What Is a Worldly Christian — And Are They Actually Saved?

What actually makes someone a worldly Christian — and is there a point where worldliness calls someone's faith into question? 1 John 2:15 doesn't leave much wiggle room — if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. In this episode we take that verse seriously, define worldliness and ungodliness on biblical terms, and work through the hard questions people are actually asking. The real issue is never just behavior — it's always a heart question. Part of the Respectable Sins series.

📖 Key Text: 1 John 2:15–16

🎙️ The Recovering Pharisee exists to equip the church in sound doctrine and practical theology — for pastors, church leaders, and everyday Christians who want their theology to shape their actual lives.

🔔 Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode in the series."

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

If you grew up in church, you probably learned what worldliness was, probably by what you were taught that you were not allowed to do and what you were allowed to do. So, for example, maybe listening to certain music or whether you were allowed to watch certain movies or shows or wear certain clothes or hang out with, you know, a particular group of friends. And at some point, for those who grew up in that type of environment and being taught about worldliness in that manner, at some point, many Christians swung the other direction and decided, as I got older, to just throw the category of worldliness completely out the window. The problem with both responses is that they missed something very real and important that we find in the Bible. Worldliness is a biblical category. I mean, this is a tension that is addressed in the pages of scripture. And I would suggest it is more serious and more subtle than a dress code or whether or not you can watch a rated R movie or not. And so let me let me just introduce this tension for this discussion a little bit. The church has historically either been too narrow, so legalistic, making worldliness primarily about external behaviors, or the church has overcorrected in the opposite direction and has been too loose and have given license to Christians, dismissing the concept of worldliness altogether, but with the desire of not wanting to appear as uptight legalistic Christians. So I can I can understand a temptation to swing in either direction, but what I want to address today is what is a biblical understanding of worldliness? Because worldliness is not primarily about what you consume as a Christian, it's about what has captured your heart. And ungodliness is simply living as though God has no active rule and reign over your daily life. And as I unpack worldliness, I'm gonna weave in ungodliness with it because I do think it's it's helpful to understand how these two categories in scripture relate to each other. And so let's define our terms here. Like, what do we mean when we say that someone is a worldly person, a worldly Christian, or they are ungodly? Two related but distinct concepts worth separating. So let's start with worldliness. I would say that worldliness is any professing Christian orienting their affections, desires, and values around the world systems, its priorities, its pleasures, its definitions of the good life, rather than centering those pleasures around God and how he has revealed himself and his will in his word. And ungodliness is not the absence of belief. I believe there could be, you know, born-again Christians who are demonstrating ungodly behavior, but ungodliness is the absence of God's active reign over someone's daily life, whether it's their decision making, how their ambitions are shaped, spending their money, how they spend their time, how they steward all that God has entrusted to them, the relationships they pursue. They do all these things without reference to who God is, what he commands, or what he loves. And it's not that God is outright rejected by this person, but he's just not often consulted. So the ungodly person may have sound doctrine in their heads and a regular church attendance habit, serving in their church, but their actual life is being governed fundamentally by something other than the fear and love of God. So I'm bringing this up because I believe worldliness and ungodliness travel hand in hand. They travel together, but they're not always identical, but they're certainly interwoven with each other. And so, for example, a person can be ungodly without being visibly quote unquote worldly, but maybe their heart posture is functionally indifferent to God. So I would say they have an ungodly heart, even if we can't perceive externally some type of behavior pattern that we can check a box and say, oh yeah, see, they're being worldly because they watch this, they dress this way. And so, um, so I just want to make sure that's clear. It's like, hey, these definitely go hand in hand, not kind of. These go hand in hand. So for instance, a person can avoid all the obvious worldly behaviors and still have a heart oriented entirely around, you know, self-comfort and and approval and all of these things are being shaped by their own desires and not necessarily the Lord and how