declare the glory of Him who is Lord over all. Paul could not have
had this meaning in his mind when he spoke of Demas as having, through
loving the present world, made shipwreck concerning his faith. He was
thinking rather of the sum-total of those pursuits, pleasures, and
ambitions which bind man to earth, hamper his spiritual growth, and
lead him to his ruin. The "world" in this sense is God's rival; to
love the "world" is to hate God.

What does separation from God imply, and when can it be said to take
place? God is everywhere; who can flee His presence? God is a spirit;
who can do Him injury? These are questions that have always presented
some difficulty. It was asked in the days of Malachi, "_Will a man rob
God_?" as if such a thing were beyond the range of possibility. At the
day of judgment, those on the left hand will ask the Judge, "_Lord when
saw we Thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick,
or in prison, and did not minister unto Thee_?" as if the things laid
to their charge were without foundation. Now, the objectors in the
days of Malachi who asked, "Wherein have we robbed thee?" were
answered, "In the tithes and offering." And the objectors at the day
of judgment will be answered, "_Verily, I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye
did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to Me_."
Evidently, therefore, God--or God in Christ--and His cause are in a
very real sense identical; so that he who forsakes the one, of
necessity forsakes the other also.

Separation from the world is an inward process; it takes place in the
heart, and cannot therefore be perceived by a man's most intimate
friends. But the forsaking of God's cause is the outward expression of
this process, the manner whereby it becomes known to all the world. If
it is asked why we assert that Demas had forsaken God, the answer is
evident; it is because he forsook Paul, who was the representative of
God's cause.

This is never the work of a day, though it may sometimes appear such.
A professedly religious man commits a flagrant act of sin--or perhaps a
punishable crime--which places him at once among the open enemies of
religion. We wonder at it; we say in our minds, "What a sudden change!
yesterday a saint, to-day an unmitigated villain!" But are we right in
saying so? Certainly not. That rash act was simply the culmination of
a process that had been going on through a long period. The man had
been sailing