How to Live in the World without being Worldly

Last week, I flew to Denver Colorado. Denver’s main claim to fame is that it is located just south of a place called Greeley. Greeley is the meat-packing capital of the world. When we used to drive to Denver, about halfway across Kansas, we could start to smell Greeley.

Cattle ranching and meat-packing is real big business out west. There are a lot of ranches in Colorado. Every once in a while, a cow will wander off and get lost. Ask a rancher how a cow gets lost, and chances are he’ll say: “Well, the cow starts nibbling on a tuft of green grass, and when it finishes, it looks ahead to the next tuft of green grass and starts nibbling on that one, and then it nibbles on a tuft of green grass right next to a hole in the fence. Then it sees another tuft of green grass on the other side of the fence, so it nibbles on that one and then goes on to the next tuft. Pretty soon, that cow has nibbled itself into being lost.”

That’s a pretty good description of what’s happened to Christians in relation to today’s passage which deals with the world. American Christians are in the process of nibbling their way to worldliness. We keep moving from one tuft of activity to another, never noticing how far we have gone from home or how far away from the truth we’ve managed to end up.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been in the book of 1 John. This is a tremendously practical little book, because it asks us to think about the question “What is real?” Is God real? In the first four verses, we learned that he sure is. He proved it. He became a man. He personally entered our world. He came here to earth as Jesus Christ. People like John saw him, they heard him, they touched him. They were eyewitnesses to God being here in the flesh, and they passed their testimony on to us so that we could know him too. They wanted us to have fellowship with the God who is real, just as they had had fellowship with him.

Then John asks the question “Well, how can you tell if a Christian is real?” How do you know whether a person who claims to know God, who claims to have fellowship with God, who claims to be a Christian - is really telling the truth? How do you tell an authentic Christian?

So far, John has told us that there are two tests of authenticity:

1. An authentic Christian is one who deals biblically with sin in his life. The person who really knows God is the person who understands that he is a sinner. He doesn’t gloss over it. He doesn’t blame other people for his sin. He doesn’t try to rationalize it. He sees sin for what it is and confesses it to God. He repents of it. And God cleanses him. The truly authentic Christian is the one who deals with sin this way.

2. The authentic Christian is one who desires to do the will of God. He wants to obey God in everything. One of the chief ways that this desire to please God shows itself is in the area of love. The authentic Christian is one who loves others. Not with the flabby, weak “live and let live” attitude that passes for love in today’s world, but with a strong, shining, self-sacrificing desire for the good of others. That is what the Bible means when it talks about love.

Now today, we’re going to look further into the book of 1 John and find a third test of the authentic Christian. It is found in ch.2, verses 15-17. Now I’m going to ask your permission to skip verses 12-14, those verses about fathers and young men and dear children. I’m sure that there’s a sermon in there someplace but if there is, I haven’t been able to find it! Seriously, those verses simply affirm the fact that John is writing to a church that contains people who are at all the different levels of spiritual maturity. In other words, he’s writing to a church a lot like ours.

Let’s examine verses 15-17:

1 John 2:15 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

1 John 2:16 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.

1 John 2:17 The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.

When we talk about the world, we’re talking about a term that can mean three different things in Scripture. The Greek word is “kosmos”. It refers to something that is a system, something that is organized. We use that very word, cosmos, to refer to the universe - a huge, orderly system. The opposite of kosmos is kaos.

1. This word is used in the Bible to describe all that God has created.

Acts 17:24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth…

2. The word is sometimes used to describe mankind, the human race, people.

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world…

2 Corinthians 5:19 … God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ…

3. Finally, the word is sometimes used to describe an organized system that is dark and sinister. It is the system that is ruled by Satan, which is opposed to God, which resists the redeeming work of Jesus Christ, and which seeks to draw us away from God. C.H. Dodd defines the world as “the life of human society as organized under the power of evil.” Jesus describes this world in…

John 12:31 Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out.

John 17:14 I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it.

This is the way John is using this word in this passage. He’s referring to the world as the spiritual system that is against God; the dark energy which is behind the things that we see every day. And John says that an authentic Christian is one who loves the Father, not the world. Why not? Because love for the Father cannot exist alongside love for the world. The world is evil, the world is empty, the world is at enmity with God. You cannot love the world and at the same time love God. The two are mutually exclusive.

