What is worldliness? Churches seem to disagree in their conceptions of it. A certain Mennonite pastor is worldly in the eyes of some of his people because he wears a necktie. One pastor’s wife was called worldly because she wore high-heeled shoes. I once saw a girl refuse a string of synthetic pearls offered as a birthday gift; she considered them too worldly. A high school boy, responding to the invitation at a city-wide evangelistic meeting, asked his counselor if he would have to give up football; his parents thought it worldly. Some have taught that drinking soda pop from a bottle is worldly. (It’s all right from a glass!) Others judge whether a woman is worldly by her hairstyle or makeup. Then, of course, there are the perennial questions about movies, dancing, and cards.
Complicating the issue is the sometimes questionable use of Scripture to condemn these practices. The young lady who refused the pearls—and wounded a weak believer in the process—believed she had Scripture on her side: “… women [should] adorn themselves in modest apparel … not with … pearls” (1 Tim. 2:9).
Two observations are in order here. First, it is true that matters of dress and appearance are subjects of scriptural concern. Both this passage and First Peter 3 contain admonitions along this line. However, it is plainly the intent of these Scriptures that women should be modest in appearance, which may permit quite different apparel now than it did in Bible times, and that, most important, they should be concerned primarily with the beauty of the inner person (1 Pet. 3:4). A plain appearance does not guarantee inner beauty, though a preoccupation with outward appearance admittedly works against spirituality.
Despite the verse in First Timothy, a woman may surely wear pearls now without overstepping limits of modesty or frugality. If someone objects that this violates a plain command, I answer, “The letter of the law may be violated so that the spirit of it may be obeyed.”
Are we, then, not always to take the Bible literally? Are we to seek the spirit of the Word in preference to its letter? Ought we to determine to live by what it means instead of by what it says, and realize that there sometimes is such a distinction? I dare to answer, Yes!
The Word itself tells us that our ministry is “not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” (2 Cor. 3:5, 6). Furthermore, Jesus told those who were twisting his meaning by too literal an interpretation of his words, “It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life” (John 6:63). This principle needs enunciation today.
Furthermore, the idea that worldliness consists just of certain things or certain pleasures is directly contrary to the plain teaching of Scripture. “I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus,” said Paul, “that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean” (Rom. 14:14).
“God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen. 1:31a). Since all that God has created is good, and since Satan creates nothing, there are no things evil in themselves. There are only good things that may be misused or used to, excess. Alcohol is valuable in industry and medicine; tobacco contains a useful agricultural insecticide; drugs bring relief from severe pain. Material things are morally indifferent in themselves.
At this point a distressingly common misuse of First John 2:15, 16 must be considered. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world,” the beloved disciple writes. “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.”
The common application of these words to certain practices is completely arbitrary. This passage has no more to do with attending motion pictures, for example, than with growing flowers! The passage does not say, as many interpret it, that we are not to love the bad or questionable things in the world. Rather it forbids loving any of the things in the world even though they may be legitimate. “Lust” as used here does not necessarily have the bad connotation it carries in modern English. It can be rendered simply “desire.”
In other words, the emphasis is upon not loving the world. “Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” The world and its things are for our use but not for our deepest love and devotion. Here God alone must come first. This is the crux of the whole matter of worldliness. The passage reveals that worldliness is a matter, not of things, but of our attitude toward them.
These verses need to be considered in the light of verse 17. “And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” A worldly person (one who gives his first love to something on earth) dooms himself to heartache, for sooner or later he must inevitably face the loss of the thing beloved. It is passing, transitory. Therefore, it is in mercy as well as jealousy that God forbids such destructive devotion.
Let me speak plainly. I hold no brief for such things as dirtier-than-ever movies. They are evil and demoralizing. But let us oppose them on the legitimate basis of verses like Philippians 4:8 (“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things”), not on the misuse of First John 2:15, 16.
Another false and tragic idea is that worldliness is friendship with sinners. To support this notion, some quote James 4:4: “Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God.” And they point to Paul’s injunction: “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord …” (2 Cor. 6:17). So we come out; we separate. Then we wonder why our churches have no outreach, why people feel that we think we are better than they. Humbly (?) we announce that we are only sinners saved by grace; yet we let our fellow sinners feel we want no more to do with them. Thus we become Pharisees, gathering our robes about us and staying unstained—and unfruitful.
Whatever the commands to be separate mean, they cannot mean this isolationism, this Protestant monasticism that is so evident in many evangelical churches today. Such an interpretation violates the spirit of Jesus’ prayer in John 17:15. “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” Furthermore, Jesus was “a friend of publicans and sinners.” James says to be a friend of the world is to be an enemy of God. Was Jesus then an enemy of God? No, a “friend of sinners” and a “friend of the world” must be two different things.
A study of the context of James 4:4 reveals that it, like First John 2:15–17, is speaking about the object of one’s affections. The picture in the preceding verse is that of a self-centered or things-centered person. “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.” This “friendship” for, or devotion to, the world is enmity with God. It reverses Jesus’ order, “If any man come to me, and hate not … his own life … he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). The worldling “hates” God for the sake of his love of the world.
Similarly, the question raised by the command to “be separate” may also be resolved by a study of the context. In Second Corinthians 6, this separation is seen to apply to alliances or partnerships: “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (v. 14a). While the rest of the New Testament teaches association with sinners, this portion shows the limits of that association by warning against union with them. That it is possible to associate rather freely with sinners and yet not compromise or be partakers of their evil deeds is conclusively proved by Jesus’ own example. He could be called both the “friend of sinners” and “separate from sinners” (Heb. 7:26). Too many evangelicals manage the latter much better than the former.
In this connection, it is interesting to note that the Bible prefers our association with sinners to a like association with disobedient brethren! “I wrote unto you in an epistle not to company with fornicators: yet not altogether with the fornicators of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or with idolators; for then must ye needs go out of the world. But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolator, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat” (1 Cor. 5:9–11).
Worldliness essentially consists, then, of putting something other than the Lord in the first place in the heart. The spiritual person keeps “things” in their proper, subordinate place. If need be, he will sacrifice them on the altar of his devotion to God.
Conversely, the worldly person daily sacrifices God upon the altar of his lusts. That “lust,” for a suburban housewife, may be her flower garden. For the high school boy, it may be his car; for a girl, her personal appearance. The businessman’s lust may be his business. And for the minister it could even be his church. It is distinctly possible for a minister to be more interested in his church than in the Lord, and to promote the church at the expense of the Lord’s best interests.
With this concept in mind, we can readily see that worldliness is by no means uncommon in evangelical churches. Because our members observe a few taboos, we think we have no worldliness. How blind we are!
Wherever a life is centered on something other than God, there is worldliness. Wherever there is a worldliness, God is grieved. Our preference for things instead of him insults his grace. It also identifies us with the transistory rather than with the eternal. “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”
