“Adulterers and adulteresses! 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.”
makes himself an enemy of God
The word “makes” means to assign, to establish, to institute, to bring into a certain state, to exhibit one’s self. Once we become a friend of the world, we assign ourselves to the position of an enemy of God. We appoint ourselves to this position of an enemy of God by using the world-system for our essential values.
PRINCIPLE:
Friendship with the world and friendship with God are mutually exclusive.
APPLICATION:
We commit spiritual infidelity when we love the world. Friendship with the world and friendship with God are mutually exclusive. A person who attempts to love God and the world simultaneously is a double-minded man. He wants his cake and eat it too. This is spiritual adultery.
Mt. 6:24, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
2 Co 6:14-16, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? 15 And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
‘I will dwell in them
And walk among them.
I will be their God,
And they shall be My people’.”
17 Therefore
“Come out from among them
And be separate, says the Lord.
Do not touch what is unclean,
And I will receive you.”
18“I will be a Father to you,
And you shall be My sons and daughters,
Says the Lord Almighty.”
God is a jealous God and will not tolerate unfaithfulness. He does not share Himself with anyone or anything. The person who falls in love with the world constitutes himself against God. He is not just indifferent to God, but he is the enemy of God. He deems that God is not sufficient for his needs, so he runs off to his mistress, the world. In adopting this system of values, he cuts off God’s blessing from his life.
When the carnal Christian fully buys into Satan’s system, he completely shuts down to the Word of God. His orientation of values changes from God’s viewpoint to Satan’s viewpoint. Satan’s viewpoint might not be overt evil but a philosophy or a religious belief contrary to the principles of the Bible. His heart hardens toward the principles of the Word. He eventually shuts down his volition toward God wholly.
The longer the carnal believer stays in this orientation away from God, the deeper he gets into Satan’s system. Conversely, the greater momentum he has in the Word of God, the stronger he gets in his orientation to God’s system of values. It takes many decisions to get to either belief system.
Ro 12:1-2-2, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”
Col. 3:2, “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.”
