The "Worldly Church"
It seems that in this day & age, we are experiencing an upward trend of excuses, justifications, & provisions for worldliness in the church. The idea of living a lifestyle of consecration, holiness, and being “set apart” has seemingly been replaced with the concepts of mass appeal, pop relevance, “balance,” and acceptance. The lives of sacrifice, obedience, & faithfulness in the early churches have been replaced by dreams of material wealth, rebellion against God’s Word, & lukewarm, “at-my-convenience” service to the Lord. The current “pop church culture” in general has almost perfected the art of maintaining a form of godliness while engaging in ungodly compromise–simultaneously teaching and deceiving churchgoers all over that this is acceptable to God and that any resistance to this lifestyle of compromise should be labeled as “too stiff,” “old-fashioned,” “religious,” etc. While this generation has produced droves of leaders and followers who are masters at the illusion of perfect harmony between “one foot in the world and one foot in the church,” the truth is that there is no harmony between worldliness and holiness. Contrary to popular belief and popular practice, there are no “levels” to worldliness in the church that are acceptable to God.
The Bible says in James 4:4, “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” It is very plain that although we live in the world, Jesus Himself said that we, as believers, are not “of” the world just as He was not. We do not belong to the norms and acceptable practices of the world, but on the contrary, the Bible says NOT to be conformed to the world. Even so, many of us believe that we can be “worldly believers” or that we can love the world to a certain extent as long as we don’t “take it too far,” when in reality, the standard set by the Word is zero tolerance. We can’t love the world & love God. Either we are in or out. The Bible says in 1 John 2:15-16: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that’s in the world—the desires of the flesh & the desires of the eyes & pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.” When we “befriend” the evil that is of the world and become partakers with what displeases God–we become His enemies. Too many of us love to engage in and to be entertained and amused by the lusts of our flesh and eyes and by the vanity of life—it shows through the shows we watch, through the music we listen to, through our posts on social media, through our interactions with others, through the things we pursue in life, through our priorities and the things that we deem valuable, etc., but the reality of scripture is that this is not “okay” just because we choose to live as if it is. We can continue to deceive ourselves and follow after those men and woman who will preach the lies that we want to hear, but it’s so vital that we understand that this does not change the truth. We, as “good” of a people as we believe ourselves to be, will be following our flesh straight to destruction and end up surprised on Judgment Day when we hear “depart from me” because we chose to trust in having the appearance of the “average Christian” life rather than trusting in the Word of God. The scripture says in 1 John 5:4, “Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.” Come away from the worldliness and from the love of the evil therein, and detach from those who practice these things. “Go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord.” Those of us who are true believers have to mature, to trust, to be changed and transformed–not by the culture of the times, but into the image of Christ. He that hath an ear, let him hear, receive, and take heed to the truth today. Be blessed and encouraged.