Love not the world, nor the things in the world. If any one love the world, the love of the Father is not in him;
John writes this command to God's family, and he aims it at the strong. He has just praised these readers for overcoming the evil one. Three questions follow. What is "the world"? Why is loving it the problem, rather than living in it? And why does John set it against the love of the Father?
The order matters. The young men have already beaten Satan in open fight. A quieter danger opens right there.
The young men were strong. They were in the vigour of life. They had heard the word of God and kept it. They had put the enemy to flight in the open field and overcome the wicked one. But if he could not meet them face to face, he had another way to ruin them... Here was where the young men might fail. In a fair fight they were invincible, but the enemy had cunning tricks, and the world is a subtle snare.
The trap is self-confidence — the sense that strength earns a licence to dabble.
A man strong enough to overcome Satan may — sadly — still be overcome by the world's attractions. He may even feel strong enough to join in some worldly practice without it harming him. Sad delusion! For the very indulgence only shows the painful decay of his strength: he is already influenced.
The word does not mean the planet, nor the people God loves. It points to an arrangement of life.
The New Testament uses the word "world" in several different ways. Here it does not mean the people who make up the world — "For God so loved the world." It means an organised system of things. Its origin, its driving principle and its destiny stand in complete opposition to the love of the Father... These things in themselves are not the world. The world is the organised way they support and sustain life, and absorb energy and attention, in complete separation from God and without reference to Him.
Another writer separates the different senses of the word.
The word world can be used in three senses. Literally, it means the order or system by which people manage human affairs on the earth. We also call the earth itself the world, because it is the platform on which the world-system operates. And we call the people who live by this world-system the world too. So we can distinguish them like this: the world-space, the world-people, the world-system.
John does not forbid contact, ownership, or use. He forbids affection.
"Do not love the world." The sin is not in the using of the world but in the loving. Living fish swim against the stream. In the same way we must swim against the world. If we do not, the stream will carry us down into the Dead Sea.
The test is personal, not outward. Anyone can answer it.
We may, sadly, be tempted by it, or in an unguarded moment be overcome by it, but the testing question is, Do we love it? This is a solemn word for all who claim to belong to God's family, yet seem more at home with the world than with God's people.
The clause about the Father is unusual, and its force lies in the contrast.
The apostle is emphatic that the love of the world and the love of the Father cannot exist together. "If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." Only here, I think, do we read of the love of the Father — that is, of our love for the Father... In this passage the apostle contrasts our love for the Father with our love for the world. They exclude each other.
Commentators differ on how far the words go. One reads them as describing the unbeliever — "in any absolute sense, only an unbeliever loves the world" (Leslie M. Grant). Another applies them to a Christian's present enjoyment:
"If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." That does not mean the man is not converted. It means that if you love the world, you do not get the love of the Father. The love of the Father is not in this scene. It is in another world altogether. It is the world of which Christ is the moral centre.
The remedy offered is not gritted teeth but a fuller heart.
The Father's love is the great safeguard against the world, its influences and entanglements. When that love satisfies the longings of the heart there is no room left for the world.
Kept there, a believer is freed on several fronts at once:
Just as we are kept in the love of God, we shall be delivered from love of the world (1 John 2:15); kept in love with the saints (1 John 5:1); and led out in love to the sinner (2 Cor. 5:14).
- Strength first. The warning follows a victory. A man who has beaten the enemy in open fight can still be taken by the world's charm.
- System, not planet. The world here is not the planet or its people. It is an organised way of running life that absorbs attention without reference to God.
- Loving, not using. The sin lies in the affection, not the possession. The test is whether you love it.
- Rival loves. Love for the world and love for the Father shut each other out. Commentators differ on whether John describes an unbeliever or a believer who has lost the enjoyment of that love.
- Full hearts. Kept in the Father's love, the heart is satisfied and has no room left for the world.
because all that [is] in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.
The verse pulls back the surface of "the world" and names the three drives that run it. John also says where they do not come from. That one phrase — "not from the Father" — gives the believer a test for every offer the world makes.
The word does not point at mountains and oceans. Commentators say John means something fallen man has put together.
The Apostle leaves us in no doubt about the character of the world he speaks of. He does not mean the physical world of nature. He means the great system that fallen man has built up, and that system is marked by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
Loving the Father gives a kind of X-ray sight into that system.
If the love of the Father takes hold of us, we will see the world in its true light. We will have a spiritual power that works like the much prized X-ray. We will get down beneath the surface of things to the skeleton frame on which everything is built.
Each phrase covers a different appetite — one wants to own, one wants to look, one wants to be somebody.
The lust of the flesh is the desire of having — the desire to get for yourself the things that feed the flesh. The lust of the eyes is the desire of seeing, taking in, with the eyes or with the mind, all the things that feed your pleasures. It covers the restless cravings of the mind as well as the endless hunt for thrilling pleasures. The pride of life is the desire of being — the longing to be somebody, or to have something that feeds pride of heart. This is the deepest-rooted evil of the three, and often the least suspected.
Others compress the three into two motions of the heart, sorted by what a person already holds and what he still wants.
Poor world! Its composition is after all only twofold, lust and pride. Lust is seeking what I do not possess, pride is self-exaltation on account of what I do possess. These principles form and actuate the world — away from God.
John is speaking about origin. These energies could not come out of God, because of what God is.
These two forces at work in the world — lust and pride — do not begin in Him. They could not. With Him are righteousness, holiness and love in infinite perfection. So such things could not have their source in the Father.
The gap between the two sources is a matter of aim, and no heart can serve both.
