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You’re probably familiar with Homer’s Greek mythical story of Odysseus and the enchanting creatures called Sirens. Odysseus has been warned about the beautiful and seductive Sirens who sing to ships passing by their island luring the crew to shore. When the ship crashes on the rocks, the sailors are killed. Odysseus’ ship is approaching the island of the Sirens. He wants to hear them without any injury to him or his men, so he has the crew plug up their ears with wax and then has them strap him to the mast and promise not to free him no matter what he says as they pass the island. The sweet sounds so allure him that he commands his men to cut him loose, but they refuse, thus saving his life from the Sirens.
We live in a world of deadly Sirens. The world’s swirling mass of alluring calls is almost overwhelming and can be deadly even to believers. These allurements take a myriad of forms in different cultures, but the Bible calls them the world. The world is Satan’s siren song to seduce hearts and destroy our spiritual lives. James says anyone who caves to the love of the world embraces a substitute lover instead of God. He describes them as adulteresses – betrayers of their loving God. Anyone who befriends this substitute god and loves this world makes himself an enemy of God. God brooks no rivals. He will not accept or tolerate other gods. To give your heart to this world is to commit spiritual adultery. For God’s own glory and for our good, He calls us to undivided love and loyalty to Him, like a spouse’s undivided loyalty to her husband.
SPIRITUAL ADULTERY – BETRAYAL OF DIVINE LOVE
James 4:4 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 unleashes a severe charge against anyone who professes to be a believer but insists on playing footsies with the world – adulteress! Some manuscripts have both adulteresses and adulterers, but the best Greek manuscripts have just “adulteresses.” James uses this word because Christ has called us to Himself and expects us as His bride to love and live for Him exclusively. Paul put it like this.
2 Corinthians 11:2-3 For I am jealous for you with a godly jealousy; for I betrothed you to one husband, so that to Christ I might present you as a pure virgin. 3 But I am afraid that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be led astray from the simplicity and purity of devotion to Christ.
God claims exclusive possession of our hearts. He calls us to be all ablaze for His glory, to live zealously for Him in this godless world. When we fail to do that and invite other lovers to capture our hearts, we are guilty of adultery. One author said, “People who flirt with the world jump into bed with other gods.”
Adultery is an ugly word. It describes betrayal of love and devotion. Marriage includes a promise to be faithful to one person as long as you live, but the adulteress lets her heart be seduced by another lover. Instead of loving God with all your heart, mind, body, and soul, you give your heart to another lover, a false lover, a substitute god, an idol.
FRIENDSHIP WITH THE WORLD
God warns us over and over to beware of the seductions of the world. Don’t be conformed to the world (Romans 12:2). Don’t love the world. If you love the world the love of the Father is not in you (1 John 2:15-17). Don’t be stained by the world (James 1:27).
So what is the world? What does it mean to be friends with the world? What does it mean to be worldly? Whatever it is, God gives us strong warnings.
1 John 2:15-17 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world–the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life–is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
What is the world? The world is the collective depravity of the human heart displaying itself in the culture at any time. Think on that: The collective depravity of the human heart on display. John MacArthur describes the world as “the man-centered, Satan-directed system of this present age, which is hostile to God and God’s people. It refers to the self-centered godless value system and morals of fallen man. The goal of the world is self-glory, self-fulfillment, self-indulgence, self-satisfaction, and every other form of self-serving, all of which amounts to hostility toward God.” David Wells, author of God in the Wasteland, adds, “Worldliness is that system of values…which displaces God and His truth [and] makes sin look normal and righteousness seem strange.” Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.” We are living in such a culture.
The world is driven by godless philosophies and agendas that are current at any time in history. In the late1800s Charles Darwin displaced God from creation with the lie of evolution. Around that same time Karl Marx displaced God from history, turning history into a constant conflict of oppressors and oppressed. Sigmund Freud and other humanists added to the world culture by removing God from the soul. These forces of the world have rushed downstream like a sewer into the God-denying teachings of our universities. The entertainment industry fashions the world on a popular level and the mainstream media daily injects godlessness into the stream. Speaking of streaming, so much of what streams into our lives digitally denies God and exalts man in his rebellion against God and His standards. Beware.
