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Worldliness: Resisting The Seduction Of A Fallen World (2008)

by C.J. Mahaney(Favorite Author)

4.04 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1433502801 (ISBN13: 9781433502804)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Crossway Books

review 1: C. J. Mahaney and friends, men I trust, have written an excellent treatment of a vital and recently neglected subject. The difference between the world and the church is eroding at an alarming rate, and we need help with holiness. This book is biblically grounded and Christ-centered, full of grace and truth. Every chapter raises the bar of Christian living without falling into legalism. Worldliness is one of the most timely and much-needed books I’ve read in years. I highly recommend it.
review 2: Should we be concerned with “worldliness” today? Churches are trying to look more and more like the culture around us, they strive to be more “relevant,” so is “worldliness” a thing of the past? Is 1 John 2:15 still true today? “Do not love the wo... morerld or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” (1 John 2:15)(Quote from: Worldliness: Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World, Edited by C. J. Mahaney)“Charles Spurgeon, writing 150 years ago, nevertheless speaks poignantly to the problem in the church today: ‘I believe,’ he asserted, ‘that one reason why the church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the church,’Further substantiating his claim, he calls history as a witness: ‘Put your finger on any prosperous page in the Church’s history, and I will find a little marginal note reading thus: ‘In this age men could readily see where the Church began and where the world ended.’ Never were there good times when the Church and the world were joined in marriage with one another. The more the Church is distinct from the world in her acts and in her maxims, the more true is her testimony for Christ, and the more potent is her witness against sin.’The greater our difference from the world, the more true our testimony for Christ–and the more potent our witness against sin. But sadly, today, there’s not much difference. The lines have blurred. The lack of clarity between the church and the world has undercut our testimony for Christ and undermined our witness against sin. In Spurgeon’s words once again: ‘Worldliness is growing over the church; she is mossed with it.’” (.p 23)“While remaining in the world, we’re not to become like the world. In the words of John Stott, we must be ‘neither conformed to [the world] nor contaminated by it.’ But this sinful, fallen world is right in our face. Our affluent and technologically advance society brings the world to our doorstep, into our homes, into our very presence…They deliver endless opportunities to pursue pleasure without regard to God and his Word, endless opportunities to be seduced by this fallen world, to succumb to the sin of worldliness.Every moment of every day we’re making choices–whether we realize it or not–between love for a world that opposes God and love for the risen Christ.Worldliness, then, is a love for this fallen world. It’s loving the values and pursuits of the world that stand opposed to God….it is to gratify and exalt oneself to the exclusion of God. It [worldliness] rejects God’s rule and replaces it with our own.” (p. 26-27) less

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