CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
‘‘The Filth of the World’’

What is ‘‘the filth of this world’’? (I Cor. 4:13). Is it the womb of evil of which the national syndicated crime is born? Is it the evil genius operating the international upheaval? Was it Babylon? Is it Rome? Is it sin? Has a tribe of evil spirits been located bearing this repulsive title? Is it V.D.?

A thousand guesses at this question might provide a thousand different answers with not one of them correct. The right answer is the very antithesis of our expectation. This ‘‘filth of this world’’ is neither of men nor of devils. It is not bad, but good—nay, not even good—but the very best. Neither is it material, but spiritual; neither is it of Satan, but of God. It is not only of the Church, but a saint. It is not only a saint, but the saintliest of saints, the Kohinoor of all gems. ‘‘We apostles,’’ Paul says, ‘‘are the filth of this world.’’ Then he adds insult to injury, heightens the infamy, and deepens the humiliation by adding ‘‘[and we apostles are] the off-scouring of all things’’ (I Cor. 4: 13).

Any man who has so assessed himself ‘‘filth of the earth’’ has no ambitions—and so has nothing to be jealous about. He has no reputation—and so has nothing to fight about. He has no possessions—and therefore nothing to worry about. He has no ‘‘rights’’—so therefore he cannot suffer any wrongs. Blessed state! He is already dead—so no one can kill him. In such a state of mind and spirit, can we wonder that the apostles ‘‘turned the world upside down’’? Let the ambitious saint ponder this apostolic attitude to the world. Let the popular, unscarred evangelist living in ‘‘Hollywood style’’ think upon his ways.

Who then hurt Paul far more than his one hundred and ninety-five stripes, his three stonings, and his triple shipwrecks could ever hurt him? The contentious, carnal, critical, Corinthian crowd. This Church was split by carnality— and cash! Some had rocketted to fame and become the merchant princes of the city. So Paul says, ‘‘Ye have reigned as kings without us.’’ Ponder the glaring contrasts in I Cor. 4:8: ‘‘Ye are full, ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us.’’ ‘‘We are fools; we are despised; we both hunger and thirst and are naked’’ (verse 10). The blessed compensation is in verse 9, ‘‘We [apostles] are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.’’

It was not hard for Paul to claim after all this that he was ‘‘less than the least.’’ Then, Paul pointed all this truth against those whose faith had lost its focus. These Corinthians were full, but not free. (A man escaped from his cell is not free who still drags his chain.) Paul is not grieved that they have super-abundance and he nothing. He groans that their wealth has brought weakness of soul. They have comfort, but no cross; they are rich, but not reproached for Christ’s sake. He does not say they are not Christ’s, but that they are seeking a thornless path to heaven. He declares, ‘‘I would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you.’’ If they were actually reigning, then Christ would have come, the millen- nium would have been there, and, Paul adds, ‘‘We would be reigning with you.’’

But who wants to be thus dishonored, despised, devalued? Such truth is revolutionary and upsetting to our corrupted Christian teaching. Can we delight in being esteemed fools? Is it easy to see our names cast about as an evil thing? Communism levels men down; Christ levels men up! True Christianity is far more revolutionary than Communism (though of course, bloodless). The bulldozers of socialism have tried to ‘‘push over’’ the hills of wealth and ‘‘fill in’’ the valleys of poverty. They thought that by education they could ‘‘make the crooked places straight’’—by an act of parliament and a mere waving of the political wand, the millennium, so long delayed, could be brought in. But those changes in Russia have been merely a change of bosses with the underdog still the bottom dog. Today plenty of people are rich by making others poor, but Paul said he was ‘‘poor, yet making many rich.’’ Thanks be unto God! the bag of Simon Magus still gets no attention from the Holy Ghost! If we have not yet been taught how to esteem ‘‘the mammon of unrighteousness,’’ how shall we be entrusted with the ‘‘true riches’’?

And so Paul, bankrupt materially and socially, was bracketed with the choice few who are listed ‘‘as the ‘filth of the world.’ ’’ Certainly this helped him understand that, as filth, he would be trodden under foot by men. Even though he could answer the philosophers, Stoics, and Epicurians on Mars Hill, yet for Christ’s sake he was willingly rated a ‘‘fool.’’ To Jesus, the world’s antagonism was fundamental and perpetual.

