Incompatible Loves

What or Who Is Our Treasure?
(1 John 2:15, Preaching: Pastor Nathan Snyder, May 1, 2016)

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.

Lord willing we are going to be focusing over the next month on verses 15-17.  John gives the children of God a command not to love the world or the things of the world.  Why?  Because love for the world and the love of the Father are mutually exclusive.  In verses 16-17 John gives further explanation of what he means by the things of the world, as well as further motivation for renouncing world-love.  So the command in verse 15 is the point of verses 15-17.  In John’s mind it is desperately urgent for us to heed this command.  Out of all the books of the New Testament, 1^st John includes the least percentage of commands per total words.  There are only 10 direct commands in the letter, and this is one of them.  So we ought to take note.  Furthermore, John concludes his letter with a similar command: “Little children, keep yourselves from idols.”  If these are John’s concluding words, the matter must be big on his mind.  Yet we need look no further than 2:15-17 to see why this command is so urgent.  A person must either love the world or love God, and it is not possible to pursue both loves.  As Jesus said, you cannot serve two masters.  Then in verse 17 John makes clear that our eternal destiny is inseparably tied to whether we love the world or God.  The stakes could not be higher.  How you and I spend eternity will be determined by whether in this life we have embraced love for the world till the day of our death, or whether we came to renounce love for the world in order to embrace the love of the Father.  The stakes could not be higher.  (See also Rom. 8:28; 1 Cor. 2:9; 16:22; Eph. 6:24).

Love for the World

When John tells us not to love the world or the things in the world, let us first be clear what he does not mean.  For one thing, John is not forbidding us from loving the people in the world.  It was John himself who wrote, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16).  And in First John he writes, “[Jesus] is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (2:2).  Then in 4:9 and 14, “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him…  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world.”  If God has loved a sinful world enough to send his Son to redeem lost sinners such as ourselves, clearly he wants us to love the people of this world as well, with a heart of compassion and a desire that others might come to know the Savior.  In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus commands his disciples to love even their enemies.

Another thing John is not forbidding here is the enjoyment of the natural world, which is God’s good creation, and the enjoyment of the many good physical pleasures it contains.  John is not urging aestheticism, although some have misinterpreted his words here in that way.  Remember, it is John’s Gospel that records the first miraculous sign Jesus performed: turning water into wine at a wedding celebration.  Jesus clearly enjoyed the pleasures of God’s good creation.  The Apostle Paul warned Timothy of false teachers, inspired by demons, “who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.  For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer” (1 Tim. 4:3-5).

            John is not forbidding loving the people of the world.  Neither is he forbidding the grateful enjoyment of God’s good creation.  What then does he mean when he commands us not to love the world or the things of the world?  John uses the word “the world” frequently in both his gospel and this letter, and often he is referring to the realm of sinful humanity which is in rebellion against God and under the sway of the devil.  Listen, for instance, to the following verses from 1 John:

“Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you.” (3:13)

“Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world…  Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.  They are from the world; therefore they speak from the world, and the world listens to them.” (4:1-5)

“We know that we are from God, and the whole world lies in the power of the evil one.” (5:19)

I take John’s command not to love the world as a command not to treasure all that godless humanity treasures.  John is not saying, “Do not love people who remain in rebellion against God.”  Rather he is saying, “Do not set your heart to pursue what people in the world are pursuing.  Do not treasure what they treasure.  Do not worship what they worship.”  John goes on in verse 16 to define more specifically what he means by “the things in the world”, which Pastor Steve is planning to look at in more detail over the coming weeks.  For now, let us note that love for the world involves being allured by the promises of world.  We are told we will find happiness in academic achievement, business success, money and the toys money can buy, sensual pleasures, popularity, political power, or even being respectable or religious.  Many of these things are harmless in themselves.  But if we pursue them as our source of happiness or self-worth, we are in love with the world.  We are idolaters.

Love of the Father

            John warns that to love the world is to push out the love of the Father.  The reverse is also true.  To embrace the love of the Father is to push out love for the world.  These two loves are mutually exclusive.  As the pre-Christian, Jewish writer Philo put it, love for God and love for the world are like light and darkness.  The presence of the one means the absence of the other.

The phrase “love of the Father” could potentially be interpreted in two different ways.  This is true in Greek and the ambiguity carries over into English as well.  It might refer to the Father’s love for us, or it might refer to our love for God as our Father.  Both possible meanings would fit here and it is quite possible John has both in mind.  We come to love God only because God first set his love on us (4:19).  If we have truly received God’s love and become his children through faith in Jesus, then God himself puts in our hearts a new love for him that we did not have before.  This is the work of God’s Holy Spirit.  This new Spirit-produced love for God is antithetical to love for the world.  It is indeed like light shining, which dissipates the darkness of idolatry in our hearts.  The promises of the world are seen to be empty when our hearts long to know God.  We begin to see that God alone is worthy of our worship.  He is a treasure worth selling everything else in order to gain him.

Is John saying that the presence in us of any inclinations toward worldly pursuits is evidence that we have no love for God and have not received his love for us?  I do not believe so.  Any sin we commit is an act of love for the world and hatred toward God, and John has made it quite clear that we are still sinners (1:8-10).  Yet John makes black and white statement throughout his letter to show that since there is no darkness in God, who is pure light, we who are his children must not compromise with darkness in the least.  Furthermore, when he contrasts those who have come into the light with those who remain in darkness, he is contrasting the overall trajectory of a person’s life.  So we must ask ourselves, what or who is the treasure that we are seeking in life?  It is either God or it is something else.  If your heart is set on God, you will have him forever in purest joy.  If your heart is set on anything else, you will lose it in the end, and you yourself will be lost forever.  There is no middle ground.  Let us all repent of our idols and cultivate love for God as he himself gives us strength through his Spirit.  And let us flee from all worldly inclinations in our hearts and see them for what they are, nothing but remnants of the darkness, full of empty promises that will never satisfy.  If we are in Christ, God is our Father now.  He has loved us at infinite cost to himself to gain us as his children.  Let us give ourselves daily in love to him for only in him do we have life.  Only in him will we find the joy that is so elusive outside of him.