The World I Reject & Respect

Today we hope to look at the Church's relationship to outsiders, especially as those outsiders may actively oppose the Church – might offer resistance in the way the world believes, speaks and does things against us.

How to deal with opposition from the world-system in a way that's in keeping with and even promotes the basic principles and beliefs of the Church? Whether the pushback is verbal or even physical? Are we to love the world or abhor (Rom 12.9) … hate the world?

I'll ask two questions of our passages, today:

1. What IS the relationship between the church and the world? And how does that present a tension?
2. How can we live not moderately but dynamically within that tension?