Love Not the World: Part 5
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Defining the World: New Testament Teaching
Defining the World: New Testament Teaching
Echoes of Old Testament Teaching
Echoes of Old Testament Teaching
Expansion Beyond Old Testament Teaching
Expansion Beyond Old Testament Teaching
Shift in Terminology
Shift in Terminology
“Obviously, then, “the nations” is no longer appropriate as the primary expression referring to the ungodly in general. By the close of the apostolic age, the Gentiles had come to comprise the dominate part of the church. To continue to using “the nations” as an expression for “the godless” would not only be confusing and even misleading at a time when national distinctions had disappeared in God’s program of salvation; it would also demean and discourage non-Jews who had come to rejoice in their new awareness of God’s love for them. The new expressions that presented themselves as more serviceable are kosmos (“the world”) and aion (“the age”).
Usage of Kosmos and Aion
Usage of Kosmos and Aion
There are many different ways or sense that our Greek NT uses the word kosmos or world.
BDAG- Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich the standard scholarly reference lexicon of the NT gives these senses:
1. that which serves to beautify through decoration, adornment, adorning
2. condition of orderliness, orderly arrangement, order
3. the sum total of everything here and now, the world, the (orderly) universe
4. the sum total of all beings above the level of the animals, the world
5. planet earth as a place of inhabitation, the world
6. humanity in general, the world
7. the system of human existence in its many aspects, the world
8. collective aspects of an entity, totality, sum total
If you were to look up the defition of the world “world” in the Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary you would find fourteen senses of world.
Why does this matter for our study of the world?
It is no small task, to categorize the NT occurrences (185 x’s) of the word and discern the precise meaning in each passage.
What about aion?
a long period of time, without reference to beginning or end, the past, earliest times, eternity
a segment of time as a particular unit of history, age
the world a spatial concept, the world
the Aeon as a person, the Aeon
When these word refer to the physical creation they do not connote moral evil. When the fall effected the whole of creation it did not give matter itself an inherent evil.
34 Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.
24 Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love
24 The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man,
2 but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
3 By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible.
We want to study the usages of Kosmos and Aion that include a moral stigma. These senses of the world do not refer to the whole created universe but specifically to the human realm and its sinfulness.
7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.
The world is not impersonal in this text. It produces works, and those works are immoral in quality. What is Jesus referring to in this passage with the term world? The mass of unregenerate humanity in its hostility toward God.
4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Notice similarly in James 4 that the world is not an impersonal force. The world is capable of friendship and enmity and its posture toward God is hostile.
Is the world’s hostility toward God always overt? Example? Most people simply live their lives by ignoring God or they pattern Him after their own imaginations of fancies.
16 But to the wicked God says: “What right have you to recite my statutes or take my covenant on your lips?
17 For you hate discipline, and you cast my words behind you.
18 If you see a thief, you are pleased with him, and you keep company with adulterers.
19 “You give your mouth free rein for evil, and your tongue frames deceit.
20 You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother’s son.
21 These things you have done, and I have been silent; you thought that I was one like yourself. But now I rebuke you and lay the charge before you.
22 “Mark this, then, you who forget God, lest I tear you apart, and there be none to deliver!
23 The one who offers thanksgiving as his sacrifice glorifies me; to one who orders his way rightly I will show the salvation of God!”
Are kosmos and aion exact synonyms?
When their senses overlap they appear to be used interchangeably.
Kosmos and Aion Used with Moral Stigma
Kosmos and Aion Used with Moral Stigma
It is important that we make a careful distinction when we study the moral stigma of the world. We must be careful that we do not broaden the reference of these words so that we impose the Bible’s negativism toward the world upon elements of human existence that the Bible does not condemn.
Example: are gluttony or sexual promiscuity evil? They are aspects of the world. Yet, food and sex are themselves good gifts of a gracious God to be enjoyed gratefully within the limits He has set for them.
God created the world at it was very good. The goodness of His creation has not been totally lost in sinful man’s corruption of it. Where to draw the lines beyond which our pursuit of the good things in our Father’s world becomes corrupted by worldliness will receive attention later. For now we want to avoid the trap of over-application.
Sense: the totality of unregenerate persons living on the earth within some period of time, along with the habitual patterns of thought and behavior by which they express their ignorance of and insubordination to God.
What characteristics of these people, their thoughts, and their behavior does the NT revelation identify?
The World is Evil
The World is Evil
The NT is clear that the fundamental nature of the world is evil.
4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,
7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.
What is the primary sin of the world?
