God's promises for the world's system
January 12 - 18, 2025 | Always Peachy Devotionals | God's Promises Week 3
God loves the world, doesn’t He?
Yes. That’s kind of a no-brainer. Of course God loves the world. The world is made up of people, and God loves people. He loves people so much that He sent His only son to die for them (John 3:16).
So if that’s the case, why does the Bible sometimes seem to indicate that God doesn’t love the world? Or that He is planning intense punishment and pain for the world? There are even verses like James 4:4 that states friendship with the world makes you God’s enemy. If the world is God’s enemy, how can He love them? What sense does that make?
Well, let’s break this down a bit. Remember that the New Testament was written in Greek, and Greek doesn’t always translate perfectly into English. But Greek, like any other language, sometimes uses the same word to mean more than one thing.
Homonymns are words that are spelled the same, even pronounced the same, but have different meanings. Think about a bat. If you just say “bat” you could mean the nocturnal flying animal, or you could mean the wooden club used in baseball. What about “train”? It could either be the heavy vehicle that pulls cars on tracks, or it could mean the act of teaching another person.
You get the idea.
Well, Greek had homonyms too, and one of them is the word kosmos (Strongs Greek 2889). This one word has many different meanings and multiple connotations, and the only way to know exactly what a verse means is to read it for context.
In some cases, kosmos is talking about the world as a part of creation. Earth. Our planet. Our home.
In other cases, more often than others, it’s talking about the world’s system. It is the perspective of people who choose not to follow Jesus, the antithesis of Christianity. It is the community of humans who choose their own way instead of God’s way.
This is the difference we’re talking about when we discuss how God feels about “the world.” He’s not talking about the world as in Earth and everyone who lives on it. He’s talking about “the World’s System” or the perspective that matters to the world.
So when we’re talking about the promises that God has made, we know He has spoken to the world. He’s spoken to us! The world, defined as our planet full of people, can claim many of the promises God has declared. Those are the promises we talked about last week.
But it’s important to know that God has made promises to the World’s System too. Just because God has promised something doesn’t mean it’s a good outcome. God’s promises are always true, but they aren’t always happy.
This week, we are going to talk about the promises God has made to the World’s System. Why is this important? Well, I think it’s just as important to understand the joyous, wonderful promises God has made, as well as the promises of judgment and consequences.
So, what are the promises God has made to this world’s system?
Monday - He has already judged them (John 3:18)
Tuesday - He will reject them (1 Samuel 14:22-23)
Wednesday - He won’t hear their prayers (Proverbs 28:9)
Thursday - He won’t know them (Matthew 7:21-23)
Friday - He won’t intervene in their consequences (Deuteronomy 28:15)
It sounds harsh. Doesn’t it? I think that’s another reason to understand God’s promises to the world’s system: so we can tell people who are going to experience them!
Just a handful of those promises are terrifying, and because they are promises, they will come true. God has never promised anything that didn’t happen. So each and every one of these will be reality one day.
And speaking of one day, our memory verse for the week sort of deals with an event that will happen at the end of time, John 12:48.
Without going into the complicated background and the multiple different prophecies that go into the foundation of this verse, we know that one day Jesus will judge the world. He is our Supreme Judge, the Righteous One, the One Who Is Qualified.
Jesus, throughout the Bible, pointed people to the Truth. That humanity is doomed without a savior and that there is only one way to eternal life—faith in Jesus Himself.
People can try to earn their way to heaven if they want. It’s up to them. But the only way a person can enter heaven on his or her own merit is to be perfect.
Grace isn’t something you can divvy up. It’s either all or nothing. Either you accept grace to cover your imperfections completely, or you reject grace and try to be good enough to make it on your own.
That is the truth, and the truth is the only thing that will matter on judgment day. Reject Jesus, and you are left with only one option: Being good enough on your own.
Spoiler Alert: You can’t do it. Nobody can.
Aren’t you grateful that Jesus came and made a way for us to be saved without having to be perfect? I sure am. Because of Jesus we have a future. Because of Jesus, we have the keys to life, and we didn’t have to do anything to earn them.
Sure, you can try to do it yourself. You can go it alone. You can try your hardest to earn eternity on your own dime. But you’ll fail. You can’t make even one mistake.
So stop putting that pressure on yourself. Don’t cling to the world’s way of doing life. Jesus came to give us a better way.
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