26. 1 Jn2_15 Do not Love the World

We have finished John’s words of encouragement to the believers of the churches to whom he is writing. This is a break in the middle of the warnings that he has laid down in the previous verses. John is insistent that our life be characterized in keeping God’s commands and love of the brethren 1 Jon 2:9-11. He is now insisting on the counter that we do not love the world or the things in the world. When I lived overseas the first time it was necessary to sift all the wheat that he had purchased. Most, if not, all was imported on container ships and in the wheat making process insect parts and eggs would be included in the finished product. Here in the states, you were lucky enough (most of the time) to be unaware of the additional nutrients added to your wheat. Often by the time it made it to where we were living the eggs had time to hatch and unless you didn’t mind the added crunch provided by the weevils in the wheat, you sifted it. This is what this verse does for us. It should sift us like wheat.

1Jn 2:15-17  Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  (16)  For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.  (17)  And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

Growing up we lived in Marrero, LA from the time I was in first grade to the 6th. There were maybe 6 houses in our subdivision at the time and it was surrounded by woods and swamps. During the summer my mom would see me leave in the morning and not come home until it was almost dark. Basically, I was a feral child running wild in the woods. My friends and I built forts, crawfished, fished, played tree tag. When I got hot and thirsty I didn’t bother going home to get a drink. If there was a little water on the ground that wasn’t stirred up I would drink it. I mean it looked clean. It was clear, I couldn’t see any impurities in it so it must have been fine, right? Right? Well as adults we know better.

These verses stand not only as a command but as a warning. Week before last as I was prepping for preaching at Hillcrest, I stumbled upon a study by the Barna Research Group done in 2016 that I would like to share with you this morning. As a reminder this was done in 2016 so it is safe to assume that these numbers are the same or worse in the 7-8 years. In a separate survey done in 2020 70% of Americans identified as Christian. Keep that number in mind as we go over this survey.

Two-thirds of American adults either believe moral truth is relative to circumstances (44%) or have not given it much thought (21%). About one-third, on the other hand, believes moral truth is absolute (35%). Millennials are more likely than other age cohorts to say moral truth is relative—in fact, half of them say so (51%), compared to 44 percent of Gen-Xers, 41 percent of Boomers and 39 percent of Elders. Among the generations, Boomers are most likely to say moral truth is absolute (42%), while Elders are more likely than other age groups to admit they have never thought about it (28%).

Practicing Christians (59%) are nearly four times more likely than adults with no faith (15%) to believe moral truth is absolute. Those with no faith (61%), meanwhile, are twice as likely as practicing Christians (28%) to say it is relative to circumstances. Americans who adhere to a faith other than Christianity are roughly on par with the national average on this question.

The study further states that Americans are both concerned about the nation’s moral condition and confused about morality itself. As nominally Christian moral norms are discarded what, if anything, is taking their place? Barna’s research reveals the degree to which Americans pledge allegiance to the “morality of self-fulfillment,” a new moral code that, as David Kinnaman, President of Barna argues, has all but replaced Christianity as the culture’s moral norm.

The morality of self-fulfillment can be summed up in six guiding principles.

What the Research Means

“The highest good, according to our society, is ‘finding yourself’ and then living by ‘what’s right for you,'” says David Kinnaman, president of Barna Group in Good Faith: Being a Christian When Society Thinks You’re Irrelevant and Extreme. “There is a tremendous amount of individualism in today’s society, and that’s reflected in the church too. Millions of Christians have grafted New Age dogma onto their spiritual person. When we peel back the layers, we find that many Christians are using the way of Jesus to pursue the way of self. . . . While we wring our hands about secularism spreading through culture, a majority of churchgoing Christians have embraced corrupt, me-centered theology.

“So, there appears to be a dichotomy at work among practicing Christians in America,” Kinnaman continues. “Most believe that the Bible is the source of moral norms that transcend a person’s culture, and that those moral truths are absolute rather than relative to circumstances. Yet, at the same time, solid majorities ascribe to five of the six tenets of the new moral code. Such widespread cognitive dissonance—among both practicing Christians and Americans more generally—is another indicator of the cultural flux Barna has identified through the past two decades.

I. Defining Terms

John uses a particular word for love here that is in some ways surprising. In English we use the word to speak of many kinds of love and expect the reader or hearer to interpret the kind of love we are talking/writing about based upon the context. Greek is different. They have a word for specifically between husband and wife, siblings, paternal/maternal, and that love that based on the act of the will for the benefit on the one loved. John uses the word agape in its verb form.

Love – agape is the verb used to describe the kind of love that we are not to have toward the world. This word is used in how God loves us and how we are to love one another. When it is used of God’s love towards us it does not into account of return benefit but seeks only the highest good of the person loved. The primary mover of this love is the will over the emotion, but it does not mean that emotion never enters into this kind of love.

When this love is used of us toward God or each other is sees the intrinsic value of the person that is loved. We are to love our enemies in this same way. We are to see them as created in the image of God and as such have intrinsic value. This runs counter to the culture of our day where value is based upon the weighted scale of subjectivism. Those that are handicapped physically or mentally or aged or for some other reason unwanted are targeted for termination something fifty years ago with the exception of abortion, would not have been considered.