he reveals his will to his children and his word. The key question here isn't, you know, what is a person doing, but what is a person loving and what is shaping them. First John 2, 15 through 16 says, 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. For everything in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one's possessions is not from the Father, but is from the world. Note in that text what John is targeting. He's targeting an individual's love, not activity, not their external behavior, primarily, not proximity to something, but rather an individual's heart posture. What is the orientation of their heart? What is it that they're loving? And John gives three categories, right? He names the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and pride in possessions. These are not a checklist of banned, you know, categories for Christians, but rather what John is doing here in inspired scripture is these things, these categories, they describe the posture of a heart that has turned from God toward created things as its source of life, joy, and satisfaction. And that is what it means to love the world. You love things that God provides that could be good gifts, but you love those things more than God. So what does worldly list, oh my goodness, what does worldliness look like in practice? Man, we can make a long list here, but just here's a few bullet point items. It can look like spending, you know, more time being shaped by things like entertainment, social media, cultural voices, more than scripture and feeling no tension about that whatsoever, where you are being shaped informed by the things of the world rather than the things of God, though you're professing to be a child of God. Or it can look like adopting the world's definition of success, you know, status, comfort, influence, and quietly using those things as the actual metric metrics for what a good life looks like for a Christian. As long as I have these things, then I'm living the good life. Or, you know, more in your face, it can be treating sexual ethics, ambition, materialism as areas where, you know, hey, Christianity is unreasonably demanding on people. And so you choose to make peace with these things through compromise, which shows another form of worldliness and ungodliness. Or it can show itself by feeling more at home in the values of your surrounding culture than in the values of the kingdom of God. Where culture, which is opposed to God, is shaping you more than scripture, it should be shaping you. And this is how you get professing Christians endorsing things that the Bible clearly disapproves of and even calls sinful. Or it can also look like carrying the same anxieties, the same exact ambitions and the same decision-making framework as everyone around you who isn't who's not a follower of Christ. This is important, you know. So you might be able to check the box and or an individual maybe may be able to check the box of, you know, I attend church regularly, I'm involved, I served, but you know, what's shaping me and influencing me is everything outside of the things of the Lord. So, what does ungodliness look like in practice? Well, again, these overlap, but for example, you know, ungodliness can look like making major life decisions, such as a career move, major financial decisions, or relationship commitments, and doing all these things without any acknowledgement of God. So, no, no prayer, no consulting scripture, no godly counsel from other Christ followers who know God's word and are committed to you. There's no any real sense that God has anything to say about any avenue of your life is a real sign of ungodliness. Or maybe you're worrying constantly about things like money, health, or the future, not because you've completely rejected God's sovereignty, but because it simply just never even occurs to you to bring those things to him as his child, to know his will, to trust in his sovereign and providential care of you if you are a child of God. So it's like a fundamental, you know, just apathy towards God, as if you don't even acknowledge that he exists. Or maybe a prayer life that is essentially non-existent, you know, outside of, you know, praying before a meal or at a Sunday service, there's no real communion with God through prayer. Or maybe it can look like treating church attendance as the full extent of your relationship with God. You know, checking the box of, hey, I go to church regularly every Sunday, every now and then I might sign up for small group or some other ministry, but your Christian walk is just entirely that. I check a box to do a thing because I'm supposed to do that thing, but there's not a true acknowledgement in your heart of I do these things out of worship to the God who saved my soul. So let's address the hard questions, right? What is a worldly Christian? And are people who practice worldly things actually Christians? Are they false converts? Are they self-deceived? Like, how do we think through this? Listen, there's all sorts of all sorts of scenarios out there. I'm not gonna wade through every last one of them. And we do got to be careful here, right? Because as Christians, as members of local churches, our responsibility when