What Does God Say About Being "Worldly Minded?"

The Love "OF" The Father

1 John 2:15
Do Not Love the World
"15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."

Why do some Christians seem more worldly than others?  Is it because they don't love Jesus as much as they should, don't read or pray enough?  Don't attend church regularly?

While all those things are very important, that is not the heart of the matter
According to this verse.  "If anyone LOVES THE WORLD, the love "OF" The Father NOT the love "FOR" the Father is not in him.  
This person does not know how much HE IS LOVED BY THE FATHER. 

The love "OF" the Father is the consciousness on our part the WE ARE LOVED by Him.  The focus IS NOT on how much we love HIM.  This person does not have a consciousness of just how MUCH God loves them.  They may even believe He is, if not outright angry at them, at least mildly disappointed.

This is the meaning of "first love" that we read about in this verse:
"4 Nevertheless I have this against you, that you have left your first love."  Revelation 2:4

Who is The One that SO LOVED us first that elicits our response to love Him in return?  Is it OUR LOVE for Jesus?  Or JESUS LOVE FOR US?
It's Jesus' love for us.
"Herein is love, NOT that we loved God, BUT THAT HE LOVED US..."  1 John 4:10

The more we hear preaching that reminds us of our righteousness in Christ, that ALL our sins--past, present, future--are put away, NOT imputed to us, the LESS WORLDLY WE BECOME.
It is when we are sin conscious that we are more worldly; that we struggle to overcome bad habits or destructive behavior patterns to no avail.
We struggle so much more when we think our right standing is dependent on our performance.

That's what the Ephesian Church was missing.  They had drifted away from this truth that Jesus loved them first. 

Scripture tells us flat out "The strength of sin is THE LAW."  So why is it that we keep dishing out a lot of do's and don'ts in an effort to control outward behavior?  Simple: we don't trust God, we don't trust grace.  It's the only antidote for sin.

"Oh, you grace people!" they say.  "When you tell someone that all their sins for their entire life are forgiven, you give people a license to sin."
Uuuuh.....NEWS FLASH:  PEOPLE DON'T NEED A LICENSE TO SIN.  They it just fine without one.

According to the Bible,  THE LAW PRODUCES LICENTIOUSNESS, not Grace.  Grace produces right living.  Grace is the cure.

Think about it; when you tell a small child to stay out of the cookie jar, what is the first thing they do as soon as your back is turned?  They go get into THE COOKIE JAR.  When told what to do or what not to do, humans invariably end up doing what they ought not.  That was Paul's dilemma.

We need to hear MORE PREACHING about how much God loves us, not that we have to love God more.  That is Old Covenant teaching. 

It is of utmost importance that we wrap our heads around the fact that our Heavenly Father LOVES us way more than we can ever comprehend.  He paid an immeasurable price to redeem us that we will never fully understand, even in eternity.
When we have a blindingly bright picture of the Father's love IN us, the world dims and looses it's attraction without OUR effort.

So the next time you see a brother or sister in Christ who seems worldly or is struggling with bad habits or any habitual sin, understand what's really going on; he or she needs to be told or reminded of The Love OF the Father.