came with Pentecost.

Unless in our prayer for revival we are ready to test the church and ourselves by this touchstone, our prayer will be in vain. With Christ His not being of the world meant everything. He proved it by separating himself from its sin, by exposing and reproving it, by accepting the cross it prepared for Him as the proof of the distance between it and Him. The cross-revealed the spirit of the world, its irreconcilable enmity to Him. It revealed the Spirit of Christ—His refusal of its friendship, His endurance of its hate and rejection. The cross is the everlasting symbol of the relation between Christ and the unregenerate world. What it called folly, He counted wisdom. What it called weakness, He proved to be strength. What it despised, He gloried in.

What is law for the head is law for the members: the disciple must be as His master. That is how Paul understood it when he cried: “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” There we have for all time the response of the true disciple to the Master’s call not to be of the world. The cross proves how the world cannot understand the disciple, and how the disciple dare not blot out the difference between the spirit of the Master and the spirit of the world. The disciple dare not please the world or seek to be reconciled to it, nor look upon the world and its spirit in any other light than this: “The world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” As it was the separation of Christ from the world by the cross that gave Him the power over the world, and gave Paul his, it is this alone that will give the church of our days its power. Just as far as we enter into the world and please it, so we lose our power. In the measure we are “not of the world even as Christ was not of the world,” we shall be able to bless it.

If it is true that the prince of darkness came as an angel of light, deceiving the very elect, and that the god of this world blinds the eyes, we need to set aside all self-confidence and place ourselves very honestly and persistently in the very light of God. We need to have the Holy Spirit show us the divine meaning of Christ’s ye are not of the world,” and see if there is any of the spirit of the world still in us. The world seeks the gratification of self in the things of the world and according to methods and principles that the wisdom of this world inspires and approves.

In any of those three respects our religion or our church may have the spirit of the world. Our religion may be selfish, seeking our own salvation and happiness alone. Or our religion may be, in a stricter sense, worldly, seeking to have with it just as much as we can of its enjoyments and possessions as possible. Or the worldliness may manifest itself in the modes of thought and action, in the principles and practices that are of the wisdom of this world, being allowed to rule and to guide in the work of Christ and the worship of God. Whatever is not of the love of God and of the Spirit of Christ is of the world and its spirit.

But it is the Spirit alone who can convince of this sin. He is able to lead each believer to see the world not only in others but in himself, possibly in forms of worldliness or worldly conformity he had never suspected. He is able to open our eyes, in the meekness of wisdom and the humility of love, to the state of our own congregation or church, or to the state of the church as a whole. We need both. Nehemiah and Daniel and the saints of old confessed their own sins and the sins of the people. Let us plead with our Lord Jesus, out of whose mouth goes the sharp two-edged sword, to speak His searching word “not of the world” in such a way as to make it go through our whole heart and being. It is one of the root words in the revelation of himself, in His discovery to His disciples of their likeness to himself, in His intercession with the Father. It must be one of the key words in any true revival, in all true prayer and preparation for it. Let us plead with Him to speak it in power until each of us and all His church has heard it.

Every heresy, every neglect or denial of God’s truth, weakens the spiritual life. The rejection of faith in the divinity of Christ, of the atonement through blood, or justification by faith, or regeneration by the Spirit endangers the life of the church. But of all heresies the worst is the heresy of a worldly spirit. It dispossesses the Spirit of God and makes every truth powerless. It brings the church into subjection to the god of this world. If there is one prayer we need it is this: Lord, show us what thou meanest: not of the world. As we see what it is to have a supernatural life and calling, and what a shame to sacrifice this to a worldly spirit, and are able to judge how far this is done in the church, our whole heart will cry out for revival as the only thing that can help the church.

One more word let us believe that deliverance from a worldly spirit is possible. Christ promised it: “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” John testified of it: “Whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.” The new life — the life of the Holy Spirit — can overcome the spirit of the world. Just let God’s children set their hearts upon and cry to God for deliverance from the bondage of this subjection to the world that crucified their Lord, and He will give it. They may not know all that is implied in the word world; there may be differences in defining it. But let them give themselves up, in the willingness to let go, and be entirely made free from what God counts “of the world.” Let them surrender to the teaching and filling of that Spirit of God who can dispossess the spirit of the world. God is gracious, God is faithful, God is mighty. And as the answer to prayer comes, we shall have true courage to pray for our brethren.