Copyright © 2022 Michael A. Brown
‘…dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.’ (Rom. 6:11)
The life
transformation of being born again, with the coming of the Holy Spirit to indwell
and fill our heart, makes us alive to God. Whereas before we were ignorant of
and blind to the things of God, these are now made real to us.
It is
the Spirit of God within us whose love for God births in us a desire to be with
God, to seek his face in prayer, to read his word and to be with our new church
family of believers. Spending quality
time in intimacy with God builds up this love within us and fills us with
warmth and passion for him. And as with
any relationship, it is regularly feeding such intimacy that deepens and
sustains our growing love for God. Being
alive to God gives us a depth of inward joy and satisfaction of heart that the
things of the world can never give us.
We love Jesus more than we love anything or anyone else. Knowing and walking with him becomes the true
meaning of life. He is all in all to us:
‘My lover is radiant and ruddy, outstanding among
ten thousand.’ (Song 5:10)
It is
this inward warmth of love for God that causes that tell-tale shining in our
eyes; that warm, joyful smile on our face; that glow, peace and inner radiance
of his presence with us; that desire in our heart to be with him, and to be
inwardly clean and right with him; that causes tongues and songs of praise to
well up and flow freely from our lips; that creates passion in our heart for
the things of God, and causes love, helpfulness and compassion for others to
naturally overflow from us towards them.
The love and fire of passion for Christ inwardly compels us to follow
and obey him:
‘If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching.’ (John 14:23)
‘For Christ’s love compels us…’ (1 Cor. 5:14)
Love and
passion for Jesus crowns him Lord of all.
It finds the ultimate meaning of life only in him, and it empties the
carnal and sense-based life of this world of the meaning it once had for
us. The warmth of inward love and desire
for God pushes out the desire for other things.
Those things that used to attract us and that once had so much meaning
for us, no longer have the same grip on us.
We abandon them and the desire for sin drops off. They become dead to us because a deeper love
has taken hold of us which draws us into the things of God, and we now find our
deepest pleasure, satisfaction and fulfilment in these things. This heart love for God draws us into the
secret place of prayer, into worship and into soaking ourselves in his
presence. The word of God becomes alive,
powerful, meaningful and precious to us when we are in love with the things of
God.
Being
alive with love, passion and desire for the things of God in this way is
something that the spirit of the world cannot stand or endure in
believers. The spirit of the world is
antithetical to love for the things of God.
It finds these uncomfortable and is hostile towards them, even sometimes
hating believers for this. It very much
wants to maintain the status quo of people’s spiritual blindness and
their carnal security in the ways of the world, lest they come to Christ and
get saved. This is why the early
believers were persecuted so much. The
spirit of the world invariably tries to push the light and love of God away, to
remove these from the public square, and to disassociate itself from any
relationship with believers who have determined that they will live
wholeheartedly for God.
Passion
for God brings us into separation from the spirit of the world. When we become dead to the world, the world
no longer wants us. Many of those people
with whom we once spent our free time and whose company we enjoyed, no longer
want us around. Unless they themselves
are seeking God in their heart and begin to get attracted to the message of the
gospel, they do not want Jesus or the things of God, so to them we become dead:
‘If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated
me first. If you belonged to the world,
it would love you as its own. As it is,
you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.’ (John 15:18-19)
‘The reason the world does not know us is that it
did not know him.’ (1 John 3:1)
‘[To them] we are the smell of death...’ (2 Cor. 2:16)
‘May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the
world.’
(Gal. 6:14)
The
world loves its own, and it will always seek to get us to compromise, water
down or change what we believe, know and experience about God, in the hope that
it can make us like itself again and so remove the uncomfortableness of the
overt presence and message of Jesus. It
will be friendly towards us just so long as we are willing to compromise or
water down what we believe, or it will maintain a convenient silence over what
we believe and stand for. Otherwise, it
separates itself from us.
Just as
the Holy Spirit within us wants to pull us in the direction of the things of
God, away from sin and carnality and into purity, holiness and the blessing of
God, the world will always try to pull us back in the direction of sin and
carnality, and away from God. However,
it is through determining to maintain a close and intimate walk with God, being
consistently and regularly refreshed in his presence, and stoking the fire of
our inner love and passion for him, that we are not dominated or overcome by
the carnal desires and attractions of the world. Keeping ourselves in the love of God in this
way helps us to continue to overflow with his presence and blessing, and
thereby to continue to influence the lives of unbelievers around us who do not
yet know the Lord:
‘Do not love the world or anything in the
world. If anyone loves the world, the
love of the Father is not in him. For
everything in the world – the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and
the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father but from the
world. The world and its desires pass
away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.’ (1 John 2:15-17)
‘What I mean, brothers, is that the time is
short… those who use the things of the
world, [should live] as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing
away.’
(1 Cor. 7:29,31)
‘Keep yourselves in God’s love...’ (Jude v.21)
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