The Fashion of This World

In this Epistle, Paul deals with many matters of conscience, and explains them for the benefit of the troubled ones in the church at Corinth. In the chapter out of which our text is taken, he writes wisely concerning the important question of marriage, and he recommends that, during the time of persecution it is well to abstain from marriage, though he does not forbid it even under the pressure of those trying circumstances. Then, after he has spent a considerable time in looking at the subject from various standpoints, he says, “It remaineth, that they that have wives, be as though they had none.” He seemed to think that the whole matter of marriage was too small for him to take into any very serious consideration, seeing that the time was so short in which such questions could need to be discussed at all, “for,” said he, “the fashion of this world passeth away.”

The Greek word used in this verse has, by some expositors, been read as though the apostle referred to mathematical figures, as when the boy at school, working out the propositions in Euclid, draws upon his slate circles, triangles, and squares, and then almost immediately rubs the whole out, and begins another set of figures. In that sense, the whole scheme or fashion of this world is only like the markings on a slate, or the chalk drawings on a blackboard; something not intended to last, but to be done away with almost immediately. So there is no need to be troubled about the things of this world, except so far as they have reference to the world to come, for the whole scheme, and plan, and fashion of this world passeth away.

But an interpretation which is far more likely to be correct is that the apostle meant, “The whole theatrical performance of this world’s pageant passeth away; the whole of its various acts, and shows, and manifestations passeth away.” If that is the meaning, Paul seems to be of the mind of the world’s great poet, that—

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.”

So he says, “The whole play passeth away; the whole performance, which is now upon the stage, will soon be changed, and all will be gone.” Just as men put on mimic robes, and one is arrayed as a monarch, and another appeareth as a slave; one is dressed in scarlet and fine linen, and another comes on the scene in the rags of a beggar; but, as soon as the play is over, they all take off the dresses appertaining to their various parts, and go to their homes in quite different garb;—so, all the pomp and glory of this world will soon have passed away, and men will go to their own eternal dwelling place, the fashion of this world having passed away for ever. It is to that thought that I wish to call your earnest attention just now. May the Holy Spirit teach us what he intended the apostle to convey to our minds concerning the transitory character of all worldly things!

I. First, then, let us ask, What is the fashion of this world that passeth away?

I answer, first, it is the whole world itself and all humanity dwelling upon it. All that we see around us is passing away. Although, to some minds, this visible creation looks as if it might last for ever, there are signs of decrepitude and decay which the thoughtful can easily discern. The very granite crumbles, the sea breaks its bounds, even the sun’s lamp at times grows dull. All things bear signs that this world is but as the traveller’s tent that is pitched to-night, only to be struck to-morrow morning. The day is coming, whether we wish it or not, when “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” As once by a deluge of water, so the second time by a deluge of fire, the whole fashion of this world shall surely pass away; “all these things shall be dissolved.” We talk about the everlasting hills, and speak of the sea as the hoary ocean; but there is nought except God that is really worthy of veneration because of age. We read of his Son, in whom he has manifested himself, that “his head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow,” to indicate the great antiquity of Christ; but all human beings are but things of an hour, and they and the world they inhabit shall soon have departed.

Vain man, who looks on this world as a thing that is lasting, should at least look upon himself as fleeting. Generations have followed each other till the whole earth resembles a sea-beach when the tide is down, where ten thousand worms have each one cast up his little separate hillock, and then gone from sight. What is there to remind us of past generations but their graves? Even their works have decayed before the time when all men’s works are to be consumed. Since we have been our own little while in the world, how many have passed away! The funeral bell is almost always tolling; the sexton never ceases from his work. Every time the clock ticks, a soul takes its flight into the land unknown. While we have been sitting here, the great processes of decay, and dissolution, and death have been going on; and although we may not have noticed it, we ourselves have been passing onwards by an inevitable march towards the confines of the spirit world. We are in a dying world, and none of us will be able to escape from the influences that are, in due time, to bear us away from this world, which is itself passing away. So, brethren, if the apostle meant nothing more than this, there is enough, in the remembrance that this world, and all who are upon it, are passing away, to calm our minds, and to make us bethink ourselves of the instability of mortal things, and of the necessity of securing something more substantial and enduring.

