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Overcoming Worldliness by Faith

by Dr Joel Beeke

FROM SWORD & TROWEL 2003 No 1

THE MOST VALUABLE things in life are not easily obtained, much less retained. That is true of contentment in Christ; or of a disciplined lifestyle of commitment to His church and kingdom. None of these blessings should be taken for granted. In spiritual life, the principle holds true: the way to gain is through pain.

In their book In His Image, Paul Brand and Philip Yancey show how pain is a necessary ingredient to growth. That’s why we speak of growing pains, they say, and repeat the saying, ‘No pain, no gain.’ In nature, struggle and pain are also necessary for proper growth. For example, a man once found a cocoon of the emperor moth and took it home to watch it emerge. One day a small opening appeared. For several hours the moth struggled but couldn’t seem to force its body past a certain point. Deciding something was wrong, the man took scissors and snipped the remaining bit of cocoon. The moth emerged easily, its body large and swollen, the wings small and shrivelled. The man expected that in a few hours the wings of the moth would unfurl in their natural beauty, but they did not. The moth spent its life dragging around a swollen body and shrivelled wings. The struggle and pain necessary to pass through the tiny opening of the cocoon are God’s way of forcing fluid from the body of a moth into the wings. The merciful snip of the scissors was, in reality, most cruel.

Likewise, the Christian life is a struggle. It demands entrance through a narrow gate and a daily walk along a narrow path. The Christian way is not a middle way between extremes but a narrow way between precipices. It involves living by faith through self-denial, and waging a holy war in the midst of a hostile world. What a war that is, for the world doesn’t fight fairly or cleanly, agree to ceasefires, or sign peace treaties.

To see how the believer overcomes the way of worldliness by faith, let’s examine 1 John 5.4, which says, ‘For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.’ Earlier in his epistle, John encourages us to flee worldliness, saying: ‘Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. 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. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever’ (1 John 2.15-17).

Here John contrasts love for the world with love for the Father. The two loves are incompatible. As Jesus said, ‘No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other’ (Matthew 6.24).

What does John mean by the ‘world’? His use of the Greek word kosmos, or ‘world’, has several meanings in the New Testament. In 1 John 5.4, the apostle does not refer to the physical world in which we live, nor to the mass of people living on the planet. Rather he uses the term to refer to a kingdom of which the ruler and the inhabitants are lost in sin and wholly at odds with anything pleasing to God. John is talking about Satan’s kingdom of darkness, which includes all people who are under his rule and living according to the standards of this world.

In the text, ‘world’ is a realm in opposition to Christ and His church. This world now lives in rebellion against the Lord and His Christ. It has become a fallen, disordered world in the grip of the evil one, rebellious and alienated. It is committed to unrighteousness, and hostile both to the Truth and to the people of God. It is people who focus on this world’s lusts and neglect the world to come. Despite its great achievements, this world is lost and incapable of saving itself.

The goal of worldly people is to move forward rather than upward; to live horizontally rather than vertically. They seek after outward prosperity rather than holiness. They burst with selfish desires rather than heartfelt supplications. If they do not deny God, they ignore and forget Him, or else they use Him only for selfish ends.

Worldliness, then, is human nature without God. Someone who is of this world is controlled by worldly pursuits, namely, the quest for pleasure, profit, and position. A worldly man yields to the spirit of fallen mankind - the spirit of self-seeking and self- indulgence - without regard for God. Each one of us, by nature, was born worldly. We belong to this evil world; it is our natural habitat.

By nature, we have a worldly mind that is ‘not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be’ (Romans 8.7). As we were nourished by an umbilical cord in our mother’s womb, so we were tied to the world from birth. Despite our natural worldliness, John speaks, quite astonishingly, of overcoming that liability. He says, ‘For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world.’ John uses that phrase sixteen times in his writings. But what exactly does he mean by ‘overcoming the world’?

John does not mean conquering the people of this world, or winning power battles over our colleagues, or dominating others. Nor does John mean withdrawing from the world, such as monks or Amish people tend to do by establishing their own communities. A Christian is called to fight in this world even though he is not of this world. He must live in the world but not let the world live in him. Escaping is not overcoming. To escape from the world is like a soldier avoiding injury by running from the battlefield.

