The Forbidden Love

John says, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” The meaning of this commandment is not, “Do not start loving the world,” but “stop loving the world.” The saints to whom the apostle writes had already begun to love the world.

There is much confusion here.

Love for the world is not the same as merely living “in” the world. Since this is the case, it is impossible to avoid worldliness by leaving the world or by abstaining from modern society. Some have tried that: the monks of the Middle Ages sought to escape worldliness by asceticism, an extreme form of self-denial, but a monk has worldliness in his heart which he cannot escape in a monastery. The Amish have tried to escape worldliness by avoiding the use of modern conveniences, by a simple unindustrialized farming lifestyle, and by not having electricity, but that is not the answer to worldliness. Electricity or the lack thereof has nothing to do with worldliness! Electricity can be used to the glory of God or it can be used in the service of sin. Jesus prayed, “I have given them thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil” (John 17:14–15). The solution, therefore, is not to depart from the world.

Love for the world is not the same as using or even enjoying the good gifts of God’s creation. There are some Christians who feel almost guilty if they enjoy pleasure. They seem to think that it is a Christian’s duty to be miserable and to make others miserable. Christians, for example, may enjoy food and drink, art, culture, and leisure with a clear conscience. There is nothing sinful in pleasure itself. Pleasure only becomes sinful when it satisfies the lusts of our flesh, the lusts of our eyes, and the pride of life. We must not love pleasure rather than God (2 Tim. 4:4), but God has given us all things richly to enjoy (1 Tim. 6:17). If one forgets that principle, one can become self-righteous and legalistic, proud that one is holier than the Christian who uses a TV or computer, or who reads certain books, or ___________ (the reader should fill in the blank).

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Worldliness: A Perennial Danger

There are two passages in the New Testament where the Holy Spirit explicitly warns us against the world. The first is James 4:4 where James calls Christians and church members “adulterers and adulteresses” because of their friendship with the world, adding that the one who will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God. Earlier in that same epistle James says that “pure religion and undefiled” is (among other things) “to keep [oneself] unspotted from the world” (James 1:27).

The other passage is 1 John 2:15, where John commands Christians not to love the world. The force of the Greek grammar is: “Stop loving the world.” The reason John gives is similar to James: “if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

I believe that we all know instinctively what worldliness is. We can sense it; we know it; and we are very quick to see it in others and to excuse it in ourselves. Worldliness is one of the greatest dangers to the church. The Christian has three main enemies: the flesh, the devil, and the world.

MP3 of Radio Interview with Rev. Martyn McGeown on 'Grace and Assurance: The Message of the Canons of Dordt'

On Friday, December  7, 2018, Rev. Martyn McGeown had a radio interview with Chris  Arnzen, the national, religious...

Jesus the Refugee

Around this time of the year, liberal churches like to focus on certain aspects of the story of Christ’s nativity in order to make political commentary. One of the favorite approaches of such liberal commentators, whether the pope of Rome, the archbishop of Canterbury, or liberal churches in the USA and Europe, is to present the baby Jesus as a migrant or a refugee. For example, a church in Massachusetts recently erected a “nativity scene” in which “the baby Jesus” was locked up in a cage, separating him from Mary and Joseph, while the “three wise men” were blocked from reaching Jesus by a wall or a fence. Such a scene was designed to provoke a conversation about immigration, constituted a protest against the separation of children from their parents by U.S. border control, and was designed to raise awareness about the plight of caravans of migrants attempting to cross the same U.S. border.

It is not my intention to make a political statement about U.S. immigration policy (or even EU immigration policy for that matter), but to explain the biblical text, which has been hijacked and twisted in an attempt to push a particular political and moral agenda. Many of the same liberals, of course, will champion abortion, but will cry foul if the same biblical passages are used to argue against the evil of murdering the unborn. For example, had Mary (the mother of Jesus) and Elizabeth (the mother of John the Baptist) been alive today, they could have—if they had been so wickedly inclined—walked into an abortion clinic and terminated their pregnancies. Mary, who in Luke 1:42 was perhaps only a few weeks pregnant at most, could have taken an abortion pill, which is now readily available in many Western countries; while Elizabeth, who in Luke 1:36 was six months pregnant, could have opted for a surgical procedure in a state-funded abortion facility such as Planned Parenthood. While any right-minded Christian shudders at the idea, many of the same liberals who promote the “Jesus was a refugee; therefore, we should have open borders” narrative are champions for the freedom of choice of women like Mary and Elizabeth, and would even demand that the taxpayer fund the right of abortion. Liberals, therefore, are selective in their “biblically-based political outrage.”

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Baptism Now Saves Us: An Assured Conscience

So what is the status of a baptized person in the Roman Catholic Church? His sins have been removed, but “concupiscence” remains. In Roman Catholicism, concupiscence is a moral weakness, a tendency toward sin, which is itself not sin and which can be resisted by grace (grace that God gives to everyone through the sacraments and through the good works of piety of a faithful church member). But the Bible teaches that all sinners (even believers) have a sinful flesh, a totally depraved and corrupted nature, which is not only inclined to all evil, but is itself evil, and which can do nothing good. This sinful nature exists in all sinners, although in believers it has been dethroned. Nevertheless, even in believers the flesh is still very active and produces in us all kinds of evil. Without a biblical understanding of sin, the Roman Catholic will lack a proper understanding of salvation: neither water baptism nor the power of free will (even when coupled with God’s grace) can deliver us from the “filth of the flesh.”

Why then does the Bible speak this way, linking the reality of salvation to the sign of baptism? Reformed theologians speak of the sacramental union, for in the Bible there is a close connection between the sign (baptism) and the thing signified (the washing away of sin in the blood of Christ). The Heidelberg Catechism asks about this sacramental union, “Why then doth the Holy Ghost call baptism ‘the washing of regeneration,’ and the ‘washing away of sins’? God speaks thus not without great cause, to wit, not only thereby to teach us that, as the filth of the body is purged away by water, so our sins are removed by the blood and Spirit of Jesus Christ; but especially that by this divine pledge and sign he may assure us that we are spiritually cleansed from our sins as really as we are externally washed with water” (Q&A 73).

The relationship between the sign (baptism) and the thing signified (salvation) is not one of identity. They are not the same, nor does the sign become the reality. A sign cannot be the reality; otherwise, it is not a sign. A sign cannot become the reality, otherwise it ceases to be a sign. Nevertheless, sometimes the Bible gives the name of the thing signified to the sign itself, because God would have us associate the reality with the sign.

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TODAY! Radio Interview on 'Grace and Assurance: The Message of the Canons of Dordt' with Rev. Martyn McGeown

TODAY from 4-6pm EST, Rev. McGeown will be interviewed by Chris Arnzen on his radio program Iron...