From the TeachingtheWord Bible Knowledgebase

Part one of a series

Editor's Note: With this installment we begin the next chapter of Arthur Pink's book, Profiting From the Word, titled "The Scriptures and the World". Christians are in a unique and challenging position. Like the saints named in the great "roll call of faith" in Hebrews chapter 11, we are "strangers and pilgrims on the earth" desiring "a better, that is, a heavenly country."

As we live and walk in this present evil world, we are on display before both angels and unbelievers. Paul wrote of this: "For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men" (1 Corinthians 4:9). Peter spoke of the salvation and grace God has extended to His people, and the trials which we now endure, as "things the angels desire to look into" (1 Peter 1:12).

Having a Biblical, Christ-honoring attitude toward this present evil world - being increasingly conformed to His image and ever less conformed to this sinful world - is vital for individual Christians, our families, our churches, and Christian education. - Dr. Paul Elliott

Not a little is written to the Christian in the New Testament about "the world" and his attitude towards it. Its real nature is plainly defined, and the believer is solemnly warned against it. God's holy Word is a light from heaven, shining here "in a dark place" (2 Peter 1:19). Its Divine rays exhibit things in their true colors, penetrating and exposing the false veneer and glamour by which many objects are cloaked. That world upon which so much labor is bestowed and money spent, and which is so highly extolled and admired by its blinded dupes, is declared to be "the enemy of God" (James 4:4); therefore are His children forbidden to be "conformed" to it and to have their affections set upon it (Romans 12:1-2). 

The present phase of our subject is by no means the least important of those that have already been before us, and the serious reader will do well to seek Divine grace to measure himself or herself by it. One of the exhortations which God has addressed to His children is, "As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby" (1 Peter 2:2), and it behooves each one of them honestly and diligently to examine himself so as to discover whether or not this be the case with him. Nor are we to be content with an increase of mere head-knowledge of Scripture: what we need to be most concerned about is our practical growth, our experimental conformity to the image of Christ. And one point at which we may test ourselves is, Does my reading and study of God's Word make me less worldly?

Next: The Spiritual Profit in Understanding the True Character of the World

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