The Christian life is no bed of roses. On the contrary, it involves warfare! This implies enemies, and the Christian has three terrible ones—the world, the flesh, and the devil. Let's think for a few minutes about this enemy called the world.
in 1 John 2:15, the child of God is warned, "Do not love the world or anything in the world." Here the word refers to the world-system, which is a deadly enemy of the Christian. This is the sense in which we will be using the world in this article.
The dictionary definition of “worldly” is “relating to, or devoted to, the temporal world.” Worldliness, then, is the condition of being concerned with worldly affairs, especially to the neglect of spiritual things. The Bible has a great deal to say about worldliness, none of it good.
Paul equates worldliness with spiritual immaturity in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3, where he addresses the believers in the church of Corinth in regard to their worldly behavior. Though they were believers—he calls them “brothers”—they were spiritual babies who could not understand the deep things of God that Paul wished to share with them. They had never progressed past learning the basics of the faith and were seemingly content to remain there. This lack of maturity led to their behaving as though they were still part of the unsaved world. They quarreled among themselves as to which of them was greater because of which of the apostles they followed (1 Corinthians 1:11-13; 3:4), when in reality they followed none of them, following instead their own lusts and desire to elevate themselves above others. Paul exhorted them to grow up and mature in the faith so they would cease from worldly behavior.
The World as a System
To understand how the world-system came into being, we must go back to the beginning of things. The first Adam was created by God. He was created in the image of God and given the rulership of this world. But Adam rebelled against God. When he did this, he actually took sides with Satan and thus came under the rule of Satan.
So we see that originally God gave the rulership of the world to Adam, but Adam handed it over to Satan. Thus, Satan gained control of the world and became the ruler of this world. This is why the Bible calls him "the god of this world" (2 Corinthians 4:4).
Satan's Problem
Because Adam was the head of the human race, he brought the whole human race into the kingdom of darkness and under the rule of Satan. But even though Satan had the whole human race as his kingdom, he still had a problem. His problem was how to keep them there! There was a way for them to escape. God, in his goodness, has always made a way for man to come back to Him. When someone turns to God in repentance and faith, they escape from Satan's rule. Of course, Satan didn't like this, so he came up with a plan.
Satan's Plan
What did Satan do? He organized humanity into a world-system based on pride, ambition, selfishness, greed, and sinful pleasures. It includes world kingdoms, world organizations, false religions, commerce, entertainment, politics, and many other things. What is the world? It is human society with God left out.
The epistles depict worldliness as the exact opposite of godliness. The world’s wisdom is not wisdom at all (1 Corinthians 3:18-19). Rather, it is foolishness, especially the world’s wisdom on the subject of religion. We see that today in the endless discussions of “spirituality” by men whose spiritual wisdom is based on nothing more than worldly illusions. True wisdom that comes from God is juxtaposed against the foolish “wisdom” of the world throughout Scripture. The message of the cross is foolishness to those with worldly wisdom who are perishing (1 Corinthians 1:18) because true wisdom comes not from man’s philosophies, but from God’s Word. True godliness is always opposed by the world.
Furthermore, Paul refers to a “worldly sorrow” (2 Corinthians 7:10) which is the opposite of the godly sorrow that comes from true repentance. Godly sorrow is what we feel over our sin when we come to see it as God sees it and when our view of it is in accord with His. Worldly sorrow, on the other hand, does not stem from the knowledge of sin against a holy God, but rather from circumstances in which the worldly find themselves. Worldly sorrow stems from a love of self and may arise from the loss of friends or property, from disappointment, or from shame and disgrace. But once the circumstances right themselves, worldly sorrow disappears. Godly sorrow, however, is only alleviated by turning to Christ, who alone provides freedom from the sorrow, the penalty and the power of sin.
Finally, Scripture draws a clear distinction between friendship with God and friendship with the world. James 4:4 tells us that “friendship with the world is hatred toward God.” He goes on to say that “anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” The apostle James uses the strong words “hatred” and “enemy” to drive home the point that we can be in the world or in the kingdom, but not both because they are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Those who choose worldliness choose to live in the enemy’s camp because all that is of the world is under the control of Satan (1 John 5:19). He is the ruler of this world, and when we choose the world, we enlist in his evil army and become enemies of God.
For the Christian, the choice is clear. To avoid worldliness, we must mature in the faith, growing up in all things in Christ so that we are no longer spiritual infants, tossed about by the lies of the world (Ephesians 4:14-15). We must come to know the difference between the wisdom of God and the foolishness of worldly wisdom, and that is only achieved by careful and diligent study of the Word, seeking God’s wisdom in prayer (James 1:5), and enjoying the fellowship of other mature believers who can encourage us to reject worldliness and embrace godliness.
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"Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things" (Colossians 3:1-2).