The Father's aim is the glory of the Son; the world's aim is the satisfying of selfish lust. No heart can love and serve both God and money. But while the world and its lust is passing away like an empty show, "whoever does the will of God abides forever."
Writers trace all three back to Eve in the garden of Eden, in the order John lists them.
She saw that "the tree was good for food", so the lust of the flesh carried her away. She also saw that it was "a delight to the eyes", so the lust of the eyes drew her. Last, she saw that the tree "was to be desired to make one wise", and the pride of life that craves knowledge woke up… The world, then, is a vast system that fallen man has organised to indulge the different lusts of the flesh, to please the eye, and to feed the various forms of pride.
The tempter brought the same three to Christ in the wilderness. Each attack aimed at one target.
He began by tempting the Second Man to step out of the place of absolute dependence on God: "command these stones to become loaves of bread"… Then came the offer of the kingdoms of the world, with all their glory. Finally he took Him to the highest point of the temple. There he tempted Him to show Himself to the crowd below by a sudden miracle, and so win their admiration… The clear aim of every temptation was the same: to get the Blessed One to step out of complete dependence on God and perfect submission to His will. But it all failed.
The three names give the believer a simple test. Hold any offer, project, or ambition up against them.
Am I asked to take part in any movement that feeds the desires of the flesh? I can say no without hesitating. People may argue that it does good, but it is not the love that is of the Father. Someone may tell me of a plan that will give me a chance to get ahead in the world if I join it… but that is the lust of the eyes — not the love that is of the Father. They may promise me that I will be widely respected and honored, but that is the pride of life. It is not of the Father. He would lead me to honor Christ, not to seek honor for myself where Christ was dishonored.
- Source. Lust and pride could not begin in God; they have their origin in the world, not in the Father.
- Skeleton. Strip off the surface and three bones remain: having, seeing, being.
- Start. All three showed up together at the tree in Eden — good for food, pleasant to the eyes, desired to make one wise.
- Standoff. The tempter tried all three on Christ in the wilderness. Each one aimed to pull Him off dependence on God. Each one failed.
- Screen. Ask of any offer which of the three it feeds. If one of them drives it, it is not from the Father — and it is passing away.
And the world is passing, and its lust, but he that does the will of God abides for eternity.
John ends his warning against loving the world by giving the reason for it. One of the two things you can give your heart to has an expiry date; the other does not.
John is not naming a place. He means a system, and one writer maps how far it reaches:
This world-system in every aspect — whether we call it the social world, the political world, the commercial world, the scientific world, the religious world — all is not of the Father. All its glory is not of the Father. The love of the world is therefore inconsistent with the love of the Father. The controlling principles in it are the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life.
Those three principles make the system attractive. Another writer traces the appeal through each one and then names the verdict:
It appeals to the flesh, the feelings of a corrupted nature: this is the sensual attraction. But there is more. There is "the desire of the eyes," the artistic attraction — form, colour, perspective. All of it appeals to what seems noble and dignified in us, yet it calmly shuts the Father out… And third, "the pride of life" is the intellectual attraction. It is the appeal of growing knowledge, by which the world boasts that it can do without God… Let the energetic, strong child of God take warning: "the world is passing away and its desires." It is only a temporary, shining bubble, ready to burst.
The world is already on its way out. The reason lies in what the system is made of:
The world is lawless, and its pleasures and riches cannot last, for lawlessness cannot be allowed to continue. In the Father's world the pleasures are for evermore, and the riches are lasting. They last because they are connected with righteousness… Sin has ruined and corrupted the old order, and darkness fills it. It must pass away, and everyone who clings to it must pass away with it.
That has a direct consequence for how a believer spends his energy:
The stamp of death is on the entire present scene, and the world of the fallen first man is under the judgment of God. It must pass away. It will not abide… Such a person may turn away from the things that feed the life that is of God, and take part instead in what builds up the world. So far as he does, he is spending his strength on what is passing away, not on what abides.
The one who lasts is marked by whose will he follows:
Now the world passes away. But the one who does the will of God shall abide for ever. As he goes through this world, he takes as his guide not the desires of nature but the will of God. That will is according to His nature and expresses it. So he abides for ever, in keeping with the nature and the will he has followed.
And it must be God's will, not a substitute we have chosen for ourselves:
Meanwhile, the doing of His will is of the greatest importance. Let it, however, be His will, and not some imaginary service of our own devising. As we have seen, we must know and understand it first, and then put it into practice.
John does not say the one who holds the right opinions abides — he says the doer does:
It is not only that the word abides for ever, but he that does God's will. This is of far more importance than any doctrine deduced by men, any article of faith, as it is called. It is no doubt needful to oppose what is false and evil, and we are bound to submit to the revealed word and will of God. But error easily slips into the doctrines that the best men draw up… Here, though, we learn that the doer of God's will abides for ever.
The will of God is not only work for this life:
The contrast is great in the one who does the will of God, however obscure; "he abides for ever." What will he be doing in heaven, in eternity? The will of God. The thought is precious, and will check self-will now.
- Two worlds. The world here is a whole system — social, political, commercial, scientific, religious. It runs on the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life. None of it comes from the Father.
- Already dissolving. The system is lawless, not just fragile. It cannot be allowed to continue, and everyone who clings to it passes away with it.
- A wasted investment. Build up that system, and you spend your strength on what is passing, not on what abides.
- The dividing line. The one who lasts follows God's will, not natural desire. And it must be God's real will, not a service he invented himself.
- The same occupation for ever. Doing God's will is what a believer will be doing in eternity. Starting now checks self-will — and he abides for ever.