“The time is short ere all that live

Shall hence depart, their God to meet:

And each a strict account must give,

At Jesu’s awful judgment-seat.

“The time is short, oh, who can tell

How short his time below may be?

To-day on earth his soul may dwell,

To-morrow in eternity.”

But, secondly, “the fashion of this world passeth away” in reference to all its honours and dignities. All that was ever emblazoned on the roll of fame, and thought to be written there for ever, shall surely be blotted out. They who wear royal crowns now shall not always be crowned. Those who are decorated with glittering stars and jewels now shall not be always so adorned. Come to the charnel-house, and see how much is left of any of the Cæsars. Look into the vault of Alexander, and see how little is the greatest of the great. The monarch cannot be distinguished from his slave, and men cannot maintain their various ranks and degrees of dignity in the grave. Death, that great Radical and Communist, that awful leveller, is continually smiting down the mighty; and with his dread axe he felleth the haughty cedar of Lebanon as easily as he doth the rush by the riverside. But there are those who will be kings when these kings of earth are no more regarded as royal, and there are those who will be peers of the heavenly realm when earthly peers have lost their patents of nobility. There are kings and priests whom the world wots not of, who shall yet come forth from their obscurity; in the day when the King of kings shall be revealed, they also shall be revealed; but, meanwhile, the fashion of this world, so far as its pomp and greatness are concerned, passeth away.

Then, dear friends, let us remember, in the third place, that the civil fashion of this world will certainly pass away too. It is necessary for good government that there should be judges, and dignitaries, and magistrates, and so forth, and men think much of the power of governing their fellow-creatures, and talk proudly about constitutions that are to last all down the ages, and establishments that will withstand the attacks of the years that are yet to come, but they make a great mistake. All these must pass away. The magistrate on the bench must be made equal with the prisoner at the bar. The great man must slumber in the dust with the beggar who was splashed by the mud from his horses’ hoofs as he rode along in his pride.

Remember, too,—and this is a solemn reflection that ought to press heavily upon every ungodly heart,—that the association of the righteous and the wicked, which is part of the fashion of this world to-day, is passing away. Many of you are, at the present moment, being kindly cared for by divine providence more for the sake of your godly relatives than for your own sakes, for you are ungodly, and therefore God cannot regard you in the same light as he does his own believing children. You are nestling under the same roof with your father, who is a saint of God; yet, if you died as you now are, you would be lost for ever. You are, at this moment, sitting in the same pew with one who loves the Lord Jesus Christ, but you are yourself Christless and hopeless. This congregation, as I look upon it, seems to me like a heap of corn upon the threshing-floor, but there is much chaff mingled with the wheat. I see here a great field of precious grain springing up, but the tares are mixed with the wheat. That is according to the fashion of this world; it must inevitably be so in the present state of things.

Even in the professing church itself, this is the fashion to-day, for the great drag-net has taken in its meshes fish of every kind, some good and some bad. But this shall not be the fashion ere long, for this present fashion passeth away; and, then, the net shall be drawn to shore, and they shall gather the good into vessels, but they shall cast the bad away. The great reaping time shall come by-and-by, and then the tares shall be bound in bundles to be burned; while the wheat shall be gathered into the garner.

“East and West, and South and North,

Speeds each glorious angel forth,

Gathering in with glittering wing,

Zion’s saints to Zion’s King.

“Man nor angel knows that day,

Heaven and earth shall pass away;

Still shall stand the Saviour’s word,

Deathless as its deathless Lord.”

Think of this, you who are living now in close relationship to Christian people. How will you bear to be separated from them when this present fashion passeth away? O husbands of gracious wives, children of godly parents, ungodly parents of converted children, think of the time when this fashion shall be ended, and the separating day shall come, and you are driven forth to the blackness of darkness for ever, while your loved ones are walking with Christ for ever in the home of the blessed in glory!