Overcoming also does not mean sanctifying everything in the world for Christ, as some claim. Some parts of the world may be redeemed for Christ, but sinful activities can never be sanctified. We should not try to Christianise drama or dance for public worship, for example, or Christianise what Hollywood has to offer by way of entertainment. For John, overcoming means fighting by faith against the flow of this present, evil world. Overcoming the world involves several things:

(a) It means rising above this world’s thinking and habits. Someone who wants to overcome the world realises that he has something to overcome. He sees that he has been floating with this world’s mentality - thinking the way this world thinks, speaking the way this world speaks, and spending time and energy in the pursuit of worldly things. He now realises that his thoughts, words, and actions have all been worldly - that he has done nothing to the glory of God or out of true faith in obedience to the spirit of God’s law. ‘I have wasted my life,’ he cries out. ‘Rather than overcoming this world, I have been overcome by this world. Its selfishness, pride, and materialism have swallowed me up.’

Someone who overcomes the world makes a clean break from worldly activities, and worldly habits. Like Joshua, he decides, ‘As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.’ He takes the cold plunge into potential rejection by the world, placing the fear of God above the fear of man, and esteeming God’s desires of greater value than the desires of men.

(b) It means persevering in freedom in Christ, separate from worldly enslavement. Worldly temptations entice us. Worldly people entice us. Internal worldliness afflicts us. Satan, ruler of this world, knows our weaknesses. By grace, the person who desires to overcome the world strives for allegiance to God rather than the world. Finding freedom only in Christ and His service, he cries out, ‘Lord, Thou hast loosed my bonds; I will fight against returning to the slavery of sin with all that is within me.’

(c) It means being raised above the circumstances of this world. Paul learned to be content in whatever state he found himself. Neither poverty nor wealth nor sorrow nor joy could move Paul from Christ- centred living. That’s what it means to overcome the world - to live, for Christ’s sake, above the threats and bribes and jokes of the world. It means following the Lord like Caleb (Numbers 14.24) in the midst of complainers. It means remaining at peace when friends or people at work despise us for serving the Lord. It means patiently enduring all the persecutions the world throws at us.

Dr Peter Hammond, whom I recently met in South Africa, told me that every time he preaches in Sudan, he expects to be arrested and persecuted. When pressed for details on how he was persecuted, Dr Hammond said he had experienced ‘minor persecution’, such as having his head submerged in a pail of urine until he was forced to drink it, or having a bag tied around his head at the neck until he fainted from lack of oxygen. ‘That’s nothing compared to what our Lord experienced,’ he quickly added. ‘We Christians must count it all joy when we are persecuted for Christ’s sake.’

Most of us do not suffer such persecution, but if we are to overcome the world, we must not expect to be friends of this world. As John tells us, worldly people who hate Christ will also hate His disciples. Luther said suffering persecution is an inevitable mark of being a believer. If you are a true Christian, expect persecution. 2 Timothy 3.12 says, ‘All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.’ Remember that a world that smiles upon you is a dangerous place.

Pray for grace to resist worldly temptation. Strive to follow Spurgeon’s advice: ‘Overcome the world by patiently enduring all the persecution that falls to your lot. Do not get angry; and do not become downhearted. Jests break no bones; and if you had any bone broken for Christ’s sake, it would be the most honoured bone in your whole body.’

(d) It means living a life of self-denial. Abraham is a prime example. When God called Abraham to leave his family and friends in Haran, Abraham obeyed, not knowing where he was going. When the well- watered plain of Jordan lay before him, he didn’t ask to move there, as his nephew Lot did. When Lot was carried off into captivity, Abraham fought to free him, then refused to take anything from the defeated kings, though he had every right to the spoils of war according to the customs of his day.