it comes to, you know, church membership and church discipline is we never speak to the genuineness of someone's profession of faith. Only God can do that. Only God knows the heart. Only God knows who truly is his children. Our role as church members, especially if you're a congregational church where the members, I believe, according to the scriptures, have the authority to exercise the keys of the kingdom to receive into membership, you know, those who have a credible profession of faith. And in the unfortunate restoration process of church discipline, in that last step of removing people from the membership of a church, also called excommunication. So our job as church members is not to, you know, determine the genuineness of someone's profession of faith. Our job is to determine whether someone has a credible profession of faith. So we're saying, do we see the fruits of repentance in this person's life that gives us confidence to declare before the world we believe that this is a brother or sister in Christ? And so we got to keep that in mind as we go through this list. Here, here, because this is a genuine tension, you know, that and it's a good question that deserves a careful answer. Because notice, you know, 1 John 2 15 is a strong verse. I mean, John very clearly says, if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. That is not soft, soft language. That is pretty black and white. If you love the world, you cannot simultaneously also love God because you can only serve one master. But the key word is loves. This is about settled, ruling affection, not an occasional failure or struggle, because that's all of us, right? Every Christian still battles worldly desires. That's the nature of remaining sin. Every last one of us is enticed by the things of the world at times. That's just called living in a broken world with a sinful, corrupted nature indwelling you. The question is, what is the dominant direction of your heart? What, what do you run toward? What brings you the most joy? What is your heart posture? What is your the ruling desire sitting on the throne of your heart? Is it Jesus Christ or is it the things of the world? Because think about it, a worldly Christian is not an oxymoron in the sense that Christians can and do drift from the Lord. You know, that's why we sing songs like Prone to Wonder, right? From the God I love. We we are all prone to drift, but persistent, unrepentant, comfortable worldliness with no grief, with no resistance, and no hunger for God is a serious warning sign that something may be terribly wrong at the root of someone's faith. So the answer here is, you know, we don't want to give anyone false assurance because that's terrifying, but we don't want to pronounce final judgment either, because we're not the Lord. So we press toward the heart. You know, that's what a good biblical counselor does. We're we're pressing towards the heart. What do you love? What's shaping your desires? Are is there a renewing of your mind, or what would you be willing to give up for God? These are like questions we're trying to use to probe people's hearts to best tell what do you love most fundamentally? So, for instance, questions like, can Christians listen to secular music and similar questions? This is this is the question people are really asking when they talk about worldliness, right? Like we want a list. Like, what are the things you can do and what are the things you can't do? The honest answer, though, is that the Bible doesn't often give you a list, and that's intentional. You know, what the Bible does give you, friends, and gives us, me as well, is a framework, a framework to think through so that we can navigate life in a manner that's worthy of the gospel. So we, with that framework, we ask ourselves questions like, well, whether it's music, media, you know, speech, who I hang out with, how I dress, how I carry myself? We ask the question, what is this doing to my affections? Is it pulling my heart toward God or away from God? Am I consuming this, whatever it may be? Am I consuming this media thoughtfully? Or am I just being passively shaped by it? Is there anything in this content that I'm excusing because I enjoy it that I would otherwise recognize as contrary to what God, God loves as revealed in his word? Or asking yourself, can I engage with this, whatever it may be, can I engage with this with a free conscience? Or am I suppressing the conviction of the Holy Spirit or the conviction that comes from my conscience, which should be informed by scripture? Cause listen, I think sometimes as Christians, we tend to, we tend to play games with some things and act like some things are kind of like a gray area when the Bible is explicitly clear that's not a gray area. So for example, you know, I've had conversations with Christians who might advocate for, like, hey, it's okay to watch a show or a movie that has, you know, explicit nudity and intimate scenes in it because it's a it's a form of art. It's not pornographic. To which I would just push back and say, help me understand how that argument fits into a biblical framework. How does that fall, how does that not fall into sexual morality? How does that, how does that not