1 John 2:15

1Jn_2:15-17

Love not the world … if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him

The world and the Father

We talk of sons going out into the world.

Hitherto they have been dwelling in the house of their father. Day by day they have had experience of his care and government. This going out into the world we speak of as if it were a loss of some of these blessings. It may be a loss of them altogether; the father and the fathers house may be altogether forgotten. The world may seem to us a good world, because it sets us free from the restraints of the family in which we have been brought up. But, on the other hand, all children look forward to this time of going out into the world. Their fathers encourage them to look forward to it; they tell them their discipline in the nursery has been intended to prepare them for the world. Well, St. John is regarding these Ephesians as members of one family in different stages of their growth. Children, young men, fathers, are all treated as sons of God and as brothers of each other. St. John would have them understand that what is true in particular families is true also of this great family. There is a time of childhood, a time when the name of a Father, and the care of a Father, and the forgiveness of a Father, are all in all. But while St. John looks thus encouragingly and hopefully upon these youths he also wishes them to be alive to the danger of their new position. They may forget their heavenly Fathers house, just as any child may forget his earthly fathers house. And the cause will be the same. The attractions of the outward world are likely to put a great chasm between one period of their life and another; these may cause that the love of the Father shall not be in them. But are the cases parallel? The family of my parents is manifestly separated from the general world; to pass from one to the other is a great change indeed. But is not the world Gods world? Is not the order which we see His order? How then can these young men be told that they are not to love that which He, in whose image they are created, is said so earnestly to love? Assuredly it is Gods world, Gods order. And how has disorder come into this order?--for that it is there we all confess. It has come from men falling in love with this order, or with some of the things in it, and setting them up and making them into gods. It has come from each man beginning to dream that he is the centre, either of this world or of some little world that he has made for himself out of it. This selfish love is the counterfeit of Gods self-sacrificing love; the counterfeit, and therefore its great antagonist. The Fathers love must prevail over this, or it will drive that Fathers love out of us. Here, then, are good reasons why the young men shall not love the world, neither the things that are in the world. For if they do, first, their strength will forsake them; they will give up the power that is in them to the things on which the power is to be exerted; they will be ruled by that which they are meant to rule. Next, they will not have any real insight into these things or any real sympathy with them. Those who love the world, those who surrender themselves to it, never understand it, never in the best sense enjoy it; they are too much on the level of it--yes, too much below the level of it--for they look up to it, they depend upon it--to be capable of contemplating it and of appreciating what is most exquisite in it. Some will say, But these young men to whom St. John wrote were godly young men, to whom he gave credit for all right and holy purposes. I believe it; and therefore such words as these were all the more necessary for them. Love not the world. For there is a love in you that the world did not kindle, that your heavenly Father has kindled; love it not, lest you should be turned into worldlings, whose misery is their incapacity of loving anything. (F. D. Maurice, M. A.)

Worldliness

Religion differs from morality in the value which it places on the affections. Morality requires that an act be done on principle. Religion goes deeper, and inquires into the state of the heart.

I. The nature of the forbidden world. Now to define what worldliness is. Remark, first, that it is determined by the spirit of a life, not the objects with which the life is conversant. It is not the flesh, nor the eye, nor life, which are forbidden, but it is the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. It is not this earth nor the men who inhabit it--nor the sphere of our legitimate activity, that we may not love; but the way in which the love is given which constitutes worldliness, Worldliness, then, consists in these three things;--Attachment to the Outward--attachment to the Transitory--attachment to the Unreal: in opposition to love for the Inward, the Eternal, the True; and the one of these affections is necessarily expelled by the other. If a man love the world the love of the Father is not in him. But let a man once feel the power of the kingdom that is within, and then the love fades of that emotion whose life consists only in the thrill of a nerve, or the vivid sensation of a feeling: he loses his happiness and wins his blessedness.

II. The reasons for which the love of the world is forbidden. The first reason assigned is, that the love of the world is incompatible with the love of God. If any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him. St. John takes it for granted that we must love something. Love misplaced, or love rightly placed--you have your choice between these two; you have not your choice between loving God or nothing. The second reason which the apostle gives for not squandering affection on the world is its transitoriness. Now this transitoriness exists in two shapes. It is transitory in itself--the world passeth away. It is transitory in its power of exciting desire--the lust thereof passeth away. Lastly, a reason for unlearning the love of the world is the solitary permanence of Christian action. In contrast with the fleetingness of this world the apostle tells us of the stability of labour. He that doeth the will of God abideth forever. And let us mark this. Christian life is action: not a speculating, not a debating, but a doing. Observe, however, to distinguish between the act and the actor--it is not the thing done but the doer who lasts. The thing done often is a failure. Bless, and if the Son of Peace be there your act succeeds; but if not, your blessing shall return unto you again. In other words, the act may fail; but the doer of it abideth forever. We close this subject with two practical truths. Let us learn from earthly changefulness a lesson of cheerful activity. Let not the Christian slack his hand from work, for he that doeth the will of God may defy hell itself to quench his immortality. Finally, the love of this world is only unlearned by the love of the Father. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

The peril of worldliness

How many a hopeful beginning of Christian life is marred by worldly influences! How many a flower of Paradise seems to perish in the bud at the deadly touch of the worlds cruel frost. We mean by the world not only the place but the people, or at least some of the people, who live in it. Of them St. Paul says they mind earthly things; that is, their affections and desires are centred in this world. Now in primitive times the distinction between the world and the Church was very marked. Those who belonged to the world did not even profess to accept the authority of Jesus Christ; on the contrary, they proclaimed outward war against Him and His, and carried it on with cruel persecutions. But soon Satan began to change his tactics. He disposed the world to respect the Church, for he began to see that her strength lay in opposition. He therefore set his wisdom to work to rob her of this power, and he has attempted to compass this end by seeking to obliterate as far as possible that clear, sharp, well-defined line of demarcation which separated the children of God from the children of this world. There is such a line, and we ought in the first place to recognise that fact, and in the second place look to God for wisdom to discern it as clearly as we can. In a large number of instances it is not difficult to discern, because there are a great number of persons whose lives speak for themselves; evidently their object in life is not to glorify God or yield to His claims. In another large number of instances, where the lines are not so hardly drawn, a tolerably good idea of the character can be obtained from indications proceeding from the lives of those by whom you are surrounded. When it is apparent that the regal claims of Christ upon the human heart are not recognised; when there is no confession of Christ in either words or actions; when lower objects obviously engross the attention, and nothing in their character or conduct indicates that the will has been surrendered to Christ, then the honesty of true love constrains us to regard such persons as belonging to the kingdom of this world, and as destitute of the new life and life instincts which belong to citizens of the New Jerusalem. Nor must we allow ourselves to be misled by the fact that most people are nominally Christians. What, then, is our relation to the world? Christ answers, Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. By constant contact with the world and by exposure to the temptations which arise in our daily life, we are to be driven more and more to realise the fact that we are citizens of a heavenly country. But there is more to be said about our relations with the world than that we are in it but not of it. We notice that our text says we are not to love the world, neither the things that are in the world; and it goes so far as to say, If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him, Now, side by side with this direction we must place another text, with which we are equally or more familiar: God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. What shall we say then? If God loved the world, are we precluded from doing that which we thank God for having done? Let us contemplate a man in whose heart the love of benevolence is strong towards the world. That benevolence will induce him to recognise the worlds present position; to bear in mind the truth that the world has rebelled against God, and that Gods edict of condemnation has already gone forth against it. Realising this--its terrible peril--he will shrink from adopting any attitude towards the world that would be likely to make the world feel as if its danger were a mere doctrinal or sentimental unreality, and this will keep him from associating with the world on terms of reciprocal amity. Christ might have wrought miracles of salvation from heaven, but He preferred to come into the world to save sinners; and so we may go into the world too, provided it is to save sinners. This should be the great work of our lives. But when instead of this we associate with the world as if it were congenial to us, it is far more likely to drag us down than our friendship is to lift it up. I am afraid it must be sorrowfully admitted that too many professing Christians are leading two distinct kinds of lives, worldly with the worldly and Christian with the Christian. You would hardly think them the same persons were you to meet them under different circumstances. They cannot be distinguished from the citizens of this world today, and they might pass for excellent saints tomorrow. But such people as these really exercise their influence for the world and not for God. (W. H. M. H. Aitken, M. A.)

The guileless spirit loving not the world, which is darkness, but God, who is light

The love of the world is here declared to be irreconcilable with the love of the Father. And the declaration applies to the things that are in the world. These are represented under three categories or heads--the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.

1. The lust of the flesh. It is lust or desire of a carnal sort; such as the flesh prompts or occasions. It is the appetite of sense out of order, or in excess. The appetite for which food is Gods appointed ordinance, and the appetite for which marriage is Gods appointed ordinance--the general needs and cravings of the body which the laws of nature and the gifts of Providence so fully meet--the higher tastes which fair forms and sweet sounds delight--the eye for beauty and the ear or the soul for music--these are not, any of them, the lust of the flesh. But they all, everyone of them, may become the lust of the flesh. And in the world they do become the lust of the flesh. It is the worlds aim to pervert them into the lust of the flesh and to pander to them in that character, either grossly or with refinement.

2. The lust of the eyes. It is not merely that the flesh lusts through the eyes, or that the eyes minister to the lust of the flesh. The eyes themselves have their own lust. It is lust that can be satisfied with mere sight, which the lust of the flesh never is nor can be. I may be one in whom the worlds sensual or sensuous delights no longer stimulate the lust of the flesh. But my eyes are pained when I see the giddy crowd so happy and secure. My bosom swells and my blood boils when I am forced to look on villany triumphant and vice caressed. It may be all righteous zeal and virtuous wrath--a pure desire to witness wrong redressed and justice done. But, alas! as I yield to it I find it fast assuming a worse character. I would not myself be partaker of the sinful happiness I see the world enjoying; but I grudge the worlds enjoyment of it.

3. The pride of life. What pains are taken in the world to save appearances and keep up a seemly and goodly state! It is a business all but reduced to system. Its means and appliances are ceremony and feigned civility. All is to be in good taste and in good style--correct, creditable, commendable. It is the worlds pride to have it so. What is otherwise must be somehow toned down or shaded off, concealed or coloured. Falsehood may be necessary; a false code of honour; false notions of duty, as between man and man or between man and woman; false liberality and spurious delicacy. It debauches conscience and is fatal to high aims. It puts the men and women of the world on a poor struggle to out manoeuvre and outshine one another, to outdo one another, for the most part, in mere externals, while, with all manner of politeness, they affect to give one another credit for what they all know to be little better than shams. Nevertheless, the general effect is imposing. Need I suggest how many sad instances of religious inconsistency and worldly conformity spring from this source? Do you not sometimes find yourselves more ashamed of a breach of worldly etiquette--some apparent descent from the customary platform of worldly respectability--than of such a concession to the worlds forms and fashions as may compromise your integrity in the sight of God and your right to acquit yourselves of guile?

And now, for practical use, let three remarks be made.

1. Of all that is in the world it is said that it is not of the Father, but of the world. The choicest blessings of home, the holiest ordinances of religion, the very gospel itself, may thus come, when once in the world, to be of the world. There is nothing in them that rises above the natural influences of self-love and social, as these are blended in the world.

2. All that is in the world is of the world, Wherever it may be found. Let us beware, then, of letting into the sanctuary and shrine of our soul, now become the dwelling place of God by His Spirit, anything that savours of the worlds sloth and self-indulgence, or of the worlds jealousy and envy, or of the worlds vain pomp and pride.

3. Let us remember that the world which we are not to love, because all that is in it is not of the Father but is of the world, is yet itself the object of a love on the part of the Father, with which, as His children, having in us His love, we are to sympathise. Let us look at it as the Father looks at it--as a deep, dark mass of guilt, ungodliness, and woe. Let us plunge in to the rescue. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)

Love not the world

I. The warning. Are we not required diligently to attend to the things of the world? And is not a promise of its enjoyment made to those who do so? True. The command is Look well to thy flocks and herds. Not slothful in business. And this is among the promises, Godliness is profitable to all things, having promise of the life that now is and that which is to come. We may value the world, we may seek to possess it, we may enjoy it. This is not what the apostle forbids. The true meaning of the injunction lies in the term, Love not the world. This affection is supreme in whatever heart it dwells. It is jealous, and admits no rival. If a man loves the world, he gives it the first place in his heart, and everything is subordinated to it. The world then becomes his God, and he worships it. What ever comes in competition with it is discarded. It becomes the object of a passion of which it is wholly unworthy. Yet the love of the world is a principle fearfully prevalent. It is to be found in many who do not suspect it. Here is a man placed in a position where he may add to his worldly substance. But there is a difficulty. The law stares him in the face, provide things honest in the sight of all men. He would like to keep it, but the prospect is tempting. By degrees his principle of integrity is overcome, and he takes the golden bait, overcome by the love of the world. One other illustration may be added. Here is a man who does respect the laws of integrity, and honour, and devotion. But he is associated with another, who does not respect them. A case arises where both must act together. The former expresses his desire to act righteously. The other uses his influence to overcome what he denominates his scruples. He is afraid to offend him; his interests are too deeply involved to run so great a risk; he yields, and presents another example of a victim overcome by the love of the world.

II. The reasons of the warning.

1. The love of God and the love of the world are incompatible with one another, and cannot exist together in the same mind. This is precisely the sentiment of our Lord (Mat_6:24).

2. The world is sinful, and therefore its service is incompatible with that of God.

3. We are ourselves perishing, and so is all that is earthly.

4. But to all this there is a glorious contrast in the last reason. He that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Such a man is the subject of principles that will endure through all the trials and vicissitudes of life. (James Morgan, D. D.)

