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?
Warning Addressed to the Strong
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.
What "the World" Means Here
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.
Loving, Not Using
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.
Two Loves That Cannot Share One Heart
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 Cure Is a Rival Satisfaction
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).
Summary
- 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.