The Great War

Anyone who deliberately chooses to love the world is thereby making himself God’s enemy. Do you think what the scriptures have to say about this is a mere formality? (James 4:4b,5a)

Which begs the question: What would that latter question have meant to James' original readers, given that the New Testament didn't, at this time, exist? Well, consider some of the Old Testament context to which, perhaps, James was pointing their minds:
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• Leviticus 11:44a,45 – “I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy… I am the Lord, who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy.”
  
  
• Deuteronomy 14:2 – “You are a people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession.”
  
  
• Psalm 1:1,2,6 – “Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night… For the Lord watches over the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked leads to destruction.”
  
  
• Psalm 141:4 – “Do not let my heart be drawn to what is evil so that I take part in wicked deeds along with those who are evildoers; do not let me eat their delicacies.”
  
  
• Proverbs 25:26 – “Like a muddied spring or a polluted well are the righteous who give way to the wicked.”
  
  

What before had been a separation between people-groups, Jew and Gentile, has now become a spiritual separation between two Kingdoms, the world's and Heaven's. Or to put it another way: When an unknown 30 year-old carpenter/teacher first spoke His first message in the Galilee - "Behold, the Kingdom of God has arrived" - that was the beginning of an invasion, the first beachhead in the Great War.

That's the War He's still fighting in and through us today. Let us march out under His orders only.