Love not the world

Intimately connected, as we are, with this point of space, we are connected still more intimately with something which transcends alike both time and space--the Eternal and the Infinite in which we live and move and have our being. It is because the world tends to draw off our thoughts from Him Who is the centre and fountain of our life that we are warned not to love the world. The world against which we are warned is something transitory and changeable. It is that which appeals to our senses, which supplies to us the natural field of enjoyment and thought and action. It is plain that if the world means all this, it is utterly absurd to think we can escape from it, as some have fancied, by becoming hermits, or avoiding certain kinds of society or amusement. The world is wrapt up in our very nature. It is a necessity of our earthly life. We might as well say we would renounce our bodies, renounce easing or breathing, as say we would renounce the world in this sense. It is not the world then in itself, but a particular way of using the world, a particular way of being affected by the world, which we Christians are to give up. It may help us to understand what is the wrong use and the wrong influence of the world if we think first what is the right use and right influence. Why did God place us in such a world as this? Was it not in order that we might be raised from the animal to the spiritual, from the state of nature to the state of grace, that we might learn to know God and do His will, and so become partakers of eternal life? This, then, is the right use of the world, that, through the things which are made, we might come to Understand the invisible things of God. Let us think of some of the ways in which this is done. The infants world is its mothers lap. In and through that visible world it is taught, even before it can think, some of the invisible things of God. So again the astronomer when he ponders over the varying aspects of the starry heavens, the naturalist when he examines with the microscope the structure of creatures invisible to the naked eye, the poet when he bows down in reverence and adoration before the Holy Spirit revealing itself in nature--these all use the world aright, they rise through the visible, the outward transitory fact, to the invisible, the inner law, the unchanging character and will of the Eternal Father. Let us now descend from this wider view of our environment to that which we most commonly understand by the term the world, and which no doubt approaches more nearly to its use in the Bible--the influence of society in general upon each member of the society. Many men have been kept from doing wrong by fear of the worlds censure, many men have been stimulated to do right from hope of the worlds praise. In this way, then, the voice of society is to a certain extent an echo of the voice of God. But far more valuable and important is that other influence of society, when each individual man ceases to think of himself as a separate unit with his separate interests, and becomes conscious of a common membership and a common life. As, for instance, when a boy at school learns to care more for the honour and credit of the school than he does for any advantage or credit to himself, or when the soldier is so penetrated by the spirit of discipline and loyally and patriotism that he willingly sacrifices his life to ensure the safety of his comrades or the triumph of his country. If through the world of nature we are taught something of the might and the wisdom and the glory of God, surely through the world of humanity, through the natural feeling of fellowship which binds us all together, we are taught a yet higher truth, we are brought into sympathy with Him who left the throne of glory to take upon Him the form of a servant. Such, then, being the right use and the right influence of the world, it will not be difficult to see what is its wrong use and wrong influence, what, in fact, is the meaning of the term world as used in my text. The world, in the bad sense, is that in our environment which has a tendency to lower our moral nature, to shut out the thought of God, to make us disbelieve in the eternal righteousness and love. Let us take a few examples. Public spirit, esprit de corps, which is the parent of so much that is good, may also be the parent of terrible evil. Men who would have shrunk from doing harm to their neighbour on private grounds have been ready to commit the worst atrocities when it was ordered by the society to which they belonged. So a man whom we have known as fair and honourable in private life, will use the most unfair means, will descend to intimidation and slander, if not to actual falsehood, in order to promote the interests of the religious or political party to which he belongs. In all these cases we see the evil influence of that world against which St. John warns us. The man forgets that the first and greatest commandment is his duty to God, and that his duty to man can only be rightly accomplished as long as he remembers his duty to God. I turn now to the second kind of social influence of which I spoke before, I mean where a man is not carried away by the prevailing feeling, but where he consciously adapts himself to it with a view to gain respect or admiration, or to avoid punishment, or blame, or contempt, or inconvenience of any kind. As I said before, the effect of this motive is to a certain extent favourable to virtuous action, but no action is made virtuous or right simply because it is done to get credit or avoid discredit. It becomes right when it is done to please God, and it is only when we believe that human judgment is in accordance with Gods judgment that we may properly take mans approval as a guide for our conduct. The great danger is that we take the fashion, whether of a larger or smaller world, as being itself the authoritative standard of life; that we are so deafened by the outside noise that we cease to hear the still small voice of God in the heart; we do not ask whether He approves, we do not even stop to ask what is the origin, or meaning, or ground of the custom or opinion which fashion enjoins, till at last we become simple echoes, we have no genuine tastes or feelings left, our one anxiety is to repeat correctly the latest catch word of the moment. (J. B. Mayor, M. A.)

Love of the world

I. Excessive affection for the mere things of the world must always be incompatible with the love of God. That which is of the earth is earthy, and cannot be made to incorporate with that which is heavenly. He who is warm in the chase after wealth or renown finds no time nor room in his heart for spiritual contemplation. It was fabled of old that when the arch tempter had made his allurements agreeable to a man his guardian angels uttered a sad lament, sang a melancholy dirge, and left him. When a licentious passion has gained dominion over the thoughts of a man, or when ambition is made free of his breast and constituted his privy councillor, then do his anxious watchings over the purity of his spirit, and his delicate perceptions of right and wrong, and his tender feelings of universal benevolence, and his meditations on futurity, and his frequent and holy communions with God, which may indeed be called our guardian angels, take farewell of the habitation where they must stay no longer, carrying out their peace and glory with them. Alas I this is no fable, but a daily sight.

II. The love of the world, being incompatible with the love of God, is consequently at enmity with His service. The lover of the world is perhaps a votary of gain; if so, he cannot serve God with the accepted obedience of generosity and benevolence. He may have enrolled himself on the lists of ambition; but God dwells with the lowly and with him on whose lips there is no guile. He may have plunged into the roaring vortex of dissipation and intoxicating pleasure; he surely cannot serve God there.

III. There is nothing durable in these objects, which appear so enchanting, and are pursued so eagerly.

IV. We ought not to love the world because an excessive attachment to it makes us unwilling to leave it at death.

V. It is but little to say that we are thus rendered unwilling to leave it when we have also to say that we are thus rendered unworthy to leave it, unfit to leave it. The discipline which the soul receives in the schools of selfishness and the bowers of pleasure and the halls of pride is not such as will fit it for heaven. (F. W. P. Greenwood, D. D.)

Love of the world

Is it true, then, that religion requires us to sacrifice every natural affection? If it is, then comply with it. If religion is such a thing, then Simeon Stylites, on his pillar top, was a pattern saint. But if this is not the ideal of religion, let us find out what the true ideal is. If there is a love of natural things perfectly consistent with and flowing out from the love of God, let us know it and act accordingly. Now what is the doctrine in the text? When we consider it in its connection we find it is not a mere statement of negations. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. It does not stop with this. Why not love these? Because we are called to cherish a higher and more comprehensive affection. We are to love the Father supremely. There are some who try to preserve a sort of balance between the two--between the spirit that makes this world supreme, which of course dissolves all moral distinction between right and wrong; and the spirit that makes God supreme, which claims as right the love of right only. It is like compromising with a cancer, or holding negotiations with the yellow fever. There are only two standards that which proceeds from the love of God as supreme; that which proceeds from the love of the world as supreme. You cannot serve them both. The whole statement of the text rests upon the simple fact that every man has a master motive in his heart, which he more or less consciously acts upon. There is one general ground from which a man measures. Here, for instance, is a man that measures from the love of the world, from the summit of worldly advantage. If you want to explain his life you do it in this way: he starts with worldly sanctions and worldly interests, and thus sometimes measures up to spiritual claims and moral laws. So you see men in every avocation of life, from the most private to the most public transactions, willing enough to confess the right, but after all holding it subordinate to the ground from which they measure--worldly advantage. Now a thing is either right or it is wrong. If we measure from Gods supreme law, the love of the Father, we must bring everything else down before that; if we measure from worldly advantage, we must bring Gods law down before that. Love not the world, is the principle. What the apostle means by loving the world and the things of the world, is loving them supremely and making them a standard; measuring from the ground of worldly sanction and interest up to the supreme right. No, we are to measure from the love of the Father downward--not from the love of worldly advantage and sanction upward. That is the real meaning of the text. Loving the Father supremely, we shall know what to love as He loves, and we shall see everything in the relation in which He sees it. From His all-comprehending affection we shall go forth to see everything truly and to love everything as we ought to love it. Every daily duty, every daily care, every common interest--your homes, your toils, your trials, will all be loved by you in due proportion, because you will read in them the Fathers meaning and you will see them in their true relations and significance. And still again, when we start from this ground of love We learn to distinguish the essence of things from the outside of things. When, for instance, a man becomes so enamoured of nature that he forgets the God who made it; when he touches not the pulses of the infinite in the motions of the worlds, but all is a dead blank and all traces of God have vanished, then man has that love of the world and of the things that are in it which is condemned by the apostle. So, too, a man may love humanity simply on its outside--for its advantage to him--merely for that which is pleasing to him, not in its essence. Jesus Christ did not look at the outside of men. He looked into humanity as an emanation from God. He saw it in its priceless worth, and died for it--not for its relations to him of friendliness, or kindness, or love, or service, or beauty, or use, but for its intrinsic worth. That is the way to love humanity. Not because it serves us, not because it is pleasant to us, not because it is friendly to us. That is a very little thing. How sour men get by and by who love it on that account! The true Christian never falters in his high faith in and deep love for humanity, because he sees it and loves it as Jesus Christ did--not with reference to himself but for its intrinsic character and value in the eyes of God. (E. H. Chapin, D. D.)

When do we love the world too much

1. When, for the sake of any profit or pleasure, we wilfully and knowingly and deliberately transgress the commandments of God and become openly and habitually wicked and vicious, and live addicted to sensuality, to intemperance, to fraud, to extortion, to injustice.

2. When we take more pains to obtain and secure the conveniences of this life than to qualify ourselves for the rewards of the next.

3. When we cannot be contented, or patient and resigned, under low or inconvenient circumstances.

4. When we cannot part with anything that we possess to those who want it, who deserve it, and who have indeed a right to it.

5. When we envy those who are more fortunate and more favoured by the world than we are, and cannot behold their success without repining; when at the same time we can see others better and wiser and more religious, if they be in a lower state than ourselves, without the least uneasiness, without emulation and a desire to equal them.

6. When we esteem and favour persons purely according to their birth, fortunes, and success, measuring our judgment and approbation by their outward appearance and situation in life.

7. When we dislike and slight others only because the world favours them not, and thus suffer our affections, our judgment, and our behaviour to be regulated by the notions and customs of men, and indeed of the worst sort of men.

8. When worldly prosperity makes us proud and vain, and we expect to be greatly honoured by others, only because they are placed beneath us, though in other respects, in valuable qualities, they may surpass us; and when we resent any little failure of homage as a real injury.

9. When we omit no opportunity of enjoying the good things of this life, when our great business and serious employment is to amuse ourselves, till we contract an indifference for manly and rational occupations, deceiving ourselves, and fancying that we are in a safe condition, because we are not so bad as several whom we could name, nor guilty of such and such vices with which the world abounds. (J. Jortin, D. D.)

The expulsive power of a new affection

There are two ways in which a practical moralist may attempt to displace from the human heart its love of the world--either by a demonstration of the worlds vanity, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon simply to withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy of it; or by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment. Love may be regarded in two different conditions. The first is, when its object is at a distance, and then it becomes love in a state of desire. The second is, when its object is in possession, and then it becomes love in a state of indulgence. Such is the grasping tendency of the human heart that it must have a something to lay hold of--and which, if wrested away without the substitution of another something in its place, would leave a void as painful to the mind as hunger is to the natural system. It may be dispossessed of one object, or of any, but it cannot be desolated of all. We know not a more sweeping interdict upon the affections of nature than that which is delivered by the apostle in the verse before us. To bid a man into whom there has not yet entered the great and ascendant influence of the principle of regeneration, to bid him withdraw his love from all the things that are in the world, is to bid him give up all the affections that are in his heart. The world is the all of a natural man. He has not a taste nor a desire that points not to a something placed within the confines of its visible horizon. He loves nothing above it, and he cares for nothing beyond it; and to bid him love not the world, is to pass a sentence of expulsion on all the inmates of his bosom. The love of the world cannot be expunged by a mere demonstration of the worlds worthlessness. But may it not be supplanted by the love of that which is more worthy than itself? The heart cannot be prevailed upon to part with the world by a simple act of resignation. But may not the heart be prevailed upon to admit into its preference another, who shall subordinate the world, and bring it down from its wonted ascendency? This explains the operation of that charm which accompanies the effectual preaching of the gospel. Beside the world, it places before the eye of the mind Him who made the world, and with this peculiarity, which is all its own--that in the gospel do we so behold God, as that we may love God. It is there, and there only, where God stands revealed as an object of confidence to sinners--and where our desire after Him is not chilled into apathy, by that barrier of human guilt which intercepts every approach that is not made to Him through the appointed mediator. It is the bringing in of this better hope, whereby we draw nigh unto God--and to live without hope is to live without God; and if the heart be without God, the world will then have all the ascendency. It is God apprehended by the believer as God in Christ, who alone can dispost it from this ascendency. And here let us advert to the incredulity of a worldly man: when he brings his own sound and secular experience to bear upon the high doctrines of Christianity--when he looks on regeneration as a thing impossible. We think that we have seen such men, who, firmly trenched in their own vigorous and homebred sagacity, and shrewdly regardful of all that passes before them through the week, and upon the scenes of ordinary, business, look on that transition of the heart by which it gradually dies unto time, and awakens in all the life of a new-felt and ever-growing desire towards God, as a mere Sabbath speculation; and who thus, with all their attention engrossed upon the concerns of earthliness, continue unmoved to the end of their days, amongst the feelings and the appetites and the pursuits of earthliness. Now, it is altogether worthy of being remarked of those men who thus disrelish spiritual Christianity, and in fact deem it an impracticable acquirement, how much of a piece their incredulity about the demands of Christianity, and their incredulity about the doctrines of Christianity, are with one another. No wonder that they feel the work of the New Testament to be beyond their strength, so long as they hold the words of the New Testament to be beneath their attention. Neither they nor anyone else can dispossess the heart of an old affection but by the expulsive power of a new one; and if that new affection be the love of God, neither they nor anyone else can be made to entertain it, but on such a representation of the Deity as shall draw the heart of the sinner towards Him. Now it is just their unbelief which screens from the discernment of their minds this representation. They do not see the love of God in sending His Son unto the world. It is a mystery to them how a man should pass to the state of godliness from a state of nature; but had they only a believing view of God manifest in the flesh, this would resolve for them the whole mystery of godliness. As it is, they cannot get quit of their old affections, because they are out of sight from all those truths which have influence to raise a new one. But if there be a consistency in the errors, in like manner is there a consistency in the truths which are opposite to them. The man who believes in the peculiar doctrines, will readily bow to the peculiar demands of Christianity. The effect is great, but the cause is equal to it--and stupendous as this moral resurrection to the precepts of Christianity undoubtedly is, there is an element of strength enough to give it being and continuance in the principles of Christianity. Conceive a man to be standing on the margin of this green world; and that, when he looked towards it, he saw abundance smiling upon every field, and all the blessings which earth can afford scattered in profusion throughout every family, and the joys of human companionship brightening many a happy circle of society--conceive this to be the general character of the scene upon one side of his contemplation; and that on the other, beyond the verge of the goodly planet on which he was situated, he could descry nothing but a dark and fathomless unknown. Think you that he would bid a voluntary adieu to all the brightness and all the beauty that were before him upon earth, and commit himself to the frightful solitude away from it? But if, during the time of his contemplation, some happy island of the blest had floated by; and there had burst upon his senses the light of its surpassing glories, and its sounds of sweeter melody; and he clearly saw that there a purer beauty rested upon every field, and a more heartfelt joy spread itself among all the families; and he could discern there, a peace, and a piety, and a benevolence, which put a moral gladness into every bosom, and united the whole society in one rejoicing sympathy with each other, and with the beneficent Father of them all. Could he further see that pain and mortality were there unknown; and above all, that signals of welcome were hung out, and an avenue of communication was made for him--perceive you not, that what was before the wilderness, would become the land of invitation; and that now the world would be the wilderness? What unpeopled space could not do, can be done by space teeming with beatific scenes, and beatific society. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)

