1 John 2:15-17 - Exposition

Love of the world forbidden.

Connecting link: Having paused for a moment in his theme to survey lovingly the believers of various ages to whom he is writing, the apostle now resumes the theme of love and life. Inasmuch as love is no merely benevolent sentimentalism disregarding moral distinctions, it must needs follow that the duty of loving in one direction must involve the corresponding duty of not loving in an opposite and alien direction. In the negative as well as the positive aspects of duty believers need instruction. Hence our theme—The region in which love is prohibited, and why.

I. HERE IS AN EARNEST PROHIBITION . "Love not the world." Owing to the poverty of language, it may be, one word has to serve several purposes. It is so with this term "world." Sometimes it means the globe itself ( Psalms 96:10 ). Sometimes the race of people thereon ( John 3:16 ). Sometimes the outer form of things ( 1 Corinthians 7:31 ). At other times, as here, it refers to the world of busy human concerns, of thinking, planning, racing, hungering, thirsting, striving, and all for its own aims and purposes, irrespectively of the glory of God or even of questions of righteousness and truth. As such it is a sinful world, and on it our love must not be set. There are, however, three specific forms of sinfulness, against the love of which we are warned.

1 . The lust of the flesh. The vain indulgence and pampering of the fleshly nature. If, e.g., we either tutor drink merely for pleasure's sake, or indulge in excess in either direction, or gratify the sensual appetites either in wrong directions or to too great an extent, we are neglecting the warning of the text.

2 . The lust of the eyes. The fondness for glitter, glare, and show. The inordinate love of sight-seeing, etc.

3 . The pride of life. Its vain-glory and love of ostentatious display. This will have no place in a consistent Christian's life. The spirit of the words, "My river is my own, and I made it for myself," is by no means extinct. Query: How far has the civilizing and humanizing effect of Christianity changed the "world"? Is the evil in it, and the consequent peril therefrom, as great as in the Apostle John's time? In other words, Is the prohibition of the text as needful now as it was then? In reply, note:

(a) in the fact that sins to which no disgrace attached in the days of the old Roman empire are now all but unknown, or at least have to hide themselves from view;

(b) in the fact that there is a very large amount of commerce, etc., in which there is "upon the bridles of the horses, Holiness to the Lord." For this we may be devoutly thankful. In many directions, too, art, music, painting, sculpture, are consecrated to the Lord.

II. HERE ARE MANY REASONS SUGGESTED AGAINST THIS PROHIBITED LOVE . Mainly five.

1 . These things in the world which we are forbidden to love are themselves essentially and radically wrong. They are "not of the Father, but of the world," i.e., the world indulges its own lusts, pursues its own aims, seeks its own pleasures, without care for or thought of a higher will. The world is a self-seeker and self-pleaser, and will not be burdened with the larger and higher questions of God, righteousness, and truth.

2 . The love of the world is incompatible with the love of the Father, i.e., with our loving him. We can love either God or the world But no human heart can hold the two opposing at the same time. That is as absolutely certain as the doctrine of the impenetrability of matter. No man can serve God and mammon. The attempt has been made to form a God-and-mammon guild. But all such attempts must be miserable failures.

3 . Besides, "perishableness" is inscribed on the world and all that is therein. "The world passeth away." And how sorely incongruous is it for an imperishable spirit to ally itself with a merely perishing framework! £ No form of national life continueth alway. Families break up and pass away. Friends die. Nothing earthly is permanent.

4 . And more than this, even if objectively the "world" continued pretty much the same, yet "the lust thereof" passes away; earth loses its power to charm; and the passions, if they have been lustfully indulged, retain their craving, but lose the power of enjoyment. But a more pleasing reason yet remains to be specified.

5 . There is a far better pursuit open to us, which will open up nobler prospects. "He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." Here the opposite course is pointed out—"doing the will of God." Losing our wills in his. "This is the way the Master went," finding his meat in the fulfillment of the Father's will. We know that that will is perfect wisdom and perfect love. And if we ever ask, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" our duty will be revealed to us

He that lives for this end "abideth for ever;" i.e., the aims of his being can never be interrupted. If he lives, he lives to the Lord; if he dies, he dies to the Lord. If he toils, he does God's will. If he suffers, he bears it. If he be on earth, he fulfils his Father's will in this life; if he departs hence, he fulfils it in another. The supreme object of his existence is sure to be realized under any circumstances, through all outward changes, in all possible places, and in any state of being, and throughout the ages of eternity. He who is thus living can use the sublime boast of Paul, and say, "In nothing I shall be ashamed… Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death For to me to live is Christ, and to have died is gain." A beloved and honoured pastor, the Rev. Thomas Craig, of Becking, in Essex, after a pastorate of sixty-two years, during which he had often expressed the wish to die "in harness," was called to his rest after a very brief illness. After his death, a sermon he had begun to prepare for the pulpit was found half-finished upon his desk. It was from the text, "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."