The Expulsive Power of a New Affection - 1 John 2:15-17

Introduction

We find ourselves in 1 John 2:15 tonight, encountering another entry for John into a series of ethical commands centered around the doctrine and ethic of Christian love.

Let’s briefly review where we’ve been.

John has opened his primary section of exposition with this sweeping ethical purpose statement in 2:1: Beloved, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. To phrase it positively, John is writing to encourage his readers to walk in the light by walking in obedience to the great commandment of Christ - love one another. John connects light and love inextricably in a tandem pair that grow and expand in the Christian together. The more light, the more love, and the more love, the more light.

John then takes a brief break to wax eloquent about the nature of the Christian life, declaring that to be a Christian is to know God, to overcome the devil, to be strong, and to have the Word of God abiding in you.

Now in verse 15, he returns to this theme of light and love, this time as it concerns not our relationship with others, as we saw in verses 9-11, but as concerns our relationship with God.

So with that being said, let’s look at the text, and then consider what it teaches us to think and what it calls us to do.

Exegetical

John opens with a very forthright command: do not love the world, nor the things in the world.

Let’s dig into this.

First, we need to consider what type of love is in view here.

The Greek word here is agapao, more commonly transliterated to English as agape. It’s here in verse 15 3 times, twice as a verb and once as a noun.

This word agapa or agape, depending on the formulation, is a unique word to the New Testament. It carries a weight and seriousness beyond the other New Testament words for love. To agapa someone or something is to regard it with the highest levels of special devotion, to the degree that you would be willing to sacrifice life and limb for it.

This is the type of love that drove Christ to the cross, and was what he had in view when he told his disciples “Greater love has no man than this, that he would lay down his life for his friends.”

This is the type of love that drives men to cross oceans, storm beaches, and give their last full measure of devotion.

This is the type of love depicted in the great stories, love that would drive a simple gardener to carry his friend up the side of a raging volcano to save the civilized world.

We generally have deeply passionate and highly positive perspectives on this type of love, which is why John’s statement here is rather jarring. He is actually commanding us to not love in this way.

Why? The answer lies in the double object of that devoted sacrificial love.

He says that we are not to love the world, nor the things in the world.

This word world here is the Greek word kosmos, and it’s used throughout the New Testament to describe the created order or the natural realm. This is everything that God has created. Everything that is inside “the box” of human experience, human senses, and the observable matter and molecules of our universe. This is everything that exists in “the Right-Side Up,” if you understand my meaning.

The concept of the world can also be more abstract, and can refer to things like culture, philosophy, or ideas that originate “inside the box,” and this is what John means when he speaks of “the things in the world.”

This is the first of many times that John uses the word world in this letter, and it carries increasingly negative connotations. Robert Yarbrough says this:

1–3 John a. Heart of the Imperative: Warning against World-Love (2:15a)

In using “world” negatively in 2:15a, he reverses the more positive connotation the word has elsewhere (2:2; 4:9, 14) and anticipates the more negative associations that emerge as the letter progresses. For John, the κόσμος (kosmos, world) is passing away (2:17). As a whole it is a realm that does not (or will not) recognize Christ (3:1) and that despises people who follow Christ (3:13). It is shot through with the influence of dangerous deceivers like false prophets (4:1) and antichrist himself (4:3), the evil one “who is in the world” (4:4). “The world” is conceived of as the stronghold of those who ignore the apostolic testimony (4:5; cf. 4:6). While “the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world” (4:14 NIV), this saving work consists in equipping believers to “overcome the world” (5:4–5), not benignly acquiesce to its ways. In the end, in a sense “the whole world is under the control of the evil one” (5:19 NIV). In the light of such numerous and pervasive negative associations, the κόσμος is a sinister sphere indeed; it is an image “of life where God does not rule” (Loader 1992: 24). It is therefore not surprising that, viewed this way, things that “belong to” the κόσμος (i.e., that are characteristic of the fallen world order rather than of God’s redemptive order unfolding in the world) can hardly be the legitimate objects of the highest devotion of Christ’s followers.

Having commanded us to not love the world or the things in the world, John now gives us the reason why: if anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

There has been some question over the years as to the precise meaning of “the love of the Father.” Is this the love that the Father has for the believer? Is this the love for God and others imparted to the believer by the Father? Or is this the love that the believer possesses for the Father?

I believe the latter is the sense that John intends here: love for God in keeping with the first great commandment.

