1 John 2:15-17, Love Not the World

From experience I would say that this is one of the most important passages in all the Bible.  I refer to this passage often when studying elsewhere.  It defines the world, and at the same time gives us the limits of temptation.  We have a command: do not love the world.  Then it tells us all that is in the world.

Remember the context.  1 John 1:5-2:27 is dealing with “sin” which can ruin our fellowship with God.  It is important for us to understand where our “love” lies.  There are only two choices: either we love the world and the things of the world or we have the love of God in us whereby we love the things of God.

Let’s take a moment and use 1 John to tell us about “the world.”

·       5:19: Satan controls the world.  (Jn. 12:31: He is the “prince of this world”.)

·       2:16: The world consists of evil desires or motivations.

·       4:1,3: There are false prophets and antichrists in the world.

·       3:1: The world doesn’t know God.

·       3:1: The world doesn’t know God’s people.

·       3:13: The world hates God’s people.

·       2:2; 4:9,14: Christ is the world’s One and Only Savior.

·       The effect of all this on believers in Christ is:

o   4:17: They will manifest Christ-likeness, not world-likeness.

o   2:15: They overcome the world by not loving the world.

o   5:4-5: They overcome the world by their faith in Christ.

o   4:4: They overcome the world by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Clearly, we are not talking about the planet called earth or “the world.”  We are talking about a “system that rules the world,” and it is at enmity with God.  Our passage describes all that is in the world.  Here is a description that helps me, from Richard Trench in his classic Synonyms of the New Testament: the world is …

All that floating mass of thoughts, opinions, maxims, speculations, hopes, impulses, aims, aspirations, as any time current in the world, which it may be impossible to seize and accurately define, but which constitutes a most real and effective power, being the moral or immoral atmosphere which at every moment of our lives we inhale, again inevitably to exhale.

What John does is to say that all these thoughts and so forth are ultimately a manifestation of three motivations or drives or lusts:

·       The lust of the flesh (hedonism, motivated by feelings or experience.)

·       The lust of the eyes (materialism, motivated by what I can see or touch, things.)

·       The pride of life (self-actualization, motivated by what elevates by importance.)

We need to be able to see this because, as the passage says, it’s everywhere!