"Us" and "Them"

As God’s royal priesthood we stand between God and the world. We represent God to the world and the world to God. We bring the world to God and we, as it were, take God to the world. Our priestly calling thus defines our relationship to the world around us. We exist for the life of the world. So, fundamentally, it’s not so much, “Us versus Them,” and it is, “Us for Them.” Now that is not to say that there is no conflict between “Us” and “Them.” There is! As God’s royal priesthood we must be against the world in order properly to be for the world. As John writes we must “not love the world or the things in the world,” by which he means, “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” And in this sense the world is not simply something out there, but rather is something we must begin rooting out in here. That’s of course one of the mistakes of monasticism and all other retreatist responses to the world. At the end of the day the world is in your heart. The other mistake is neglecting Jesus’ petition in John 17:15, “I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that you should keep them from the evil one.” Jesus intended for us to remain in the world in order that “the world may believe that” He was sent by the Father. Indeed in this same prayer, He says, “As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.” And we know from His instruction to Nicodemus earlier in the Gospel that “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” And in the same way you have been sent into the world, not for its condemnation, but for its salvation. Your calling, then, is to bear witness to Jesus Christ by maintaining that unity, holiness, and faith that have marked the church universal since the days of the Apostles and by calling your friends and neighbors to join this communion of the saints.