INSULATED

I do not pray that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one – John 17:15

The Ordered Life is an INSULATED Life. We’ve meditated on the disentangled life, but must distinguish between being entangled and being involved. The 17^th chapter of John’s Gospel offers ample revelation. In the Garden, Jesus prayed for us to be IN the world but not OF the world (Jh.17:11,14,16). He prayed to the Father, not to take us “out of the world” but that we should be kept or insulated from the evil (v.15). As believers in Christ, we are in the world but “are not of the world” (v.16). We are to be involved but not entangled. Jesus has sent us “into the world” even as the Father sent Him (v.18). We are to be INSULATED from sin, not ISOLATED from sinners. Our Master left us the example in reaching out to sinful humanity: “Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples” (Mt.9:10). When the Pharisees criticized Him, He affirmed: “For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (Mt.9:13b).

Jesus did not ask the Father to take Christians out of the world, but that He take the world out of Christians (Jh.17:17.19). We are to live IN the world, but must not let the world live IN us. A boat in water is by design, but water in the boat is disaster! As Wiersbe explains: “Identification with the world and its needs is one thing. Imitation of the world and its foolishness is quite another.” Scriptures do not advocate isolation FROM the world, for then we could no longer function as salt and light IN the world (Mt.5:13-16)! God wants His children to impact the world, but we definitely must be insulated from the corruption, contamination, permissiveness, ungodliness, and evil therein. We are to be insulated and not isolated. God is not interested in taking us out of the world and isolating us from ungodly influences. He is not interested in putting us in a monastery somewhere to keep us untainted by the world. His plan is not a plan of isolation, but insulation (v.15). 

Isolation means shutting ourselves off from the world in which we live. Insulation means having the power of Christ flow through us to the lost around us. The first is a clear violation of John 17. The latter is Christ’s model for ministry. The word for entangle – empleko – was also used to describe sheep whose wool was caught in thorns. This helps illustrate the main difference between getting involved and becoming entangled. When the everyday affairs of this life hem us in so tightly that we cannot free ourselves to fulfil the call of Christ our Commander, then we have become entangled in the “thorns” of temporal pursuits, popular philosophy, godless values or the “passing pleasures of sin” (Heb.11:25)! Possessions, projects, and passions have possessed many! And this happens so easily in our increasingly materialistic, hedonistic, seductive and self-absorbed society! Thank God, we are sanctified and insulated through the Word of God (v.17).

Practically however, you must “Guard your heart” – your spiritual and moral control center – with all diligence, knowing that out of it flows the springs of all that determines the course of your life (Pro.4:23). You must continually “watch and be sober” (1The.5:6). You must meditate on things that are of eternal value; things which will still be standing long after the breath of God has swept all other non-eternal entities into oblivion: “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth” (Col.3:2). This is the real Key: Attachment to Christ is the secret of detachment from the world. Ponder on John Piper’s probing questions: “Do we live like our citizenship is in heaven and wait eagerly for the Savior to return (Phi.3:20)? Do we feel like death would be more gain than loss (Phi.1:21)? Are we so entangled with this world that leaving it is the worst thing we can think of?” God wants you insulated, but not isolated: get involved!