06.25.07

Friendship with the World - Hostility Towards God

Posted in Jesus a Friend of Sinners? at 9:06 am by TruthofmyKing

James 4:4

4 You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

NASB

Some would argue that the word “world” here (kosmos) doesn’t include the people of the world but rather the worldy system.

NON-SENSE!

This argument is designed to allow one to deny the true meaning of the verse. 

Would there be a worldly system without worldly people? 

Worldly people are the blood or the very life of the world.  Take them away and the worldly system will cease to exist.   Take the engine out of a car and it ceases to run.  Take the gas out of a lawnmower and it no longer cuts grass. 

How can one explain the worldly system without the worldly people?  Would greed exist without people?

To be “friends” with worldly people is to be friends with the world!  It is men who are quick to justify their lifestyle that bend this Scripture when they hear it.  Scripture is meant to bend us, shape us, not the other way around. 

“Always stand to it that your creed must bend to the Bible, and not the Bible to your creed.”   

“It is an ill sign when a man dares not look a Scripture in the face, and an evidence of brazen impudence when he tries to make it mean something less condemnatory of his sins, and endeavours to prove it to be less sweeping in its demands.”  

~Charles Spurgeon

Here is a sermon that was on file from a reformer of the Church, John Wesley.  His words and reasonings are worthy on this particular subject, so please listen:

Let us, First, consider, what it is which the Apostle here means by the world. He does not here refer to this outward frame of things, termed in Scripture, heaven and earth; but to the inhabitants of the earth, the children of men, or at least, the greater part of them. But what part? This is fully determined both by our Lord himself, and by his beloved disciple. First, by our Lord himself. His words are, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love its own: But because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you. And all these things will they do unto you, because they know not him that sent me.” (John 15:18) You see here “the world” is placed on one side, and those who “are not of the world” on the other. They whom God has “chosen out of the world,” namely, by “sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth,” are set in direct opposition to those whom he hath not so chosen. Yet again: Those “who know not him that sent me,” saith our Lord, who know not God, they are “the world.”

Equally express are the words of the beloved disciple: “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you: We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.” (1 John 3:13,14.) As if he had said, “You must not expect any should love you, but those that have ‘passed from death unto life.’” It follows, those that are not passed from death unto life, that are not alive to God, are “the world.” The same we may learn from those words in the fifth chapter, verse 19, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in the wicked one.” [1 John 5:19] Here “the world” plainly means, those that are not of God, and who, consequently “Lie in the wicked one.”

Those, on the contrary, are of God, who love God, or at least “fear him, and keep his commandments.” This is the lowest character of those that “are of God;” who are not properly sons, but servants; who depart from evil, and study to do good, and walk in all his ordinances, because they have the fear of God in their heart, and a sincere desire to please him. Fix in your heart this plain meaning of the terms, “the world;” those who do not thus fear God. Let no man deceive you with vain words: It means neither more nor less than this.

John Wesley

For the Truth of My King

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