The Worldly Church

“Third, you must hate his directing of your feet along the way
that leads to the ministration of death. And in this respect you
must carefully consider the person to whom he sent you, and
especially how unable that person is to deliver you from your
burden. He to whom you were sent for ease, that is Legality by
name, is the son of the Bondwoman who is in bondage along with
her children; she represents Mount Sinai as a mystery, which you
have feared would fall on your head. Now if she, with her
children, are in bondage, then how can you expect to be made free
by them? Therefore this Legality is not able to set you free from
your burden. No man has ever got rid of his burden by him, no,
and is not likely to be so delivered in the future.”
“You cannot be justified by the works of the law; for no man
living can be rid of his burden by means of the works of the law.
Therefore Mr. Worldly-Wiseman is an alien guide, and Mr.
Legality a cheat; as for his son Civility, in spite of his
smiling manner, he is yet a hypocrite and cannot help you.
Believe me, there is no substance in such blustering talk that you
have heard from this intoxicated man. His only
design has been to deprive you of your salvation by means of
turning you from the way along which I sent you.”
John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress


The biblical example of Legality is the Pharisees. They were all about making sure everyone believed that they were holy men. They made public displays of giving and their robes made people notice them. They were great at condemnation, but were failures themselves. We have men like that today that speak out publicly against something, but are prisoners of that very sin. Jesus spoke about them.


"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean. Matthew 23:27


Today, you can't watch a sport or award show without seeing someone thank God for their win. I don't find fault with this at all. We are to give Him all the glory and I have to believe they are. What bothers me is the amount of sport, music, television, and movie stars that use the cross to decorate their bodies, but appear not to have the cross applied to their lives. 


They are just the examples I use, but we need to question ourselves more so. Are we living for Christ? Have we allowed our selfish hearts to be crucified with Christ? Are we different on Wednesday than we are on Sunday? Jude 4 warns us that there will be men like Worldly-Wiseman that will enter unnoticed into our churches. These ungodly men will turn the grace of God into a life of obscenities.


"For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord. " Jude 4


But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people.
 II Timothy 3:1-3



But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. In their greed these teachers will exploit you with fabricated stories. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping. II Peter 2:1-3