While I was looking for the resolutions post on the Senior High Blog, I stumbled on this post from last year as well. I thought it was so good that I’d repost it here. It’s from an author named Alec Motyer from his book on the letter of James (which is in our bookstore). Here’s what he has to say from James 1:27, where James says we are to keep ourselves “unspotted” (in the NKJV) from the world:
“James summons us to be unstained from the world. “The world” (see 4:4) has the same meaning for James as for Paul and John. It is the whole human scheme of things organized in terms of human wisdom to attain a human goal, without reference to God, His laws, His values or His ultimate judgment. The world is, in fact, anything and everything that is at odds with the Lordship of Jesus in our lives.
“If we are to live for Him in the world, there is a constant issue of commitment, loyalty, to be faced: are we His or are we not? Are we His, not by virtue of a past decision allowed to grow stale, but in the daily pressure of the often small things by which our lives are besmirched? For it is more than likely true that, if life were all large decisions, few of us would go far wrong. Yet, faced with the world’s ceaseless bombardment of our eyes, ears, thoughts and imaginations, the world’s insidious erosion of values and standards, and clamor for our time, money and energy, it is easy to adopt a general way of life which, though it avoids the open pitfalls of sin, yet is not discernibly different from the style of one who does not know Christ. We may well decide to belong to Jesus, yet fail to carry that decision through with the rigor which alone proves that it was a real decision. It is one thing to yield our lives to Him, but it is another to live each moment of the day on His side of the great divide from the world.”