Anything that adds to the swirl of anti-god thinking is the world. Even Disney has joined the flow of moral evil, making evil look good and righteousness strange. God ordained government to resist evil, but our government today is affirming evil as good and as one preacher I heard recently said, if you call evil evil, they’ll be coming after you! The world system is more than physical. The seductions of the world system are orchestrated by Satan to draw people away from God. John Wesley said anything that cools your affection for God is worldliness.
You and I as believers in Christ must develop the discernment to see what is of the godless world and what is pleasing to God. And like the pleasures and lusts of James 4:1-2, worldliness is really a matter of the heart. That’s why we need to guard our hearts with all diligence. But if we are seduced by any of the cultural sirens, any of the lures that take our heart’s devotion and love away from God, we have stirred up the enmity of God against us. Whoever chooses to be a friend, philos – lover, of this godless world system makes himself an enemy of God (James 4:4). When your heart, your pleasures, and your lusts are continually excited by the world rather than being zealous for God, you have stirred up God’s enmity.
You can tell when your heart cools toward Christ. Spiritual truths lose their grip, become unreal, flat. You begin to lose your moral edge, tolerating sins you used to reject. You are drawn to listening to the wrong voices. If you continue this bent in loving the world and don’t repent, you face the judgment of God. 1 John 2:17 says if you are hitched to this world and your heart is in love with this world, you’re going to go down with this world.
What happened to Demas? We don’t know when it started, but he went from appearing to follow Christ to deserting Paul because he loved this present age (2 Timothy 4:10). His heart got hitched to the world. I have a feeling Paul saw a shift in Demas early on and had a concern about him before he disappeared into the world. Things are no different today. There are many men, even those in ministry, who have been seduced by the money, the power, the adulation, the popularity. Some turn the church into a world-pleasing entertainment center, trying to impress the world with the smoke and mirrors and $1000 sneakers. They do exactly what Demas did – forsake Christ for the world.
What about Mrs. Lot? God said, “Flee for your lives and don’t look back!” Mrs. Lot was so attached to Sodom she just couldn’t help but look back to what she loved, and she turned into a pillar of salt. Jesus tells of the foolish farmer whose heart was attached to his crops rather than to God. He built bigger barns, but paid dearly. The rich young ruler was attached to his riches and just couldn’t let go. All of this is friendship with the world, loving the world system in whatever shape it takes rather than loving Christ and zealously following Him.
What’s your heart hitched to? Could it be you are a friend of this world? Colossians 3:1 says set your mind on things above, not on things of this earth. There’s a godless world system out there that offers satisfaction, solutions, self-fulfillment, self-pleasure. There’s a devil out there who works hard to lure us into biting the world’s baits. And there’s a God who has called us to loyalty and faithfulness and who has promised to satisfy our deepest desires and give us pleasures forevermore. Don’t be foolish and willingly turn away from God and look to this world for your joy, your daily satisfaction, your fulfillment. That’s called idolatry.
WORSHIPING THE CREATURE RATHER THAN THE CREATOR
Romans 1 describes this whole worldly process and takes us to the heart of man’s biggest problem, replacing God with this world.
Romans 1:21-25, For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and crawling creatures. 24 Therefore God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, so that their bodies would be dishonored among them. 25 For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
That, my friends, is the world. The world worships and serves created stuff rather than the God who created us. In the next few verses Paul says God gives them over to sexual perversions, including lesbianism and homosexuality. That’s where friendship with this world can take you, making sin look normal and righteousness strange. And when you do that, you make yourself an enemy of God, a spiritual adulterer. God brooks no rivals. God doesn’t tolerate any competition. God doesn’t share His throne. He doesn’t share His bride. You can’t love the world and God. This world system we live in is diametrically opposed to God. And while it may look innocent enough, it would always crucify Christ, whether academically, in religion, politics, pop-culture, or philosophy, whatever.
