Take the World
Take the World
1 John 2:15-17
I have difficulty with people who see the world in black and white. What I mean by that is that there are people for whom everything is either/or. It’s either good or it’s bad. I’ve had political discussions with people who seem incapable of nuance, of seeing that two things could be true at the same time, or of seeing that there is a spectrum of thought.
Now, I have to be very careful, here, because there are things that are either/or. There are things where there is no wiggle room – it’s either right or it’s wrong. Sometimes there is no nuance, no in-between. What God calls sin is sin, and there is no room for argument. But when it comes to people, and when it comes to some issues, there is a “yes, but ...”, and there is room for interpretation. There are gray areas in life, and sometimes we have to measure things not as good or bad, but as better or worse. We’ve kind of seen that with some of the Israelite kings, where the Bible says they were good, but ..., or they were bad, but ... They were not as good as they could have been, or they were not as bad as some others were. Was Joash, for example, a good king or a bad king? Well, he was good until he was not. We have to weigh his impact, and it appears that it was mostly good. We discover that good kings did bad things, and bad kings did good things. Not everything is either/or.
John has already shown us that he is a black and white man. A couple weeks ago, we read in 1 John 2:9, for example, that anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother lives in the light ... It’s as simple as that for John. Your attitude toward other people reveals your spiritual condition. Either/or – you are either in the light or in the darkness. You either hate or you love. You either desire good for them or you desire evil for them. John leaves no room for ambivalence. It’s really as simple as this: failure to love is hate. Apathy, as in I have no feelings one way or the other and no concern for his soul, is a form of hatred. James names it the sin of omission – If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them (Jas 4:17). And you will notice, as we go along, that John is this way throughout the letter. I might want some nuance, some gray areas, but John won’t let me. There is no such thing as a sinning Christian, we have already heard. But there is also no such thing as “partly holy.” It’s all or nothing.
Let me insert here that there are people who claim the Bible is full of contradictions. They all disappear when we examine them in their fuller context. Let me begin by posing one for you.
John tells us, in our text, do not love the world or anything in the world. But he wrote in the gospel, the familiar words, God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son (Jn 3:16). On its face, the contradiction is this: God loved the world, but we are not to love the world.
In context, John is talking about God loving people, and that whoever believes receives life. World is modified by whoever. John, in the gospel, is revealing God’s plan of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, and people respond. There, world is the people of the world. But in the letter, John is writing about the things of the world. World is modified by anything. God loves the people of the world; we are not to love the things of the world.
Do not love the world or anything in the world. Two question arise immediately: what does John mean by love, and to what is John referring as the world. John will answer the second question in a bit, so we begin with love. This is a form of the verb ἀgapavw (agapao). The noun form is agavph (agape). This is a sacrificial love, a love that has been defined as “seeking the overall good” of someone when it is directed toward people. When directed toward things, it is a “striving after”, or a pursuit of those things. It is placing not just high value, but the highest value. It is wanting something more than you want anything else. It may be expressed as, “I’d rather have ...” or “the most important thing to me is ...” When John says, Do not love the world, he is telling us not to make the world our highest priority. If it is ...
If anyone lose the world, love for the Father is not in them. Now, one little problem: people will claim to believe in God, or to believe in Christ, as if their belief is all that matters. I’ve become somewhat of a skeptic, I suppose. I actually don’t care if you believe in God. James tells us that even the demons believe in God, so belief is sort of irrelevant. Jesus doesn’t actually call us to believe in the sense we often use the word. He calls us to obedience. He calls us to follow him - a step much further than belief. Jesus stated quite plainly, “If you love, keep my commands” (Jn 14:15). Love is not evidence by belief but by obedience. It’s really a matter of your belief changing your behavior.
We need to make a clear distinction between belief and love. That is, you may believe in God but not love him. The evidence is fruit, results, obedience. Your love for God will be evidenced by your behavior, by your obedience – not by your belief. John is not saying that if you love the world you don’t believe in the Father, but that if you love the world you don’t love the Father. Love for the Father, here, is placed in contrast to love for the world. And to love in this way is to set your priority, to make God your preference. It is to strive after God. The songwriter expressed it this way: “I have one deep, supreme desire – that I may be like Jesus. To this I fervently aspire– that I may be like Jesus. I want my heart his throne to be, so that a watching world may see His likeness shining forth in me. I want to be like Jesus.”1 Jesus said that no one can serve two masters (Mt 6:24). You can’t make both God and the world your highest priority. You must choose, and John says that if you choose the world, you have rejected God. You may believe all you want, but if the world is more important to you than God, you have rejected God. The love of the Father is not in you.