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.

Let’s think about this for a minute. We Christians have kicked around the concept of worldliness for a long time. Most of the time, we have missed the point. We have defined worldliness in terms of externals: how you dress, what you do, where you go, etc. And the conclusion we have come to is that if you dress a certain way, or you don’t do certain things, or go to certain places, then you’re OK. You have kept yourself from being worldly.

We should be so lucky! Nothing could be further from the truth. This passage teaches that worldliness - love for the world - is a whole lot more subtle than whether you stay away from nightclubs. It is an attitude of the heart. So it’s possible to go to all the right places and do all the right things, very religious things even, and be utterly worldly because of the attitude of your heart.

Look at the characteristics of worldliness in verse 16:

1. the cravings of sinful man (KJV-the lust of the flesh)

This refers to our natural physical appetites out of control. When the serpent tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden, the Bible says

Genesis 3:6 …the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food

The first point of temptation for Eve was that she desired the fruit because she was hungry. Satan said “Go ahead. Eat it. You’re hungry. Don’t deny yourself this good physical pleasure.” Isn’t it interesting that the very first temptation in recorded history had to do with eating? Sometimes when we talk about physical appetites in spiritual terms, we think only of the sex drive. But God wants us to know that it is just as important to keep our desire for food, or our desire for sleep, under control as it is to rein in our sex drive. Gluttony is as much a sin as sexual promiscuity. Both are appetites out of control.

The world tells us today to indulge our appetites. Don’t deny ourselves. Do whatever makes us feel good. If you see a woman you want, take her. If you’re tired of a relationship, drop it. If you feel like sleeping in, go ahead.

When the devil tempted Christ in the wilderness, this was his approach. (The devil isn’t terribly original.) “You’re hungry. You’ve been fasting and praying for forty days. What a wonderful person you are, Jesus. How spiritual! You deserve a break today. Turn these stones into bread and dig in.” The lust of the flesh. The world tells us to follow our appetites wherever they lead. God created our appetites. But he intended that we rule them not that they rule us. Our appetites are good when they are kept in their intended place. But out of control, they ruin us. And that’s what Satan and his system would like to see happen.

2. the lust of the eyes

God not only created us with physical appetites, but he gave us an appreciation for nice things. He gave us the capacity to appreciate beauty. And there is something in us that makes us gravitate toward that which is beautiful. We want to get close to it. We want to possess it. But again, the world corrupts this good thing. We become obsessed with outward attractiveness. We place too much of a premium on how things look on the outside. Someone has defined the lust of the eyes as “the love for beauty divorced from the love for goodness.” Put another way, this is style without substance. Misplaced values.

You need only to pick up a magazine or turn on your television to understand that the world places a very high premium on looking good. Ever see many ugly people in television commercials? Are the actors on the soaps your average cross section of ordinary looking people? Women like Cher and Heather Locklear gaze seductively out of the newspaper and say “You too can have a body like this.” It’s no wonder that of 33,000 women who responded to a survey in Glamour magazine, 75% regarded themselves as too fat although only 25% were actually overweight. It’s no wonder that almost half of all women in the U.S. are on some sort of diet. It’s no wonder that we are in the midst of a physical fitness craze. It’s no wonder that in our society there is an irrational fear of growing old. It’s the lust of the eyes. The love for beauty divorced from the love for goodness.

Let’s go back to the Garden of Eden. The Bible says that after Eve saw that the fruit was good for food, she saw that it was pleasing to the eye. She wanted it because it was attractive. She desired it for its appearance.

Satan’s second approach to Jesus in the wilderness was along the same lines.

Matthew 4:8-9 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”

The world will offer us beauty by appealing to the lust of the eyes. But it’s beauty that turns to ashes because it’s beauty apart from God.

3. the pride of life (the boasting of what man has and does)

God has made each one of us unique. There is nobody else like you in the world. (Thank God!) We feel, deep down inside, that uniqueness. And that is good. There is nothing wrong with that. Our special-ness is part of the image of God in us. We want people to recognize it, we want them to appreciate it, we want them to celebrate it. We want others to feel that we are special.

