Worldliness Among Christians

I read this article from a Christian website, a film review:

http://www.crossrhythms.co.uk/articles/life/The_Bourne_Ultimatum/28811/p1/

These verses (NIV) came to mind:

1 John 2:15-17. 'Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.'

Galatians 6:14. 'May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.'

James 4:4. 'You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.'

Is this too harsh?

richardf

Grrrr... We just dont see it. We dont see the worldiness.

And whats worse is many preachers are now using clips from worldy movies during their sermons to illustrate their points. How vile is it to use a PG-13 or R rated movie to attempt to make the Word of God clearer to your listeners? Talk about unequally yoked.

And by doing this the preacher is promoting worldliness to their listeners.

Krispy

That's encouraging, I thought I was the only one who took those verses literally. Most Christians around me don't have a problem with worldliness in their lives.

I think it was Ravenhill who said, 'We haven't spent five minutes with God, but we'll spend 2hrs in a stinking movie house.' The Bible says what the Bible says. Let us live by it.

Worldliness is wrong. In any form.

Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.

Thank you for that verse, brother. It's a mouthful. An enemy of God?! At times I am think I am just getting by, or being amiable out of sincere, unconditional love, but what is it to be a [i]friend[/i]... of the world? Doing and enjoying the things it does? Being like-minded, on its side? Feeling at home in it? And then what does it mean to be an [i]enemy[/i]? In our day we don't like having enemies, people running after our lives. It's just not natural to have somebody hate you, or persecute you for any reason. We're supposed to be agreeable, right? (Ain't that the wisdom of the world?) So much of what I do day after day has somewhere deep at its rood one motive: pleasing men and feeling good about it. So then, if people like me so much, me being a Christian--I mean, worldly people--is there something wrong with me? Was Paul a likable, good person, or the Lord Jesus, when He rebuked the proud and self-righteous Pharisees? To God: yes. But to men: they killed them.

What is also amazing in the verse is that we [i]choose[/i] to be or not to be friends of this world. It is a choice, and everybody, consciously or not, make it. Art Katz said that there are only two possibilities: to be an idolater, or to be a martyr. The line is so fine, incomprehensible. Only the Lord by His Spirit can make it known to us, and deliver us from our idolatry. May He have mercy on us the unworthy and blind to do so! I am afraid that at times I choose, willingly, to be a friend of the world. There comes a point in a believer's walk, when s/he can't be ignorant about it. And this is scary: when we choose to disobey God, not doing what is right. But both for the ignorant and for the backsliders there is hope, in the blood of Jesus!

In Christ,
Slavyan

1 John 2:15-17. 'Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives foreve

There is a sermon by a man named Thomas Chalmers that deals with the very issue. ( He was a preacher in the Church of Scotland back in the 1700's)

His take on it is a little different though.

The sermon is called "The Expulsive Power of a New Affection"

Basically he says: A preacher can deal with the sin (the love of this world) one of two ways. He can just stand and decry how horrible sin is and he can scare people. Or he can replace the love for this world with a new affection. His conclusion is that that is what the Gospel does.

In this case there is something more than the mere displacement of an affection. There is the overbearing of one affection by another. But to desolate his heart of all love for the things of the world, without the substitution of any love in its place, were to him a process of as unnatural violence, as to destroy all the things that he has in the world, and give him nothing in their room. So that, if to love not the world be indispensable to one's Christianity, then the crucifixion of the old man is not too strong a term to mark that transition in his history, when all old things are done away and all things become new. We hope that by this time, you understand the impotency of a mere demonstration of this world's insignificance. Its sole practical effect, if it had any, would be. to leave the heart in a state which to even heart is insupportable, and that is a mere state of nakedness and negation. You may remember the fond and unbroken tenacity with which your heart has often recurred to pursuits, over the utter frivolity of which it sighed and wept but yesterday. The arithmetic of your short-lived days, may on Sabbath make the clearest impression upon your understanding - and from his fancied bed of death, may the preacher cause a voice to descend in rebuke and mockery on all the pursuits of earthliness - and as he pictures before you the fleeting generations of men, with the absorbing grave, whither all the joys and interests of the world hasten to their sure and speedy oblivion, may you, touched and solemnized by his argument, feel for a moment as if on the eve of a practical and permanent emancipation from a scene of so much vanity.

But the morrow comes, and the business of the world, and the objects of the world, and the moving forces of the world come along with it - and the machinery of the heart, in virtue of which it must have something to grasp, or something to adhere to, brings it under a kind of moral necessity to be actuated just as before - and in utter repulsion to wards a state so unkindly as that of being frozen out both of delight and of desire, does it feel all the warmth and the urgency of its wonted solicitations - nor in the habit and history of the whole man, can we detect so much as one symptom of the new creature - so that the church, instead of being to him a school of obedience, has been a mere sauntering place for the luxury of a passing and theatrical emotion; and the preaching which is mighty to compel the attendance of multitudes, which is mighty to still and to solemnize the hearers into a kind of tragic sensibility, which is mighty in the play of variety and vigour that it can keep up around the imagination, is not mighty to the pulling down of strong holds.

The love of the world cannot be expunged by a mere demonstration of the world's worthlessness. But may it not be supplanted by the love of that which is more worthy than itself? The heart cannot be prevailed upon to part with the world, by a simple act of resignation. But may not the heart be prevailed upon to admit into its preference another, who shall subordinate the world, and bring it down from its wonted ascendancy? If the throne which is placed there must have an occupier, and the tyrant that now reigns has occupied it wrongfully, he may not leave a bosom which would rather detain him than be left in desolation. But may he not give way to the lawful sovereign, appearing with every charm that can secure His willing admittance, and taking unto himself His great power to subdue the moral nature of man, and to reign over it? In a word, if the way to disengage the heart from the positive love of one great and ascendant object, is to fasten it in positive love to another, then it is not by exposing the worthlessness of the former, but by addressing to the mental eye the worth and excellence of the latter, that all old things are to be done away and all things are to become new. To obliterate all our present affections by simply expunging them, and so as to leave the seat of them unoccupied, would be to destroy the old character, and to substitute no new character in its place. But when they take their departure upon the ingress of other visitors; when they resign their sway to the power and the predominance of new affections; when, abandoning the heart to solitude, they merely give place to a successor who turns it into as busy a residence of desire and interest and expectation as before - there is nothing in all this to thwart or to overbear any of the laws of our sentient nature - and we see how, in fullest accordance with the mechanism of the heart, a great moral revolution may be made to take place upon it.

The whole sermon is at this website: http://www.newble.co.uk/chalmers/comm9.html

It's long, but it's worth the read.

I agree with all of you that we have the immutable command to : "Love not the world"

But, the power to obey that command is only found in the Gospel.

If Scripture is so plain and simple about not being worldly at all, why do so many Christians ignore it?

If Scripture is so plain and simple about not being worldly at all, why do so many Christians ignore it?

Because they are not Christians. They are imposters and our babylonian church system strengthens them in their sin and wordliness.

In Christ - Jim

Wow guys, I completely agree with all your answers. This is hefty stuff.