Mark, too, fourthly, that the busy fashion of this world will also pass away. You are engaged in your shops, most properly; you are toiling in your various callings, or pursuing your several professions. One is a baker, another a grocer; one is a lawyer, and another a doctor; but all this occupation passeth away. There is a land in which there shall be no toiling for daily bread, and no need to cast ourselves wearily upon our couch after too long and too trying a day of toil. There is a time coming when that extra ten pounds which seems so important, now, or that extra ten thousand pounds, or that extra million pounds added to one’s estate shall be thought to be of no more value than a single hair. When men come to die, how their business dwarfs to nothing! It casts a long shadow right across the pathway of life; but when they lie upon their last bed, and gaze into eternity, they see things in a different light, and estimate them at their real value. O sirs, ye, who are pursuing earthly gain as though it were something substantial, are like the fools that hunt the will-o’-the-wisp, and plunge after it into the morass, to their own destruction! Can ye carry your gold with you into the world where you are going? If ye could hang it on the cerements that are to be wrapped about you in the tomb, how much the richer would your dead body be for all its golden decorations? What can your gold buy for you beyond a thicker slab of stone to lie upon your corpse while the poor sleep under a lighter load in a field where the wild flowers grow?

Believe me, there is nought here that is worthy of your pursuit. If you give your soul up to anything earthly, whether it be the wealth, or the honours, or the pleasures of this world, you might as well hunt after the mirage of the desert, or try to collect the mists of the morning, or to store up for yourselves the clouds of the sky, for all these things are passing away. It is hard sometimes to realize that we are citizens of that country where worldly wealth has lost all value because of the infinitely more precious wealth there that is the common property of all the saints. It is hard sometimes to realize what that land must be where we are to rest for ever, and yet to serve God day and night in his temple; but when we are indulged by the Holy Spirit with a faith’s view of that better country, and are permitted for a little while to think of the time when we shall bathe our weary souls in these seas of heavenly rest, and not a wave of trouble shall roll across our peaceful breast, then are we glad that the fashion of this poor weary world is so soon to pass away. But, alas! the thought of death, and the natural clinging that we all have to life, make us sometimes wish that this world would last for ever, and that its fashion were not so transient as it is. Yet, wish as ye may, ye sons of men cannot make the fashion of this world remain; it will soon be gone, every jot of it; so may you all have a portion that shall last!

Once more, even this world’s religious fashions will pass away. The time is coming when the Pharisee will no more stand and say, “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess.” Self-righteousness is a fashion that will not outlast the trial hour of death. The time is coming when men will no longer be able to put their trust in priests, or to imagine that occult influences can flow from human, hands into their souls. The foolish fashion of Ritualism and ceremonialism will certainly pass away. It ought never to have existed, for it is a delusion and a snare; but it will pass away when He comes who abhorreth it with all his soul. This world’s religion is sometimes that of mere formal orthodoxy,—the mental acceptance of a certain creed, the laying hold of certain dogmas, and fighting for the outward forms of them. All this is common enough in the religion with which many men are satisfied; but it will all pass away. In that day when nothing but genuine heart-work will endure the tests that will then be applied, and when only the real regenerating work of the Holy Spirit will pass current with the Most High, all mere head-knowledge and notional religion will have melted, and flowed away. Your unopened family Bibles with their great gilded clasps, your brass-bound prayer-books and hymn-books, your mere formal family prayers read out in so orderly a tone, with no heart in the performance,—all will pass away like the foam upon the waters. What careth God for all that you have to say if you say it not from your heart? What value doth he set upon a round of ceremonies if true soul-worship be absent from them? All mere outward godliness and fictitious religion will pass away; and how naked and ashamed will the worldly professor be when God shall strip him of his tawdry robes! How foul will they look who thought themselves clean! How horrible will be the leprosy upon the brows of those who imagined that all was well because they covered their filthy sores from the sight of men! How desperate will be their doom who dreamed of going to heaven, yet who have never trusted in Christ’s great atoning sacrifice! May none of us have anything to do with this world’s fashion which will pass away, but may we all have that righteousness which will ensure to us the life everlasting!

