A liquid is immiscible with another liquid when it can’t form a homogeneous mixture when mixed. Sounds a bit like a tongue twister. Let’s break it down. Think oil and vinegar in a salad. Shake them together all you like, but they’re immiscible. They’re together, but separate. However, consider chocolate syrup and milk: shake those together and you suddenly have chocolate milk. That’s because they’re miscible liquids and can form a homogeneous mixture. In a homogeneous mixture the components combine to form one uniform thing.  

“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them.” (1 John 2:15)

Christians must be immiscible as far as the world is concerned. We are in it, but not of it. We mustn’t become homogeneous when things get shaken up! We know that we are to love the people of the world – they are God’s children, made in his image. And we know that we’re to love and care for the planet. So what does it mean to “not love the world”?

We are to ensure that we don’t start to love society’s united rebellion against God. We mustn’t get sucked into the society’s self-promoting, controlling way of living that lulls us into ignoring God. The world wants us to love it. It wants our time, dedication, effort, money, attention… we can’t be giving that to the world and Jesus simultaneously.

It comes down to attraction.

The oil and vinegar can’t mix with one another because the molecules aren’t attracted enough to each other; the oil loves the oil particles too much to consider becoming one with the vinegar. If we are to remain in the world (as Jesus prayed for us in John 17) but not love it, then we need to make sure that nothing the world offers supersedes Jesus’ attraction.

And how do we do that?

Obedience.

1 John 2 continues, “Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.” (vv16-17 MSG).

Whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.

So the next time you’re drinking some chocolate milk, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal any areas where you’ve become a little too homogeneously aligned with the world. Or when you next pour a vinaigrette over your salad, pause and consider the last thing Jesus asked you to do. Then go do it – immiscibly.