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No Partnership with the World, June 10
Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?
whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of
God.
James 4:4
.
Christ and the world are not in partnership. The apostle says, “Know
ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?” ... Conformity
to the world will never be the means of converting the world to Christ.
Christians must be entirely consecrated to God if the church is to be
efficient in its influence for good upon unbelievers. The slightest diversion
from Christ is so much influence, power, and efficiency given to the
enemy.
A Christian, as described by the Scriptures, is a person who is sepa-
rated from the world in his aims and practices and is united with Christ—a
possessor of the peace which Christ alone can bestow, finding that the joy
of the Lord is his strength and that his joy is full. Christians will not leave
the world to perish unwarned, and make no effort for the reclaiming of
the lost.... Those who truly love Christ ... watch for every opportunity to
employ the means at their command in doing good and in patterning after
the works of Christ. They will not yield to temptations to make alliances
with the world. They will not unite with secret orders and bind themselves
by intimacies with unbelievers. But those who are not wholly on the side
of Christ are to a large degree controlled by the maxims and customs of
the world....
Satan is rich in this world’s goods, and he is full of cunning to deceive,
and his most effective agents are those whom he can lead to take a form
of godliness while they deny the power of God by their un-Christlike
characters. The children of God are to stand firmly for the right under all
circumstances. They are not to be deceived by those who have the mind
and spirit of the world....
God has His faithful witnesses who are not attempting to do that
which Christ has pronounced impossible—that is, seeking to serve God
and Mammon at the same time. They are burning and shining lights amid
the moral darkness of the world and amid the gross darkness that covers
the people like the pall of death.
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