What does it mean that the world is passing away (1 John 2:17)?

Here then we have exposed for us the framework on which the world system is built; every item of it totally opposed to the Father, and to that world which is to come, when the present world order is displaced. "The world passes away," we are told, and so does the lust of it. We are not surprised to hear it. What a mercy that it does, for what greater calamity could there be than that the world and its lusts should be perpetuated for ever! The world will disappear; the Father and His world will abide. We shall indeed be foolish if we are filled with love for that which vanishes away instead of love for Him who abides.

How striking the contrast in verse 17! We might have expected the end of the verse to have been, "but the Father abides." That however is so obvious as hardly to need stating. "He that does the will of God abides for ever;" that is the wonderful fact. It is the world that passes away. When believers die we remark that So-and-so has "passed away." The world gets on very well without them and seems perfectly stable. The Apostle John views things from the Divine side, and helps us to do the same. Then we see the world about to pass away, and the doer of the will of God, though he be withdrawn from earthly scenes, is the one who abides for ever. He serves the will of God. The will of God is fixed and abiding. The servant of that will is abiding too.

(V. 17). Moreover, man's world is passing. However fair on occasions its outward show may be, it is dominated by sin, and over all is the shadow of death. Already we have heard that the darkness, or ignorance of God, is passing; now we learn that the world that abides in darkness is also passing. In contrast with the passing world, those that do the will of God abide for ever; they belong to a world on which no shadow of death will ever fall.

But the world here has another characteristic that is pressed. It is evanescent, having God's sentence of death upon it. It is wholly to pass away. It is passing and its lust, for who can keep it? It does not matter whether it be riches or rank, pleasure, power, or aught else; it comes to nothing — its pride sometimes even in this age finding itself in a workhouse. For all that, men are devoured with the desire to be something greater than they are, so that under the surface lies unhappiness which pleasure cannot dispel.

"The world passeth away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." It is not only that the word abideth 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 glides into the doctrines which the best men formulate, against or for which men contend. But here we are told that the doer of God's will abides for ever. This none does without cleaving to Christ, and loving the Father. Surely "the Son abideth for ever." The Christian may fall asleep, but he abideth for ever. The Lord is coming to wake him up from the sleep of death, or to change him if he then survive, into His glorious likeness manifestly then for ever. But he is called to recognise it now, and to act on it every day, that he be not drawn into the defiling paths of the world that are thought so pleasant, but are, on the contrary, each and all covered and filled with evil and ungodliness.

Then again the world is passing away and the lust thereof; there is nothing durable. The world is lawless, and its pleasures and riches cannot be durable, for lawlessness cannot be allowed to continue. In the Father’s world the pleasures are for evermore, and the riches are durable, and the reason they are durable is because they are connected with righteousness. In this world the riches are the mammon of unrighteousness; but if you get riches and righteousness connected, you will find they are durable. And therefore the doer of the will of God is put in contrast with the lawless world. The world passes away, but the doer of the will of God abides for eternity. We are told that the darkness is passing away, and the world is passing away; how foolish, therefore, it is for anyone to set his heart upon the things of the world! The old order which has been ruined and corrupted by sin, and which is steeped in darkness, must pass away, and everyone who clings to it must pass away with it; but he who stands firm in separation from it, and in opposition to all its forces, controlled by the will of God, endures forever.

But the apostle has yet one more word for the young men. He says: "The world is passing away and the lust thereof." Another apostle has said, "All flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away" (1 Peter 1:24). For the Christian to be ensnared in the love of the world or the things of the world, whatever present worldly advantage he may gain, in the end it will be a sad experience. 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. But the one who practises the will of God will abide for ever. He is born of God — of the abiding word of God; has in him the abiding nature and life of God. It is eternal life that is dwelling in him. In so far as such an one turns aside from the things that minister to the life that is of God, to participate in what builds up the world, he is exerting himself in what is passing away, not in what abides.

Now the world passes away; but he who does the will of God, he who, in going through this world, takes for his guide, not the desires of nature, but the will of God — a will which is according to His nature and which expresses it — such a one shall abide for ever according to the nature and the will that he has followed after.

Yet the heavens and the earth pass away, — that is, in the form in which now we know them; or, as the apostle speaks to the Corinthians, "the fashion of this world passes away" (1 Cor. 7:21): and that this is the sense in which we are to understand it, other scriptures come to assure us.

Yet the heavens and the earth pass away — that is, in the form in which now we know them; or, as the apostle speaks to the Corinthians, "the fashion of this world passes away" (1 Cor. 7:31); and that this is the sense in which we are to understand it, other scriptures come to assure us.

Beautiful as this world is as we see the works of God, the witnesses of His handiwork and goodness, lovely mountains, seas and rivers, all nature smiling in the springtime, or ripening its stores in autumn, yet we know that it is all the old creation, everything subject to decay, its fairest scenes passing away; there is nothing abiding. It is because of sin, which has marred God's old creation, and therefore it must be all purged with fire, the very works that are therein shall be burned up, and all that we see now shall pass away.

Here, then, sketched in the early dawn of the world's history, is a very complete picture of the world on the one side, and on the other, of the believer's pathway through the world to glory. Some fifty centuries have passed and the world has immensely developed. The young sapling of Enoch's day has become a gigantic tree. Its three main shoots as revealed in Lamech — "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life," have become three main trunks, each bearing branches and twigs innumerable. The great tree now shows signs of weakness. Shall we let you into the secret? The interior is a mass of decay and rottenness. The imposing tree is doomed. Upon it this sentence is written: "The world passes away and the lust thereof" (1 John 2:17).

Shall we lament it? No, indeed. Being what it is, the passing away of the world-system is a subject for rejoicing, and the above quoted verse does not close without adding, "but he that does the will of God abides for ever." It is men of the Enoch stamp that will abide.