What John is saying then is that the love for the world and the love for God are mutually exclusive. You cannot have both together, but must choose one or the other.

He further leans into the distinction in verse 16 when he says that all that is in the world is from the world, and not from the Father.

This is interesting, because we certainly acknowledge that God has created all things, and the Scriptures themselves say that from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. How do we reconcile this seeming disparity between Paul and John?

Listen to John Owen:

Works of John Owen: Volume 7 Chapter 11: The Seat of Spiritual Mindedness in the Affections—The Nature and Use of Them—The Ways and Means Used by God Himself to Call the Affections of Men from the World

All things here below were at first made beautiful and in order, and were declared by God himself to be exceeding good, and that not only in their being and nature, but in the use whereunto they were designed. They were then desirable unto men, and the enjoyment of them would have been a blessing, without danger or temptation; for they were the ordinance of God to lead us unto the knowledge of him and love unto him. But since the entrance of sin, whereby the world fell under the curse and into the power of Satan, the things of it, in his management, are become effectual means to draw off the heart and affections from God; for it is the world and the things of it, as summed up by the apostle, 1 John 2:15, 16, that strive alone for our affections, to be the objects of them.

What John implies here then is that God indeed has created all things, and all things are indeed from Him, but the creation has been corrupted and God has allowed the evil one to take jurisdiction over the world and the things of the world, which John now clarifies further in the center clause of verse 16.

There are a lot of different approaches to this threefold description of all that is in the world, but I think we can rightly summarize them as desires focused on pleasure and gratification one hopes to receive. Let’s look a little closer.

The lust of the flesh reflects physical appetites. John speaks here of the pleasures of the world that gratify our senses. The lust of the flesh then can rightly be described as our physical appetites for food, drink, sex, and good times. This is the rallying cry of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

The lust of the eyes reflects material appetites. John speaks here of worldly riches and goods, things that Jesus might say that moth and rust would destroy. These are material treasures, stuff, possessions.

The boastful pride of life reflects the attitude that humans develop when they have obtained the desires of their flesh and the desires of their eyes. It is the attitude that says with king Nebuchadnezzar: Is this not Babylon the great, which I myself have built as a royal house by the strength of my power and for the glory of my majesty?”

These are the things that the one who loves the Father ought not and indeed cannot love with the type of whole-hearted sacrificial devotion that marks our most important relationships.

John proceeds, in this third phrase of verse 16, to clarify why specifically that which is in the world cannot be loved by the one who loves God: because these things are not from the Father, but from the world.

In other words, these things find their origin in the fallen cosmos, not in God Himself. They spring forth out of a Genesis 3 world rather than a Genesis 2 world.

Verse 17 brings us to another and more poignant reason to reject the things of the world: the world and it’s lusts are passing away. No sane person would sit down for dinner in a burning building. No sane person would board a sinking ship. No sane person would hold shares in a company that has declared bankruptcy. So likewise, no sane person would set as the chief object of their affections the world which is passing away, and the lusts and desires contained therein.

The Puritan John Flavel describes them this way:

The Whole Works of the Reverend John Flavel, Volumes 1-6 Inference 7

The apostle reduceth all earthly things to three heads, “the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life,” 1 John 2:16. he calls them all by the name of that which gives the lustre and beauty to them, and pronounceth them all fading, transitory vanities, they all pass away; as time, so these things that are measured by time, are in fluxu continuo, always going, and at last will be all gone.

And the Puritan Thomas Manton:

The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, Volume 2 Looking Back Ill Becomes Those that Have Set Their Face Heavenward

The pleasures of sin are base and brutish, which captivate and bring a slavery on the soul, Titus 3:3. The enjoyments of the world cannot last long; your gust and relish of them, within a little while will be gone, 1 John 2:17; yet these are the things that tempt you to forget and draw you off from God. And will you marry your souls again to those sins from which they were once divorced, and for such paltry vanities repent of your obedience to God, even after you have made trial of him? Are these things grown better, or God grown worse, that you should turn your hearts from him to them?

He then contrasts the world, which is passing away, with the one who does the will of God, who abides forever.

John thus functionally equates loving God with doing the will of God, and positions the result or outcome of both as eternal life, or abiding forever.

Having considered the text, let’s now turn our attention to the principles in play here.

Doctrinal

Love for the world and love for God are mutually exclusive

John is clear: an affectionate devotion for the world cannot coexist with an affectionate devotion for God. They are oil and water, fire and ice, darkness and light.

