The Christian and the World

By Edd Sterchi

    Do you know what you look like when you dress like the world? The world.
    Do you know what you sound like when you speak like the world? The world.
    Do you know what you “smell” like when you commune with the world? The world.
    Do you know what you become like when you act like the world? The world.
    Note the following combined verses from the Bible concerning the Christian's relationship to the world and worldly things, and consider the way you dress, speak, associate, and act:
“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...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...And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever...For whatever is born of God overcomes the world...But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world...Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this:...to keep oneself unspotted from the world...that you may become blameless and harmless, children of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.” (Verses in order of wording: Jas. 4:4; 1 John 2:15, 17; 1 John 5:4; Gal. 6:14; Jas. 1:27; Phil. 2:15)
    Christians are to be separate from the world and her lost ways. “Therefore ‘Come out from among them And be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, And I will receive you.’” (1 Cor. 6:17).
    Yes, we are in the world, but we should never be of the world.

- Edd Sterchi preaches for the Broadway Church of Christ in Campbellsville, KY. He may be contacted through the congregation's website: http://www.broadwaychurchofchrist.net/