The very language carries with it the implication of necessary and
continual antagonism. For what is 'the world,' in this context, but
the aggregate of men, who have no share in the love and life that
flow from Jesus Christ? Necessarily they constitute a unity, whatever
diversities there may be amongst them, and necessarily, that unity in
its banded phalanx is in antagonism, in some measure, to those who
constitute the other unity, which holds by Christ, and has been drawn
by Him from 'out of the world.'

If we share Christ's life, we must, necessarily, in some measure,
share His fate. It is the typical example of what the world thinks
of, and does to, goodness. And all who have 'the Spirit of life which
was in Jesus Christ' for the animating principle of their lives,
will, just in the measure in which they possess it, come under the
same influences which carried Him to the Cross. In a world like this,
it is impossible for a man to 'love righteousness and hate iniquity,'
and to order his life accordingly, without treading on somebody's
corns; being a rebuke to the opposite course of conduct, either
interfering with men's self-complacency or with their interests. From
the beginning the blind world has repaid goodness by antagonism and
contempt.

And then our Lord touches another, and yet closely-connected, cause
when He speaks of His selecting the Apostles, and drawing them out of
the world, as a reason for the world's hostility. There are two
groups, and the fundamental principles that underlie each are in
deadly antagonism. In the measure in which you and I are Christians
we are in direct opposition to all the maxims which rule the world
and make it a world. What we believe to be precious it regards as of
no account. What we believe to be fundamental truth it passes by as