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Ephesians 2:11-12:
11Wherefore remember, that ye being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands;
12That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world....
Denial of God is on the increase. It steps out into the open and lays aside every mask. It does this not merely with single individuals but in broad and influential circles.
Twenty and more years ago this was different. An individual atheist, here and there would openly proclaim his denial of God and thereby arouse aversion, which with many people turned into abhorrence. And although, even then, the ranks were broad of those who in fact had broken with all religion, yet any one of them would have resented the implication of being called an atheist. This they certainly were not. They had broken with your views regarding Divine things to be sure. But, as they said, the eye of their soul was ever open to the eternal, and the desire of their heart still went out after the Unknown, the Infinite.
Now, however, a further step is taken. Even the semblance of being religious can be laid aside without fear of singularity. Atheists have discovered that they are far more numerous, especially among the cultivated classes, than they had dared to surmise. They see that, when they come out openly with a denial of God, public opinion takes it calmly, and sometimes even hails it as an evidence of honesty. Even among the faithful, we have gradually become so accustomed to the increase in numbers of those who deny God, that we scarcely any more remember the shudder which this open denial occasioned in better days.
This is significant.
When for the first time a child hears his father or mother evilly spoken of, his feeling reacts against it. And when, in the course of years, he has grown accustomed to such talk about his parents, and can listen to it calmly, he has suffered moral loss.
The same holds true of a people with respect to their king or government.
When infraction of the royal majesty first begins, expressions of unbounded indignation will be heard among the people. But when one constantly moves in circles in which this infringement is common, in the end he ceases to be affected by it. Respect for what is high disappears.
And in the same way, people have lost something of the golden dust of their wings, when they have become so accustomed to the idea of the denial of God that no more protest is raised against the disavowal.
Especially with respect to this do "evil communications corrupt good manners."
Here, all unobservedly, a poison works that extinguishes higher aspirations and unnerves the elasticity of the confession of one's faith.
"Without God in the world" is not yet the most dangerous form in which this denial of God presents itself. Many are atheists from sheer indifference. They care for nothing. Others deny God because in their pursuit after sinful pleasures, they will not brook a troubled conscience. Others, again, are atheistic because in their own wisdom they are too proud to bow before God. But each of these three groups rather maintain silence regarding God, than, from enmity, drive propaganda against the faith. They live without God in the world, but they are not fanatics to the extent that they try to banish God from the world.
When it comes to this, spiritual infatuation reaches its highest degree and every prospect of recovery is cut off.
That this God-denying fanaticism now and then obtains public hearing, and that some people purposely circulate tracts bearing the most shameful titles, in order to slander the faith in God, and make it appear ridiculous, is a most serious menace to the life of a nation.
It betrays the presence in the national life of a poison that insidiously works harm and breaks national elasticity.
It was among the heathen that such slander of the gods was first made punishable. And almost every nation that first was great and afterward went down, shows in history this sad process, that it began by becoming wealthy; that from the wealth proceeded moral decay; that moral decay led to religious indifference; that then, in the more cultivated circles, people lived "without God in the world;" and that at length a fanaticism broke out against all religion, whereby in the end the people became altogether degenerate and were overtaken by ignominious ruin.
In the days of Paul, like conditions of ungodliness prevailed in Ephesus, and of those who there had been converted to Christ, Paul, who knew them, wrote that even they in former times had been without hope and without God in the world (Ephesians 2:12).
And this expresses in a painful way what we see on a broad scale all around us.
Though here we find a difference in degree.
There are those who, year after year, live without any more thought of God and have nothing to say of Him. No single religious book ever comes into their home. They have no family altar and they let their children grow up without any religion. They have no regard for baptism. They marry outside of the Church. They bury their dead as we bury a dog. Their lives are consummated without God in the world.
But most people have not as yet gone to such lengths. Especially at marriage, they cannot yet dispense with the solemnity of the church service. Many have their children baptized. When sickness, with danger of death, climbs in through their windows, they still call at times upon God. There are some among them who, in behalf of their growing children, do not consider religion a superfluity, and give their servants time to attend church. But apart from these minor exceptions, they live altogether "without God in the world."