Overcoming begins at conversion. Those reborn of God have such a radical change of heart that they become new creatures with radically different views of sin, the world, Christ, and Scripture. They hate sin and long to flee from it. They hate what they used to love, and love what they used to hate. They long to know Christ and to live to please Him. Such people, John says, ‘overcome the world’. Jesus Christ defeated Satan and the world on behalf of all those given to Him by the Father from eternity. Subjectively, this act takes place in the lives of sinners who are made partakers of Christ’s great act of atonement through regeneration. It is Christ Who has overcome the world for us. It is through Christ that John could tell young people - ‘I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the wicked one.’ We are victors because we belong to the Victor.

However, overcoming the world is still a daily battle. We have overcome the world because we belong to the One Who has overcome, but we also must strive to win daily battles against the world. Here is how we are to do this. The Christian is still attracted to the world because of the sin that remains in him. The Bible calls this remaining attraction ‘the flesh’. Thus we must keep ourselves ‘unspotted from the world’ remembering that our ‘flesh’ is still inclined toward the world. Complete isolation from the world cannot keep us from sin, because even believers carry a piece of the world within them. John says: ‘This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.’ Fighting daily against the temptations of the world can only be accomplished by faith.

In 1 John 2, John names three ways in which we are lured into the ways of the world: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. In Christ’s strength, faith battles against these paths of worldliness. We shall look at each path.

1 FIRST, faith battles against the lust of the flesh. Faith refuses to love a world that delights in the lusts of the flesh. That means resisting temptations, such as illicit drugs, smoking, excessive eating or drinking. The Bible repeatedly warns against such excesses. We must not be brought under bondage to anything physical but are to exercise self-control, for our body is the temple of the Holy Ghost.

The prohibition against fleshly lusting forbids sexual immorality in all forms. It forbids any flirtation or physical intimacy outside of marriage. God has wisely placed sexual intimacy within the sanctity of marriage. We must also be modest about the way we dress, so that it does not encourage lust. Clothing that calls attention to our bodies arouses fleshly lusts that offend God. He blames those who provoke lust as much as those who lust after them.

Refusing to love the world means keeping ourselves and our children from worldly parties, unedifying entertainment, night clubs, and dancing, all of which stir the lusts of the flesh. It also includes turning away from worldly music, such as hard rock and soft rock, Christian contemporary music, and many other forms of music that promote the lusts of the flesh. We must ask of all forms of entertainment: Can I pray over this? Does it glorify God or ignite fleshly lusts? Does it pass the test of Philippians 4.8, being honest, just, pure, lovely, and of good report? If it encourages lust, avoid it.

Faith refuses to love this present evil world. Rather, it heeds Romans 13.14, which says, ‘Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.’

2 SECONDLY, faith battles against the lust of the eyes. Satan works very hard to engage our eyes in worldly entertainment. Just as he tempted our first parents to believe that their Creator was hard and unbending, so he whispers to us, ‘When did God say that you couldn’t enjoy movies or television? Doesn’t He want you to know what’s going on in the world? Only a hard, legalistic God would deny those to you.’ Satan has been using such arguments since Paradise. He knows his time is short, so he will do anything to persuade us to look at the temptations of worldly entertainment. Perhaps he’ll even use a friend to entice you, as he used Eve to tempt Adam. Satan is a master at hiding himself under the cloak of friendship.

Today Satan makes such fruit even more tempting by allowing us to see it in the privacy of our home - in videos or over the Internet. We must say no to all forms of entertainment which teach that man is in control of his world and that glamorise sin. Such entertainment makes adultery look innocent, commonplace, or even exciting. Murder becomes thrilling. Profanity is everyday speech. We cannot trust our own strength in this, for even the apostle Paul admitted, ‘For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.’

Let us also rid our homes of unedifying magazines, trashy novels, indeed, all printed material that contradicts the Ten Commandments. How can we ask not to be led into temptation while we continue to play with temptation? As James warns us, ‘Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.’

3 THIRDLY, faith battles against the pride of life. How prevalent such pride is in our hearts. As George Swinnock said, ‘Pride was the first shirt we put on in Paradise and the last we will take off when we die.’ The pride of life includes:

(a) Pride in ourselves and our accomplishments. By nature we are filled with self-gratification and self-fulfilment. We live for ourselves, promoting our own wisdom and accomplishments.

