The People vs. the System of This World

In this excerpt from our 2015 National Conference, Kevin DeYoung reminds us that we are to love the people of this fallen world while rejecting the system of this fallen world.

Transcript

The people in this fallen world are to be loved. The system of this fallen world is to be categorically rejected. If you cannot understand both of those things at the same time you and I will not become mature Christians.

You will have people over here who are very fine at saying we must love the world. "God so loved the world..." and so they want to redeem culture, and they want to transform the world, and they have all sorts of things that we need to go see this movie, and we need to have the finest, stuff and the best stuff because the world. They forget about the verses that talk about the world under the sway of the evil one—a place filled with temptations and dangers.

But if on the flipside we only understand the world as a place in control of the evil one, then you're bound to be a very cantankerous sort of person. "Look the world is evil and that's why I don't love anything or anyone in the world including you. Just trying to be biblical." Okay. Those are not the people you want serving on the elder board of your church. But if you're not discerning they go to a verse: "The world is under the control of the evil one." Well it is. We’re going to talk about that, but the world as the fallen system is to be rejected even as the Father has a love for His lost people in this world and so seeks them out that while they were still a long way off, Jesus said in Luke 15 the Father ran to this prodigal who was returning home.