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Lesson Three: Worldliness -Purity- It is extremely Biblical to say that Christians should be “in the world, but not of it.” “In” is emphasized by texts such as John 17:15 and 1 Co-rinthians 5:9-10, while “not of” is emphasized by James 4:4 and 1 John 2:15, among many other pas-sages. Here, as in many areas of our walk with God, balance is key.However, God’s people inevitably find this balance hard to strike. Many Christians view their disciple-ship in an almost monastic light. They recognize the dangers posed by the world, but in response to those dangers, they seek to with-draw their children and themselves from the world. Their motives are good, but in so doing, they often forfeit the opportunity to be a godly influence, both by moderating their children’s exposure to the world and by shining the light of Christ for the sinner to find.On the other hand, many other Christians struggle with the oppo-site problem. They fail to hear the urgency of the Bible’s call toward purity. They are quick to recognize the appeal of worldly practices, but slow to acknowledge their dangers. Most of all, they fail to admit that most of the people around them are really, really going to lose their souls because of the evil ©Copyright Matthew W. Bassford, 2013. This material is subject to a Crea-tive Commons attribution-noncommercial-no derivative works license. This means that it may be reproduced, shared, and used freely, provided it is attributed to the author, not used for commercial purposes, and not altered in any way. For more information, please see creativecommons.org