Time for a Falling Out

James tells us not to be on friendly terms with the world: “Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?” (4:4). It is as though he is saying, “Don’t you get this?  Don’t you know this yet?” He goes on to finish the verse: “Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”

He is not being very diplomatic here. He is not trying to strike a bargain between God and the world so that we can be chummy with the world and still be on good terms with God. It’s all or nothing. We have to think of this as a war. The world is the enemy. If we are consorting with the enemy and wearing its uniform, then God is against us. If we are friends with God and wearing His uniform, the world is against us. Which way do we want it?

The Apostle John tells us the same thing: “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” (1 John 2:15).

So here we are living in the world, which is just where God wants us, and the world’s apostles and evangelists are forever preaching and pushing their agenda on us. Are we listening to them? Are we a captive audience? Are we being “conformed to this world” or are we being “transformed by the renewing” of our mind (Rom. 12.2)?

How do we become conformed to this world? It comes of listening to the world and letting the world define for us who we are and dictate to us what we are to be. Just for starters, it has plenty to say about women and marriage and children. Truckloads of worldly advice. Don’t let the world instruct you in this or anything else. Is the world frowning on your choices and children and methods of bringing them up? That’s a good sign. But a little bit of worldliness goes a long way in hardening our hearts and getting us to drift and compromise. And once we start trying to please the world, the target is always shifting.

God our Maker has defined who we are, and He has designed us for God-glorifying purposes. “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. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:16).

Have you made friends with the world? Then it’s time for a falling out.

“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (John 15:18-19).