To love God is to keep the commandment of Christ

John tells us back at the beginning of chapter 2 that he is writing so that we may not sin. He expands that thought positively by telling us that he is writing a timeless and fresh commandment, both from the mouth of Moses and the mouth of Christ himself. That commandment is expressed positively as loving your neighbor as yourself, and negatively as not hating your brother.

John now extends that command here and tells us that just as we are to love our neighbor and not hate them, so also we are to love God and not love the world. Therefore, the commandment of Christ, which is what John is ultimately writing about, is to love God and love neighbor.

To love God is to do the will of God

This is tightly connected to the previous principle, and is drawn from verse 15 dovetailing into verse 17. We affirm therefore that to love God is to do the will of God and to do the will of God is to love God, and in that we likewise affirm that our relationship with God encompasses both our will and our affections. We love Him both with action and with emotion, with deed and with feeling, externally and internally.

Love for God therefore encompasses the whole of Christian existence.

To love God is to abide forever

Love for God is a visible signifier by which we may be reminded of our guarantee of eternal life. John continues his theme of assurance here by telling us that a mark of our eternal security is our present, willful, active affection for God.

John contrasts this with the world which is passing away, along with it’s lusts. The world is transient. It is in motion, it is changing, it is passing from one form to another until it eventually fades away altogether.

The Christian who has set their love and affection upon God is the opposite of the world, not fading or passing but actually growing in love and affection through this life first, and then beyond death, and then into eternity.

Ethical

So having considered the text and the principles, I want to spend the rest of our time tonight discussing how this works itself out in our daily lives.

John gives us two basic commands here, one explicitly and one by inference. Let us discuss the practical implications of both, and do so in dialogue with some Godly voices from the past and present.

Do not love the world nor the things in the world

John enjoins us in the most simple and yet poignant terms possible: do not love the world. Do not love the things of the world. Do not set your affections on fleeting and carnal pleasures.

Listen to John Flavel again:

The Whole Works of the Reverend John Flavel, Volumes 1-6 Plea 5

What light and vain things are all those pleasures of sin, for the sake whereof you deprive your souls of the everlasting comforts of Jesus Christ? Deluded soul, it is not the intent of Christ to rob thee of thy comfort, but to exchange thy sinful for spiritual delights, to thy unspeakable advantage. It is true, you shall have no more pleasure in sin, but instead of that you shall have peace with God, joy in the Holy Ghost, and solid comforts for evermore. What are the sensitive or sinful pleasures of the world? You have the total sum of them in 1 John 2:16, 17. “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lusts thereof; but he that doth the will of God abideth for ever.”

Flavel’s words are piercing. What light and vain things. What a foolish waste of time to fritter your life away on these petty lusts and desires.

Likewise the Puritan Thomas Manton said that “looking back ill becomes those that have set their face heavenward.”

What did he mean by that? Simply that looking back toward the things of this world is not fitting or proper for the one who has set their face heavenward.

We would do well tonight to ask ourselves: have we set our faces heavenward? Are we fixed on the glory of the things above? Or do we, as Manton says, have a hankering for what we’ve left behind?

Listen to Manton as he discusses the rich young ruler and Lot’s wife in connection with this principle:

The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, Volume 2 Looking Back Ill Becomes Those that Have Set Their Face Heavenward

We have an instance in the text of a man which pretended to follow Christ, which is to set our faces heavenward (for we follow Christ, first in labour and patience, and then into glory). But he would look back, and had many thoughts of what he had left at home. And he is pronounced unfit for the kingdom of God, that is, to be a disciple of Christ. And we have another instance, recommended to our observation by our Lord himself: Luke 17:32, ‘Remember Lot’s wife;’ that is, remember her sin, and remember her punishment. Both are taken notice of, Gen. 19:26, ‘But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt.’ There was a hankering of mind after what she had left in Sodom. She looked back, because she had left her heart behind her; there were her kindred, her friends, and her country, and pleasant place of abode. That look was a kind of repenting that she had come out of Sodom. And what was her punishment? She that looked back perished as well as they that never came out. Yea, she is set up as a monument or spectacle of public shame and dishonour, to warn the rest of the world to obey God, and trust themselves with his providence.

Manton is brilliant here, and I commend this full discourse to you from volume two of his collected works.

The Christian who sets their affections upon the world and the things of the world is like Lot’s wife, looking back upon the pleasant place of their former abode, as it were repenting of our repentance! What an awful thought when it’s expressed that way. Yet this is what we do when we long and lust after the things of this world.

