Christians are often told to be in the world but not of the world. This advice is particularly important in America today where our society is literally crumbling right before our eyes. So many things that God calls sin are being legalized and the moral compass of our society is totally broken that the church of God has to be extra careful not to get sucked into a world that is literally totally anti-Christian and morally rotting away.
John Stott makes a poignant point here when he shared the following insight: “The church has a double responsibility in relation to the world around us. On the one hand we are to live, serve and witness in the world. On the other hand, we are to avoid becoming contaminated by the world. So, we are neither to seek to preserve our holiness by escaping from the world nor to sacrifice our holiness by conforming to the world.”1
Thus, Christians must always be vigilant to live holy in an unholy world by shining the light of Christ by our witness against the backdrop of a totally godless society. Thankfully the Holy Spirit that lives inside of us is more than able to help us put to death the old sin nature that so often craves the sins of the world. As such we must constantly allow the Holy Spirit to have full reign in our lives supplying us with the power to live godly in an ungodly world.
When the church lives this way, and is absolutely different from the world she will evoke one of two reactions. Either she will attract many non-believers by their viewing Christians as the most joyful and content people around, or the church will be repulsive to the unsaved because our lifestyle and gospel message clearly condemns their sinful lives. Either way the gospel will be doing what it has always been designed to do and that is to convict sinners, some to repentance and others to more rebellion against God.
However, when the church is lukewarm, as many American churches are today, it neither convicts or repels sinners, but instead causes the non-believer to believe that Christians are no different than they are. This sadly leaves them thinking that they neither have to worship Jesus or repent of their sins. And as a result this leaves them doomed to damnation.
My prayer is that the church will wake up from its compromising ways and be the salt and light of the world – shunning sin and exalting Jesus. For when this happens yes, persecution of the church will increase, but many souls will also be saved!
1 John R.W. Stott Quotes (Author of The Cross of Christ) (page 2 of 8) (goodreads.com)
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