But here John is using it negatively in how we sound relate to the world. While we are here let us define world. Where the Greek language is so descriptive in its words for love, it uses the Greek word kosmos in much the same way we use love in English. It can have many different translations and it is up to the reader/listener to understand what it means based upon the context of the conversation. It can mean the universe, the sum total of creation. Joh 17:24  Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. It can mean the inhabited world. Rom 1:8  First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is proclaimed in all the world. The people who all dwell on the earth. 1Jn 2:2  He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. And it can mean the evil world order controlled by Satan and set in opposition to God. Eph 2:1-3  And you were dead in the trespasses and sins  (2)  in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—  (3)  among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

It is in the latter ethical sense that this verse addresses. How do we know that? We look at the context which in the very next verse says 16) For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. The term involves all that goes into making up the organized system of evil on this earth. It includes such elements as all unregenerate men, their thoughts, their purposes. Attitudes, and desires that are opposed to God and the patterns of evil practice that characterize life apart from God.

Going back to the verb agape and its use here. It is making an intellectual choice of the will to embrace some or all of the world’s values, philosophies, attitudes, thoughts, those things that are set against to the values and principles as set forth in the word of God. Using it in the negative sense then John is saying they at least in some part were embracing the ways of world and were enamored with them. As love of the world increases our love for the Father decreases. John doesn’t use Lord, or God, but he uses Father. He who has brought us into the household of God in salvation, justification, and adoption. He who has loved you from before the foundation of the world and chose you for salvation and embraced you as child not only in the legal sense but in steadfast love and faithfulness. It is Him for whom your love grows cold. We see this in the example of Demas. A companion and traveler with Paul, involved in the ministry of the gospel and yet the one who deserted Paul because of his love for the world.

You may ask how is it possible for those who are in Christ to love the world? We need to understand that the Bible is written with two perspectives in mind; that which is done by God in moving with unseen hands to will and work according to His good pleasure and from the human perspective. For example, when we see a person faithfully attending to the means of grace in faithful attendance to church and practice of the disciplines of grace we rightly say they are persevering in the faith even as they maintain a good profession in the midst of trials and tribulations also recognizing that it is the work of the Spirit in the preservation of the saint until the end. Conversely when we begin to wander from the faith because we see value and attractiveness in the things of this world and sin, we are responsible. 1) Our wandering from the love of the Father to loving the world from the human perspective is our choice to do so. From God’s perspective it may be that He is giving us over for a time to sin and its consequences to show our continual need for Him.

Though the following quote from the 1689 deals with assurance see what the lack of assurance stems from.

LBCF 1689 Chapter 18 P4. True believers may in various ways have the assurance of their salvation shaken, decreased, or temporarily lost. This may happen because they neglect to preserve it13 or fall into some specific sin that wounds their conscience and grieves the Spirit.14 It may happen through some unexpected or forceful temptation15 or when God withdraws the light of his face and allows even those who fear him to walk in darkness and to have no light.16 Yet they are never completely lacking the seed of God,17 the life of faith,18 love of Christ and the brethren, sincerity of heart, or conscience concerning their duty. Out of these graces, through the work of the Spirit, this assurance may at the proper time be revived.19 In the meantime, they are kept from utter despair through them.20

The last option is the beginning of your apostasy means you have never really closed with Christ by faith and have only had some temporary religious experience. It is dangerous to assume it is the second option and the third should frighten us to the depths of our souls. Again, because John, through the inspiration of the Spirit has written these words it is therefore possible and probable to love the world in varying degrees.

What is the world? Again, it is those values, philosophies, attitudes, thoughts, those things that are set against to the values and principles as set forth in the word of God. Jas 4:4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.

This is Providence Baptist Church a 1689 Confessional reformed Baptist Church. We would never pollute ourselves with the love of the world, would we? If you remember at the very first I told how I use to drink water from any source I could find in the woods. It looked clean to the naked eye, but we know it wasn’t. I will set this before you. You drink from impure water if there is some aspect of your life that you are doing that is not a direct result of your love for God. If it is not love for God, it is for the love of the world.

Saint Augustine captured the heart of our text when he prayed to the Father and said, “He loves thee too little who loves anything together with thee which he loves not for thy sake.”

It is a matter of the theoretical verses the practical. It is what we know versus what we do. Let me ask you some questions. What was the motive in marrying? Was it in love to God or to satisfying a longing in your own heart? Depending on motive one or the other will determine whether you adopt the worlds view on marriage or the Bibles view and how that is worked out. What about your decision to have children or not have children? Is it based upon a self-centered need or upon your love to the Father. Grandparents though the decision was not yours to make to have them how do you view them? Have you made idols of your grand children? Do you look at them through the lens of your love to God?

Do the jobs we take reflect an emphasis on our faith or does it reflect our passion and pursuit of wealth? You see, one done through the eyes of faith will keep you faithful in your duties as husband and father. If you are working for the pursuit of riches then it will be of little importance to you whether you honor God as a husband and a father.

Wives and mothers, if you work, why do you work? What do you see as your primary duty in light of your love to the Father? Or does your love of the world dictate to you what your priorities are? We can all nod our head and say amen when we hear a good sermon. In reformed circles it is our form of entertainment on some levels. But do we understand that we are responsible for every sermon we hear. Not just to say Amen! But to apply what we have heard to our lives. To be doers of the word and not hearers only.

It is time we sift ourselves like wheat through what the word of God teaches lest we be sifted like wheat and be found wanting.