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"Do
not love the world"
God's Word gives this commandment in I John
2:15-17. There we read:
I John 2:15-17
"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
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."
According to this passage: "If anyone
loves the world, the love of the Father IS NOT in him". In
other words: the love of the world eliminates the love of the
Father. It is impossible for both of them to co-exist. I would
like today to have a look at some things pertaining to this
subject, starting from the book of Judges.
1. Judges 1-2
In Judges 1-2 Israel, the people of God,
had finally arrived in the promised land and were ready to take
it. However, God's command was not only to take it but also
to remove from it all the nations that pre-occupied it. As we
read in Deuteronomy 7:16
Deuteronomy 7:16
"And you shall
destroy all the peoples whom the LORD your God delivers over to
you; your eye shall have no pity on them; nor shall you serve
their gods, for that will be
a snare to you.
Also Deuteronomy 7:2-6
"and when the
LORD your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and
utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them
nor show mercy to them. Nor shall you make marriages with
them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor
take their daughter for your son. For they will turn your
sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the
anger of the LORD will be aroused against you and destroy you
suddenly. But thus you shall deal with them: you shall destroy
their altars, and break down their sacred pillars, and cut
down their wooden images, and burn their carved images with fire.
For you are a holy people to the LORD your God; the LORD
your God has chosen you to be a people for Himself, a special
treasure above all the peoples on the face of the earth."
The Lord had chosen Israel to be HIS
PEOPLE. His people therefore should have no mix with the
Gentiles. The Lord didn't want a mixed people, with half a foot in
Him and half in the world. In contrast, He wanted His people to
be TOTALLY given to Him, knowing that any mixture with the
nations would turn them away from Him.
Despite the clearness of the Lord's command, Israel denied to follow it.
Judges 1:27-33 tells us:
Judges 1:27-33
"Neither did
Manasseh drive out the inhabitants of Bethshean and her
towns, nor Taanach and her towns, nor the inhabitants of Dor and
her towns, nor the inhabitants of Ibleam and her towns, nor the
inhabitants of Megiddo and her towns: but the Canaanites would
dwell in that land........Neither did Ephraim drive out the
Canaanites......Neither did Zebulun drive out the inhabitants of Kitron......Neither did Asher drive out the inhabitants of
Accho,......Neither did Naphtali drive out the inhabitants of Bethshemesh, nor the inhabitants of
Bethanath;"
Then in chapter 2 we
read:
Judges 2:1-3
"Then the angel
of the LORD came up from Gilgal to Bochim, and said: "I led
you up from Egypt and brought you to the land of which I swore to
your fathers; and I said, "I will never break My covenant
with you. And you shall make no covenant with the
inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars."
But you have not obeyed My voice. Why have you done this?
Therefore I also said, "I will not drive them out before
you; but they shall be thorns in your side, and their gods
shall be a snare to you."
Instead of separating from the Gentiles,
Israel mixed with them and denied to drive them away. Probably,
they might have reasons. They might think that what God had said
was ....... too much. That, at the end, they could manage to
serve God, having the Gentiles living in their midst. It is not
difficult to find excuses to compromise the Word of God. There
are many excuses that one can find to justify a place for the
world in him. However, the truth was that God had spoken.
He had spoken, commanding His people to be separated from the
Gentiles. As He has also spoken to us, His people, commanding us
not to be yoked together with the unbelievers:
II Corinthians 6:14-18
"Do not be
unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship
has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light
with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what
part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has
the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the
living God. As God has said: "I will dwell in them and walk
among them. I will be their God, and they shall be My
people." Therefore "Come out from among them and be
separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will
receive you. "I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My
sons and daughters, says the LORD Almighty"
God has spoken. He wants His people a holy
people, without any mixture with the world and its practices. He
didn't want Israel to mix with the
Gentiles, for He knew that any such mixture would bring them far
from Him and near to the Gentiles, which is what finally
happened:
Judges 2:11-13
"And the
children of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD, and served Baalim: And they forsook the LORD God of their fathers,
which brought them out of the land of Egypt, and followed other
gods, of the gods of the people that were round about
them, and bowed themselves unto them, and provoked the LORD to
anger. And they forsook the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth."
The mixture of the people of God with the
Gentiles will always bring loss. The love of the world kills the
love of the Father, and the yoking together with the Gentiles
leads to the forsaking of the Lord and the worshipping of the
gods the Gentiles worship. The love for the Lord freezes, when
His children start looking at the world, at "the nations
round about them". When they permit "the cares of this
world, the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other
things" (Mark 4:19) to enter their hearts and turn them away
from the Lord, as the Gentiles turned the Israelites away when
the latter permitted them to be their land-mates.
2. James 4:4 and other
passages
The fact that the love of God and the love
of the world are things entirely incompatible to each other, is
also confirmed by other passages of the Scripture that put the
one against the other. Such a passage is also James 4:4. There we
read:
James 4:4
"Adulterers and
adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is
enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the
world makes himself an enemy of God."
The adulterer is one who is in a marriage
relationship, and yet seeks relationships outside of it. This
makes him adulterer. Similarly, adulterer in James 4 is the one
that though in a covenant with God, though engaged with the Lord
Jesus Christ (II Corinthians 11:2), he is also after other
covenants and namely covenants with the world. This makes him
adulterer. In other words, it is adultery to have a relationship
with the Lord and simultaneously to seek a friendship with the
world. Friendship both with the world and with God is NOT
POSSIBLE. In the heart of a man of God only God should dwell, and
He does not accept roommates there. As Luke 10:27
characteristically says:
Luke 10:27
"So he answered
and said, "You shall love the Lord your God WITH ALL
your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with
all your mind"
And Matthew 6:24
"No one can
SERVE TWO MASTERS; for either he will hate the one and love the
other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other.
You cannot serve God and mammon."
It is impossible to serve two masters. It
is impossible to have our eyes fixed both to God and to the
world. For:
Matthew 6:21
"where
your treasure is, there your heart will be also."
It is not possible to
have our hearts in heaven when our treasure is in the things of
the earth. We cannot walk the way of God, having our eyes fixed
on the things of the world. To walk the way of the Lord we need
the respective vision and Hebrews 12:1-2 tells us how it is
called:
Hebrews 12:1-2
"let us run
with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto
Jesus, the author and finisher of our
faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured
the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right
hand of the throne of God."
Also Colossians 3:1-2
"If then you
were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where
Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind
on things above, not on things on the earth."
The things we should set our minds on are
the THINGS ABOVE. The Christian vision is the LORD JESUS CHRIST.
All the others, though they may seem logical and good, are wrong
visions leading to wrong ways. As Jesus said in Matthew 16:24-25:
Matthew 16:24-25
"Then Jesus
said to His disciples, "If anyone desires to come after Me,
let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
"For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but
whoever loses his life for My sake will find it."
The way of Jesus Christ, the right way, is
not the way of self but its exact opposite: the way of self's denial. The one that wants to follow
him, should no longer seek his own will but the will of the one
that died for him. As II Corinthians 5:14-15 tells us:
II Corinthians 5:14-15
"For the love
of Christ compels us, because we judge thus: that if one died for
all, then all died; and he died for all, that those who
live should live no longer for themselves, but for Him who died
for them and rose again."
Jesus Christ died that we should no longer
live for ourselves but for HIM who died for us. "Those who
are Christ's have crucified the flesh with
its passions and its desires", Galatians 5:24 says. We will
either follow Christ or the flesh. We will either serve God or
the world. We will either be yoked together with the unbelievers
or with God. There are no intermediate states acceptable. The way
of God is contrary to the way of the world and we cannot be
walking in both.
Tassos Kioulachoglou
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