The world is at enmity with God and God is at enmity with the world. This is why the church isn’t called to reform the world system. Paul didn’t go around trying to reform the Greco-Romans world of his day. He preached Christ and labored to bring people salvation and deliverance from the world. It’s not our God-given mission and it’s a fool’s errand anyway. The world is corrupt and will be until Jesus comes back and ties up the devil for a thousand years and imposes His righteous rule. But even then, there will be a final world rebellion against Christ just before the Great White Throne Judgment where all world-lovers will be judged and cast into the lake of fire. Then God will dwell among His people and we will love and adore and worship Christ for eternal ages with no competition from this world system.
GOD IS JEALOUS FOR YOUR HEART
James 4:5-6a Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”? 6a But He gives a greater grace.”
Before James challenges you about God’s jealously over your life, he asks a great question. What authority does the Scripture have over your life? Does it speak with purpose? Does God mean what He says? Does the Bible carry all the weight and authority of deity over your life? Many people would have to answer, “The Bible really has no authority over me. I don’t like a lot of what it says. Science has discounted much of it. It certainly doesn’t fit in with our times. Yes, I think it is void of power or purpose.”
That’s a sad testimony. The Bible does have purpose. Everything it says speaks to God’s purpose. And here James gathers a great truth expressed in many different ways in the Old Testament and that truth is this: God is jealous for your heart. He poured out His love into your heart through the Holy Spirit who was given to you (Romans 5:5). The Holy Spirit who was placed within you by God claims your undivided love and loyalty and is grieved by your love affair with the world. God brooks no rivals. God is jealous for your heart.
THE DOCTRINE OF DIVINE JEALOUSY
We need to understand the doctrine of divine jealousy. One of the first names by which God revealed Himself was “Jealous.” He forbade idolatry in the second commandment with this reason – Exodus 20:5, “You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God.” Exodus 34:14 says, “You shall not worship any other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”
One author wrote, “God is jealous for His own glory and since He is the supreme Being in the universe, He has the right to elevate Himself above all else.” Ezekiel 39:25 says, “I will be jealous for my holy name.” And we should be jealous of His glory just as He is jealous of His glory. He is jealous of our worship and devotion, just as any spouse is naturally jealous of her lover’s heart.
GOD’S GREATER GRACE
But you may ask, “How can I keep from loving this world which I face every day. How can I keep from giving in to its siren song?” James assures us of our hope in verse 6a, “God has a greater grace.” God’s grace is greater than the pull of the world. Paul told us where sin abounds, grace superabounds. We aren’t living this Christian life in our own strength. Jesus assured Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:9, “My grace is sufficient for you.” If you are born again and belong to Christ, God will keep pouring His greater grace into your heart. His grace pouring into our hearts motivates us to find our joy and satisfaction completely in God alone, never in this world. His grace moves our hearts to long for God alone.
Marvelous grace of our Loving Lord
Grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt.
SO WHAT?
James has dropped some serious stuff on us here. Are you having an affair with Mr. Cosmos? Will you admit your pride and worldly spirit and ask God to humble you and pour His grace into your heart? In Galatians 6:14 Paul gives us the key to avoid loving the world: “God forbid that I should glory, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”
Even as we acknowledge God’s truth and grace, our hearts are prone to wander, prone to leave the Lord we love. We too easily listen to the world’s siren calls that appeal to our selfish desires. So watch over your heart with all diligence. Watch and pray and saturate yourself with God’s words. Walk circumspectly, making the most of the time because the days are evil. Fight worldliness, which is anything that dulls your affections for God and distracts your attention from living for Him every day. By the power of the Spirit turn away from the lusts of the flesh and follow the leading of God’s Spirit into pleasing God. Keep yourself aware of the love of God. Pray that your heart will be zealous for Christ, just as God is jealous of the Spirit He has given you. Have you embraced Him as the lover of your soul?