Avoid Getting Entangled

UV 4238/10000 Avoid Getting Entangled For if, they have escaped the pollutions of the world by ( personal) knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and are overcome, their last condition has become worse for them than the first. 2 Peter 2 v 20 The world is grossly imperfect and full of many moral and spiritual pollutants. The uni-verse states that our personal knowledge of God revealed through and in Christ Jesus acts as a shield or protective barrier from the pollutions of the world. Despite the protective power of the Word that is Christ, if we breach this layer of protection and allow us to be influenced or if we succumb to such influences and adulterations of this world, then Paul warns us we would be worse than before we met Christ, before we knew God. We would be like a dog that returns to its vomit and a pig that goes back after a nice wash to wallow in the miry pit. The stern warning is issued by the apostle to the church to keep us from being entangled again like the rest of the world. For we will be more miserable and cursed when we forsake Christ and embrace the world and its sins. This should be read in the context of a famous mega church founded in Australia being mired in a few sex scandals involving the founder’s family and others. The enemy accelerates the pace, intensity and frequency of bringing temptations our way but we need to be shrewd as a serpent in evading, avoiding, fleeing, distancing ourselves constantly from it. We cannot have a secret or double life that will disgrace our testimony and the fair name of the Lord. Once we allow ourselves to be overcome by such temptations, our condition will be worse than before we came to know the Lord. We need to set boundaries and firewalls to protect ourselves in practical ways from all such enticements of this world. Elsewhere in the epistles, Paul admonishes the early church to emulate the soldier in not getting entangled in ‘civilian affairs’, the athlete in disciplining his body, the farmer in being patient and contented. In spirit, courage, obedience, endurance and self control we should be like the soldier who obeys his commanding officer. In physical endurance, training, discipline, we should be like the athlete preparing for an event. In emotions and stability like the farmer. Instead of becoming worse, we should aim and work hard at getting better, degree by degree, day by day.