Your heart either belongs to God or it is set on things of this world. God is a jealous God and will not tolerate a bride who is continually going after another lover. Those who truly have their sins washed away in the blood of the Lamb of God are the bride of Christ. God consistently refers to worldliness as "adultery."

Ye adulterers and adulteresses, 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. –James 4:4

As mentioned before, this is a matter of the heart. Nothing is more devastating to the marriage relationship than unfaithfulness, which begins when the heart is drawn away and culminates in becoming intimate with someone other than the one you have already promised yourself to exclusively. It is the ultimate sin because it involves almost all other sins. When you commit adultery you are breaking all the other commandments as well. It involves lying, stealing, covetousness, and putting something else before God – obviously. Now if adultery is wrong then everything that leads up to it is wrong, also. When you get on a road that leads to a certain city and start traveling you are going to end up in that city sooner or later. If you make your environment conducive to adulterous thoughts and surround yourself with opportunities to go there – that is where you are going to end up.

This is what standards are about. They are barriers to stop the wheels from turning in that direction. They are the guard rails on the dangerous mountain road. People who truly love God will control the things they allow in their minds, hearts, and lives, and they will not be flirting and carrying on with the world. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment." (Matthew 22:37-38) A man and wife vow to each other on their wedding day to give their all to one another – to the exclusion of all others. They are promising to give to each other what they will never give to anyone else except God. God expects – yeah, He demands, the same from us. We must be his alone and our heart cannot be in love with this world and the things of the world.

Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. – Colossians 3:2

God wants to be the greatest pleasure and delight of your heart. It grieves and hurts his heart when you turn away from Him to another – the pleasures and cares of this world. God has so much more to offer than this world. How insane it is to make this world and its vain, temporal things the delight of your heart and the love of your life!

Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence [is] fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. – Psalms 16:11

They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house; and thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures. – Psalms 36:8

So what are we talking about? We must make it clear or many folks simply do not understand. What is the "world" that God is speaking of when He says that we cannot love it – and Him?

First of all, this world is directed and operated by the multitude of unregenerate people who have rejected God and his authority over their lives. The education, the entertainment, and even most of organized religion are under the control of the enemies of God. There is no argument about that. Therefore, the education, the entertainment, and the religion of this world are going to be full of the philosophy of those who reject God, his law, his love, and his salvation. Ask yourself how a person could love God and be a part of any of this. The answer is, they cannot. You either love the world and are one of them, or you love God and have come out from among them. Everyone speaks the language of their own people and so our conversation in this world (our walk) tells what we really are.

They are of the world: therefore speak they of the world, and the world heareth them. – 1 John 4:5

This is the great conflict the true child of God must face sooner or later. The light and the darkness cannot get along together in the same place. The Son of God came to this world and the world rejected him and crucified him.

He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. – John 1:10

If we are going to live for God and be faithful to him in this world we will also have to come out from among them and be separate. This will cause us to be rejected and hated by others and this is precisely where most people stop. They cannot endure being ostracized or even thought of as different or odd by others.

If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. – John 15:19

But this is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak. If a person cannot bear this minor reproach for Christ then how can they possibly really know Him? How could they love Him? What kind of wife would be ashamed to be identified with her husband? What would we think of a wife who deliberately took her pleasure in, and kept company with men who hated and despised her husband and desired their acceptance and approval instead of her husband’s? How would the husband of such a wife feel?

Worldliness is unfaithfulness to God. It is spiritual adultery. It will be a concern of every true child of God. Heaven is a place only for those who love God, and all of God’s promises are given to those "who love him." Search the Scriptures and you will find this is very clear. Those who love the world have no claims on God’s promises for eternity with Him.

But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. – 1 Corinthians 2:9

It is a very serious matter then. It is not just a difference of opinion. It is not just old-fashioned people with old-fashioned ideas they refuse to turn loose of. It is basic to the Christian life and critical to having a true walk with God. You cannot love the world and God – you must choose one or the other. It does not matter that modern Christianity has invented what they call a "worldly Christian." That is a term and concept that absolutely contradicts the Word of God. It may be a convenient idea for keeping worldly people coming to church and supporting the "work" and padding the pockets of the false prophets of our day but it will look very abominable when we stand before God.

Remember this when you are at some worldly gathering like a professional ball game or a theater with your heart and mind and body involved and enjoying all the same pleasures and admiring all the same wicked people that the thousands of unsaved, irreverent, enemies of God around you are enjoying and admiring – while you forget God. Remember this when you are filling your mind and your children’s minds with the profanity, the pornography, and the philosophy of the perverts from Hollywood while they entertain you with movies and TV shows – while you forget God. Most modern Christians now will argue that they can go to the beach or the public pool where everyone is almost completely naked and take their clothes off and join them – and there is nothing wrong with it at all. Anyone who objects to such behavior is just "old-fashioned" and prudish. The truth is that people who will do such things are worldly minded and carnal and …

... the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. – Romans 8:7

When a person lives like this they are the unfaithful wife who takes her ring off and changes her clothes and goes off to town in search of someone to give herself to besides her husband. She wants to conceal her identification with her husband so she can be accepted by someone else. She comes home with her body, her mind, and her heart defiled just like the people do who go to the party places of the world where the liquor, the profanity, the nakedness, and their cruel hateful words for God are spewed all over them. You cannot possibly come into the presence of God from an environment like that and be intimate with the heavenly Bridegroom whom you profess to love with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. You are deceiving yourself if you think you can. That is the biggest reason that the churches are as dead as can be. We have heard it said many times by a preacher that if you can shout at the ball game on Saturday night you should shout in church on Sunday morning. But the fact that they were shouting at the ball game is the very reason they are NOT shouting in church.

If you love the world and refuse to separate from its wicked practices, but indulge yourself in the same things they do, and enjoy their company, you are at enmity with God – count on it! It is true that you will have no problem finding a church where you will "fit in" just like you are, and you can listen to a preacher who will never tell you what you have just read, but remember that you are going to stand before God himself one day and give account of what you have done in this body. Heed the Word of God instead of the comforting words of some worldly false prophet who will sell your soul to hell for his own selfish purposes!

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. – Romans 12:2

And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. 1 John 3:3

For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. – 1 John 5:4

Mike Miller
June 12, 2010