Partaking of the world’s impurity will defile our understanding and conscience.

Titus 1:15—Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind (the part that understands) and conscience (the part that knows one's self) is defiled.
(MSG) 10-16 For there are a lot of rebels out there, full of loose, confusing, and deceiving talk. Those who were brought up religious and ought to know better are the worst. They've got to be shut up. They're disrupting entire families with their teaching, and all for the sake of a fast buck. One of their own prophets said it best:

     ‘The Cretans are liars from the womb,

     barking dogs, lazy bellies.’

He certainly spoke the truth. Get on them right away. Stop that diseased talk of Jewish make-believe and made-up rules so they can recover a robust faith. Everything is clean to the clean-minded; nothing is clean to dirty-minded unbelievers. They leave their dirty fingerprints on every thought and act. They say they know God, but their actions speak louder than their words. They're real creeps, disobedient good-for-nothings.

A wrong love for the world
sets us at odds with what God wants.

I John 2:15—Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
(MSG) 15-17 Don't love the world's ways. Don't love the world's goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.

 

II Timothy 4:10—For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia.
(MSG) 9-13 Get here as fast as you can. Demas, chasing fads, went off to Thessalonica and left me here. Crescens is in Galatia province, Titus in Dalmatia. Luke is the only one here with me. Bring Mark with you; he'll be my right-hand man since I'm sending Tychicus to Ephesus. Bring the winter coat I left in Troas with Carpus; also the books and parchment notebooks.

In ways beyond our human conception, it is the world and the “laws” of the world that pull us away from the right and righteous Laws of the Kingdom of Christ. It is His Kingdom that shall one day fill all the world with the Peace and Rightness born into us from the Kingdom of the Heavens. It is in the redemption God has provided for us through His only begotten Son that the corrupt government of man will be overcome—first in us, then in the world.Then, humanity, led by a company of saints, will find its way in God’s Government evolving in the earth from out of His Kingdom in the Heavens. Jesus, Who came here from where He lived in communion with His heavenly Father, has thus opened the way for us to know, and live by, the way which Heaven’s Kingdom now holds for us.

LORD, set me free from the defiling pull of the world. Work in me till I abhor its moral filth and greed. Let me not embrace it even in my conscience. Cleanse my mind so I can think right thoughts and become mature for Your Kingdom, and its purpose for this hour.

What is our present position and responsibility in the world?
—John 15:18,19; I John 2:15,16; II Corinthians 2:3,4; Mark 16:15

 

 

 

 

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