131
THE KING’S BUSINESS
Antichrist.
votional life of Bible meditation, and our practical life of Christian service ? Do they make us less desirous of prayer, or. of the Bible, or of work for God? If they do, we may be per fectly certain that somehow or other they come within the category of that which is “ of the world.” At any rate, there are two dangers in worldliness; the danger that the line of demarca tion is removed; and the danger of our spirituality being robbed. Worldli ness removes the line of demarcation between the Church and the world, and it robs the soul of everything that is. included in the term spirituality. You will notice in this passage, ( “Dove not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” ) that there is a contrast between the two loves. Love, in the Bible, we know is not a senti ment, but a sacrifice; not a feeling, but a fact; not an emotion but an energy. Therefore, loving the world means the definite, unmistakable attitude of the soul which can be described by this word, “ love.” Notice, also, in passing the doom of the world. The world is passing away, and its lust. So that you have as an enemy the love of the world, and this is our first peril. I have said very little yet that will en able us to detect worldliness, but I hope, before I finish, to say a little more along this line. I will just add one thing—I believe it will apply to, perhaps, ninety-five per cent of our problems. Whenever we are in doubt as to worldliness, worldliness, it may be, companions; worldliness, it may be connected with our intellectual life; worldliness, it may be, connected with our recreation; this will go far to settle the question: “What, in this re spect, would the Lord Jesus Christ wish me to do?”—not “What would Jesus do?” ; but “What would He now have me to do?”
2. The second peril is ‘ called “ A ntichrist ” (2 :1 8 ). “ It is the last hour; and as we have heard that Anti christ cometh, even now there have arisen many Antichrists.” You have another reference to Antichrist in 4:3. As far as I can read the New Testa ment, the Antichrist of St. Paul is sec- idar, the Antichrist of St. John’s epis tles is religious, and the Antichrist of the Apocalypse is both secular and re ligious. Antichrist means the oppo nent of Christ, but 1 would beg of you earnestly to notice that it is an oppo nent who imitates, he who is against Christ, because he is an imitator of Christ. Today according to St. John, we have the spirit of Antichrist. By and by there will be the person of Antichrist. Fundamentally he is not what we should call irreligious, but rather religious. You find in St. Paul’s epistles, and you get it here, too, that he is the one who opposes by imitation. Whenever you find a spuri ous coin circulated, you may be per fectly certain that there is a good coin somewhere about, because people never imitate a bad thing. This imi tation of Christ is splendid testimony to the power of our Lord ; and our greatest danger in the Christian life' today is that there are so many imita^ tions o f Christ. I should like to show this morning how this epistle, writ- : ten ages agOj seems to have antici pated various forms of the imitation of Christ today, which are really anti- Christian. There is one imitation of Christ called Christian Science, which is nei ther Christian nor scientific. What does that really mean? It is an imi tation of Christ, but it imitates by de nying the Son, and of course, denying the Atonement. Some years ago, as the result of a fire in that church which is now St. Paul’s, Portman Square, London, we occupied for our services
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online