(b) Pride of materialism. Loving possessions such as our homes or cars or clothing more than God falls under condemnation, along with envy, or the wish to become rich at the expense of our spiritual welfare.

(c) Pride of desecrating the Lord’s Day. How proud we must be to think that we don’t need to set aside one day out of seven to worship the Lord and to receive the kind of spiritual food that will nurture us for the coming week.

(d) Pride in idolising movie actors, sports heroes, government leaders, or other popular figures. John condemns all human idolisation as the pride of life.

Faith strives against these paths of worldliness. It gains victory over all the subtle power of external and internal worldliness by:

(a) Believing in Jesus the Son of God. John asks, ‘Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?’ After writing about the conflict endured by biblical heroes of faith, the writer of Hebrews says the only way these people endured stonings, burnings, drownings, tortures, and other persecutions was by ‘looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.’

The Lord chose to be nailed on the cross rather than be crowned king of the world. And in those dreadful hours on the cross, the world was vanquished at His feet. His victory on the cross was for you, dear believer. The cross is also your way to glory. When you are faced with worldly temptation, ask yourself, ‘How shall I do this great wickedness against my Saviour and sin against His cross?’ Then confess with Paul, ‘God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.’ Sing with Isaac Watts:

Faith obtains victory over the powers of this world because faith enables us to draw upon the resources of Christ. If you want your lamp to work, you must connect it to a power source. Likewise, faith connects us to the mighty resources of the One Who has overcome the world. Faith in Christ overcomes the world by making us feel at home with God and His kingdom rather than with the devil and this world. It gives us new affections through the Holy Spirit. We can truly say with Paul, ‘For to me to live is Christ.’

John says that if you have been born of God, then you will believe in His Son. You will love Him and His people, and you will overcome the world. No one but Christ can give you that power. You cannot give it to yourself. The church cannot give it to you. It is a divine gift, which enables you to say, ‘Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee’ (Psalm 73.25).

(b) Faith gains victory over the world by purifying the heart through Christ-centredness. 1 John 3.3 says that every person who has in him the Christian hope of being a son of God, ‘purifieth himself, even as he is pure’. A believer who fixes his faith and his eye on Christ is transformed into the image of Christ. Faith that looks at a bleeding Christ produces a bleeding heart; faith that looks at a holy Christ produces a holy life; faith that looks at an afflicted Christ, produces sanctified affliction.

According to Richard Cecil, ‘One affliction sanctified, will do more in enabling the Christian to get a victory over the world, than twenty years of prosperity and peace.’ By looking at Christ, the lusts of the world no longer have dominion over us. Worldliness is driven from the heart, its supreme fortress. Christ overcame sin, Satan, death, and hell for us, but He also promises to be in us to purify us. That is the secret of overcoming the world, for, as 1 John 4.4 says, ‘Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world.’

Christ-centredness helps us to see sin as it really is. Satan tries to make sin attractive. Sadly, we are prone to yield to that device. We ask, ‘What is the harm of listening to "Christian" contemporary music? Everyone else is doing it.’ We then take sin as a sweet morsel on our tongue. That will not happen if we put faith to work, for faith sees sin for what it is. ‘Faith looks behind the curtain of sense, and sees sin before it is dressed up for the stage,’ wrote William Gurnall. Faith sees the ugliness of sin without its camouflage.

(c) Faith gains victory over the world by helping us live according to what pleases God. By faith, we are pleased by what pleases God, and as our faith grows stronger, it increasingly tramples the world under its feet. It does this by obeying God’s commandments. The aim of the world’s commandments is to promote wealth, fame, social standing, secular power, and human pleasure. Jesus Christ aimed for none of those things. He overcame the world by obeying God’s commandments - loving God above all and His neighbour as Himself. That is the goal of all those born of God. They yearn to obey God’s commandments, and by this, they overcome the world.