“We’ve no abiding city here;

This may distress the worldling’s mind,

But should not cost the saint a tear,

Who hopes a better rest to find.

“We’ve no abiding city here;

Sad truth, were this to be our home;

But let this thought our spirits cheer,

We seek a city yet to come.

“We’ve no abiding city here;

Then let us live as pilgrims do:

Let not the world our rest appear,

But let us haste from all below.”

This will suffice concerning the fashion of this world which passeth away.

II. Now, just for a few minutes, I am going to try to show you, by way of contrast to what I have been saying, that there is a fashion that will not pass away.

There are some things that will remain, and amongst them is, first, the life within the believer which God’s Holy Spirit has implanted. Do you know what it is, dear friends, to be “born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever”? He who hath a mere notional religion, that springs from his own free will, will find that, sooner or later, it will die; but that incorruptible seed of the Holy Ghost, which constitutes us the living children of the last Adam, who was made a quickening Spirit, shall never die. That life came not from mortal man, neither can the teeth of time fret it, nor the arrows of death smite it. This is one of the things that passeth not away.

And, as the inner life of the believer thus endures, so, thank God, the outward truth also passeth not away. There is not a single truth that is revealed in this blessed Book that shall ever become a lie. There is not one promise there that shall ever be revoked. What God hath revealed, in his Word, is not for yesterday nor for to-day alone, but for to-morrow, and until the world’s end, and throughout eternity. I know that there are those who would like to see a new Bible, or a revised version of it,—I mean a revised version of the original Scriptures to suit their depraved taste. They would fain have what they call “new developments” and “fresh light” worthy of this “advanced” generation! But, beloved friends, there is nothing new in theology* but that which is false; only the old is true, for truth must be old, as old as God himself. So let us rejoice that, whatever may happen, and although the fashion of this world shall surely pass away, there is not a single text between the covers of this Book that shall ever lose an atom of its truth and force. Oh, no; the old Book is not effete, and the revelation it has brought to us will never grow stale. The promises well up with as rich consolation to us to-day as they did to the first of the martyr-band. The solemn oath and covenant of God stand as firm and fast to-day as when he first gave them to our fathers; so let us cling to the Holy Word and to the doctrines of God’s grace, for these are among the things that are to abide for ever.

“En graved as in eternal brass

The mighty promise shines:

Nor can the powers of darkness rase

Those everlasting lines.

“He that can dash whole worlds to death,

And make them when he please;

He speaks, and that almighty breath

Fulfils his great decrees.

“His very word of grace is strong

As that which built the skies;

The voice that rolls the stars along

Speaks all the promises.”

Yet again, as the life within, and the truth revealed, so the fruit of the inner life, wherein we are led by the Holy Spirit and the Word, shall remain. They who build a world-wide empire will lose all that they have laboured to gain. Men may pile up a city of marble only to see it become a heap of dust. But if you give a cup of cold water, in the name of Christ, to one who belongs to him, you shall not lose your reward. Every holy thought, every devout purpose, every thankful hymn, every earnest prayer, every true-hearted sermon, every good work that is done for God in the power of the Holy Spirit, liveth beyond the possibility of death. The saints depart from earth, in due season; but why? “That they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.” Their works are still present before the mind of God, and he accepts them. Not all that even Christians do shall abide, for “the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.” Many a man, and many a good man too, shall lose much of what he did;—much of his preaching, much of his teaching, much of his so-called praying and alms-giving, shall prove to be but wood, hay, and stubble which shall be burned, though he himself, being on the rock, a believer in Christ, shall be “saved; yet so as by fire.” But happy is that man who so completely lives unto God, and is so fully guided by the Holy Spirit and by the revealed truth of God, that he spends himself and is wholly spent in his Master’s service, and so builds upon the one foundation, which is Jesus Christ, not wood, hay, and stubble, but gold, silver, and precious stones, which shall be found to his own joy and to God’s glory in the great testing time that is surely coming.