Manton continues when he says that such a hankering after the world, the cares, the pleasures, and the pomp thereof belies our conversion. Manton says that our conversion is simply the turning from the creature to God, from self to Christ, and from sin to holiness. Then listen to this brilliant line:

The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, Volume 2 Looking Back Ill Becomes Those that Have Set Their Face Heavenward

As our degeneration was a falling from God to the creature, Jer. 2:13, so our regeneration is a turning from the creature to God.

Expository poetry. I’m just going to let Manton cook, as the young folks would say:

The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, Volume 2 Looking Back Ill Becomes Those that Have Set Their Face Heavenward

The world and the flesh are the things behind us; we turned our back upon them in conversion, when we turned to God. Grace ‘teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts,’ Titus 2:12. It is the world that doth call back our thoughts, and corrupt our affections—the world, that is an enemy to God, and our religion, James 4:4. Therefore, the world must be renounced, and we must grow dead to the world, that we may be alive to God. There is no halting between both.

Manton’s words remind me of an old song: the world behind me, the cross before me, no turning back, no turning back.

I might modify the words slightly to fit John’s text here: the world behind, God before me. No turning back. Friends, this is our rallying cry. God before us, no turning back.

To summarize, here is Joel Beeke:

Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 3: Spirit and Salvation Disciplines to Cultivate Holiness

We must not let the world conform us to its image (Rom. 12:2). Though worldliness is expressed in how people talk, dress their bodies, array their possessions, and spend their time, we must remember that the core of worldliness lies in what people love. John warns, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For 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. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever” (1 John 2:15–17). Rather than letting such defiling desires control our hearts, we must set our minds on whatever is honorable, just, pure, lovely, and virtuous (Phil. 4:8).

Christians must live as citizens of another world, “strangers and pilgrims” passing through this earth on their way to a better place (Heb. 11:13). “The citizens of the city of God,” Augustine said, “sigh for the peace of their heavenly country.” Calvin said, “If heaven is our homeland, what else is the earth but our place of exile?… It is like a sentry post at which the Lord has posted us, which we must hold until he recalls us.” He added, “The present life is for his people as a pilgrimage on which they are hastening on toward the Heavenly Kingdom.”73 They hope in “new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Pet. 3:13).

We have sufficiently demonstrated that the Christian is not to love the world nor the things in the world. Our affections are not to be set on these things, and they are to be mortified, left behind, and otherwise removed from the life and experience of the Christian.

What then ought to fill that void?

This is the question posed by Thomas Chalmers in his sermon, from which I have lifted the title of this lesson tonight: how shall the human heart be freed from it’s love for the world?

Love for God. This is second application point tonight.

Love the Lord your God

This command is implied here by John. If we do not love the world, then the love of God is necessarily within us. The theological and ethical argument to be made from this text is that these two affections, these two loves, are so all-consuming and so massive that they cannot coexist in a single heart.

Let me pose a question to you to help us understand how this works.

Imagine you have access to a lab with the most sophisticated machinery and the world’s best scientists. Your task is to remove all the air from a glass beaker. How would you do it?

The answer is remarkably simple. Fill the beaker with water.

That is the picture posed here by John and that is the way Thomas Chalmers answered the question, “How does the Christian not love the world?” Our heart is the beaker, the world and it’s lusts and pleasures and desires are the air, and try as we might, all the most advanced emotional and mental and spiritual machinery cannot completely extract the air of worldliness from the beaker of our heart. The solution for us is remarkably simple, almost too simple. Remove all the air of worldliness by filling your heart with the water of God Himself.

This is the expulsive power of a new affection. We ought to have such a delight in God, such an appetite for his sweetness, such a savoring for His splendor, that the things of this world grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.

The question for us tonight is this: are we about this business of making much of God? Are we continually pouring His greatness and glory and goodness into the beaker of our hearts til it overflows?

This ought to be the singular focus of the Christian life. Here is Thomas Manton again:

The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, Volume 2 Looking Back Ill Becomes Those that Have Set Their Face Heavenward

So the apostle telleth us, Phil. 3:13, ‘But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,’ &c. Farther progress in holiness is the one thing that we should mind, and that above all other things. This is the unum necessarium, Luke 10:42; the primum or principium, the one thing, that is, the main thing: Ps. 27:4, ‘One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after.’ But how should we mind it? Not looking to the things which are behind, but looking to the things which are before. The things behind are our imperfect beginnings, or so much of the race as we have overcome and got through. It is the sluggard’s trick to consider how much of the journey is past, or how far the rest of the racers are behind him. But he that sets heartily to his business considers how much is before, that he may get through the remainder of his race, and so obtain the prize. The things which are before us are God and heaven, and the remaining duties of the holy life. These we should mind, and not look back, as satisfying ourselves with what we have attained to already.