We need to avoid two extremes in obeying God’s commandments, however. One is legalism, which adds man-made requirements to God’s commandments. The other is antinomianism, which denies the authority of the law as a rule of life for Christians. Today, our greatest problem is antinomianism. We will not be ruled by God. We fancy that our own instincts are so sanctified that we can safely follow where they lead. This thinking can lead us into the swift current of worldliness. As soon as a believer rests his oars in his battle to keep God’s commandments, he yields to the world and is swept downstream. He is then overcome by the world rather than overcoming the world in Christ.

(d) Faith gains victory over the world by enabling us to live for the unseen world that awaits us

Faith sees that the world is unworthy of our attention. It sees that the world never gives what it promises. It is a gigantic mirage, a tragic fraud, a hollow bubble. ‘To forsake Christ for the world is to leave a treasure for a trifle, eternity for a moment, reality for a shadow,’ wrote William Jenkyn. John Trapp wrote, ‘Pleasure, profit, and preferment are the worldling’s trinity.’

Faith sees there are greater pleasures to be had by abstaining from sin than by indulging in it. Faith values the eternal rewards that Christ has laid up in Heaven far more than all the treasures of the world. In abstaining from worldly pursuits, the Christian experiences true happiness, believing that in God’s presence there is ‘fulness of joy’ and ‘pleasures for evermore’.

Here on earth, Heaven is in our hearts and in our deepest affections, yet the world and the devil are at our elbow. But only righteousness will dwell in the new heavens and earth to come. By faith, we believe that Christ has gone to prepare that world for us and will return to put an end to the present evil one. Satan and all of his followers will one day be banished to eternal perdition.

By faith, we believe that the best is yet to come. We look to a time when we will be saved for ever from Satan, the world, and our old nature. Sin will be left behind; evil will be walled out. There will be no more tears, pain, sorrow, temptation, or death. We will worship and praise God, serve and reign with Christ, and fellowship with the saints and angels. We will find Heaven a perfect place of perfect mansions, perfect gold, perfect light, and perfect pleasure. Above all, we will be in perfect communion with the Triune God, knowing, seeing, loving, and praising Him for ever. Truly, ‘our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.’

We must use every means to strengthen ourselves against worldliness. We must listen to sermons, saturate ourselves with Scripture, read books that can make us ‘wise unto salvation’, and pray without ceasing. We must fellowship with believers, observe the Lord’s Day, evangelise unbelievers, and serve others. We must be good stewards of our time, always remembering, as Thomas Manton said, ‘A carnal Christian is no Christian but the carcase of a Christian, [for] if we don’t put the love of the world to death, the world will put us to death.’

When we surrender to the devil’s temptation, that failure is rooted in unbelief. Usually, we are guilty of neglecting to use the shield of faith and the means of grace to protect us from the enemy. Jesus often asked His disciples, ‘Where is your faith?’ He also asks us whenever we allow the fiery darts of Satan to enter our soul: ‘Why don’t you believe, watch, and pray?’

Let us beware of anything that is rooted in worldly success, worldly theories, and worldly methods. For example, Christians who trust Christ and His Word should resist turning for help to therapists who approach their problems from the world’s point of view. Too often, psychologists advocate self-reliance rather than reliance on God.

If J C Ryle could write in the late-nineteenth century, ‘Worldliness is the peculiar plague of Christendom in our own era,’ how much more ought we to see it in our day! Myriads of so-called Christians today think like the world, look like the world, and act like the world. They may appear morally decent, but Christ is not the focus of their lives. They are at home in this world and lack a passionate commitment to Christ and His great commission. They forget that when the worldly man thinks he has conquered the world, the world has conquered him. Then he is no longer salt and light in the world, and provides evidence that he is not born again after all.

We must repent of every backsliding way and by faith return to the Lord. Let’s heed Thomas Guthrie - ‘If you find yourself loving any pleasure better than praying, any book better than the Bible, any house better than the house of God, any table better than the Lord’s table, any person better than Christ, any indulgence better than the hope of Heaven - take alarm!’ Friend, if you marry the spirit of this age, you’ll find yourself a widow or widower in the age to come. Don’t dress for the world to come in front of the mirror of this world. Remember, repent, return, and do the first works.