worldliness

¹⁵Do not choose to love the world, nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. ¹⁶For all that is in the world is the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and the arrogance of a life which is not of the Father, but is of the world. ¹⁷And the world is passing away, with its desire. But whoever does the will of God abides unto eternity.

²Consider the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth.

²And do not choose to be conformed to this age, but instead choose to be reformed in the newness of your mind, so that you may demonstrate what is the will of God: what is good, and what is well-pleasing, and what is perfect.

⁴You adulterers! Do you not know that the friendship of this world is hostile to God? Therefore, whoever has chosen to be a friend of this world has been made into an enemy of God.

¹²instructing us to reject impiety and worldly desires, so that we may live soberly and justly and piously in this age,

¹⁹If you had been of the world, the world would love what is its own. Yet truly, you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world; because of this, the world hates you.

¹⁵Do not choose to love the world, nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. ¹⁶For all that is in the world is the desire of the flesh, and the desire of the eyes, and the arrogance of a life which is not of the Father, but is of the world.

¹⁹These are the ones who segregate themselves; they are animals, not having the Spirit.

¹⁴Be like sons of obedience, not conforming to the desires of your former ignorance,

⁴No man, acting as a soldier for God, entangles himself in worldly matters, so that he may be pleasing to him for whom he has proven himself.

¹¹Most beloved, I beg you, as new arrivals and sojourners, to abstain from carnal desires, which battle against the soul.

²²So then, flee from the desires of your youth, yet truly, pursue justice, faith, hope, charity, and peace, along with those who call upon the Lord from a pure heart.

¹⁷And so, I say this, and I testify in the Lord: that from now on you should walk, not as the Gentiles also walk, in the vanity of their mind, ¹⁸having their intellect obscured, being alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is within them, because of the blindness of their hearts. ¹⁹Such as these, despairing, have given themselves over to sexual immorality, carrying out every impurity with rapacity. ²⁰But this is not what you have learned in Christ.

¹²Yet truly, these others, like irrational beasts, naturally fall into traps and into ruin by blaspheming whatever they do not understand, and so they shall perish in their corruption, ¹³receiving the reward of injustice, the fruition of valuing the delights of the day: defilements and stains, overflowing with self-indulgences, taking pleasure in their feasts with you, ¹⁴having eyes full of adultery and of incessant offenses, luring unstable souls, having a heart well-trained in avarice, sons of curses! ¹⁵Abandoning the straight path, they wandered astray, having followed the way of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the wages of iniquity.