CHOSEN OUT OF THE WORLD.
By H. A. St. John
"If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you." John 15:19. By the above words of the great Teacher, we learn that a person or thing may be in the world and yet not of the world. Indeed we are told that the children of God are chosen out of the world, and this is their relation to God even while personally in the world. But they are strangers and pilgrims in the earth, and not dwellers. Their affections are set on things above, and not on things on the earth. Their citizenship is in heaven. Their conversation is in heaven. Their names are enrolled in heaven. They are laying up their treasure in heaven, and not on the earth. They are chosen, ordained, and sent out in this world, like their divine Lord, as ambassadors from the highest court and government in the universe, even the court and government of Heaven. It is their business and mission in the world to win and gather souls out of the world. They are looking for a city which is out of sight, an abiding city whose builder and maker is God, a city incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for them. He that hath not this hope in him has not been chosen out of the world. He that lays up treasure on earth is not of the chosen ones, neither he that loves the pleasures of earth more than God, and heavenly things. All that are chosen of God, and hence chosen out of the world are waiting, anxiously waiting, to be taken out of the world. And that day will come; yea, blessed be God, it will come soon. The adorable King who has His abode in heaven will come in great glory. All the holy angels, from the same blissful abode, will come with Him. With a mighty shout of joy and triumph, and the trump of God, all the chosen ones sleeping in death will be awakened. They, together with the living saints—a mighty host like the sands of the sea—in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, will be changed to immortal glory. They were all chosen out of the world in the days of their probation, and now they are taken out of the world when the days of probation are over. We have reason to praise our God, that we can now come out from the world and be separate, and touch not the unclean thing, sin, and the Lord will receive us, and be a Father unto us, and we may be His sons and daughters. The Lord Almighty says that we may walk on the highway of holiness—a way cast up above the low, degrading, contaminating things of earth. We may joyfully tread this path of the just, which ever shineth more and more, until we actually, personally, and gloriously enter the perfect day, in the home of perfect bliss, and rejoice evermore with all the just made perfect.