[AI translation] This verse is from Jesus' great high priestly prayer, in which Jesus prays for his disciples. The prayer for the disciples is so timely because the disciples are left in the world. In the world that did not know Jesus, that rejected Him, hated Him and crucified Him. It is no easy task to be a disciple of Jesus in the world. I want to talk about what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus in this world.How do we, the people and followers of Christ, as a church, relate to the world? This has been the age-old question for two thousand years. To the world in which we live today and here, to the social order, to the form of government that is in place and built in this country. To the way of life on earth today, determined by the technical and scientific possibilities of the nuclear age. Not to a bygone, old world, nor to an imagined, future world, but to the world that actually exists around us. What is the attitude of the man who seriously wants to follow Jesus? I do not ask you to take them out of this world, but to keep them from evil. They are not of this world, just as I am not of this world." (Jn 17,15-16) Let me first say how the temptations of a wrong attitude to the world have threatened us in the past and throughout the history of the Church, and continue to threaten us today.
One is the temptation to flee from the world. It is a terrible misunderstanding of the gospel when one seeks to live a life of faith by shutting oneself off from the world. He is forced to remain in the world, but he isolates himself spiritually from it. In the supremacy of his own faithfulness he despises and scorns this evil world, which is doomed to destruction. He withdraws from it, in a certain sense, he has a monastic, monastic attitude towards it. He sees only an enemy in the world, against which he defends himself by shutting himself off. To everything that is the world, he can only say: "You must not! For example, a believer must not go to the cinema because it is worldly entertainment, a believer must not take part in politics because it is not pure, etc. This attitude of contempt for the world is what Jesus condemns most of all. For He pleaded for His own, "I do not ask that you take them out of this world". But He really knew what this world was like!
The other temptation is just the opposite. Immersion in the world, immersion in the world, worldliness. As much as it is a misunderstanding of the gospel to despise the world as a believer, it is also wrong to be drawn into the world as a believer, to howl with the wolves. He is uncritically involved in everything the world does. It is a great evil if there is no difference between the life of a believer and that of a non-believer. If the contours of the Christian life that distinguish him from the world are blurred. When the boundary between the kingdom of God and the world is blurred in the conduct of a Christ-follower. It all flows together and he lives, rejoices, grieves, worries, hopes in the same way as one who does not know Jesus. His speech, his behaviour, his attitude to his work, his family life, tell us nothing about the saving grace of God that has appeared in Jesus for all people, including him! Such worldly-minded people will now hear that Jesus not only prayed for them, "I do not ask that you take them out of the world", but also "that you keep them from evil" (John 17,15)
The third kind of misalignment between the church and the world is what might be called, in short, clericalism. This is the tendency to make the relationship between the church and the world work in the church's favour. The church should command the world, rule over the world's social and economic order. It should know what is good, it should set the moral and sociological principles to be followed, and these should guide the world. This is like saying that, for example, a trade union should be a Christian organisation, politics should be governed by a Christian political party, the peace movement should be a Christian peace movement, the CSC should be a Christian CSC, etc., because only in this way can it be good and effective. Jesus does not put the church above the world when he says of his brethren, "They are not of this world, just as I am not of this world" (v.16).
There is a fourth temptation in the church's relation to the world: it is the opposite of the first. It serves the world. In its excessive loyalty it gives to Caesar - that is, to the world - not only what belongs to Caesar, but also what belongs to God! As harmful as the church's ambition to rule the world is, so harmful and wrong would be its attitude of serving the world. The world would be hurt most by such submission, because the world needs the church, the believers, just as much as the human body needs salt! This world absolutely needs something that is "not of this world". If believers do not give this to the world: they are stealing, they are cheating the world!
Neither isolation, nor submission, nor dominion over the world, nor servility is the right attitude towards the world. Then what is the right attitude? What Jesus says: to be in the world, but free from the evil in the world. Not with a spirit or power from this world, but fully in the world. If we were to formulate the question as to what we owe to the world, I would have to answer: By being fully Christ's, by being fully Christian in this world. We, believers, are sent by our Lord into this world! But not to be teachers of the world, who give out good advice and recipes, who know the world's social agenda better, or who despise the world's political aspirations, who imagine themselves above it, or who submit to the powers that be of this world. We have no such prescription for the world, but a happy message. (John 3:16) We are Christians to bring this gospel, this good news to this world! We must know that there is no other power that can save the world than the pure, uncompromising gospel, the testimony of Christ!
Of course, this must not only be preached, but also lived! "For we are a savour of Christ unto God, both of them that are saved, and of them that are damned: to them it is the savour of death unto death; but to them it is the savour of life unto life." (2Cor 2:15-16) A sweet savour of Christ! There is nothing that can spread so silently, unobtrusively, freely and irresistibly as the fragrance! Out on the street next to a chocolate factory, everyone knows and smells immediately what is being made inside the building. Even if all the doors and windows in the neighbourhood were locked and someone was blind and deaf, they would still be aware of the spreading smell. Just as an ordinary piece of paper can still smell for a long time what was wrapped in it, a stick of sausage, an onion, or a bottle of cologne, so a believer should smell that he believes in Christ crucified and risen. We must be so closely in touch with Jesus in spirit that a certain atmosphere is created in the world around us, so that those who are otherwise deaf and blind can smell the good fragrance of Christ on us.
What should we do in concrete, practical terms? Let me mention two things:
1) This world absolutely needs people who take the divine commandments, I might say the life of Christ, very seriously! The ethics of the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount are most loudly proclaimed by living them! The way in which believers live married life, family life, should be a testimony that it is possible to live a pure and happy marriage today! This is what God's laws provide for man in this world. By taking "thou shalt not steal" seriously, he illustrates that the best deal is absolute honesty. Or for example, you know the 9th commandment, "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour"! If a Christian man obeys this commandment, he will definitely expel from this world an atmosphere tainted by gossip and malicious suspicion. Or, for example, when one takes seriously what Jesus said about the second milestone, that is, when one volunteers to do a service that one is not obliged to do, watch, faces brighten. The selfishness in others thaws, the relationship becomes cordial, the work ethic improves. Do you feel how much the world needs believers to live according to God's command?
2) Then, the world desperately needs people who will bring God's forgiveness of sins into daily life. Forgiveness is not something we receive to selfishly keep for ourselves, but to pass on to others. Perhaps the person who practices forgiveness will be labeled as weak, but never mind! A world without forgiveness is hell! Show the world what it means to forgive people in the factory, in the factory, in the family, or here in the church! Forgiveness is the most effective preaching of the gospel without words! This world needs it!
Let me end with a picture! Workers were repairing a church damaged in the war. Some were busy carving large pieces of stone with chisels and hammers. Someone came up to them and asked one of the workers, "What are you doing here? The man replied, tired and indifferent, "You can see! I am carving stones! He asked the other one: What are you doing here? The man replied with a worried look: 'I have five children at home, I have to work a lot to feed them. He asked the third one: What are you doing here? He pointed proudly to the beautifully carved stone and replied: That's how a believer should relate to the world! Let every man in his place do the work entrusted to him, as one who builds a temple to God, to the glory of his name!
This is the attitude towards the world that Jesus had in mind when he pleaded for his brothers and sisters: 'I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from evil. They are not of this world, just as I am not of this world". If only we could go out into the world each day with the intention expressed in this prayer:
I beseech thee with all my heart,
God, my gracious creator:
Grant me this day also
With peace to accomplish,
To learn your will,
To walk in your ways;
Let thy grace cover me,
My pleasure shall be according to thy pleasure.
Amen
Date: 12 April 1959.
Lesson
2Kor 2,12-17