8 And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: 9 concerning sin, because they do not believe in me;
What is the natural inclination of the world?
2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—
Sons of disobedience is the same Hebrew idiom that Jesus used when He nicknamed James and John the “Sons of Thunder.”
This idiom is a way of referring to a person’s most deeply rooted habits and instincts. Just as James and John were apparently by nature boisterous and forceful, people of the world are by nature disobedient.
“Certainly we need not look beyond the walls of our fundamentalist families, churches, and schools to find that same spirit— we all feel it powerfully even within ourselves. A spiritual authority who expresses an expectation for some specific form of good conduct or adherence to some biblical command can expect many under his care simply to disregard that expectation. Then, if he confronts their failure, he can expect them to retort in terms indicating neither a desire to obey nor a recognition of any valid claim on their obedience. Such attitudes reflect, at best, a capitulation to our fleshly propensity to imitate the sons of disobedience as Israel imitated the nations, and very possibly they reflect an unregenerate heart.” Leery (51)
The Word Hates Christ and Christians
The Word Hates Christ and Christians
This is the character of the world. The world hates our Savior.
7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil.
Later Jesus also said this,
18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. 19 If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.
Why does the world hate not only Christ, but Christians as well? Because of our relationship with Jesus!
14 I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.
Christians- we are not of the world (John 17:14) because our Savior has chosen us out of the world (John 15:19), and God gave us to Him out of the world.
6 “I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.
The world does not take our defection from its course and cause lightly. In response, it pours out its hatred.
Perhaps James had this teaching of Jesus in mind when he wrote-
4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
Siding with the world is irrational for believers. Why?
1). The world hates our heavenly Father
2). Siding with the world constitutes spiritual idolatry
Does that sound familiar to anything we studied from the OT? c.f. Ezekiel 16!
Yet when we as believers commit the sin of loving the world and then we deny the depravity of our actions it shouldn’t come as any surprise.
20 This is the way of an adulteress: she eats and wipes her mouth and says, “I have done no wrong.”
The World Is Morally Repulsive
The World Is Morally Repulsive
The world is dirty and defiling.
27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
What are the implications of worldliness from this verse? Contact with the world marks one with an ugly blemish.
20 For if, after they have escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the last state has become worse for them than the first.
Defilements- a moral defilement resulting from the commission of some evil deed, not the sort of filth that can easily be cleansed.
4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
Corruption- sense of organic decay, such as the decomposition of a dead body, in a figurative sense in the moral realm.
“If a dirty body is objectionable, what is a rotting one? To our Father’s pure eyes, this present evil world is utterly repulsive.” (55)
The World is Self-Focused
The World is Self-Focused
One of the best known passages on worldliness.
16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.
This verse is often understood as providing a categorization of worldly things. That is people often think of these categories as something that external that we might set our hearts on.
Desires of the flesh- those things that bring us bodily pleasure.
Desires of the eyes- those things that appeal to our materialistic impulses.
Pride of life- that which brings us worldly status.
Perhaps a better approach rather than focusing on the external things that we might set our hearts on, is to instead notice the inward aspects of our fallen human natures that worldly things appeal to.
“Any given worldly object may appeal to any combination of these fallen predispositions. In its sinfulness and enmity toward God, the world pursues bodily pleasure, visual gratification, and the boastful self-congratulation that accompanies wealth and status.”
The world has an inordinate pursuit for such things for the sake of gratifying and exalting oneself.
The Root of the World’s Evil Character
The Root of the World’s Evil Character
What would you say is the root of the world’s evil character? Answer: the world does not know God.
15 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. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.
Implied by the sharp distinction between the world and the Father.
1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.
21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
5 not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God;
Not only does the world not know God, it actively seeks to prevent others from doing the same.
12 I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake.
13 I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father.
14 I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
Three times John refers to knowing God and twice to overcoming the evil one who is at the heart of the world. Apparently these two ideas are connected.
4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
Here John makes this connection explicit. Knowing God, being born of God by believing in Jesus, is paramount to overcoming the world.
Just as the world does not know God, so also it does not know God’s children.
1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.
The world does recognize its own however.
1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
5 They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
“A believer whose life truly testifies of God has no reason to expect worldly people to appreciate or understand him, except for those whose hearts our Father is drawing to the Savior.” (58)
What two categories of people does John create in these verses?
Can a person belong to both categories at once?
Is there no such thing, then, as a worldly Christian? Even though we are God’s people we are still prone to imitating the world.
