The Gospel of John captures the long prayer that Jesus prayed before his disciples in the upper room at the last supper before His arrest. In that prayer He makes this remarkable request:
I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 15I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. John 17:14–15
Apparently when we come to believe in Jesus He doesn’t just call us home immediately because He has more work that he wants to accomplish in us and through us. But our quandary is that we still live in a dark, corrupt world that can corrupt us as well.
I picture a large clay jar immersed about half way up in a brackish tide pool. It’s so porous and full of cracks and fissures that the bad water is seeping into it and polluting it. That pot is like my heart in this dark and polluted world. What am I to do? I can’t move the jar because it’s anchored in place.
The answer is the fill the jar with fresh water, and keep filling it. Once the fresh water is up to the level as the brackish water outside the flow stops. But when it rises above the outside level, fresh water begins to flow outward through the cracks. And if you keep on pouring the fresh water in, the inside of the jar gets cleaner and cleaner as it flushes the bad water out.
There’s a spiritual anaology to this picture. Peter told the very first hearers of the Gospel:
And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Acts 2:38
Later the apostle Paul adds a few brushstrokes to the picture with this exhortation:
And do not get drunk with wine, for that is debauchery, but be filled with the Spirit, Ephesians 5:18–20
The verb in the Greek text is a present tense which we could translate literally as: “keep being filled with the Spirit.” Get that? “Keep being filled with the Spirit.” Just like in our story of the porous clay pot, as the Spirit keeps filling our heart, the flow from the world inward is reversed!
And John reminds us:
Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. 1 John 4:4
So the solution to living in a dark and corrupt world without being corrupted by it, is not a technique or some multi-step program. It’s a person! When I’m being filled with the Spirit of God, His holiness and goodness flow into me and out through the cracks and fissures of my life and into the world around me. It’s a beautiful thing!