Do You Love The World Or Are You Abiding In Jesus’ Love?
You will know by your fruit.
By Bud Shaver
John 2:15-16 states: "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world."
Until the Christian community allows this command to transform its kingdom focus, we will continue to run into a brick wall whenever we plead with Christians to do something, anything about the fact that 3,000 children will die today from abortion. The Christian community has been conditioned to not get involved; we love our reputation, our jobs, our time, our concept of ministry, our freedom. We love what the world tells us to love. We pursue what the world tells us to pursue. We are consumed by the world.
"True religion consists of keeping yourself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27. If we can make excuses about why we don’t need to get involved to end abortion in our communities, then it is obvious that we love what the world tells us to love too much and we don’t love what the Father loves. We have become polluted by the world and our religion is worthless.
Jesus tells us in John 15 to remain in his love and that if we abide in him, then we will bear much fruit. But what is the fruit that we will bear? In this parable Jesus does not tell us what fruit he expects us to bear. We have a similar parable in Isaiah 5 about a vineyard and in verse 2 it states, “He looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.” In verse 7 we are given the explanation of the parable: “The vineyard of the LORD Almighty is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah are the garden of his delight. And he looked for justice, but saw bloodshed; for righteousness, but heard cries of distress.” The fruit that will be produced by the people of God when we abide in Jesus’ love is justice for those who blood is being spilled and righteousness that helps the oppressed.
The Christian community has to re-evaluate its focus and stop loving what the world values. Our religion must not be worthless simply because we are polluted by the world. Each day blood is being spilled at the abortion clinics in our communities. Cries of the oppressed are sounding from the abortion clinics in our communities. What are you committed to doing to help rescue them, what fruit will you produce? Do you love the comfort of the world, or will you step out of your comfort zone and abide in Jesus’ love in order to produce good fruit?
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