God and the world are diametrically opposed to each other. But how can something that God created represent opposition to his nature and will?
Evil exists, but it did not always exist. It came into existence because God made it possible for men and angels to choose to serve him or reject him. Both angels and men rejected him.
Their rebellion in this universe is behind the "world," a word used in many passages of scripture to denote "that which is hostile to God, i.e. lost in sin, wholly at odds [with] anything divine, ruined and depraved" (BGAD). In this sense, "the whole world lies in the power of the evil one" (1 John 5.11).
The world stands under God's judgment. The Lord judges and disciplines his people "so that we may not be condemned with the world" (1 Corinthians 11.32). Through faith, Noah "condemned the world" (Hebrews 11.7). Christ pulls us out of this condemnation. "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8.1).
So God's people no longer belong to the world. They are in it still and have been sent into it as agents of salvation, but they are not of it (see John 17). As Paul would say, they are dead to it. Peter calls it an escape from "the filthy things of the world through the rich knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 2.20).
God's people and the world have nothing in common. "They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world's perspective and the world listens to them. We are from God; the person who knows God listens to us, but whoever is not from God does not listen to us" (1 John 4.5-6a). In fact, "the world hates" the ones God has gathered to himself (1 John 3.13).
Because of this inherent antagonism between God and the world, God's people cannot be, in the truest sense of the term, friends with the world. James defines the attempt to be friends with the world and God at the same time as spiritual adultery, or betrayal. "Adulterers, do you not know that friendship with the world means hostility toward God? So whoever decides to be the world's friend makes himself God's enemy" (James 4.4).
Jesus summed up the antithesis as "God and Mammon" (Matthew 6.24; Luke 16.13). Money is the physical manifestation of the devil's power to persuade the world that security can be bought. Man can take care of himself. By working harder, smarter, longer hours, the world believes it is able to guarantee its future, hedge its bets against adversity, and take charge of its own life. The saint knows it's all a lie. By faith he depends upon the preserving power of God and overcomes the world (1 John 5.4).
The world tends to accept and justify sin when it takes up residence nearby. Parents for example, tend to accept adultery or homosexuality when their children practice it. God's people, however, know that all sin distances man from God. When it appears close to them, they find it all the more repugnant, because of the harm it does to themselves and to their loved ones. Part of their goal for a pure and undefiled religion is "to keep oneself unstained by the world" (James 1.27). Only in this way can they "shine as lights in the world" (Philippians 2.15).
Nor can God's people have fellowship with those whose religion has been penetrated by the world. The world erects its idols, worships the product of its own mind, performs works which it has defined as good and worthy. The world believes all religions are the same. Religion is something good to have, but no one should be radical about religion, because it's one element of the good life, a sop to whatever Exalted Being or Superior Power may be out there.
Those who have embraced the Cross will not find it hard to abandon this world of sin or to leave it upon death or Christ's return. They are glad to have been saved from it; their praise is not for their own accomplishments but for God's rescue from a perishing world. "But 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" (Galatians 6.14).
No comments:
Post a Comment