Worldly affections destructive of love to God

There are things in the world which, although not actually sinful in themselves, do nevertheless so cheek the love of God in us as to stifle and destroy it. For instance, it is lawful for us to possess wealth and worldly substance; we may serve God with it, and consecrate it at His altar; but we cannot love wealth without growing ostentatious, or soft, or careful, or narrow hearted (1Ti_6:10). So, again, with friends and whist is called society.

I. Love of the world brings a dulness over the whole of a mans soul. Fasting, and prayer, and a spare life, and plainness, and freedom from the cumbering offices and possessions of the world, give to the eye and ear of the soul a keen and piercing sense. But this discipline is almost impossible to the man theft moves with the stream of the world; it carries him away against his will. The oppressive nearness of the things which throng upon him from without defrauds him of solitude with God. They come and thrust themselves between his soul and the realities unseen; they drop like a veil over the faint outlines of the invisible world, and hide it from his eyes. And the spiritual powers that are in him grow inert and lose their virtue by the dulness of inaction. The acts of religion, such as reading, thought, contemplation of the unseen, prayer, self-examination, first seem to lose their savour, and are less delighted in: then they grow irksome, and are consciously avoided.

II. As we grow to be attached to the things that are in the world, there comes over us what I may call a vulnerableness of mind. We lay ourselves open on just so many sides as we have objects of desire. We give hostages to this changeful world, and we are ever either losing them, or trembling lest they be wrested from us. What a life of disappointment, and bitterness, and aching fear, and restless uncertainty, is the life of the ambitious, or covetous, or self-indulgent! But it is not only in this form that the mind is made vulnerable by a love of the world. It lays itself open not more to chastisements than to temptations; it gives so many inlets to the suggestions of evil. Every earthly fondness is an ambush for a thousand solicitations of the wicked one. It is a lure to the tempter--a signal which betrays our weaker side; and as the subtle infection of evil temper winds itself into the mind, the spirit of the Dove is grieved by an irritable and unloving spirit. The very affections of the heart recoil sullenly into themselves, and sometimes even turn against the objects of their immoderate fondness. In this way the love of the world becomes a cause of very serious deterioration of character. It soon stifles the love of God; and when that is gone, and the character has lost its unity, particular features unfold themselves into a fearful prominence. The chief among its earthly affections becomes thenceforth its ruling passion, and so predominates over all the rest, and draws the whole mind to itself, as to stamp the man with the character of a besetting sin. And this is what we mean when we call one man purse-proud, and another ostentatious, or selfish, and the like. The world has eaten its way into his soul, and the love of the Father is not in him.

III. Now, if this be so, what shall we do? We cannot withdraw ourselves. One has wealth, another a family, a third rank and influence, another a large business: and all these bring with them an endless variety of duties and offices, and usages of custom and courtesy. If a man is to break through all these, he must needs go out of this world. All this is very true; but, at the same time, it is certain that every one of us might reduce his life to a greater simplicity. In every position of life there is a great multitude of unnecessary things which we may readily abandon. And as for all the necessary cares of life, they need involve us in no dangers. In them, if we be true hearted, we are safe. When God leads men into positions of great trial, whether by wealth, or rank, or business, He compensates by larger gifts of grace. (Archdeacon Manning.)

The nature and danger of an inordinate love of the world

I. What we are to understand by the world. A general inventory of this worlds goods is given us by the apostle, divided into three lots. The first contains all the pleasures of the world, called the lust of the flesh, because they are proper to a corporeal nature, or such as the soul now desires, only by reason of its union with the body. The next class is riches, which he calls the lust of the eyes, because the eye takes a peculiar pleasure in gazing at those things which they immediately procure. The pleasures I before mentioned are gone with a touch, these with a look. So unsubstantial are the goods contained in the two first lots of this worlds inventory. Let us now examine the third, and see if we can find anything more solid there. This opens to us all the honours, the high stations, the power and preferments of the world. This the apostle calls the pride of life, because it is the ambitious mans great object, and at once attracts and foments the vanity of Iris heart. Bet it never satisfies the vanity which it excites. Ambition is insatiable as arvarice.

II. The extent of this prohibition; or with what restrictions it must nccessarily be taken.

1. This does not forbid us

(1) to prosecute our worldly affairs with application and diligence.

(2) Nor does it countenance, much less require, a total separation from the world.

(3) Nor are we hereby forbid to enjoy the world, or to take any delight in the good things of the present life.

(4) This text does not forbid us to value, or in a certain degree desire to possess the good things of this world: because they are in some respects desirable, and to many good purposes useful; and therefore a wise man will not indulge an absolute contempt of them, or be totally indifferent to them.

(5) Neither are we forbid a conformity to the innocent customs, manners and fashions of the world.

2. What is it then that it does forbid?--I answer in one word, all excessive love of the world, or all immoderate attachment of the heart to it.

(1) We then love this world too much when we neglect our souls, or our interest in a better world, for the sake of it.

(2) Tis a certain sign that a ]nan loves the world too much when he grows vain, imperious and assuming, and despises others merely on the score of their wanting that affluence which he enjoys.

(3) When a man grows confident in the world, and trusts to it as his chief good.

(4) We then love the good things of this world too much when we dare to venture on any known transgression with a view to secure or increase them.

(5) When a man has no heart to do good with what he has iii the world, and is averse to acts of charity, piety and beneficence.

(6) When we are tormented with an anxious solicitude about the things of this world.

(7) It is a sign that our hearts are two much attached to earthly things if we cannot bear our earthly losses and disappointments with temper.

(8) It is an indication that we love the good things of this life too much when we are not thankful for them, and forget to make our acknowledgements to Him at whose hand we hold them.

III. The grounds of this prohibition.

1. I am to suggest a few general considerations proper to guard us against an immoderate love of the present world. To this end then let it be considered.

(1) How many dangerous temptations it lays in the way of our souls.

(2) The more fond we are of the world the greater is our danger from it. The more it engages our hearts the more power it has to captivate them.

(3) An excessive passion for the world defeats its own end. The more inordinately we love it, the less capable we are of the true enjoyment of it. If we squeeze the world too hard we wring out dregs. In our cup of worldly bliss the sweetest lies at top: he who drinks too deep will find it nauseous.

(4) Why should we love the world so much, when there is nothing in it that suits the dignity or satisfies the desires of our souls?

2. Let us now particularly consider those two motives whereby the apostle himself enforces the caution he gives in the text.

(1) An excessive love of the world is inconsistent with a sincere love of God. An immoderate love of the world, or of anything in it, is paying that devotion and homage of our heart to the creature which is due only to the Creator. What vile ingratitude as well as folly is here! To love the world more than God is a plain indication of the apostacy of the heart from him. And from this inward apostacy of the heart begins the outward apostacy in life.

(2) The world and everything in it is mutable and mortal, constantly changing, and hastening apace to dissolution. (John Mason, M. A.)

Worldliness

I speak to you, not as hermits, but as men of the world, occupied constantly in honourable vocations, and yet conscious that there is a life above this world--an eternal, spiritual, divine life. Will you suffer me to put before you two or three suggestions which may enable us, while living in this world, yet to rise above it?

1. And the first suggestion I would make is, that it would be well for him who desires the spiritual life to adopt some definite, constant action of self-denial. It may be abstinence from alcoholic drink, from theatres and balls--things perfectly right and legitimate in themselves; it may be even so small a thing as early rising in the morning, or it may be some pecuniary generosity; but whatever it is, if it be adopted as a definite self-denial, as a definite self-consecration of the man to God, it will undoubtedly have a purifying and elevating influence.

2. My second suggestion is this, that every one of us who desires to live the spiritual life should ask himself the question, In what respect does my ordinary life, my professional, my regular routine of existence, tend to draw me from God, tend to deaden the spiritual activities and faculties? and then that he should set himself to encourage a practice which will limit this tendency. For, according to the familiar illustration of the philosopher Aristotle, if a stick is bent in one direction, and you want to straighten it, you must bend it violently in the opposite direction. Suppose, for example, as is quite likely, that one is engaged in the business of commerce, it is his object to make money, and this is legitimate in itself; yet, if he be spiritually minded, he will not be blind to the fact that the occupation of making money does tend to set the soul upon earthly, and not upon heavenly things. In order to remedy this tendency he will encourage in himself a definite, systematic practice of generosity; he will aim at using his money, not as an owner, but as a trustee, so that by means of it he may make the world better, he may increase the happiness and joy of those less fortunate than himself.

3. Let me take a third instance to show the duty and beauty of this spiritual life. It is easy to get into the state in which the very being of God Himself becomes a doubt and a difficulty, and yet it is vital to avoid that state altogether and always. Is it not the case in public life that there are dangers which threaten the well-being of the spiritual nature--I mean the love of victory for instance, which is not the love of truth? The voice of the people is not the voice of God, it tends now-a-days to drown the voice of God. What can be the effect of the malice and uncharitableness which men display so often towards one another, but to make God seem distant, and as if He had no relation to the human soul? Anyone then who in the noble field of public life is anxious not to let his spirituality die out will be careful at times to retire into solitude to commune with his Maker and with his own soul, and he will cry out, Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do? Such a man will try always to live as in the sight of God. (J. E. Welldon, D. D.)

The world we must not love

Let us not confuse the world with the earth, with the whole race of man, with general society, with any particular set, however much some sets are to be avoided. Look at the thing fairly. Yet let us read the letters of Mary Godolphin. She bore a life unspotted by the world in the dissolute court of Charles II, because the love of the Father was in her. In small serious circles are there no hidden lusts which blaze up in scandals? Is there no vanity, no pride, no hatred? In the world of Charles IIs court Mary Godolphin lived out of the world which God hated; in the religious world not a few, certainly, live in the world which is not Gods. For once more, the world is not so much a place--though at times its power seems to have been drawn into one intense focus, as in the empire of which Rome was the centre, and which may have been in the apostles thought in the following verse. In the truest and deepest sense the world consists of our own spiritual surrounding; it is the place which we make for our own souls. No walls that ever were reared can shut out the world from us; the Nun of Kenmare found that it followed her into the seemingly spiritual retreat of a severe Order. The world in its essence is subtler and thinner than the most infinitesimal of the bacterian germs in the air. They can be strained off by the exquisite apparatus of a man of science. At a certain height they cease to exist. But the world may be wherever we are; we carry it with us wherever we go, it lasts while our lives last. No consecration can utterly banish it even from within the churchs walls; it dares to be round us while we kneel, and follows us into the presence of God. (Abp. Wm. Alexander.)

The Christian in the world

A true Christian living in the world is like a ship sailing on the ocean. It is not the ship being in the water which will sink it, but the water getting into the ship. So in like manner the Christian is not ruined by living in the world, which he must needs do while he remains in the body, but by the world living in him. Our daily avocations, yea, our most lawful employments, have need to be narrowly watched, lest they insensibly steal upon our affections, and draw away our hearts from God.

A dangerous experiment

Whoever is contriving, by how little faith or how little grace, and with how large interspersing of gaieties and worldly pleasure he may make his title to salvation good, is engaged in a very critical experiment. He is trying how to be a Christian without being at all a saintly person. How to love God enough without loving Him enough to be taken away from his lighter pleasures, and he really thinks that, aiming low enough to be a little of a Christian, he still may just hit the target on the lower edge. Perhaps he will; but is he sure of it? And, if he really is, what miserable economy is it to be so little in the love of God and the joys of a glorious devotion, that he can be just empty enough to want his deficit made up by amusements! If that will answer, a very mean soul certainly can be saved. (H. Bushnell, D. D.)

