So we’re fighting a three-front war—something no one’s likely to win without divine power. Let’s take a look at the first enemy, the world.
I wrote some on this just a few posts ago, focusing primarily on definitional matters. Here I’d like to focus on how to fight so as to win. I think a key biblical source on this question is John’s first epistle.
The Right Family
“The recent display at the Paris Olympics stirred up a lot of controversy. Conservative sites are outraged…. The event reminded me of 1 Jn 3.13: ‘Do not be surprised, brethren, if the world hates you.’” - P&D
Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jer 29:5, ESV)
“Though they seem opposites, detachment and indulgence are two sides of the same bad coin. Both are, in the end, attempts to escape the pain of what Christianity recognizes as a fallen world. These attempts are, however, futile.” - Breakpoint
“ ‘Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.’… Yet here, in 1 Timothy 3:7, as the culminating qualification for the church’s lead office, we hear that pastor-elders must be well thought of by outsiders.” - Desiring God
“However, it is increasingly rare to find in the aforementioned issues of race-relations, LGTBQ+ narratives of identity, gender roles, etc., that the various systems of thought in place are under the domain of darkness. What I mean by that is the simple truth the apostle John expresses so clearly when he speaks to a present love of this world being incompatible with genuine faith (1 Jn.
“Both! This world is getting better and it is getting worse at the same time! The good seed is growing and producing an abundant harvest. The grain on one stalk is much more than the little seed that was cast into the ground. And the weeds are growing too.” - Colin Smith
“Think about the goodness of God that saved us. It was the kindness of God extended to undeserving sinners in their time of greatest need. With that as a model perhaps the fruit of goodness is just that. It is kindness. But more than kindness it is kindness extended to even our enemies.” - Ref21
“We often teach our youth that the ‘outside world’ is full of reprobate, evil monsters, and that the moment you graduate from Christian school and step onto a college campus or into a workplace, you’re going to be attacked from all sides—persecuted, mocked and ostracized.” - Pursuing the Pursuer