“Hardly a more pitiful condition can be imagined, as though a wealthy farmer’s children would want to eat slop and wallow with the hogs.” (59)
“It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” C.S. Lewis, Weight of Glory
The World, the Flesh, and the Devil
The World, the Flesh, and the Devil
Where does the world get its power?
What persuasion could make humans clamor for mud and hog slop? What makes us content with mud pies in a slum when we could be on a holiday at the sea?
Such a pull towards hog slop is unthinkable, and yet every believer every day feels the almost gravitational pull of the world’s attractions on his heart, even while his head tells him that these things are the moral equivalent of the pigpen.
So where does the world get its power?
Illustration: flicking through social media and you stop on a page that has an alluring model on it. You know you should turn your device off, and yet there is a pull to stop and stare. What is the power behind that attraction?
You are on a diet and you struggle with overeating and you watch a video on making chocolate chip cookies. You know you should turn it off and yet there is a pull to watch. Where does this attraction come from?
The power of the world lies in the combination of Satan’s activity in opposition to God and the sinful nature of fallen human flesh.
31 Now is the judgment of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out.
30 I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me,
11 concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.
4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
Is there any reason to believe that Satan works similarly to blind the minds of believers, trying to confuse us about the difference between hog slop and heavenly treasure? Examples?
A great deal of the world’s power is due to the supernatural power of its prince.
30 I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me,
Thankfully, Jesus stands as an example of a man who was not subject to that power.
Think of the most powerful magnet you can imagine? What amount of force can that magnet exert? It can life heavy objects like a bull-dozer. Yet, the most powerful magnet in the world has no power to lift even the smallest twig.
Jesus lacked the sinful nature that Satan’s seductions play upon. Thus, Jesus was able to withstand all the wiles of the Devil.
Yet, in this life, we still have a fallen human nature. So we are like a pile of iron to Satan’s super magnet. We are still very susceptible to his temptations.
14 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
What does this tell us about our flesh? “To the flesh, the values of things have been inverted: spiritual truth is foolishness.”
3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh,
4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
6 For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.
7 For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot.
8 Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.
Our flesh, then, provides our adversary easy access to us, allowing him to alienate us from all that is good and allure us with all that is evil.
Thus we contend against, while in this life, the world, the flesh, and the Devil--sometimes called the unholy trinity that threatens the welfare of the human soul.
The flesh is one’s enemy within.
The Devil is one’s enemy without.
The world is the Devil’s kingdom, populated with so many zealots for his cause that resistance seems not only futile but foolish.
And these three enemies work together, they reinforce one another with such effectiveness that a mere human, in himself, is utterly unable to withstand their combination of assaults.
Rescue from the World
Rescue from the World
3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,
Why did Christ die for us? To save us from what? Our sins right? Not just from our sins. What does Galatians say? from the present evil age. Why did Christ deem it necessary to give his very life to rescue us from the world? Because it is a very real and present danger to our very life!
And yet we wish to toy with the world and enjoy it! We become resentful of spiritual authorities that forbid us its death-dealing pleasures?
11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people,
12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,
13 waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,
14 who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works.
Look at v. 12 again.
12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,
What is it that is training us by use of disciplinary instruction to renounce worldly passions? God’s saving grace!
“When some attraction can be discerned as manifesting the character of the world, true grace extends no smiling approval, permission, or tolerance. What grace is it that wishes a drowning child a pleasant swim? The problem, of course, is that, unlike drowning, our adversary’s ways of killing us are so delightful that we fail to notice what he is doing. Because his poison-laced drinks taste so sweet, delightedly we drink on. When will we awaken to the Word of God and believe it? The world is a mortal danger from which our Savior shed His blood to deliver us and which He graciously disciplines us to shun.” (66)
2 May grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.
3 His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence,
4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
What is our rescue from the world according to Peter?
The Impermanence of the World
The Impermanence of the World
31 and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.
17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
6 and that by means of these the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.
7 But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist are stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
8 But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.
Even though the world is relentless in its hostility toward God, it is comforting to remember that the world cannot win.
33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”
Detailed Theological Definition of “The World”
Detailed Theological Definition of “The World”
The world is a spiritual kingdom ruled by Satan, in unremitting conflict with the kingdom of God, consisting visibly of the mass of living people who do not know God, and who, in response to satanic allurement that plays upon and preys upon fallen human nature, corrupt the various aspects of God’s earthly creation into avenues for the gratification of self instead of the glory of God, thereby incurring eternal judgment and destruction.
