Worldliness.htm

WORLDLINESS.

"My brothers, do not be surprised if the world hates you." (1 John 3:13 NEB).

WHY THE WORLD HATES SONS OF GOD.
Christ said: "If the world hates you, it hated me first, as you know well. If you belonged to the world, the world would love its own; but because you do not belong to the world, because I have chosen you out of the world, for that reason the world hates you... As they persecuted me, they will persecute you; they will follow your teaching as little as they have followed mine. It is on my account that they will treat you thus, because they do not know the One who sent me." (From John 15:18-21 NEB).

"See what sort of love the Father has given us, so that we should be called children of God; and such we are. That is why the world does not have a knowledge of us, because it has not come to know Him." (1 John 3:1).

"With us therefore worldly standards have ceased to count in our estimate of any man; even if once they counted in our understanding of Christ, they do so no longer. When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new world (a new act of creation); the old order has gone, and a new order has already begun." (2 Cor 5:16,17 NEB).

"For the grace of God has dawned upon the world with healing for all mankind; and by it we are disciplined to renounce Godless ways and worldly desires, and to live a life of temperance, honesty, and Godliness in the present age, looking forward to the happy fulfilment of our hope when the splendour of our great God and our Saviour Christ Jesus will appear." (Titus 2:11 13 NEB).

"Have you never learned that love of the world is enmity to God? Whoever chooses to be the world's friend makes himself God's enemy." (James 4:4 NEB).

WHY SONS OF GOD CANNOT LOVE THE WORLD.
"Do not set your hearts on the Godless world or anything in it. Anyone who loves the world is a stranger to the Father's love. Everything the world affords, all that panders to the appetites or entices the eyes, all the glamour of its life, springs not from the Father but from the Godless world. And that world is passing away with all its allurements, but he who does God's Will stands for evermore." (1 John 2:15-17 NEB).

"This, therefore, I say and bear witness to in the Lord, that you no longer go on walking just as the nations also walk in the unprofitableness of their minds, (1) while they are in darkness mentally, and alienated from the life that belongs to God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the insensibility of their hearts." (Eph 4:17,18).

"Did you not die with Christ and pass beyond reach of the elementary ideas belonging to this world? Then why behave as though you were still living the life of the world?" (Col 2:20 NEB & footnote).

"As obedient children, do not let your characters be shaped any longer by the desires you cherished in your days of ignorance. The One who called you is holy; like Him, be holy in all your behaviour, because Scripture says, 'You shall be holy, for I am holy.'" (1 Peter 1:14 16 NEB).

(1) Good-for-nothing notions. (NEB).