Befriending A Cruel Master And Becoming A Slave

What does it mean to befriend someone? It means to attend to, care for, love, please and serve. Have you ever befriended someone, only to become a slave in the process? You attend to, care for, love, please and serve – only to become a slave. You have befriended a cruel master.

This is exactly what is happening when we befriend the world (the world that is hostile to God; the secular, temporal culture that pays the highest tribute to man, taking little or no notice of the Creator, as in 1 Jno. 2:15-17).

When we attend to this world, care for it’s cares, love it, please it and serve it, we become, not simply woefully misguided, but slaves to the world. Lutzer was right when he said: “Worldliness is excluding God from our lives and, therefore, consciously or unconsciously accepting the values of a man-centered society.” And, “Worldliness is not only doing what is forbidden but also wishing it were possible to do it. One of its distinctives is mental slavery to illegitimate pleasure.” (How In This World To Be Holy, by Edwin Lutzer, 1985).

Or, as James said: “Adulterers and adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God,” (Jas. 4:4).