John tells us here, with the chorus of church history: eyes up, Christian! Our best is upward and onward, in the heavenly places, for our best is God Himself! What greater satisfaction could we have than an ever-deepening, ever-closing relationship with our Maker?

Might we be filled with this joy and satisfaction! Might we be filled with God Himself!

Here is Thomas Manton again:

The Complete Works of Thomas Manton, Volume 2 Looking Back Ill Becomes Those that Have Set Their Face Heavenward

Fix your end and scope, which is to be everlastingly happy in the enjoyment of God. The more you do so, the less in danger you will be of looking back. We are often pressed to lay up treasures in heaven, Mat. 6:20; and, as those that are ‘risen with Christ,’ to ‘seek the things which are above,’ Col. 3:1. Our Lord himself saith to the young man, Mark 10:21, ‘Go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasures in heaven.’ If your life and business be for heaven, and your mind be kept intent on the greater matters of everlasting life, nothing will divert you therefrom; you will almost be ready to forget earth, because you have higher and better things to mind. It is not barely thinking of the troubles of the world, or confessing its vanities, will cure your distempers, but the true sight of a better happiness. A little in hand is better, you will think, than uncertain hopes; but a sound belief, which is ‘the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen,’ that openeth heaven to you, and will soon make you of another mind.

Friends, have we fixed our end and scope on our own everlasting happiness in the enjoyment of God? Have our affections been thoroughly and unwaveringly set upon Him? Do our hearts leap at the thought of God? Are His praises ever on our lips? Do we tremble with holy anticipation at the thought of meeting God in prayer, in His Word, and in the corporate gathering of His people together?

Do we fill our minds with the excellencies of God? do we linger long on his perfections?

I will leave you tonight with just a few practical encouragements in this regard. How are we to grow in our love for God, and thereby expel any love for the world from our hearts?

Pray for your love for God to increase.

Pray with David in Psalm 27:4

Psalm 27:4 LSB

One thing I have asked from Yahweh, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of Yahweh all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of Yahweh And to inquire in His temple.

Pray that God would show you His beauty and glory and that He would jog your heart to love him and to set your affections upon Him.

Discipline yourself to encounter God regularly in His Word

Ingest the Word. Feast upon it. Therein lie the beauties and glories of God Himself, in which we are to delight and be satisfied! It is simply not possible to love God truly apart from encountering Him as He has revealed himself in his Word.

I would encourage you as you read your Bible to stop after every chapter and ponder this question: Did I catch a glimpse of the glory and greatness of God in this text? What beauties did I behold? What wonders did I witness? Simply put, ask every text you read this question: What do you show me about God?

Then once you’ve nailed that down, and the answer to the question has popped off the page, stop. Think about that thing, long and hard. Dwell on it.

If you want to love God more, it will happen every time you seek His face in His word.

Behold the beauty of the Lord with the old masters

Find an old, dead author and read what he wrote about God. I can recommend two recently dead authors to you right now: RC Sproul’s The Holiness of God, and J.I. Packer’s Knowing God.

If you want to take the next steps into the deep things of God, I would recommend reading a systematic theology. Start with Geerhardus Vos’ Reformed Dogmatics. After that, try the one-volume Banner of Truth translation of John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Allowing the brilliant and godly men of yesteryear to serve as our guides will open the floodgates of God to our hearts and minds.

Share the glory of God with others

Ask someone what they read today. Ask them what they learned about God. I promise you these conversations will stir your heart to greater love for God and will turn the faucet on full blast as you look to fill the beaker of your heart with the water of divine glory.

Do not love the world, nor the things in the world. These things are passing away.

Rather, expel that old lust by the power of a new affection. Set your eyes upon God. Reflect upon His beauty. Delight yourself in His character and works.

Do this, and you will find yourself less and less wooed by the lusts of the flesh and the lusts of the eyes. You will find yourself looking back less, and looking onward and upward more.

May we fix our end and scope on our everlasting happiness in the enjoyment of God.