fall into just being unwise in what you're taking in that might entice sinful passions of the flesh? Or for instance, music, you know, I might step on toes here, but listen, I'm a hip-hop head. Uh I grew up, you know, on hip-hop. Uh, I lived that lifestyle. And a lot of the, you know, activity I did in the streets was motivated by the anthems of the music I listened to. And so I find it difficult as a professing Christian to regularly consume music that glorifies the very sins that would have led me to eternal punishment. I find it hard to, as a normal diet of my entertainment, to listen to music that glorifies things that the scriptures call sinful and wicked and evil, to consume things that Jesus hung on the cross to save me from, yet to be entertained by them in my gym workout routine as I'm listening to, you know, whatever the music may be. And so this, this, and I'm I'm not just picking up music. I mean, we could apply this to any kind kind of category. So, for example, I've I've had some conversations with Christians who are okay with using certain um, you know, curse words. And I would just say, like, well, let me ask you this. If Jesus were a guest in your home and you were having a conversation with him, you were breaking bread with Jesus, or you were on the couch in your living room going to put something on, would you watch that? Would you listen to that? Would you say that or talk about that or laugh at that if Jesus were a guest in your home? And if you have to like pause and hesitate to answer that, well, then I think that just shows in your heart of hearts, you know that it's not a great area because it would displease the Lord. And so, you know, the goal here is not a Christian who has, you know, a perfectly clean playlist and then they could say, surely I'm holy because I only listen to Christian radio. No, it's it's a Christian who is developing the discernment to engage with culture as a transformed new creation rather than being quietly conformed to the world around them that is antithetical to everything that represents Christ and his gospel. Romans 12, too, is is the framework, right? Being transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you can discern, not so that you can avoid everything and call it holiness. Christians are not called to live under, you know, a rock, right? God is not a killjoy. He doesn't want his children to enjoy all the rich blessings of the world, such as art and nature and media and and all these things. No, there he wants us to enjoy all that he has for us, all the good gifts he blesses us with, but he also wants us to be transformed by the power of his word and the gospel and not conformed to the ways of this world, which we were saved out of. Remember, we were transferred from the domain of darkness and transferred into God's kingdom, the kingdom of light. And we are called to walk as children of light. The real problem with the conversation of worldliness and ungodliness is we tend to have a thin view of holiness. I think that's the deeper uh issue underneath this conversation, a thin, external, rule-based view of what it means to be holy. So when holiness is just a list of prohibitions, I think two things end up happening. Number one, people who faithfully, rigorously, arduously who keep the list feel righteous without ever actually pursuing the heart of God. They're convinced they're righteous, they're convinced they have God's favor because, hey, I'm checking the boxes. I don't do this, I don't do that, I don't hang out with people who do, and therefore I'm I'm righteous. I mean, that's exactly what the Pharisees did. But second, people who reject the list feel free without ever actually examining their hearts. They feel like, no, God's not about lists, and so it's all grace. So just you got license, man. Just do what you do, and God knows your heart. Listen, neither group is really dealing with the real issue here. Both are still struggling. They're not dealing with the real thing. And so true holiness is not the absence of worldly behavior, it's the presence of a heart captivated by God, a heart that is progressively being conformed into the image of Christ, a heart that is genuinely grieved by sin and truly hungry for righteousness. And again, I just want to re-emphasize you know, perfection is not the goal for Christians. That's that's what the doctrine of glorification is. The goal for us is faithfulness. Are we faithfully moving in the right trajectory as flawed, broken sinners who's gonna who are gonna fall flat on our face? The whole in so much of Christian living is not that people are doing too many worldly things, quote unquote. It's that there is a very little positive hunger for God underneath our our behaviors altogether. There's a tends to be a gospel gap, you know, a lack of hunger for the things of God. We acknowledge academically that we're to be holy, and that's a concept in the scripture, but then we tend to lack a earnestness to actually become holy because God is holy. But holiness is good news. So let me give some gospel motivation here. The answer to worldliness is not, you know, more rules, it is a more compelling vision of God and his heart as it's revealed in our salvation, in