It is surprising to me how many Christians have asked, "What do you mean by `worldly'?" when speaking about today's music. Only a few years ago Christians didn't ask that questionthey knew exactly what worldliness meant. The entrance of Contemporary Christian Music [CCM] has brought a great amount of confusion as to what worldly means.
Over the last twenty years, there have been a number of young people, professing Christians, who have asked me, "What do you mean by `worldly'?" Their reaction was as if I were speaking of something of which they had never heard.
Worldly simply means "of or like the world." Satan is called "the god of this world" (I Cor. 4:4), and it is his purpose to blind the minds of people so that they do not understand nor receive the truth of the Gospel of Christ.
To be a Christian is to be different from the world, to be like Christ. In His prayer recorded in John 17:16,17, Jesus prayed for His followers in this manner: "They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them [set them apart from the world] through thy truth: thy word is truth."
"The preaching of the cross is to them, that perish foolishness" (I Cor, 1:18). The world rejects the Bible, but now modern Christianity tries to win today's young by taking the music from the secular, ungodly world, with its beat and sensual styles, and calling it Christian music. Because of this, merger with the world, there is a growing ignorance and confusion as to what the Scriptures teach about separation from the world (see II Cor. 6:14-18).
"For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world." Titus 2:11, 12.
-- From The Sword of the Lord