And the worst of it is that they can live on in this way, year in and year out, and not feel unhappy about it. The need of fellowship with a higher life has almost altogether been taken out of their heart, so that they do not miss the life with God. A life without God has become to them second nature. When it is over, all is done. There is no home-sickness within them after higher things. From one pleasure they go to another. However small a measure of religion you would hand out to them, it would give them no satisfaction, but prove a burden.
The very same tenor of mind and heart which was abroad for two thousand years in the declining heathen world of the Roman Empire, has made itself master of these present-day out-and-out people of the world.
This does not estrange them from higher endeavor. They are lovers of art. They take part in works of philanthropy. With respect to the development of the people at large, as they understand it, they are enthusiasts. Sometimes they dote on ideals which awaken poetic talent in them.
But rather than being trained thereby to worship, this higher, more ideal life becomes to them an occasion to interpret all religion as superfluous.
Religion may be good for the lesser man in the lower walks of life. The upper classes have outgrown it. To "live without God in the world" is in their eye the very means by which to secure high places in the life of the world.
Love alone can here work salvation.
At Ephesus people who had lived "without God in the world" were, nevertheless, converted unto Christ by the hundreds, not through reproach and harsh judgments, but through the love wherewith the Apostles approached them.
In that Apostolic love shone the reality of a life in the world with God. And it is this reality of a life in the world with God that has thawed out hearts and captured them.
Of course this "reality" is not divorced from the Creed. There is no greater witness for the truth and the facts of the Gospel than Paul. Neither is this reality of a life with God without forms. Preaching, Baptism and Holy Communion have ever stood in the foreground. But (and this accounts for the power) back of the Creed and that ministry of forms, was the work of the Holy Spirit, the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the heart, a life in constant fellowship with God.
If, then, in these times the Church of the Lord would raise a barrier again in the way of this wide-spreading godlessness, let her maintain her stand by the Articles of the Faith, let her continue faithful in the sacred ministries of the sanctuary, but, before all things else, let her see to it that back of these forms the essence be not lost, and let her cultivate with young and old the high, spiritual reality of the life with God.
This demands effort.
For you must live in the world. Only at your death does God call you away. And in the world almost everything draws you away from God. Not only wealth and temptation, but also the incessant activity of life, labor that is strenuous and exacting, a multiplicity of interests, much trouble and sorrow.
This accounts for the fact that among confessing Christians there are all too many who, while they count themselves Christians, can live for hours, some times whole days without thinking of God. Even in their prayer the mind wanders. They perceive scarcely anything of being near unto God and of living with their God in constant fellowship of the Spirit.
And this lack can not be made good by faithful confession of the faith, neither by bearing constant witness.
Much activity and good works can not take the place of the reality of a life with God in the world.
The lamp can not burn unless it is continually replenished with oil.
Not in us, but in God alone, is the power and might that can stem unbelief in the world. And in this conflict you can only be an instrument in the hand of your Lord, when His might inwardly inspires you, when His Spirit inwardly drives you, and when to be near unto God, and to live with God in the midst of the world has become to you your second, your regenerated nature.
* * * * * * *This devotional classic offers 110 meditations on a single thought from Psalm 73: "As for me, it is good to be near to God." The author states, "The fellowship of being near unto God must become reality ... it must permeate and give color to our feeling, our perceptions, our sensations, our thinking, our imagining, our willing, our acting, our speaking. It must not stand as a foreign factor in our life, but it must be the passion that breathes throughout our whole existence."
The meditations reflect the blending of spiritual vigor with doctrinal loyalty so consistently expressed in the life of Abraham Kuyper. These are devotions with true substance, avoiding the extremes about which Kuyper adds a word of caution: "Stress in creedal confession, without drinking from the Living Fountain, runs dry in barren orthodoxy, just as truly as spiritual emotion, without clearness in confessional standards, makes one sink in the bog of sickly mysticism."
Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) was a Dutch political leader and Calvinist theologian. Elected to parliament in 1874, he became Prime Minister in 1901 and served in that capacity until 1905. As a theologian, he revived a systematic, orthodox Calvinism. He founded the Free Reformed Church and the Free University of Amsterdam. His other works include Principles of Sacred Theology, Lectures on Calvinism, and The Work of the Holy Spirit
Further information about Abraham Kuyper's life can be seen in the translator's "Biographical Note"; further information about To Be Near Unto God can be Abraham Kuyper's "Preface" to that book.
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