God-centered resources from the ministry of John Piper

My good friend, Rick Gamache, was recently expositing Ephesians 2:1-9 and included this powerful quote from Martyn Lloyd-Jones. He comments on verse 2, about those who live “according to the course of this world”:

Their little life is entirely controlled by the organization of the world. They think as the world thinks. They take their opinions ready-made from their favourite newspaper. Their very appearance is controlled by the world and its changing fashions. They all conform; it must be done; they dare not disobey; they are afraid of the consequences. That is tyranny, this is absolute control—clothing, hair style, everything, absolutely controlled. The mind of the world! ... Most lives are being controlled by it and governed by it, all their opinions, their language, the way they spend their money, what they desire, where they go, where they spend their holidays; it is all controlled, governed completely ... by this world, the mind of the world, the age of propaganda, the age of advertising, the mass mind, the mass man, the mass individual, without knowing it. Is it not tragic? But that is man in sin ... he is controlled by the mind of the world. (From God’s Way of Reconciliation.)

This is a wasted life. For freedom Christ has set us free; let’s stand firm and not submit again to a yoke of such slavery (Gal. 5:1), and not be conformed to this world (Rom. 12:2).