Further, my dear brethren and sisters in Christ, it is a very sweet reflection that, amongst the things that shall never pass away, are such as these:—the love that was fixed upon us before the day-star knew its place or planets ran their round; the love that bought us upon Calvary’s cross; the love that has prepared a place for us that, where Jesus is, there we may be also, to be like him, and with him for ever;—that love shall never pass away. So, too, the power of God which brought us up out of Egypt, and is leading us through the wilderness, the power that has fought our battles, and has kept us safely to this day;—that power shall never pass away. Then, too, the fulness of God, upon which we have lived, and from which we have been drinking such deep draughts to satisfy our great necessities;—that fulness shall never pass away. There will come a time when everything of a spiritual kind, which we have rejoiced in here, instead of passing away, shall be brighter than ever to our sight, nearer to us, and better understo Our true daylight draweth nigh. It is twilight with us now, but not the twilight of the evening; ’tis the twilight of the dawn. Our pathway lies upward; we have already ascended somewhat, but we have to go far higher yet. Up the ladder that Jacob saw we pursue our joyful way, and there shall be no descent for us; there shall be no falling from the elevation to which grace uplifts us, “for the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.” We shall soon see the King in his beauty, and the land that is very far off. We may begin to put off our old week-day garments, for the heavenly Sabbath bells will soon ring out their welcome call. Let us shake ourselves from the dust, for our beautiful array is ready, and we shall soon sit down at the marriage supper of the Lamb. Eagerly anticipate—all of you who love the Lord Jesus Christ,—eagerly anticipate your better portion. Ye daughters of sickness, you shall soon have done with all pains and pangs for ever. Ye children of poverty, you shall soon have done with your anxieties and griefs concerning your many wants. Ye toil-worn workers in the vineyard of Christ, and ye who are oppressed with many cares, you shall be Marthas no longer, but you shall sit at Jesu’s feet for ever. As for you who have been mourning, and sighing, and crying, your weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Put off your sackcloth, for God shall gird you with the garment of praise. Forget the drought of the wilderness, for you shall soon be in the paradise of God, and at his right hand where there are pleasures for evermore.

“O paradise eternal!

What bliss to enter thee,

And once within thy portals,

Secure for ever be!

“There all around shall love us,

And we return their love;

On band of happy spirits,

One family above.

“There God shall be our portion,

And we his jewels be;

And gracing his bright mansions,

His smile reflect and see.

“O paradise eternal,

What joys in thee are known!

O God of mercy guide us,

Till all be felt our own!”

The gist of all I wanted to say is just this. Brethren and sisters, let us hold very loosely everything here, but let us get a very firm grip of everything that is to be hereafter. Let the visible begin even now to melt away, and let the invisible take its true substantial form. If God has been prospering some of you,—and he has been very gracious and kind to some of his people in temporal matters, set not your hearts on any of those things. Your garden, your house, your children, your gold,—all the prosperity that God gives you,—accept it, rejoice in it, use it as you ought, but do not abuse it; these things are not your God; you have no abiding city here, but you seek one to come; and, oh, do give a grip as of steel to the things that are eternal! Never endure a doubt that Christ is really yours; if you have one, may the Holy Spirit cast it out, and give you the full assurance of faith! Never tolerate the question, “Is Christ mine?” If it must be raised, and it must sometimes, never be content till you have settled it. With your face in the dust, and your hands in the prints of your Saviour’s pierced feet, come now to him again; cling to him anew; make him your All-in-all; and so, when the shadows thicken, and the world grows dim, may the light stream full upon your eyes, and your soul stretch her wings, and soar away to her eternal rest!

The Lord bless you all, for Jesus Christ’s sake! Amen.