the gospel. You don't become less worldly by, you know, gritting your teeth and avoiding things and living as a Christian monk. You become less worldly. Worldly by having your affections truly redirected towards something greater. I love how Thomas Chalmers, I believe, yeah, Thomas Chalmers said, you know, the way you displace an affection for a bad thing is to replace it with a greater affection for a greater thing, which would be Christ. And this is the logic of the gospel. Christ gave himself for us to purify for himself a people for his own possession, eager to do what is good. That's Titus 2.14. Holiness is not what earns God's love, it's it's what his love produces. Think about that. And that changes everything about how we pursue holiness. So we pursue holiness because God first pursued us through the ministry of reconciliation, the gospel of Jesus Christ, saving us from his eternal wrath. And that, among other reasons, motivates us out of gratitude to pursue holiness. So the pursuit of holiness, you know, therefore, is an act of faith, not fear. It flows from believing that God is better than what the world offers. So we don't pursue holiness out of fear of, oh man, if I don't check all these boxes, God is going to punish me. And, you know, that's why I go through this season of suffering or I lost my job because I wasn't holy enough. And so God's punishing me because I wasn't keeping the right, you know, I wasn't checking the right boxes. No, that's not, that's not how God loves his children. He's not a deity in the sky with a magnifying glass burning ants. So how do we cultivate a holy heart then? Well, I would say take the framework questions seriously and just apply them to your life on a regular basis. So asking yourself questions like, you know, number one, what is currently shaping my desires more than scripture? If I were to examine my life, what is shaping my desires, my convictions, what fuels my ambitions? Is it something other than God in his word? If so, start there. Or what would I be unwilling to surrender if God asked? Ask yourself that. And what does that tell you? If there's something you would not be willing to surrender to the Lord, then clearly you love the things of the world more than the Lord. Or where is my theology failing to touch my actual daily life? Where is there a gap between what I know I say I believe in my head, but how I'm functionally living on a daily basis? Pursue, you know, the positive spiritual, I'm sorry, the positive disciplines, not just the negative ones. So worldliness shrinks when godliness grows. So pursuing the ordinary means of grace is a great way that the Lord can use those means of grace as instruments in his hands to progressively mold you more into the image of Christ. So read scripture to know God, not just to have devotions. Read the Bible to become familiar with the meta-narrative of scripture, which is God redeeming sinful mankind to himself through the person and work of Christ. Pray with honesty about what you actually love and what you wish you loved more. God already knows everything. So go to him in all honesty and say, Lord, I am ensnared with some of the things of the world. There are things that I recognize that I love more than your church, than your word and your gospel. So, Father, break me of these things and help me to replace a desire for those things with a greater desire for you and your gospel and your church and your word. And also put yourself in the path of things that stir genuine affection for God. That could be good preaching, you know, being more attentive to your local pastor when you hear the word. Good community. Make sure you're in a healthy gospel-preaching church with authentic discipling community and hospitality, pursue worship, the Lord's Supper, all these means of grace for your edification to stir your affections more and more towards the things of God. And so, for the, you know, can I do this questions that we tend to gravitate towards, like, can I wear this? Can I listen to this? Can I watch this? I would say train your conscience through scripture rather than outsourcing your discernment to a list someone else has made. Okay. Don't gravitate towards, well, what does this book, or is there some other podcast, or is there some teacher out there who says Christians can do all these things? And so I'm gonna do the, don't build your theology that way. You want to have your conscience informed by God's inspired, sufficient, and authoritative scripture. And I guarantee you it will give you a framework to navigate life in a God-honoring way without fear and anxiety, but rather with delight and joy, and you'll be better suited to disciple others to do that as well. And praise be to God that He has given us the gift of a conscience. Now, get don't get me wrong, some people's consciences can be ill-informed, but a healthy, biblically informed conscience is also a great guide to keep you pursuing genuine holiness and to abstain and turn away from anything that would ensnare you down the trajectory towards worldliness and ungodliness. Now, I know this is a lot. I would encourage you to keep studying your word, keep in prayer, and know that God loves you. God bless.