What Did Jesus Mean by “The World”?

By Nicholas T. Batzig

In his excellent little book The Emotions of Jesus, Robert Law offers a passing contemplation about how the Savior would have seen the world through the lens of sinless human experience. He writes: 

“Though little is directly reported of it in the Gospels, this also belonged to the perfection of our Lord Jesus. No one has ever lived in such a marvellous world as he, to whom ‘the glory in the grass and splendour in the flower’ continually revealed the diviner miracle of a Heavenly Father's munificent love and care.”

If anyone could have sung the words of the hymn “This Is My Father’s World” with a heart full of delight at the manifestation of the glory of God in the intricately created plants, trees, animals, fish, sunsets, oceans, seasons, minerals, gems, rocks, scents, food, and drink, it was the sinless Son of God incarnate. And yet, there was another world that the Savior viewed from the side of sinless humanity. These two worlds collided when the Son of God entered the first world in order to redeem men from the second. The mystery of the incarnation is that “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him” (John 1:10).

As He walked the dusty Palestinian streets, moving ever closer to the cross, Jesus declared the essence of what He had come into the world to do. In addition to coming to atone for the sins of His people—and in addition to conquering the evil one—Jesus came to overcome the world. He made this clear when He said, “Now is the judgment of this world” (John 12:31). Again, as He brought the Upper Room Discourse (John 13–17) to a close, Jesus told His disciples: “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Judging and overcoming the world was an essential part of Jesus’ work on the cross.

Of course, in order to rightly understand the nature of Jesus’ victory over the world, we have to come to a right understanding of His use of the word “world” in these two places in John’s gospel. Jesus surely did not have creation per se in mind. Though it is subjected to futility on account of the sin of man (Rom. 8:20), there is nothing inherently evil about creation. It couldn’t be that Jesus was frowning on the world that He had created together with His Father and the Holy Spirit. It must have been another “world” altogether.

The World

The Apostle John spelt out what Jesus had in mind when he described the world of which Jesus spoke: 

“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:15–17). 

It is the world under the sway of the evil one to which Jesus referred when He spoke of overcoming it. He had come to conquer the prince of the power of the air—the (little r) ruler of this world—and to overthrow the dreadful results of the rebellion into which the evil one had led mankind. One writer captured so well what Scripture has in mind when it speaks of this fallen world:

It is the world with its power and might, its knowledge and wisdom, its commerce and industry, its culture and civilization, without God and in opposition to Him; the world with its pride and self-exaltation, its trust in man and in the power and wisdom of man, its hatred for God and of one another, its covetousness and lust for power, and for the glory of man; the world with its lust of the flesh, its idolatry and adultery, its profanity and deceit, it's striving after pleasures and treasures, its . . . vanities; the world, too, with its strife and debate, its unrest and revolutions, its wars and destruction.1

Just as Jesus came to conquer the sin of His people and the stronghold of the evil one, He came to overcome this present evil world by His death on the cross. But, how could He say that the judgment of the world had already come when He was on the earth? After all, Jesus said, “Now is the judgment of the world.” 

The answer is found in the already/not-yet of His finished work on the cross. 

In the death of Jesus, the world was put on trial. When the Son of God was being condemned before human judges, the Judge of all the earth was condemning this fallen, evil world. When He hung on the cross, the Son of God was tearing away the facade of goodness with which the world masks its idolatry, pride, foolishness, self-righteousness, and lawlessness. When we see Christ crucified, we see the world as it really is—in all of its rebellion and deceit. There is a day coming in which the verdict, which was rendered at the cross, will be fully and openly manifested. On that day, all of the world’s deceit and hypocrisy, falsehood and wickedness will be laid bare and viewed in light of the righteous judgment of the Son of God.

God will purify this present world of all of its evil, pollution, and corruption and bring something new and righteously beautiful out of what was old and corrupt.

The implications are enormous for those who have been united to Christ by faith alone. In the first place, the believer must learn to live his or her Christian life in light of the relationship that he or she now sustains to the overcome world. At the end of the letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul made that glorious declaration about the result of the death of Jesus in regard to his relation to the world: “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Gal. 6:14). The great Scottish pastor William Still explained:

We like to think of the double crucifixion, envisaged here, in theatrical terms. There stands the world, and there stand I, and between us stands the cross. Viewed from the world’s side I am crossed out because branded with that hateful cross the world has no time for me. Viewed from my side the world is crossed out, for through my faith in Christ’s death I have also died to the world; so that I and the world agreed on one thing, and one only; that through Christ we have equally and mutually no time for each other.

In the second place, there is a promise to believers that no matter how much the world may persecute, oppose, oppress, scoff at, and deride them, Christ is the victorious King and Savior of those He chose out of the world and for whom He gave Himself on the cross. The victory is already won. There is nothing that the world can do in all of its persecuting malice to separate the believer from the love of God in Christ. This is the reason why the Apostle cried out, 

“I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38–39). In the world, believers will most certainly have tribulation. “But,” Jesus says, “take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

In the third place, there is a cosmic implication to Christ’s victory over the world. Jesus has conquered this fallen world and secured a new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. This does not mean that Jesus is going to scrap this present world and create one that is altogether new. It does mean, however, that because of what Christ has accomplished at the cross, God will purify this present world of all of its evil, pollution, and corruption and bring something new and righteously beautiful out of what was old and corrupt. In our next article, we will look in more detail at this dimension of the cross.

 

Herman Hoeksema, The Amazing Cross (Jenison, Mich.: Reformed Free Publishing Association, 2018), 10–11. ↩︎