For everything in the world – the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life – comes not from the Father but from the world. There’s an interesting word in here that we need to understand: ἐpiqumiva (epithumia). Epithumia is desire or longing for something. It may be a good thing. In Luke 22:16, Jesus said, I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you. In 1 Thess 2:17, Paul expressed an intense longing to visit that congregation. God created appetites: hunger, thirst, companionship, physical affection. It’s the perversion, or inversion, of those appetites that is sin – gluttony, drunkeness, wanton sexual behaviors – sins of the flesh, or sins in the flesh. That is, epithumia, desire is good or bad depending on it’s object.
Here John answers the second question we posed earlier – what does he mean by the world? The lusts of the flesh are out-of-control appetites, where we would rather eat, sleep, drink, indulge, satisfy urges, rage – where those become our obsession and our priority. The lusts of the eyes are covetousness, jealousy – we want something we see, or we want something someone else has. This is the very essence of socialism – the desire that everyone ought to have what everyone else has.
We’ve seen this recently when Elon Musk made SpaceX a public company and sold stock in the company. Suddenly, he was, on paper at least, a trillionaire - the richest person in the world. Within the hour, practically, certain politicians were calling for that money to be taxed. But what we heard was, “If we had that money, we could ...” to this or that good thing. “It’s not fair that he has so much money (and we don’t).” “No one should have that much money.”
But what is the Tenth Commandment? Look at Exodus 20:12 – You shall not covet ... and there’s a list of things you are not to desire: your neighbor’s house, your neighbor’s wife, your neighbor’s servant, your neighbor’s donkey. Is that list exhaustive? Are those the only things we are not to covet? No, because the end of the verse is this – or anything that belongs to your neighbor. It’s not yours. You are not to steal it (v. 15); you are not even to desire it.
The pride of life. What is that? Well, it is at least partly the idea that we deserve what someone else has, or we deserve to receive without effort on our part. We deserve free housing. We deserve free medical care. We deserve reparations. We’re so important that other people should give us what we want. It’s also the pride of possession – look what I have. I have something you don’t. It’s also arrogance and boasting about how great we are, about our accomplishments. There is satisfaction in a job well done, or in completing a difficult task, earning a grade or a degree. But satisfaction is not the same as arrogance. By the way, I hear people frequently declare that they are proud to be Christian. It seems like an oxymoron to me – a proud Christian. What does the Scripture say about pride? God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble (Prov. 3:34; Jas 4:6). Paul says that love is not proud (1 Cor 13:4).
So, the world for John is characterized by these three things: lust of the flesh; lust of the eyes; pride of life. If that’s what you love, or if any part of that is what you love, and by love we mean that’s your priority, that’s what you live for – then you don’t love God, no matter how earnestly you believe. Those things, John says, do not come from the Father. When John writes, For everything in the world ... comes not from the Father, he not talking about creation. He’s talking about the perversion of creation. He’s not talking about appetites and desires; he’s talking about the perversions of those appetites and desires. Not everything you see comes from God.
In fact, there is a distinct misunderstanding. In the beginning, when God created mankind, the writer tells us that God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over ... every living creature ...” (Gen 1:28). Subdue and rule over do not mean exploit, conquer, and destroy. God meant for us to care for, to husband the land, to steward the resources. Everything God made was good, even very good. But with sin and rebellion came corruption, even to the point that mankind’s good desires were corrupted and we became selfish and grasping and destructive. Appetites are meant to be satisfied, not indulged, and it is the perversion of those good appetites that is sinful, and that John refers to as the world.
But there’s another problem with the world, with indulging our God-given appetites. Not only are the lusts of the flesh, lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life opposed to love for the Father, but they are temporary. They are ephemeral. James warns against setting too much stock in our plans. We don’t know what the next hour holds for us, let alone the next year. James says, What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes (Jas 4:14). Paul writes that this body is perishable (1 Cor 15:42). It is ours for a little while. So John says, the world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.
C. S. Lewis wrote, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing.”2 We read Hebrews 11 for examples of faith, but I think we fail to get the point. Moses’ faith, for example, was a choice to suffer in this life rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin (v. 25). Abraham was looking for the city whose author and builder is God (v.10). The chapter summary tells us that God had planned something better for them (v. 40).
Love of the world is love for something fleeting, ephemeral, and perishable. Love for God is love for Someone eternal. We’re sort of stuck with a poor translation at the end: whoever does the will of God lives forever. It doesn’t actually say that. It says, whoever does the will of God lives in eternity. Eternal life. Life with God, both here and in heaven. John 3:16 – whoever believes will not perish but have eternal life.
Here’s a place where John gives us an either/or choice. It’s either love for the world, which excludes love for the Father, or love for the Father, which excludes love for the world. It’s a matter of what matters most. God wants more for you than the mere satisfaction of appetites and desires. God wants eternity for you. Which do you love more: the temporary pleasures of the world, or the permanent, eternal promise of the Father?
You have to choose. You can’t have both.
1 Thomas O. Chisholm, © 1945, renewed 1974 by Lillenas Publishing Co. All rights reserved.
2 Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Harper Collins, 1980), pp. 136-137