Unlading

When ballast is thrown out, the balloon shoots up. A general unlading of the thick clay which weighs down the Christian life of England and of America, would let thou sands soar to heights which they will never reach as long as they love money and what it buys as much as they do. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Worldliness impedes the sight of higher things

Suppose I were shut up within a round tower, whose massive wall had in some time of trouble been pierced here and there for musketry; suppose, further, that by choice or necessity, I am whirled rapidly and incessantly round its inner circumference, will I appreciate the beauties of the surrounding landscape or recognise the features of the men who labour in the field below? I will not! Why? Are there not openings in the wall which I pass at every circuit? Yes; but the eye, set for objects near, has not time to adjust itself to objects at a distance until it has passed the openings; and so the result is the same as if it were a dead wall all round. Behold the circle of human life! of the earth, earthy it is, almost throughout its whole circumference. A dead wall, very near and very thick, obstructs the view. Here and there, on a Sabbath or other season of seriousness, a slit is left open in its side. Heaven might be seen through these; but alas! the eye which is habitually set for the earthly cannot, during such momentary glimpses, adjust itself to higher things. Unless you pause and look steadfastly, you will see neither clouds nor sunshine through these openings, or the distant sky. So long has the soul looked upon the world, and so firmly is the worlds picture fixed in its eye, that when it is turned for a moment heavenward, it feels only a quiver of inarticulate light, and retains no distinct impression of the things that are unseen and eternal. (W. Arnot, D. D.)

Love not the world

Love not the world, cries St. John in a shuddering laconicism. A multitude of voices echo his words. The shores of time are strewn with many a wreck, each serving as a beacon to point out the rock on which they stranded. Here the merchant who worked seven days in the week, who forgot God in piling up riches, and failed at last, cries, Love not the world. Here the millionaire who inherited a fortune and doubled it every ten years, and drained every cup of pleasure, and now faces death with a tainted body and a leprous character, cries, Love not the world. Here the statesman who reached the senate chamber and laid his hand on dishonest gold and went down in ignominy, cries, Love not the world. Here the brilliant journalist, the clever student, the gifted artist, who reached distinction at the sacrifice of strength, life, reputation, cry, Love not the world. Could we lift the curtain that shrouds the tomb, what awful warnings would break upon our ears! Miser, spendthrift, drunkard, libertine, sensualist, what sayest thou? That gluttony is shame, and drunkenness woe, and debauchery corruption, and the wages of sin death. Love not the world. Apart from God there is nothing. In Him are all things. The love of the creature more than the Creator is the curse and condemnation of the soul. Supreme affection toward God is the coronation of humanity. (S. S. Roche.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Jn 2:15-17. To you all, whether fathers, young men, or little children, I say, Love not the world — Pursue your victory by overcoming the world, and all the temptations which may assault you from it, whether from prosperity or adversity, from riches or poverty, honour or reproach, pleasure or pain, life or death; from the persons of the world, or from the things that are in the world — Whether they assault you through the medium of your senses, or your appetites and passions. If any man love the world — Esteem, desire, or pursue it, or any thing in it, inordinately, so as to place his happiness in the enjoyment of it; the love of the Father is not in him — There being a real inconsistency between the love of the world and the love of God; between being carnally minded, esteeming, desiring, and pursuing immoderately visible and temporal things, which is death, and being spiritually minded, having our thoughts and affections set on invisible and heavenly things, which is life and peace, Rom 8:6. For all that is in the world — That is tempting and alluring; the lust — Επιθυμια, the desire; of the flesh — The pleasure arising from gratifying the outward senses, whether of the taste, smell, or touch, or the bodily appetites; the desire of the eyes — Those things, which, being seen by the eyes, are earnestly desired and sought after, and which they take pleasure in beholding, especially riches, including also the pleasures of imagination, (to which the eye chiefly is subservient,) of that internal sense whereby we relish whatever is grand, new, or beautiful; and the pride of life — Those things wherein men are wont to take the greatest pride, and which chiefly feed pride of heart; all that pomp in clothes, houses, furniture, equipage, manner of living, things which generally procure honour from the bulk of mankind, and so gratify pride and vanity. It therefore directly includes the desire of praise, and, remotely, covetousness. All these desires are not of the Father, but of the world — That is, from the prince of this world, or from that corruption of nature that prevails in worldly men. And the world passeth away — Namely, all the enjoyments of the world; and the desire thereof — All that appears desirable in it, and causes it to be so much sought after; or all that can gratify the above-mentioned desires, passeth away with it; but he that doeth the will of God — That loves him, and not the world, and seeks happiness in him, and not in worldly things, abideth in the enjoyment of what he loves, and makes the object of his pursuit, for ever.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

3. So that we must not love a godless and evanescent world, 1Jn_2:15-17.

This self-purification revolves a withdrawal of our fellowship from the world in its impure conditions.

15. Love—Resumption of the topic of love from 1Jn_2:11. To that verse John had impressively taught us to love our brother; he will now teach us what not to love.

The world—There are aspects in which the world should be loved.

1. With a love of affection which desires its well-being not only as a whole, but for the beings that inhabit it. Even “God so loved the world;” and so requires us to love; and this includes the love of our brother in 1Jn_2:3-14.

2. We are to love in due degree the enjoyments which God has provided for our rational natures. We may enjoy life as a scene of duties, mercies, and gracious gifts of God. Yet are we so to enjoy as to not love it in any superiority over, or competition with, that better world for which it is our preparatory. He who enjoys this world in accordance with a constant faith in a higher and holy world to come “makes the best of both worlds.” A two-fold happiness makes him both fearless and doubly cheerful. But there are three aspects in which the world is not to be loved.

1. As a material solid residence it is under divine reprobation, and is vanishing and doomed, and if we bury ourselves in its materialities we are liable to be doomed with it. 2. As a mass of unregenerate beings, to whom, however we may wish well, yet we know that it “lieth in wickedness,” and must not sympathize with its unregeneracy. 3. As a mass of depravities and errors, of immoralities and false doctrines, there is a world of thought and character for which we must have no moral approving love. These are unfolded in the triad of the next verse. In these aspects the love of the world is incompatible with the love of the Father. The errorist may believe that his lawless appetites for the world are at one with the Father; the Christian knows better. Of these three the first is most properly the world.

Love of the Father—The word Father here, as in 1Jn_2:1, designates God the Father in his relation to the Son, and so as head of the system of salvation. The love of the Father is, then, our love for God as the prime source of our salvation, the author of the blessed heaven, the Father of Christ. It is the love inspired by the Spirit in consequence of our faith in Christ.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Chapter 10

THE WORLD WHICH WE MUST NOT LOVE

1Jn_2:15-16

An adequate development of words so compressed and pregnant as these would require a separate treatise, or series of treatises. But if we succeed in grasping St. Johns conception of the world, we shall have a key that will open to us this cabinet of spiritual thought.

In the writings of St. John the world is always found in one or other of four senses, as may be decided by the context.

(1) It means the creation, the universe. So our Lord in His High priestly prayer -"Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world."

(2) It is used for the earth locally as the place where man resides; and whose soil the Son of God trod for a while. "I am no more in the world, but these are in the world."

(3) It denotes the chief inhabitants of the earth, they to whom the counsels of God mainly point-men universally. Such a transference is common in nearly all languages. Both the inhabitants of a building, and the material structure which contains them, are called "a house"; and the inhabitants are frequently bitterly blamed, while the beauty of the structure is passionately admired. In this sense there is a magnificent width in the word "world." We cannot but feel indignant at attempts to gird its grandeur within the narrow rim of a human system. "The bread that I will give," said He who knew best, "is My flesh which I will give for the life of the world." "He is the propitiation for the whole world," writes the Apostle at the beginning of this chapter. In this sense, if we would imitate Christ, if we would aspire to the Fathers perfection, "love not the world" must be tempered by that other tender oracle-"God so loved the world."

In none of these senses can the world here be understood. There remains then:

(4) a fourth signification, which has two allied shades of thought. World is employed to cover the whole present existence, with its blended good and evil-susceptible of elevation by grace, susceptible also of deeper depths of sin and ruin. But yet again the indifferent meaning passes into one that is wholly evil, wholly within a region of darkness. The first creation was pronounced by God in each department "good" collectively; when crowned by Gods masterpiece in man, "very good." "All things," our Apostle tells us, "were made through Him (the Word), and without Him was not anything made that was made." But as that was a world wholly good, so is this a world wholly evil. This evil world is not Gods creation, drew not its origin from Him. All that is in it came out from it, from nothing higher. This wholly evil world is not the material creation; if it were, we should be landed in dualism, or Manicheism. It is not an entity, an actual tangible thing, a creation. It is not of Gods world that St. John cries in that last fierce word of abhorrence which he flings at it as he sees the shadowy thing like an evil spirit made visible in an idols arms-"the world lieth wholly in the evil one."

This anti-world, this caricature of creation, this thing of negations, is spun out of three abuses of the endowment of Gods glorious gift of free will to man; out of three noble instincts ignobly used. First, "the lust of the flesh"-of which flesh is the seat, and supplies the organic medium through which it works. The flesh is that softer part of the frame which by the network of the nerves is intensely susceptible of pleasurable and painful sensations: capable of heroic patient submission to the higher principles of conscience and spirit, capable also of frightful rebellion. Of all theologians St. John is the least likely to fall into the exaggeration of libelling the flesh as essentially evil. Is it not he who, whether in his Gospel, or in his Epistles, delights to speak of the flesh of Jesus, to record words in which He refers to it? Still the flesh brings us into contact with all sins which are sins that spring from, and end in, the senses. Shall we ask for a catalogue of particulars from St. John? Nay, we cannot expect that the virgin Apostle, who received the Virgin Mother from the Virgin Lord upon the cross, will sully his virgin pen with words so abhorred. When he has uttered the lust of the flesh his shudder is followed by an eloquent silence. We can fill up the blank too well-drunkenness, gluttony, thoughts and motions which spring from deliberate, wilfully cherished, rebellious sensuality; which fill many of us with pain and fear, and wring cries and bitter tears from penitents, and even from saints. The second, abuse of free will, the second element in this world which is not Gods world, is the desire of which the eyes are the seat-"the lust of the eyes." To the two sins which we instinctively associate with this phrase- voluptuousness and curiosity of the senses or the soul-Scripture might seem to add envy, which derives so much of its aliment from sight. In this lies the Christians warning against wilfully indulging in evil sights, bad plays, bad books, bad pictures.

He who is outwardly the spectator of these things becomes inwardly the actor of them. The eye is, so to speak, the burning glass of the soul; it draws the rays from their evil brightness to a focus, and may kindle a raging fire in the heart. Under this department comes unregulated spiritual or intellectual curiosity. The first need not trouble us so much as it did Christians in a more believing time. Comparatively very few are in danger from the planchette or from astrology. But surely it is a rash thing for an ordinary mind, without a clear call of duty, without any adequate preparation, to place its faith within the deadly grip of some powerful adversary. People really seem to have absolutely no conscience about reading anything-the last philosophical Life of Christ, or the last romance; of which the titles might be with advantage exchanged, for the philosophical history is a light romance, and the romance is a heavy philosophy. The third constituent in the evil anti-trinity of the anti-world is "the pride" (the arrogancy, gasconade, almost swagger) "of life," of which the lower life is the seat. The thought is not so much of outward pomp and ostentation as of that false pride which arises in the heart. The arrogancy is within; the gasconade plays its "fantastic tricks before high heaven." And each of these three elements (making up as. they do collectively all that is "in the world" and springing out of the world) is not a substantive thing, not an original ingredient of mans nature, or among the forms of Gods world; it is the perversion of an element which had a use that was noble, or at least innocent. For first comes "the lust of the flesh." Take those two objects to which this lust turns with a fierce and perverted passion. The possession of flesh in itself leads man to crave for the necessary support to his native weakness. The mutual craving for the love of beings so like and so unlike as man and woman, if it be a weakness, has at least a most touching and exquisite side. Again, is not a yearning for beauty gratified through the eyes? Were they not given for the enjoyment, for the teaching, at once high and sweet, of Nature and of Art? Art may be a moral and spiritual discipline. The ideas of Beauty from gifted minds by cunning hands transferred to, and stamped upon, outward things, come from the ancient and uncreated Beauty, whose beauty is as perfect as His truth and strength. Still further; in the lower life, and in its lawful use, there was intended to be a something of quiet satisfaction, a certain restfulness, at times making us happy and triumphant. And lo! for all this, not moderate fare and pure love, not thoughtful curiosity and the sweet pensiveness which is the best tribute to the beautiful-not a wise humility which makes us feel that our times are in Gods hands and our means His continual gift-but degraded senses, low art, evil literature, a pride which is as grovelling as it is godless.

These three typical summaries of the evil tendencies in the exercise of free will correspond with a remarkable fulness to the two narratives of trial which give us the compendium and general outline of all human temptation.

Our Lords three temptations answer to this division. The lust of the flesh is in essence the rebellion of the lower appetites, inherent to creaturely dependence, against the higher principle or law. The nearest and only conceivable approach to this in the sinless Man would be in His seeking lawful support by unlawful means- procuring food by a miraculous exertion of power, which only would have become sinful, or short of the highest goodness, by some condition of its exercise at that time and in that place. An appeal to the desire for beauty and glory, with an implied hint of using them for Gods greater honour, is the essence of. the second temptation; the one possible approximation to the "lust of the eyes" in that perfect character. The interior deception of some touch of pride in the visible support of angels wafting the Son of God through the air is Satans one sinister way of insinuating to the Saviour something akin to "the pride of life."

In the case of the other earlier typical trials it will be observed that while the temptations fit into the same threefold framework, they are placed in an order which exactly reverses that of St. John. For in Eden the first approach is through "pride"; the magnificent promise of elevation in the scale of being, of the knowledge that would win the wonder of the spiritual world. "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." {Gen_3:5} The next step is that which directs the curiosity both of the senses and of the aspiring mind to the object, forbidden-"when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise." {Gen_3:6} Then seems to have come some strange and sad rebellion of the lower nature, filling their souls with shame; some bitter revelation of the law of sin in their members; some knowledge that they were contaminated by the "lust of the flesh." {Gen_3:7} The order of the temptation in the narrative of Moses is historical; St. Johns order is moral and spiritual, answering to the facts of life. The "lust of the flesh," which may approach the child through childish greed, grows apace. At first it is half unconscious; then it becomes coarse and palpable. In the mans desire acting with unregulated curiosity, through ambition of knowledge at any price, searching out for itself books and other instruments with deliberate desire to kindle lust, the "lust of the eyes" ceases not its fatal influence. The crowning sin of pride with its selfishness, which is self apart from God as well as from the brother, finds its place in the "pride of life."

III We may now be in a position to see more clearly against what world the Primate of early Christendom pronounced his anathema, and launched his interdict, and why?

What "world" did he denounce?

Clearly not the world as the creation, the universe. Not again the earth locally. God made and ordered all things. Why should we not love them with a holy and a blameless love? Only we should not love them in themselves; we should not cling to them forgetting Him. Suppose that some husband heaped beautiful and costly presents upon his wife whom he loved. At last with the intuition of love he begins to see what is the secret of such cold imitation of love as that icy heart can give. She loves him not - his riches, not the man; his gifts, not the giver. And thus loving with that frigid love which has no heart in it, there is no true love; her heart is anothers. Gifts are given that the giver may be loved in them. If it is true that "gifts are naught when givers prove unkind," it is also true that there is a sort of adultery of the heart when the taker is unkind-because the gift is valuable, not because the bestower is dear. And so the world, Gods beautiful world, now becomes to us an idol. If we are so lost in the possession of Nature, in the march of law, in the majestic growth, in the stars above and in the plants below, that we forget the Lawgiver, who from such humble beginnings has brought out a world of beauty and order; if with modern poets we find content, calm, happiness, purity, rest, simply in contemplating the glaciers, the waves, and the stars; then we look at the world even in this sense in a way which is a violation of St. Johns rule. Yet again, the world which is now condemned is not humanity. There is no real Christianity in taking black views, and speaking bitter things, about the human society to which we belong, and the human nature of which we are partakers. No doubt Christianity believes that man "is very far gone from original righteousness"; that there is a "corruption in the nature of every man that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam." Yet the utterers of unwholesome apothegms, the suspecters of their kind, are not Christian thinkers. The philosophic historian, whose gorge rose at the doctrine of the Fall, thought much worse of man practically than the Fathers of the Church. They bowed before martyrdom and purity, and believed in them with a child-like faith. For Gibbon, the martyr was not quite so true, nor the virgin quite so pure, nor the saint quite so holy. He who knew human nature best, who has thrown that terrible ray of light into the unlit gulf of the heart when He tells us "what proceeds out of the heart of man," {Mar_7:21} had yet the ear which was the first to hear the trembling of the one chord that yet kept healthful time and tune in the harlots passionate heart. He believed that man was recoverable; lost, but capable of being found. After all, in this sense there is something worthy of love in man. "God so loved" (not so hated) "the world, that He gave His only begotten Son." Shall we say that we are to hate the world which He loved?

And now we come to that world which God never loved, never will love, never will reconcile to Himself, -which we are not to love.

This is most important to see; for there is always a danger in setting out with a stricter standard than Christs, a narrower road than the narrow one which leads to heaven. Experience proves that they who begin with standards of duty which are impossibly high end with standards of duty which are sometimes sadly low. Such men have tried the impracticable, and failed; the practicable seems to be too hard for them ever afterwards. They who begin by anathematising the world in things innocent, indifferent, or even laudable, not rarely end by a reaction of thought which believes that the world is nothing and nowhere.

But there is such a thing as the world in St, Johns sense-an evil world brought into existence by the abuse of our free will; filled by the anti-trinity, by "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life."

Let us not confuse "the world" with the earth, with the whole race of man, with general society, with any particular set, however much some sets are to be avoided. Look at the thing fairly. Two people, we will say, go to London, to live there. One, from circumstances of life and position, naturally falls into the highest social circle. Another has introductions to a smaller set, with an apparently more serious connection. Follow the first some evening. He drives to a great gathering. The room which he enters is ablaze with light; jewelled orders sparkle upon mens coats, and fair women move in exquisite dresses. We look at the scene and we say-"what worldly society has the man fallen into!" Perhaps so, in a sense. But about the same time the other walks to a little room with humbler adjuncts, where a grave and apparently serious circle meet together. We are able to look in there also, and we exclaim-"this is serious society, unworldly society." Perhaps so, again. Yet let us read the letters of Mary Godolphin. She bore a life unspotted by the world in the dissolute court of Charles II, because the love of the Father was in her. In small serious circles are there no hidden lusts which blaze up in scandals? Is there no vanity, no pride, no hatred? In the world of Charles IIs court Mary Godolphin lived out of the world which God hated; in the religious world not a few, certainly, live in the world which is not Gods. For, once more, the world is not so much a place- though at times its power seems to have been drawn into one intense focus, as in the empire of which Rome was the centre, and which may have been in the Apostles thought in the following verse. In the truest and deepest sense the world consists of our own spiritual surrounding; it is the place which we make for our own souls. No walls that ever were reared can shut out the world from us; the "Nun of Kenmare" found that it followed her into the seemingly spiritual retreat of a severe Order. The world in its essence is subtler and thinner than the most infinitesimal of the bacterian germs in the air. They can be strained off by the exquisite apparatus of a man of science. At a certain height they cease to exist. But the world may be wherever we are; we carry it with us wherever we go, it lasts while our lives last. No consecration can utterly banish it even from within the churchs walls; it dares to be round us while we kneel, and follows us into the presence of God.

Why does God hate this "world"-the world in this sense? St. John tells us. "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." Deep in every heart must be one or other of two loves. There is no room for two master passions. There is an expulsive power in all true affection. What tenderness and pathos, how much of expostulation, more potent because reserved-"the love of the Father is not in him"! He has told all his "little ones" that he has written to them because they "know the Father." St. John does not use sacred names at random. Even Voltaire felt that there was something almost awful in hearing Newton pronounce the name of God. Such in an incomparably higher degree is the spirit of St. John. In this section he writes of "the love of the Father," {1Jn_2:15-16} and of the "will of God." (1Jn_2:17.) The first title has more sweetness than majesty; the second more majesty than sweetness. He would throw into his plea some of the winningness of one who uses this as a resistless argument with a tempted, but loving child-an argument often successful when every other fails. "If you do this, your Father will not love you; you will not be His child." We have but to read this with the hearts of Gods dear children. Then we shall find that if the "love not" of this verse contains "words of extirpation" it ends with others which are intended to draw us with cords of a man, and with bands of love.

William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.

2:15-17 The world is a morally evil system that is under the influence of Satan and is opposed to God and to Christ’s Kingdom on this earth (2:16; 3:1; 4:4; 5:19; John 12:31; 15:18; Eph 6:11-12; Jas 4:4). The world appeals to people’s fleshly desires and thereby diverts them from God. Those who are from this world need God to redeem them from it.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Do not love the world nor

In 1Jn 2:15-17 the word "world" refers to all the things people want to do that do not honor God. AT: "Do not behave like the people in the world who do not honor God, and do not love" (See: Metonymy)

the things that are in the world

"the things that those who dishonor God want"

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him

A person cannot love this world and all that dishonors God and love the Father at the same time. (See: Metaphor)

the love of the Father is not in him

"he does not love the Father"

the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the arrogance of life

This is a list of some of the things in the world. It explains what is meant by "everything that is in the world" (See: Metonymy)

the lust of the flesh

"the strong desire to have sinful physical pleasure"

the lust of the eyes

"the strong desire to have things that we see"

the arrogance of life

"pride of life." This could imply both possessions and attitudes. AT: "the bragging about what a person has or does" or "the pride people feel because of their things and what he does"

is not from the Father

"does not come from the Father" or "is not how the Father teaches us to live"

are passing away

"pass away" or "will one day not be here"

translationWords

love

world

God the Father

lust

flesh

will of God

eternity

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

1Jn 2:15. Μὴ ἀγαπᾶτε τὸν κόσμον, love not the world) This has special reference to you, young men. Follow up your victory against the wicked one, in whom the world lies: ch. 1Jn 5:19.—οὐκ ἔστιν, is not) Contraries do not exist together.—ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ Πατρὸς) the love of the Father towards His children, and filial love [of the children] towards the Father.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Jn_2:15. μὴ ἀγαπᾶτε τὸν κόσμον] The meaning of ἀγαπᾶν depends on that of the idea κόσμος.

κόσμος is with John eminently an ethical conception = mankind, fallen away from God, and of hostile disposition towards Him, together with all that it lives for and has made its own; comp. on Jam_1:27; Jam_4:4 (similarly Gerlach, Besser, Düsterdieck, Myrberg, Ebrard, Braune[132]). The explanations that deviate from this are divided into three leading classes(1) Those in which ΚΌΣΜΟς is regarded as a total number of men indeed, but in a limited way; either = the heathen world (Lange), or more indefinitely: the mass of common men (Oecumenius: Ὁ ΣΥΡΦΕΤῸς ὌΧΛΟς, Ὃς Οὐ ΤῊΝ ΤΟῦ ΠΑΤΡῸς ἜΧΕΙ ἈΓΆΠΗΝ ἘΝ ἙΑΥΤῷ; Calovius: homines dediti rebus hujus mundi), or the greater part of men (Grotius: humanum genus, secundum partem majorem, quae in malis actionibus versatur); Storr limits the idea here to that part of the world which the antichristians constituted. (2) Those which understand κόσμος not of the human world itself, but of the evil dwelling in it; so says the Scholiast: ΚΌΣΜΟΝ ΤῊΝ ΚΟΣΜΙΚῊΝ ΦΙΛΗΔΟΝΊΑΝ ΚΑῚ ΔΙΆΧΥΣΙΝ ΛΈΓΕΙ, Ἧς ἘΣΤῚΝ ἌΡΧΩΝ Ὁ ΔΙΆΒΟΛΟς; Luther: the world, i.e. godlessness itself, through which a man has not the right use of the creatures; to this class belong also the explanations of Calvin, Morus, S. Schmid, Semler;[133] but in this abstract sense the word never appears elsewhere; and besides, taking this view, difficulties appear in the sequel which can only be overcome by arbitrary interpretations. (3) Those explanations in which κόσμος is regarded as the total of perishable (actual) things; these things being regarded as purely physical, there lies in the idea κόσμος, in and by itself, no ethical meaning, but this appears only through the ἀγαπᾷν which is connected with it; the κόσμος as a creature of God is in itself good and irreproachable, but the love to the κόσμος, through which man centres his affections on it, and makes it the single aim of his activity, is to be blamed, because amid all association with earthly things it is not they, but God, that must be loved; thus there results for the command: μὴ ἀγαπᾶτε τὸν κόσμον, certainly an appropriate idea; but what follows in 1Jn_2:16-17 has induced almost all commentators who accept this view to give, nevertheless, to the idea κόσμος itself, more or less distinctly, an ethical reference; thus Lücke indeed says: ὁ κόσμος is, as the sum total of the temporal and sensuous, in contrast (!) to the πνεῦμα, always only the objective sphere of evil, i.e. to which it tends as ethical direction and disposition, but immediately afterwards he explains the same idea as the sum total of all sensuous appearances, which excite the desire of the senses; still more definitely de Wette says: the sum total of that which attracts desire, the temporal, sensuous, earthlyregarded in contrast with God; but this connection of the ethical reference with the idea of actual things is itself rather unsuitable; not in the things, but in man himself, lies the cause of the seductive charm which things exercise upon him; besides, it is not possible to retain this conception of the word without modification to the end of the 17th verse.[134] It is true some commentators[135] distinctly say that John here makes a sort of play upon the word, but such an assumption does too much violence to the clearness and certainty of the thought for us to approve of it. The right view, therefore, is to take ὁ κόσμος here in the same sense that the word prevailingly has throughout Johns works, so that it signifies the world lying ἘΝ Τῷ ΠΟΝΗΡῷ. This ΚΌΣΜΟς, this is the meaning of the apostles warning, is not to be the object of the ἈΓΆΠΗ of believers. From this it follows that ἈΓΑΠᾷΝ here means neither to love too much, nor to love with unhallowed sense, but love in the strictest sense of the word, consisting in a life of inner fellowship.[136]

μηδὲ τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ] As κόσμος is an ethical idea, natural objects as such cannot be meant by τὰ ἐν τ. κ., but only these in so far as they are taken by the ungodly world into its service; or better, the apparently good things which the world pursues, or with which it delights itself, and which therefore belong to it, as riches, honour, power, human wisdom, and such like. Ebrard erroneously understands thereby the different kinds of sinful impulse, thought, and action, e.g. avarice, ambition, sensuality, and such like, for either of these is plainly a love (although a false, unholy love) which cannot itself again be regarded as the object of love.

ἐάν τις ἀγαπᾷ τὸν κόσμον, οὐκ ἔστιν κ.τ.λ.] By this sentence the apostle confirms the previous exhortation, expressing the incongruity of love to the κόσμος with the ἀγάπη τοῦ πατρός; Bede: Unum cor duos tam sibi adversaries amores non capit. By ἀγάπη τοῦ πατρός is to be understood neither the love of God to us (Luther II., Calovius), nor the charitas quam Pater praescribit (Socinus); but, as by far the most of commentators (Bede, Beza, Grotius, Vatablus, Spener, etc., and all the modern commentators, even Ebrard, despite his erroneous interpretation of 1Jn_2:5), interpret, love to God.[137]

If πατρός is the correct reading, then the name Father is here to be explained from the filial relationship of Christians to God, and points to their duty not to love the world, but God.

Between the two sorts of ἀγάπη there is the same exclusive contrast as between the Θεῷ δουλεύειν and μαμωνᾷ δουλεύειν, Mat_6:24. Compare also Jam_4:4 : ἡ φιλία τοῦ κόσμου, ἔχθρα τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐστίν.

[132] It might not be incorrect to suppose that John, when he here and afterwards in his Epistle places the κόσμος in sharp contrast with believers, specially understands the sum-total of those who, as the light has come into the world, love the darkness rather than light (Gospel of Joh_3:13), and therefore not unsaved humanity as such, but those of mankind who resist salvation, while by ὅλος ὁ κόσμος (1Jn_2:2) the whole human race, as needing salvation, is to be understood.

[133] Calvin: Mundi nomine intellige, quiequid ad praesentem vitam spectat, ubi separatur a regno Dei et spe vitae aeternae. Ita in se comprehendit omne genus corruptelae et malorum omnium abyssum. Morus explains κόσμος by: malum morale; S. Selimid by: corruptio peccaminosa; Semler by: vulgata consuetudo hominum, res corporeas unice appetentium. Here may be enumerated also the interpretation of Erdmann: totus complexus et ambitus mali, quatenus hoc non solum toti generi humano, verum etiam propter hominum a Deo defectionem omnibus rebus humanis totique rerum naturae inhaeret.

[134] Thus Lücke finds himself compelled in the case of πᾶν ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ to make an abstraction of the things themselves, and to understand thereby their ethical reference; and here results the certainly unjustifiable thought that this ethical reference of things has its origin in the things themselves (ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου). Still more decidedly, de Wette says that in the words ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου ἐστί, ver. 16, ὁ κόσμος is not regarded as the sum total of earthly things, but as the sensuous life alienated from God, or as the sum total of worldly men who enjoy this; somewhat differently Brückner: that the sum total of earthly evil, of the κόσμος, is here regarded rather of real things, is clear from the subordinate clause μηδὲ τὰ ἐν τῷ κ.; in ver. 16 the personal aspect prevails. Neander, on ver. 16, equally deviates from the explanation which he had given of ver. 15; in the latter he regards ὁ κόσμος as the world and earthly things, but in the former as the predominating tendency of the soul to the world, the growing worldliness of the soul, which blends itself with the world.

[135] Thus a Lapide says (after he has assigned to the word three meanings, namely (1) homines mundani, in his proprie est concupiscentia; (2) orbis sublunaris, in hoe mundo proprie et formaliter non est eoncupiscentia; sed in eo est concupiscentia materialis i.e. objectum concupiscibile; (3) ipsa mundana vita vel concupiscentia in genere): omnibus hisce modis mundus hic accipi potest et Johannes nunc ad unum, nunc ad alterum respicit; ludit enim in voce mundus.

[136] Lücke groundlessly thinks the idea of love must necessarily be weakened to that of mere longing for, if by κόσμος the human world is understood.

[137] A combination of both interpretations: amor patris erga suos et filialis erga patrem (Bengel), is clearly unjustifiable.

1Jn_2:15-17. A warning against love of the world, which is directed neither specially to the children (Oecumenius: ἐπτόηται γὰρ ἀεὶ τὰ παιδία περὶ τὸ φαινόμενον ἡδύ), nor specially to the young men (Bengel, Semler, Besser), but to all (Bede: omnibus haec generaliter ecclesiae filiis scribit).

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Jn 2:15 . He is dealing with believers who have a large experience of the grace of Christ, and on this fact he proceeds to base an appeal, a call to further advancement and higher attainment: “Love not the world”. Yet God “loved the world” (Joh 3:16 ). Observe that the Apostle does not say that the world is evil. It is God’s world, and “God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good” (Gen 1:31 ). His meaning is: “The things in the world are transient. Do not set your affection on them, else you will sustain a bitter disappointment. The world is a good and beautiful gift of God, to be used with joy and gratitude; but it is not the supreme end, it is not the home of our souls”. “Let the Spirit of God be in thee,” says St. Augustine, “that thou mayest see that all these things are good; but woe to thee if thou love created things and forsake the Creator!… If a bridegroom made a ring for his bride and, when she got it, she were fonder of the ring than of the bridegroom who made the ring for her, would not an adulterous spirit be detected in the very gift of the bridegroom, however she might love what the bridegroom gave?… God gave thee all those things: love Him who made them. There is more which He would fain give thee, to wit, Himself who made these things”. Again: “There are two loves of the world and of God. If the love of the world inhabit, there is no way for the love of God to enter. Let the love of the world retire and that of God inhabit, let the better get room.… Shut out the evil love of the world, that thou mayest be filled by the love of God. Thou art a vessel, but thou art still full; pour out what thou hast, that thou mayest get what thou hast not”. ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ Πατρός , like ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ Θεοῦ (1Jn 2:5 ), either (1) “love for the Father,” in antithesis to ἀγαπᾷ τὸν κόσμον , or (2) “the love which the Father feels for us”. In fact the one implies the other. The sense of the Father’s love for us awakens in us an answering love for Him. Cf. 1Jn 4:19 .

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Wherewith the Father is loved.

The world which is full of wicked desires, lusts or pleasures, and pride, is utterly hated of our heavenly Father. Therefore the Father and the world cannot be loved together: and this admonition is very necessary for green and flourishing youth.

He speaketh of the world, as it agreeth not with the will of God, for otherwise God is said to love the world with an infinite love, John 3:16, that is to say, those whom he chose out of the world.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

Love not the world--that lieth in the wicked one (Jo1 5:19), whom ye young men have overcome. Having once for all, through faith, overcome the world (Jo1 4:4; Jo1 5:4), carry forward the conquest by not loving it. "The world" here means "man, and man's world" [ALFORD], in his and its state as fallen from God. "God loved [with the love of compassion] the world," and we should feel the same kind of love for the fallen world; but we are not to love the world with congeniality and sympathy in its alienation from God; we cannot have this latter kind of love for the God-estranged world, and yet have also "the love of the Father in" us.

neither--Greek, "nor yet." A man might deny in general that he loved the world, while keenly following some one of THE THINGS IN IT: its riches, honors, or pleasures; this clause prevents him escaping from conviction.

any man--therefore the warning, though primarily addressed to the young, applies to all.

love of--that is, towards "the Father." The two, God and the (sinful) world, are so opposed, that both cannot be congenially loved at once.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 15. Love not the world] Though these several classes were so well acquainted with Divine things, and had all tasted the powers of the world to come: yet so apt are men to be drawn aside by sensible things, that the Holy Spirit saw it necessary to caution these against the love of the world, the inordinate desire of earthly things. Covetousness is the predominant vice of old age: Ye fathers, love not the world. The things which are in the world, its profits, pleasures, and honours, have the strongest allurements for youth; therefore, ye young men, little children, and babes, love not the things of this world. Let those hearts abide faithful to God who have taken him for their portion.

The love of the Father is not in him.] The love of God and the love of earthly things are incompatible. If you give place to the love of the world, the love of God cannot dwell in you; and if you have not his love, you can have no peace, no holiness, no heaven.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

15 Love not He had said before that the only rule for living religiously, is to love God; but as, when we are occupied with the vain love of the world, we turn away all our thoughts and affections another way, this vanity must first be torn away from us, in order that the love of God may reign within us. Until our minds are cleansed, the former doctrine may be iterated a hundred times, but with no effect: it would be like pouring water on a ball; you can gather, no, not a drop, because there is no empty place to retain water.

By the world understand everything connected with the present life, apart from the kingdom of God and the hope of eternal life. So he includes in it corruptions of every kind, and the abyss of all evils. In the world are pleasures, delights, and all those allurements by which man is captivated, so as to withdraw himself from God.

Moreover, the love of the world is thus severely condemned, because we must necessarily forget God and ourselves when we regard nothing so much as the earth; and when a corrupt lust of this kind rules in man, and so holds him entangled that he thinks not of the heavenly life, he is possessed by a beastly stupidity.

If any man love the world He proves by an argument from what is contrary, how necessary it is to cast away the love of the world, if we wish to please God; and this he afterwards confirms by an argument drawn from what is inconsistent; for what belongs to the world is wholly at variance with God. We must bear in mind what I have already said, that a corrupt mode of life is here mentioned, which has nothing in common with the kingdom of God, that is, when men become so degenerated, that they are satisfied with the present life, and think no more of immortal life than mute animals. Whosoever, then, makes himself thus a slave to earthly lusts, cannot be of God.

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

15. Love not the world] The asyndeton is remarkable. S. John has just stated his premises, his readers’ happiness as Christians. He now abruptly states the practical conclusion, without any introductory ‘therefore’. As was said above on 1Jn_2:2, we must distinguish between the various meanings of the Apostle’s favourite word, ‘world.’ In Joh_3:16 he tells us that ‘God loved the world’, and here he tells us that we must not do so. “S. John is never afraid of an apparent contradiction when it saves his readers from a real contradiction … The opposition which is on the surface of his language may be the best way of leading us to the harmony which lies below it” (Maurice). The world which the Father loves is the whole human race. The world which we are not to love is all that is alienated from Him, all that prevents men from loving Him in return. The world which God loves is His creature and His child: the world which we are not to love is His rival. The best safeguard against the selfish love of what is sinful in the world is to remember God’s unselfish love of the world. ‘The world’ here is that from which S. James says the truly religious man keeps himself ‘unspotted’, friendship with which is ‘enmity with God’ (Jas_1:27; Jas_4:4). It is not enough to say that ‘the world’ here means ‘earthly things, so far as they tempt to sin’, or ‘sinful lusts’, or ‘worldly and impious men’. It means all of these together: all that acts as a rival to God; all that is alienated from God and opposed to Him, especially sinful men with their sinful lusts. ‘The world’ and ‘the darkness’ are almost synonymous; to love the one is to love the other (Joh_3:19): to be in the darkness is to be of the world.

neither the things that are in the world] Or, nor yet the things, &c., i.e. ‘Love not the world; no, nor anything in that sphere.’ Comp. ‘Not to consort with … no, nor eat with’ (1Co_5:11). ‘The things in the world’, as is plain from 1Jn_2:16, are not material objects, which can be desired and possessed quite innocently, although they may also be occasions of sin. Rather, they are those elements in the world which are necessarily evil, its lusts and ambitions and jealousies, which stamp it as the kingdom of ‘the ruler of this world’ (Joh_12:31) and not the kingdom of God.

If any man love the world] Once more, as in 1Jn_2:1, the statement is made quite general by the hypothetical form: everyone who does so is in this case. The Lord had proclaimed the same principle; ‘No man can serve two masters … Ye cannot serve God and mammon’ (Mat_6:24). So also S. James; ‘Whosoever would be a friend of the world maketh himself an enemy of God’ (1Jn_4:4). Comp. Gal_1:10. Thus we arrive at another pair of those opposites of which S. John is so fond. We have had light and darkness, truth and falsehood, love and hate; we now have love of the Father and love of the world. The world which is coextensive with darkness must exclude the God who is light. By writing ‘the love of the Father’ rather than ‘the love of God’ (which some authorities read here) the Apostle points to the duty of Christians as children of God. ‘The love of the Father’ (a phrase which occurs nowhere else) means man’s love to Him, not His to man: see on 1Jn_2:5. A fragment of Philo declares that ‘it is impossible for love to the world to coexist with love to God’.

15–17. The Things to be Avoided;—the World and its Ways

Having reminded them solemnly of the blessedness of their condition as members of the Christian family, whether old or young, and having declared that this blessedness of peace, knowledge, and strength is his reason for writing to them, he goes on to exhort them to live in a manner that shall be worthy of this high estate, and to avoid all that is inconsistent with it.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Love not the world,.... The habitable earth, the world in which men live; this is not to be loved by saints, as if it was their habitation, where they are always to be, and so loath to remove from it, seeing they are but sojourners, and pilgrims, and strangers here; this is not their rest, nor dwellingplace, their continuing city, or proper country, that is heaven. Nor should they love the men of the world, who are as they came into it, are of it, and mind the things of it, and lie in wickedness, and are wicked men; for though these are to be loved, as men, as fellow creatures, and their good, both spiritual and temporal, is to be sought, and good is to be done to them, as much as lies in our power, both with respect to soul and body; yet their company is not to be chosen, and preferred to the saints, but to be shunned and avoided, as disagreeable and dangerous; their evil conversation, and wicked communications, are not to be loved, but abhorred, and their works of darkness are to be reproved; nor are their ways to be imitated, and their customs followed, or their manners to be conformed unto:

neither the things that are in the world; good men that are in the world, though they are not of the world, are to be loved; and the kingdom of Christ, though it is not of the world, yet it is in the world, and is to be regarded and promoted to the uttermost; and there are the natural and civil things of the world, called this world's goods, which may be loved within due bounds, and used in a proper manner, though they are not to be loved inordinately and abused. This is the character of worldly men; so the Jews call such, , "such that love world" (g). Near relations and friends in the world, and the blessings of life, may be loved and enjoyed in their way, but not above God and Christ, or so as to take up satisfaction and contentment in them, to make idols of them, and put trust and confidence in them, and prefer them to spiritual and heavenly things, and be so taken with them, as to be unconcerned for, and careless about the other; but the evil things of the world, or at least the evil use of them, and affection for them, are here intended, as appears from the following verse. Now it is chiefly with respect to the fathers, and young men, that this exhortation is given; and the repetition of what is said to them before is made, to introduce this; which is exceeding suitable to their age and characters. Old men are apt to be covetous, and love the world and worldly things, just when they are going out of it, and about to leave them; and young men are apt to be carried away with lust, vanity, ambition, and pride: and therefore, from each of these, the apostle dissuades, from the following arguments,

if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him; that is, "the love of God", as the Alexandrian copy and the Ethiopic version read; who is the Father of Christ, and of all the elect in him; and who is indeed, by creation, the Father of all men, the Father of spirits, of the souls of men, and of angels, and the Father of mercies and of lights, and by the love of him is meant, either the love with which he loves his people, and which being shed abroad in the heart, attracts the soul to himself, and causes it to love him above the world, and all things in it; and such an one esteems of it, and an interest in it, more than life, and all the enjoyments of it, and is by it loosened to the world, and sets light by it, and can part with all good things in it, and suffer all evil things cheerfully, under the constraints and influence of this love; so that it is a clear case, that when the affections of men are set upon the world, and they are glued to the things of it, their hearts are not warmed with a sense of the love of God, or, that is not sensibly in them, or shed abroad in their hearts: or else by the love of God is meant love to God, which is inconsistent with the love of the world, or with such an inordinate love of mammon, as to serve it; for a man may as soon serve two masters, as serve God and mammon, which he can never do truly, faithfully, and affectionately; and which also is not consistent with friendship with the men of the world, or a conversation and fellowship with them in things that are evil, whether superstition or profaneness; see Mat 6:24.

(g) Kimchi in Psal. xlix. 9. Ben Melech in ib. ver. 14.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

15 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.

Ver. 15. Love not the world] You fathers, and you young and strong men, let me caution you (before I speak again to the little children, 1Jn 2:18), to beware of worldliness. A man may be very mortified, and yet very apt to dote on the world.

If any man love the world] Have it he may, and use it too, as the traveller useth his staff (which either he keeps or casts away, as it furthers or hinders his journey), but love it he must not, unless he will renounce the love of God. {See Trapp on "Mat 6:24"} {See Trapp on "Col 3:2"} Aristotle in his Politics teacheth, by the example of Thales, that philosophers may be rich; but he excellently addeth αλλα ου τουτο εστι περι ου σπουδαζουσι, howbeit this is not their chief study; it is but a by-business with them. (Polit. i., cap. ult.)

The love of the Father is not in him] The sunbeams extinguish the fire; so doth the love of the world the love of God. But some not so much as roving at God, make the world their standing mark.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Love not the world - The term “world” seems to be used in the Scriptures in three senses:

As denoting the physical universe; the world as it appears to the eye; the world considered as the work of God, as a material creation.

(2)The world as applied to the people that reside in it - “the world of mankind.”

(3)As the dwellers on the earth are by nature without religion, and act under a set of maxims, aims, and principles that have reference only to this life, the term comes to be used with reference to that community; that is, to the objects which they especially seek, and the principles by which they are actuated.

Considered with reference to the first sense of the word, it is not improper to love the world as the work of God, and as illustrating his perfections; for we may suppose that God loves his own works, and it is not wrong that we should find pleasure in their contemplation. Considered with reference to the second sense of the word, it is not wrong to love the people of the world with a love of benevolence, and to have attachment to our kindred and friends who constitute a part of it, though they are not Christians. It is only with reference to the word as used in the third sense that the command here can be understood to be applicable, or that the love of the world is forbidden; with reference to the objects sought, the maxims that prevail, the principles that reign in that community that lives for this world as contradistinguished from the world to come. The meaning is, that we are not to fix our affections on worldly objects - on what the world can furnish - as our portion, with the spirit with which they do who live only for this world, regardless of the life to come. We are not to make this world the object of our chief affection; we are not to be influenced by the maxims and feelings which prevail among those who do. Compare the Rom 12:2 note, and Jam 4:4 note. See also Mat 16:26; Luk 9:25; 1Co 1:20; 1Co 3:19; Gal 4:3; Col 2:8.

Neither the things that are in the world - Referred to in the next verse as “the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” This explanation shows what John meant by “the things that are in the world.” He does not say that we are in no sense to love “anything” that is in the material world; that we are to feel no interest in flowers, and streams, and forests, and fountains; that we are to have no admiration for what God has done as the Creator of all things; that we are to cherish no love for any of the inhabitants of the world, our friends and kindred; or that we are to pursue none of the objects of this life in making provision for our families; but that we are not to love the things which are sought merely to pamper the appetite, to please the eye, or to promote pride in living. These are the objects sought by the people of the world; these are not the objects to be sought by the Christian.

If any man love the world ... - If, in this sense, a person loves the world, it shows that he has no true religion; that is, if characteristically he loves the world as his portion, and lives for that; if it is the ruling principle of his life to gain and enjoy that, it shows that his heart has never been renewed, and that he has no part with the children of God. See the Jam 4:4 note; Mat 6:24 note.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

If any man love the world, this wicked world, or any thing in it, as pleasures, riches, honours, so that his affections be more upon these then upon God, the charity of the Father (or of God) is not in him. (Witham)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

What he here means by the forbidden object of our love, must be gathered from his own explication, 1Jo 2:16. The love itself forbidden, in reference thereto, is that excess thereof, whereby any adhere to terrene things, as their best good; wherewith, as he adds, any sincere love to God is inconsistent, as Mat 6:24; Luk 14:3; a consideration so awful and tremendous, that it is not strange the precept it enforces should have so solemn and urgent an introduction.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vers. 15-17. Secondly, walking in the light excludes all love of the world. This is another form of darkness.

Love not the world. Obviously, both "love" and "the world" are used in a different sense insmov Joh_3:16, where it is said that "God loved the world." The one love is selfish, the other unselfish. In the one case "the world" means the sinful elements of human life, in the other the human race. It is most important to distinguish the different meanings of ko in the New Testament. Connected with komein and comere, it means

(1) ornament; (1Pe_3:3)

(2) the ordered universe, mundus; (Rom_1:20)

(3) the earth; (Joh_1:9)

(4) the inhabitants of the earth; (Joh_3:16)

(5) all that is alienated from God, as here and frequently in St. John"s writings.

The things of the world are not those things in the world which may become objects of sinful affection, such as wealth or honour, still less such as scenery or physical objects. St. John is not condemning a love of those material advantages which are God"s gifts, nor of nature, which is God"s work. He is forbidding those things the love of which rivals and excludes the love of God all those immoral tendencies and pursuits which give the world its evil character. The world kosmov is order; the things in the world are the elements of disorder those things which arise from each man making himself the center of the world, or of some little world of his own creation.

These rival centers clash with one another, and also with the one true Center. All this St. John forbids. With tasmw, cf. ti h+n ejn tw ajnqrwpw. (Joh_2:25) Note the mhde (not mhte), nor yet: "Love not the world; no, nor any of its ways." As so often, St. John goes on to enforce his words by a negative statement of similar but not identical import. Love of the world absolutely excludes the love of the Father. "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Some important authorities have tou Qeou for tou Patrov; the balance is decidedly for the latter.

Vers. 15-17.

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. (Psa_96:10) Sometimes the race of people thereon. (Joh_3:16) Sometimes the outer form of things. (1Co_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:

(1) Beyond all question there is a vast improvement in many respects, notably

(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.

(2) Notwithstanding all allowance to be made for these advances, there is still a sinful element of self-seeking, selfishness, pride, haughtiness, and boasting in the world, which is strenuously to be shunned. The lusts of the flesh are not dead yet. The pride of life lingers nay, it flourishes yet. The "interests" of commerce are regarded as paramount.

(3) There are forms of ill in the world which have actually developed under modern civilization, and against which it behooves a Christian steadily and steadfastly to protest. Selfishness of the lords of the soil, etc. In all that partakes of the world-spirit, i.e., self first, a believer is to have no concern, no sympathy whatever.

(4) Nor can it be questioned that since the apostle"s time there have arisen, and in our day there still exists, forms of the world-spirit even in the Churches of Christ. Sectarian strives, heart-burnings, huge hierarchies, dead forms, high offices, gorgeous vestments, large ambitions, exclusive claims, etc. All these, though clad in religious guise, are as much a part of the lust and pride of the worldliness as aught outside; and, because found in the Church, must be more offensive to God, because of the pretence of sanctity which attaches to them. From all this our hearts must recoil. It is "the world," though baptized with the Church"s sacred name. It is altogether inconsistent with the simplicity that is in Christ. It cannot be reconciled with the Lord"s teaching in Mat_20:25-28.

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 themselvesessentially 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 prettymuch 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.

1. There is a far better pursuit open to us, which will open up noblerprospects. "He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." Here the opposite course is pointed out 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

1. in the Word,

2. by the openings of Providence, and

3. the teachings of the Holy Ghost.

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.

Vers. 15-17.

An apostolic prohibition, and the reason thereof.

not the world, neither the things that are in the world," etc. The text is not addressed to either of the three previously mentioned classes in particular, but to all the apostle"s readers. Genuine Christians need to guard themselves against love of the world. The worldly spirit is about us, it pervades much of society, it is active and vigorous; and within us there is a residue of the old worldly and sinful nature. By reason of these things even a true Christian is in danger of loving the world. Notice

I THE APOSTOLIC PROHIBITION. "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.

1. The world is not the material universe. This is a creation of God, and it vividly illustrates some of his infinite perfections. "The heavens declare the glory of God," etc.. (Psa_19:1-6) The light is the garment in which he robes himself. (Psa_104:2) The fertility of the earth is an illustration of his bounty and beneficence. A divinely inspired poet, having surveyed the creations of God, exclaimed, "O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches." We read, "The Lord shall rejoice in his works." There is in nature endless significance for our instruction, much that is vast and sublime to awe us, much that is beautiful to delight us, much that is bountiful to supply our needs, and much to lead our thoughts to God. There is a sense in which we may love this beautiful creation, and with all the more of warmth because our Father made it and sustains it!

1. The world is not the world of men as such, or mankind. It is not the world of Joh_3:16, "God so loved the world," etc. With the love of benevolence and pity God loved the world of sinful men. And we should

2. cherish feelings of kindness and pity for those who do not yet know Jesus Christ should love them as God loved the world.

3. The world here is the world of sinners as distinguished from those that are true Christians, or, as Ebrard expresses it, "unchristian humanity." By "the world" St. John does not mean the material, but the moral world, the heathen world. In his view, as Dr. Culross says, "the world is in sin. Its sinful condition is variously represented. It is in darkness; it knows not God; it finds his commandments grievous; it lies in wickedness; it is in death not merely exposed to it as a penalty, but in it as a condition. The "things" of it are such as these lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." The "world" of John"s day we know, as to its actual condition, from other sources. Let any one turn over the pages of Tacitus, Juvenal, Martial, or Persius, with their often-unconscious disclosures of prevailing licentiousness and cruelty; and what he learns will put "colour" into John"s outlines. The same world at heart we still find in the present century, under modem conditions. It has grown in wealth. It has become civilized and refined. Law has become a mightier thing. The glory of science was never half so bright. But, looking close in, we still find the old facts a dislike of God and love of sin, pride and self-sufficiency, a godless and selfish use of things, men "hating one another," selfishness fighting selfishness, an infinite mass of misery." "Neither the things that are in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the vain-glory of life." By "the lust of the flesh "we understand the inordinate desire for sensual indulgences, the longing for the gratification of the carnal appetites. How prevalent is this lust! We see it in the epicure, in the wine-bibber, and in others in still coarser and more degrading forms. It is most terrible in its effects upon the soul. "The lust of the eyes," interpreted by the aid of other Scriptures, seems to mean the eager desire of possession directed towards temporal and material goods, or covetousness. It is not the desire to look upon pleasing, or beautiful, or sublime things, which is here condemned, but the sinful look of avarice. In confirmation of this view, see Pro_23:5 Pro_27:20; Ecc_4:8 Ecc_5:10; Luk_14:18, Luk_14:19. Probably there is also a reference to the feeling of hatred and the desire of revenge, as indicated in Psa_17:11 Psa_54:7 Psa_91:8 Psa_92:11. "The vain-glory of life" is "the lust of shining and making a boasting display." It points to that which is so prevalent in our day the desire for grand houses, and costly furniture, and fine horses and carriages, and rich and fashionable dresses; the effort to give luxurious parties and splendid entertainments, and to outshine our neighbours in our mode of life. These things are of the world, worldly; and- these things Christians are exhorted not to love.

II THE REASON OF THIS PROHIBITION. The reason, is twofold.

1. Because the love of the world excludes the love of God. "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." Man cannot love the holy Father and the unchristian world. These two affections cannot coexist in one heart. Either of them, by its very nature, excludes the other. And "the things that are in the world," the love of which is prohibited, are "not of the Father, but of the world." They do not proceed from him; they are utterly opposed to his character and will; and, therefore, affection to them cannot dwell in the heart that loves him. Sensuality and covetousness and vain-glory are irreconcilably opposed to love to God.

2. Because the world and worldly things are transient. "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof." "The world" is still the unchristian world. It has in it no elements of permanence. The darkness of moral error and sin must recede before the onward march of the light of truth and holiness. The principles and words which oppose the Church of God are transient; they are passing away. Shall we set our hearts upon such fleeting things? And the lusts of the world are evanescent also. The gratifications of the flesh and. of the senses quickly cease. The things which many so eagerly desire and pursue, the pleasures and riches, the honours and vain shows of this world, are passing away like dreams of the night. And even the appetite for some of these things fails. The time comes when the desire for sensual gratifications ceases. Indulgence in the pleasures of the world tends to destroy the capacity for enjoying them. When that time comes, the man of the world, sated, wearied, disappointed, regards these things bitterly and cynically, finding that he has wasted heart and life upon them. Therefore let us not love them. But, on the other hand, "he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." The doing of his will is the evidence and expression of our love to him. Here, as so frequently in the writings of St. John, we see the importance of action. It is not love in profession that is blessed, but love in practice. "If ye love me, ye will keep my commandments." It is not the creed that is commended, but the conduct. He who thus acts out his love to God abides for ever. He is connected with a stable order of things. He is vitally related to God himself, and is an heir of immortal and blessed life. He is now a participator in the life of Christ; and to all his disciples he gives the great assurance, "Because I live, ye shall live also.

By all these considerations let us not love the unchristian, unsatisfying, and perishing world; but through our Lord Jesus Christ, let us seek to love the Father with an ever-growing affection. W.J.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

To you all, whether fathers, young men, or little children, I say, Love not the world - Pursue your victory by overcoming the world. If any man love the world - Seek happiness in visible things, he does not love God.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

world

kosmos = world-system. 1Jn 3:13; Joh 7:7. (See Scofield "Rev 13:8").

The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Warning against the love of the world:

v. 15. 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.

v. 16. 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.

v. 17. And the world passeth away and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.

On the fact that he is dealing with believers who have a large experience of the mercy of the Father and of the grace of Christ, the apostle bases his warning appeal: Do not love the world nor the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. It is true, on the one hand, that we should make all men, regardless of their attitude toward the Gospel, the object of our merciful and benevolent regard, Gal 6:9-10. Above all, we should try to bring them all the wonderful news of the grace of God in Christ Jesus, Mat 28:19-20. But an entirely different matter is that of fraternizing with them while the unbelievers persist in rejecting the Word of God and in remaining in their spiritual darkness and condemnation. In this sense we cannot and should not love the world, the unbelievers. We should shun and detest the things in which the unbelievers find their enjoyment, with which they are exclusively concerned—the avaricious love of money, the pleasures of sin, particularly transgressions of the Sixth Commandment, ambition for honor before men, business schemes and practices which are at variance with the law of love. If a person professes to be a Christian and yet seeks the company of the world, of the children of the world, and takes part in the sinful pleasures, pastimes, and practices in which they indulge, he thereby convicts himself as not being a genuine disciple of the Lord, and shows that the love toward God, his heavenly Father, is not living in his heart. For how can a person be united with the enemies of God in the bonds of a true friendship? Where love for the world and its ways begins, there begins also the hatred of God. Where love of the world gains the ascendancy, there is nothing but spiritual death.

How this condition is brought about the apostle explains: For everything that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the proud ostentation of life, not are they of the Father, but they are of the world. That is the entire imagination, the sole object of the children of this world: the lust of the flesh, the desire to have and enjoy that which pleases their corrupt nature, the evil inclination of their hearts, whether this be in eating and drinking or in sensual delights; the lust of the eyes, when people seek to gratify the sensuality of their hearts by such sights as are intended to satisfy this desire, as in impure, lewd pictures and filthy theatrical exhibitions; the pride, the braggart boasting, the conspicuous ostentation of this life, when people make it a point to show off their wealth, very often ill-gotten gains. All these things are not in agreement with the new spiritual mind which should be found in the believers, in the children of God; they do not come from above, from the Father of Lights, but from below, from the kingdom of darkness. Those sins are the sphere in which the children of the world live and move, and from which the believers should always be far removed.

With warning emphasis the apostle therefore adds: And the world passes away and its lust;

but he that does the will of God remains to eternity. This world with all its sinful lusts and desires is passing away; the sentence of condemnation has been spoken, and the final destruction is inevitable. The thought is not only that the world and all its so-called pleasures are transient, but also that they are corrupt and subject to eternal damnation. Only he that does the will of God, that walks and conducts himself always in conformity with the will of the heavenly Father, whose fellowship with the Lord expresses itself in a behavior which always meets with His approval, only lie will obtain eternal life, for only he will have given that evidence in love which proves the presence of faith in the heart. Thus we Christians must never forget that our faith will bear the fruit of a Christian conduct, of true brotherly love, and of denial of the world and its lusts.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Observe here, 1. That our apostle doth not, as he did before, direct his advice to any one particular sort or rank of Christians in special, but unto all in general; Love not the world, &c.

Observe, 2. That the prohibition here is not absoltue, but comparatively only. It is not an ordinata charitas, but inordinata cupiditas, that is here forbidden; we may look upon the world, and desire it, delight in it, and in the enjoyment of it, provided we do not chuse it for our portion, delight in it as our chief good.

Observe, 3. St. John doth not say, Leave the world, but Love not the world; he doth not say, use not the world, but Love it not; that is, seek not after the world inordinately, and delight not in it immoderately. Seek it we may, but but not in an undue manner; delight in it we may, but not in an undue measure.

Observe, 4. The arguments which our apostle makes use of to enforce his dehortation.

1. The contrariety of the love of the world to the love of God; If any man love the world (in an undue manner and measure) the love of the Father is not in him; that is, the worldly lover has no interest in the Father’s love; the world’s darlings are none of God’s friends, the world’s lover has no love of the Father in him; there is no positive love of God in him in whom there is a superlative love of the world.

Lord, how desperate and dangerous a sin then is worldly love! If the love of the Father be not in him, the hatred of the Father is towards him, Jas 4:4 Know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?

A second argument to dissuade from worldly love is contained in the 16th verse: For all that is in the world; that is, all that is in esteem and vogue with the men of the world, is either the lust of the flesh, that is all sensual delights and enjoyments, which occasion intemperance: or the lust of the eye, the desire of gold, silver, stately houses, rich gardens, which tend to gratify the eye: and the pride of life, or the desires of honours and dignities, high titles, and places of advancement, which tend to gratify our pride, all these are not of the Father; that is, they are not desires excited by him, nor are they pleasing to him, but are the desires of the men of the world, and proceed from that corruption which is in them.

The third argument is taken from the world itself, and its short continuance, in the 17th verse, the world passeth away, that is, all the things of the world, which the men of the world doat upon, and are in love with, are of a fading transitory nature in themselves, and they pass away from their possessors and owners. And the laws thereof: that is, the pleasure which they had in gratifying their lusts passeth away, but the sting remaineth, and the torment abideth.

It is added, But he that doth the will of God abideth forever. Behold here the permanent felicity, not of the knowing, but obedient Christian. He abideth forever, not in this, but in the other world, in a state of endless happiness. Although eternity, in its most comprehensive notion, be peculiar to a Diety, and incommunicable to a creature, yet it is that which God has made rational creatures capable of; and as he abideth for ever, so will he grant to them that do his will to abide with him for ever also; The world passeth away, and the lust therof; but he doth the will of God abideth for ever.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

15–17. Love not the world. An exhortation to all three classes just named. The love of the world and of God are not reconcilable. See notes on James 4:4. By “the world” is meant the ways of the world, its passions, pleasures and pursuits.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

15–17. THE THINGS TO BE AVOIDED;—THE WORLD AND ITS WAYS

Having reminded them solemnly of the blessedness of their condition as members of the Christian family, whether old or young, and having declared that this blessedness of peace, knowledge, and strength is his reason for writing to them, he goes on to exhort them to live in a manner that shall be worthy of this high estate, and to avoid all that is inconsistent with it. In chap. 1. walking in darkness was shewn to be incompatible with fellowship with God. Here love of God is shewn to be incompatible with affection for the world.

15. [489][490] read ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ Θεοῦ. Some later authorities have the conflate reading ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τοῦ πατρός.

[489] 5th century. Brought by Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople, from Alexandria, and afterwards presented by him to Charles I. in 1628. In the British Museum. All three Epistles.

[490] 5th century. A palimpsest: the original writing has been partially rubbed out and the works of Ephraem the Syrian have been written over it. In the National Library at Paris. Part of the First and Third Epistles; 1Jn 1:1 to 1Jn 4:2; 3Jn 1:3-14. Of the whole N.T. the only Books entirely missing are 2 John and 2 Thessalonians.

15. μὴ ἀγαπᾶτε τὸν κόσμον. The asyndeton is remarkable. S. John has just stated his premises, his readers’ happiness as Christians. He now abruptly states the practical conclusion, without any introductory οὖν or διὰ τοῦτο. Our equally abrupt ‘Love not the world’ comes from the Rhemish. Tyndale and others weaken it by expansion; ‘So that ye love not the worlde.’ And obviously S. John is once more addressing all his readers, not the νεανίσκοι only. Omnibus his pariter mandat (Bede). As was said above on 1Jn 2:2, we must distinguish between the various meanings of the Apostle’s favourite word, κόσμος. In Joh 3:16 he tells us that ‘God loved the world’, and here he tells us that we must not do so. “S. John is never afraid of an apparent contradiction when it saves his readers from a real contradiction.… The opposition which is on the surface of his language may be the best way of leading us to the harmony which lies below it” (Maurice). The world which the Father loves is the whole human race. The world which we are not to love is all that is alienated from Him, all that prevents men from loving Him in return. The world which God loves is His creature and His child: the world which we are not to love is His rival. The best safeguard against the selfish love of what is sinful in the world is to remember God’s unselfish love of the world. Ὁ κόσμος here is that from which S. James says the truly religious man keeps himself ἄσπιλον, friendship with which is ἔχθρα τοῦ Θεοῦ (Jas 1:27; Jas 4:4). It is not enough to say that ‘the world’ here means ‘earthly things, so far as they tempt to sin,’ or ‘sinful lusts,’ or ‘worldly and impious men.’ It means all of these together: all that acts as a rival to God; all that is alienated from God and opposed to Him, especially sinful men with their sinful lusts. Ὁ κόσμος and ἡ σκοτία are almost synonymous. To love the one is to love the other (Joh 3:19). To be ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ (1Jn 2:9; 1Jn 2:11) is to be ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου (1Jn 2:16; 1Jn 4:5). Nor is μὴ ἀγαπᾶτε to be weakened into ‘love not too much’: it means quite literally, ‘love not at all.’ The world ‘lies in the evil one’ (1Jn 2:19); and those who ‘have overcome the evil one’ cannot love the world.

μηδὲ τὰ ἐν τῷκ. Nor yet the things &c. ‘Love not the world; no, nor anything in that sphere.’ Comp. Mat 6:25; Mat 23:9-10; and μὴ συναναμίγνυσθαι … τῷ τοιούτῳ μηδὲ συνεσθίειν (1Co 5:11). Τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, as is plain from 1Jn 2:16, are not material objects, which can be desired and possessed quite innocently, although they may also be occasions of sin. Rather, they are those elements in the world which are necessarily evil, its lusts and ambitions and jealousies, which stamp it as the kingdom of ‘the ruler of this world’ (Joh 12:31) and not the kingdom of God.

ἐάν τις ἀγαπᾷ. Once more, as in 1Jn 2:1, the statement is made quite general by the hypothetical form: everyone who does so is in this case. The Lord had proclaimed the same principle; ‘No man can serve two masters … Ye cannot serve God and mammon’ (Mat 6:24). So also S. James; ‘Whosoever would be a friend of the world maketh himself an enemy of God’ (1Jn 4:4). Comp. Gal 1:10. Thus we arrive at another pair of those opposites of which S. John is so fond. We have had light and darkness, truth and falsehood, love and hate; we now have love of the Father and love of the world. The world which is coextensive with darkness must exclude the God who is light.

ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ πατρός occurs nowhere else: hence the reading of [567][568], ἡ ἀγ. τ. Θεοῦ. It means man’s love to the Father, not His to man (see on 1Jn 2:5); and it points to the duty of Christians as children of God. They must not love their Father’s enemies. The order of the Greek is perhaps to be preserved. There is not the love of the Father in him. Whatever profession there may be of Christianity, the guiding principle of his life is something quite different from devotion to God.

[567] 5th century. Brought by Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople, from Alexandria, and afterwards presented by him to Charles I. in 1628. In the British Museum. All three Epistles.

[568] 5th century. A palimpsest: the original writing has been partially rubbed out and the works of Ephraem the Syrian have been written over it. In the National Library at Paris. Part of the First and Third Epistles; 1Jn 1:1 to 1Jn 4:2; 3Jn 1:3-14. Of the whole N.T. the only Books entirely missing are 2 John and 2 Thessalonians.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

15-17.] Dehortation from the love of the world. The preceding designation of the different classes has been, as so frequently in St. John, their ideal designation, in the perfection of their several states of Christian life: and now, as so often, he brings that ideal state to bear on real temptations and duties. The love of the Father, the abiding in Him by His word abiding in them, the victory over him in whom ὅλος ὁ κόσμος κεῖται,—these particulars have been enounced: and though there may be a more apparent reason why the young should have this dehortation addressed to them, and more apparent allusion to the νενικήκατε τὸν πονηρόν in the bringing out of the κόσμος, yet there can be no doubt that it is to all that this address is made. All are in the world, and as long as they are, are in danger of being betrayed by the senses to cleave to the things present and seen, to the forgetfulness of those which are absent and unseen. This general reference is shewn by the ἐάν τις which follows. Love not the world (what is ὁ κόσμος, in the diction of St. John? And what does he import by ἀγαπᾷν τὸν κόσμον? When we read Joh 3:16, οὕτως ἠγάπησεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν κόσμον, ὥστε τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ τὸν μονογενῆ ἔδωκεν, κ.τ.λ., are we to understand the same thing by the words as here? and if not, are both κόσμος and ἀγαπᾷν taken in a different sense, or if one only, which? Beza replies, “Mundum considerat quatenus cum Dei voluntate non consentit, et enim amorem damnat qui nos a Deo abducit: alioquin dicitur Deus ipse suum mundum infinito quodam amore dilexisse, id est, eos quos ex mundo elegit,” The palpable error of this last “id est,” directs us to the right solution of both questions. The κόσμος in both cases is the same, the ἀγαπᾷν is different. In Joh 3:16 it is the love of divine compassion and creative and redeeming mercy: here, it is the love of selfish desire, cherishing avarice or pride. But then recurs our question, What is ὁ κόσμος? And it is no easy one to answer. If we reply so as to make it personal, we are met at once by the difficulty of τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ: from which we cannot escape by saying that these are as below ἡ ἐπιθυμία κ.τ.λ., for none can be said ἀγαπᾷν τὴν ἐπιθυμίαν, but the ἐπιθυμία is the ἀγάπη. Hence some have been led to take these three, ἡ ἐπιθ. τῆς σαρκός, ἡ ἐπιθ. τῶν ὀφθ., ἡ ἀλαζονεία τοῦ βίου, as put for the things desired, and the material of the ἀλαζονεία. So Calvin, Episcopius, Bengel: but this manifestly will not hold, owing to the opposition in ver. 17 between ὁ κόσμος κ. ἡ ἐπιθυμία αὐτοῦ on the one hand, and ὁ ποιῶν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ on the other, which evidently requires that its first member should be personal as well as its second. And this last will be a weighty reason also against 2) taking ὁ κόσμος as merely material, the present order of things, in so far as it is alien from God. We are thus brought to a point, for our understanding of ὁ κόσμος, intermediate between personal and material. But then our question is, which of the two is to take the first place? Is ