The Bible says:
“Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”
— 1 John 2: 15, 16
What is worldliness?
Simply put, it’s a Christian forsaking his first love and so abandoning the things that are eternal, spiritual, and heavenly, and embracing the things that are earthly, material, and temporal.
This often means they lose their distinctions and no longer are identified with Christ, but because they become like the world are identified with the world.
Worldliness comes about when instead of having the mind of Christ, the Christian follows the herd mentality that follows the mindset of Satan, who is the master mind of the world system. They strive for those things that can be included under lust or primitive desire.
It’s all that excites greedy ambition, and all that arouses in us the pride or glamor of life, all such things that are part of the Satanic system. Worldliness is thinking in terms of the world and regulating our behavior by its standards.
Worldliness can only be true of God’s people. The lost man is not guilty of it because he cannot be anything else.
It is that state in which the Christian continues thinking and living exactly as they did before they were saved. Or it comes after some time of deliverance from it diverting back to by yielding to the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.
The Christian is saved out of the world system and is translated into the kingdom of Christ. They are then in the world but no longer to be of the world or not worldly even as Jesus was in the world, but not of the world or worldly. (John 17: 14) The Christian is to be the “salt of the earth” and “the light of the world.”
(Matthew 5: 13, 14) The current contemporary church is worldly. She reeks with worldliness.
She that was redeemed and “chosen out of the world” and set free by the blood of Jesus Christ is in bondage to Satan through her infatuation with the world. She is worldly because her ideas, and methods, and the way she conducts her affairs are of the world.
And the moment we conduct our affairs the way the world does, and bring in worldly ideas, and methods, and reject God’s method, message, and mission, we’re guilty of worldliness.
There was a time when you could tell someone was a Christian by the way they dressed, spoke and behaved in public. And you still can in some rare instances.
But the worldliness in contemporary Christianity has blurred all distinctions and you have to wonder if the professing Christian is just a worldly Christian or actually still a lost person pretending to be a Christian.
Worldliness does not commend us to God. It makes us the enemy of God and the friend of the world. (James 4: 4) Worldliness alienates us from God and makes us useless for His service. A covetous spirit and a desire to please men are the driving forces behind worldliness. A contented spirit and a desire to please God are the driving forces behind biblical Christianity.
Confession and repentance and turning back to God and turning our back on the ways of the world will deliver the church of her worldliness. The Christian has been delivered out of the world that is ruled by Satan and must through prayer and obedience to God’s word keep the world out of them and allow only Christ to sit upon the throne of their heart.
Are you a worldly Christian?
James H. Cagle is a Ray City resident who pastored several churches for a total of 11 years. Email him at pastorjameshcagle@ yahoo.com
