It’s easy for us to get caught up in the things of this world and become distracted. It’s easy to take our eyes off of Christ, fix our gaze on the “winds” of this world, become afraid, and begin to sink into a mire of distractions, which leads us to start thinking, sounding, and acting like the world around us.

That’s why our engagement requires a Christ-centered, Holy Spirit-wrought biblical wisdom to know how to live properly. Two basic biblical guardrails will help us rightly navigate living in this world: love and humility.

What I’m presenting is basic, but I’m hopeful it will cause each of us to see a bit better the greatness of Christ, while at the same time be a bit more convicted of our self-righteousness and cause us to be all the more thankful to our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus, in whom our hope and righteousness squarely rests. 

To understand how we are to live in this world as Christians is to simply recognize we cannot do it apart from Christ. That’s not to say I can’t live in this world as an image bearer, as I most certainly can and do live on earth, along with 7.8 billion other people.

All of humanity survives and thrives under God’s common grace as God has covenanted with mankind. God made a formal agreement with mankind through Noah (Genesis 8:21-9:17), where God promises not to wipeout humanity, but instead blesses mankind by directing them to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth (9:1). 

God blesses them with food, the animals, and the plants of the earth (9:3). And as image bearers of God, He also institutes and commands mankind to exercise equitable justice, “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (9:6). Mankind will continue to be blessed by God through the Noahic covenant until the implied return of Christ (8:22).

It’s necessary to remember we are all image bearers, believers and unbelievers alike, and it becomes highly important as we consider Christ’s instruction to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Forgetting this truth and having a high opinion of ourselves and a low opinion of our neighbor(s) isn’t demonstrating love, in fact, it sounds completely contrary to our Lord’s command.

Love for Christ keeps us headed down the right path in this world. This love is not a self-interested love, a self-defensive love, or a self-righteous love. Rather, it is a selfless love that has us look to God in Christ through the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit and His ministering of the Word preached.

It’s a love that reminds us of the Cross, our sin, and our Savior. It’s a love that is not of this world but a love with which the Father loved the Son before the foundation of the world (cf. John 17:24). It’s a love which unifies us in God, through Christ, so that the world may believe Jesus is the Sent One (cf. John 17:20).

For the Christian, it’s a love that is completely other-oriented.

Our genuine humility is derived from the fact the believer has been twice covenanted by God; once through the Noahic covenant, but secondly and most importantly, through the new covenant, which is not of common grace but special grace or salvific grace.

The Christian recognizes she or he did nothing to deserve becoming a member of the new covenant. It’s all by God’s grace, predestined before the beginning of time through the administration of the Godhead and the gospel of Jesus Christ. We are humbly brought into this dual citizenship, and humble we should remain.