Friends with the world

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. – James 4.4

Last Sunday I preached on the passage in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus tells us that we cannot serve both God and ‘stuff.’ I think the contrast here is very similar. There Jesus talks about how we are going to love one and hate the other or hate one and love the other. 

Here we see a good explanation of where John writes ‘don’t love the world or the things of the world.’ We can’t love the world and love God. If we love the world we are hating God and proving ourselves His enemy.  

Let me pause for a second just in case the wordage is not clear. This does not say to not be friends with the people of the world. God says, after all, ‘love God and love people.’ Notice it says in 1 John ‘don’t love the world’ and here ‘don’t make friends with the world.’ The principle is that we are not to be friends with and we are not to love the world system. It has nothing to do with people. Too many times I have seen Christians unfriend lost friends because of sorry advice. We must be friends with the people in the world – but we don’t have to befriend their system. 

We can’t afford to cozy up with the world and its ways. We can’t get comfortable in this system because it will always draw us away from God. We have to live in this world system. We are going to have friends here. Let’s be sure that our friendship is with them and not the system.