And, once again, Satan and his evil system wants to take something good and use it against us - use it to turn us away from God. The world whispers to us “Yes, you are special. Why don’t you show everyone how special you are? Why don’t you impress them? Why don’t you prove to everyone what a neat person you are?” The pride of life. Status. The desire to outshine others. It’s all around us on Long Island, from the vanity license plate to the 10 million dollar estate on the North Shore. The pride of life is the magic behind the designer label. A few years ago, people would think you were crazy to parade around with somebody else’s name on your clothes. Not anymore. It’s a badge of being chic, of being “in”. The label is the most important part of your apparel.

Eve felt it in the Garden (even though she wasn’t into designer clothes.) When she looked at the fruit and saw that it was good for food and pleasant to the eyes, she believed the serpent when he said that it would make her wise like God. “Eat it”, said the serpent, “and it will put you right up at the top, right up alongside God. You’ll be part of the in-crowd.” So she ate it. And the world has been a very dark place ever since.

Jesus, in the wilderness, felt the temptation of the pride of life. The devil suggested that Jesus throw himself off the pinnacle of the Temple and trust God to save him from bashing his brains out on the rocks below. Imagine how that would impress those Pharisees! There wouldn’t be any doubts at all that Jesus was the Messiah after a display like that! But Jesus wouldn’t do it. He knew all about the pride of life, the desire to impress.

The pride of life is when we try to lift ourselves up in the sight of others. To be a part of the in-group. To be superior. We feel it when we think that Americans are the best people in the world. We feel it when we pride ourselves on being Irish or being Italian or being white. We feel it when we pride ourselves on being New Yorkers or being Republicans or being Baptists. It is putting ourselves up while we put others down. Whenever we try to put ourselves up, it leads to divisions, and hatred, and war.

The devil would like nothing better than for you to be a good Christian on the outside and have this attitude in your heart. C.S. Lewis, in “The Screwtape Letters” describes this. Screwtape is a senior demon. He writes to his nephew Wormwood, who is a junior demon, and who has been placed in charge of tempting a man who has just become a Christian. The man has recently come into the friendship of a couple who are very cynical and worldly-wise, the sort of people who look down on everyone and everything. Screwtape tells Wormwood how to seize this opportunity to poison the man’s heart. Listen to what he says…

read Lewis, p.47

The Bible says to humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and He will lift you up.

The pride of life. The lust of the eyes. The lust of the flesh. These are the attitudes of the world system. This is the fuel on which that system runs. These are the ideas and values that assault us every single day we live in the world. This is a lot more complicated and hard to deal with than those simplistic definitions of worldliness about not wearing makeup.

The authentic Christian is a person who loves the Father, not the world. The authentic Christian is one who doesn’t buy into the world’s values. For him, the love of the Father is all that counts. It doesn’t matter that he may be married to an woman who is showing her age, for he sees in her the inner beauty of the image of God. It doesn’t matter that he doesn’t wear the best designer clothes, or drive a BMW, or have a place in the Hamptons, for his need for acceptance is found in his relationship with the Lord.

John reminds us in v.17 that the world, for all its seeming permanence, for all its outward beauty, and for all its power to influence the Christian, is on the way out. It is passing away. But the authentic Christian, the man who does the will of God, lives forever.

Mordecai Ham was a Baptist evangelist early in this century. He had a penchant for saying exactly what was on his mind. When he rolled into town to conduct revival meetings, he didn’t hang around with the saints all day. He asked to be taken to see the worst sinners in town. One of them hid in a cornfield when he heard Ham was coming. This character was a real womanizer, unfaithful to his wife and children. Ham tracked him down to a corn shock. The man asked the preacher what he was going to do. Ham said that he was going to ask God to kill him. When the man protested, Ham observed that that shouldn’t bother him, since he didn’t believe in God anyway. But if there were a God, then death would be appropriate for a man who had so poisoned his family’s prospects of knowing Him.

Mordecai Ham isn’t very well known, but he was the evangelist who led Billy Graham to the Lord. He once said “A halfway Christian is one who holds onto the church with one hand while he plays with the toys of the world with the other.”

Are you doing that today? Are you a halfway Christian, caught up in the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life? If you are, then you need to be reminded of

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.

Don’t be a halfway Christian. Be authentic. The authentic Christian is a person who

- deals biblically with sin in his life

- desires to do the will of God

- loves the Father, not the world.