Brethren, is this our choice? What irks us more than to be classified with unlearned and ignorant men?—though an unlearned and ignorant man wrote ‘‘the Revelation,’’ which still baffles the learned. We are suffering today from a plague of ministers who are more concerned that their heads should be filled than that their hearts be fired. If a preacher leans toward headiness, let him spend his years of schooling before he enters the pulpit. Once he gets there, he is in it for life. Added degrees will not matter, because twenty-four hours a day are not sufficient for him to bear the names of his flock before the Great Shepherd, or fulfill the parallel responsibility of preparing their soul-food. The fact, then, is that spiritual things are spiritually (not psychologically) discerned. Neither God nor His judgments have changed. By His prerogative, there are still things withheld from the prudent and ‘‘revealed unto babes.’’ And babes, brethren, have no colossal intellects! The Church of this hour boasts an all-time high in the IQ of its ministry. But hold on a minute before we triumph in the flesh. We are also having an all-time low in spiritual births, for the devil shudders not, Brother Apollos, at your verbal Niagaras!

The line of demarcation from the world is distinct, deliberate, and discredited. Bunyan’s pilgrims passing through Vanity Fair were a spectacle. In dress, speech, interest, and sense of values, they differed from the worldlings. Is this so in our lives today?

During the last war a British general said, ‘‘We must teach our men to hate, for what men hate they will fight.’’ We have heard much (though not half enough) about perfect love; but we also need to know how to ‘‘be angry and sin not.’’ The Spirit-filled believer will hate iniquity, injustice, and impurity; and he will militate against all of them. Because Paul hated the world, the world hated Paul. We, too, need this disposition of opposition.

Stanley wrote his ‘‘Darkest Africa,’’ and General Booth his ‘‘Darkest England’’ amidst crushing opposition. The for- mer saw the tall, impenetrable forest, with its lurking leopards, subtle snakes, and denizens of the darkness. Booth saw the English streets as God saw them—the lurking lust, the sewers of sin, the greed of gambling, the peril of prostitution— and he raised an army for God to fight them. Our front streets are now mission fields. Forget culture, for a well-mannered, nicely groomed and soft-spoken lady may be as far from God as the Mau Mau mother with her grass skirt. Our cities are alive with impurity. A Christian, dreaming before his television night by night, has a dead brain and a bankrupt soul. He would do better to persuade God to let him quit this world if he is so out of touch with this lax, loose, licentious age that blindness of the sinner no longer tears his soul. Every street is now a river of devilry, drink, divorce, darkness, and damnation. If you are taking a stand against all this, marvel not, brethren, that the world hate you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own.

Paul declares in good round English, ‘‘The world is crucified unto me.’’ Is this far beyond twentieth century Christians? Golgotha witnessed many crowds who came to see the humiliation of its malefactors. There was carnival at the Cross; there was mockery at misery. But who went the next morning to view the victims? The first callers were vultures— to peck out their eyes and strip their ribs; then dogs ate the limbs which hung from these hapless victims. Thus distorted, and decorated with his own entrails, the felon was a fright. Even so, to Paul, the crucified world was as unattractive as that!

Well might we, too, inwardly quake and with trembling lips repeat this phrase, the world is crucified to me. Only when we are thus ‘‘dead to the world and all its toys, its idle pomp and fading joys’’ can we feel the freedom that Paul knew. The plain fact is that we followers of Christ respect the world and its opinions and appreciations and qualifications. A modern critic says that we believers have gold for our god and greed for our creed. (Only those who are guilty will get mad at that quip!) On the other hand, in this year of grace, I do know some saints on both sides of the Atlantic who wear clothes that others have cast off, and so turn all their dollars and dimes (or pounds and pence) into grist for God’s mill. With his strong emphasis on separation, one wonders that Paul ever got any converts at all.

This blessed man, to whom the world was crucified, was considered ‘‘mad.’’ Moreover, Paul so presented his message that others sought his death, for their ‘‘craft was in danger!’’ Such blessed apostles, with their healthy, holy disregard for the world and its men, shame us.

‘‘They climbed the steep ascent to heaven

     Through peril, toil and pain;

O God, to us may grace be given

     To follow in their train.’’

Soon it will be ‘‘Farewell mortality, welcome eternity.’’ Here’s wishing you, beloved believer, a year of sacrificial service for Him who was our sacrifice. May we, too, finish our course with joy.