Do not love the world
1 John 2:15a
8th May 2020
1 John 2:15a
Do not love the world or anything in the world.
When John says this it may raise a couple of questions for you. Questions like "Not even bunny rabbits? Not even sunsets? Not even chocolate?" And questions like "But didn't God so love the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever shall believe in him shall not perish but have everlasting life?" (John 3v16). So how can John say this? Should we not even love people? Surely that can't be right. But we know all Scripture is inspired by God and is true, although sometimes we disagree about what it means. So what does this passage mean?
As I read this, I thought of two explanations of these words. So I went to several commentaries and I found out - to my relief - that some commentaries agree with my first explanation and some agree with my second explanation. So we can't know which John meant, but I am convinced both are true, so I'm going to give both answers.
One explanation depends on what John means by the word "love", and the other depends on what he means by the word "world".
First, "do not love the world or anything in the world" means don't love it more than you love God. Don't give yourself to it. Don't choose it as your priority. Don't even compromise with it. Jesus said "No-one can serve two masters. Either he'll hate one and love the other, or he'll be devoted to the one and despise the other. You can't serve both God and money." (Matthew 6v24).
We can't serve both God and the world or anything in the world. Not even rabbits, sunsets and chocolate, not anything. Not money, not family, not career, not safety or comfort. We must "love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength" (Deuteronomy 6v5, Mark 12v30) which at least means we must put God first always. God is more important than anything else.
It's easy for Christian people who love Jesus to make the mistake of relegating God to their second, third or fourth priority. I know one Christian lady who couldn't possibly go to house group because her favourite soap opera was on the TV. Do not love the world or anything in the world more than you love Jesus. Not even television.
We can like things in the world. We can enjoy them and thank God for them, but Jesus comes first. We can give thanks to God for wine, but we can't drink more of it than is helpful, and we can thank God for food, but we can't eat more of it than is helpful, because we're putting God first. We can love our friends, but we should probably be in church on a Sunday morning no matter what our friends are doing. And so on.
This is the meaning of the passage if we focus on the word "love”: do not love anything in the world more than you love God.
The second meaning depends on what the word "world" means.
The Bible can use some words in more than one way, and you have to work quite hard to ascertain what a word means in a particular passage. People can get into all sorts of tangles if they think the word must always mean the same thing. And here we have an example of that problem. The Bible says "God so loved the world that he gave his only son". So we know that God loves all the people in the world and that God wants to save for himself a community out of that world by the sacrifice of his own Son. That's all wonderful! That's why we're here. That's what this whole church business is about. But in other passages of Scripture, "the world" means everything that is opposed to God and his Kingdom. There is a godly way of doing something and there is world way of doing it. There are God's priorities and there are the world's priorities. The world is a system - partly a demonic system, partly a fallen human system - that opposes God.
If you've watched the declension in the morality of our country and our laws over the last generation or two, you see the system at work. There is a demonically-controlled system, which human beings deliberately or unknowingly co-operate with, set up against God and his Kingdom. Always giving more and more reasons not to believe in Jesus, not to repent of our sins, not to recognise that our sins are sins. Do not love that system or anything part of it.
So both are true:
- Don't love even nice things more than you love God.
- Have no part in that worldliness that opposes God.