Intimacy with the World

“You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” (James 4:4)

What does James call these people?

Adulterous

We would be horrified if some great Christian leader/teacher came up and called us that.

There are plenty of actual adulterous within the church. But in what way are we adulterous?

Friendship with the world is hatred toward God.

We can’t have it both ways. We can choose to be a friend of the world but that puts us an enemy of God.

How can we define this friendship?

Mutual attachment, intimacy, fellowship, alliance.

To have an intimacy with the world it has to come from their side as well. But by the world’s nature, it can have no fellowship with light. That means we have compromised.

God will not have the darkness. The world will not have the light.

Somehow, we want the world to love us – but they can’t – they won’t without the light going.

Heather Jean Torosyan