Amen, Richard!!
When we realize how we are to experience a transformation of character by having a full-heart surrender to God by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we will appreciate true piety, true godliness, a way of life that is a continual expression of the self-sacrificing love of God in Christ, who gave all heaven in Christ to save us! How can we settle for less than to give all to Him who gave all for us?
"It is as true now as in apostolic days, that without the illumination of the divine Spirit, humanity cannot discern the glory of Christ. The truth and the work of God are unappreciated by a world-loving and compromising Christianity. Not in the ways of ease, of earthly honor or worldly conformity, are the followers of the Master found. They are far in advance, in the paths of toil, and humiliation, and reproach, in the front of the battle 'against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.' Ephesians 6:12, R. V. And now, as in Christ's day, they are misunderstood and reproached and oppressed by the priests and Pharisees of their time." {The Desire of Ages, page 508, paragraph 4}
Let us renounce a Laodicean "world-loving and compromising Christianity," for by compromise with one known sin, we separate from God (see Isaiah 59:2) and come under condemnation (because sin leads to death). The Scripture shows clearly that such is not a true conversion, because supreme love for God cannot allow for the love of the world on the throne of the same heart. We either love Jesus supremely and our neighbor as ourselves because we have beheld His loveliness and surrendered all to Him, or we are unconverted and still overcome by unbelief. May we not be of those who love the world, but those who do God's will and abide forever because we discern the excellency of the spiritual nature of the kingdom of God that does not come with outward show.
1 John 2:15-17
15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.