Solution to Kosmic Thinking; 1 John 2:15

The doctrine of the cosmic system (cont.)

7. It is an autonomous way of thinking that produces a lifestyle of autonomy, i.e. a lifestyle which is independent from God and develops its values and ideas independent from God. There is a lifestyle that is consistent with cosmic thinking and it might be religious and ethical. For example, the legalistic lifestyle of the Pharisees was just as worldly as the antinomian sinful lifestyle of the Corinthians. So this worldly way of thinking can be religious, ethical, and moral. You can’t just squeeze cosmic thinking into one box, it has many different dimensions to it.

8. Cosmic thinking is completely antagonistic to God, His plan, His principles, and His procedures. It is mutually exclusive to love for God. You are either one or the other: either operating on God’s divine viewpoint or on man’s human viewpoint; you can’t do both. James 4:4 ^NASB “You adulteresses,” i.e. they spiritually unfaithful to the God who saved them, “do you not know that friendship [attraction to] with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” If you are a believer operating on worldly concepts of thought, then you are an enemy of God and there will never be any success, and advance in the spiritual life. The cosmic system is 180 degrees antithetical to Bible doctrine.

9. Therefore the believer is to extricate himself from the morass of cosmic thinking in the soul. The cosmic assumptions that are dominating the soul have to be surgically removed. Romans 12:1, 2 ^NASB “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, {which is} your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind [renovation of thinking], so that you may prove [demonstrate] what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.” James 1:27 ^NASB “Pure and undefiled religion in the sight of {our} God and Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their distress [doctrinal application], {and} to keep oneself unstained by the world. [4:5, 6] Or do you think that the Scripture speaks to no purpose: “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”? But He gives a greater grace. Therefore {it} says, ‘GOD IS OPPOSED TO THE PROUD, BUT GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE’.” The issue is cosmic thinking, arrogant thinking, the thinking of Satan and the demons, and God has given us the Holy Spirit who indwells us and who is going to help us to understand His Word, but we have to humble ourselves under the teaching of the pastor-teacher who communicates the Word.

10. Cosmic thinking, then, is the thinking of arrogance, the same kind of thinking that characterises the thought of Satan and the demons, that in independence from God we can make life work. James 3:13-15 ^NASB “Who among you is wise and understanding? Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and {so} lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic.”

11. When the believer is thinking divine viewpoint then the world is going to be opposed to the Christian. The problem is seen in John 15:18, 19 ^NASB “If the world hates you, you know that it has hated Me before {it hated} you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you.” The solution is found in John 17:14 where Jesus says to the Father in His high-priestly prayer ^NASB “I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” The way to avoid worldly thinking is the Word and reliance upon the Lord Jesus Christ and the precedent of the spiritual life established by Him for living the Christian life on the basis of the filling of the Holy Spirit.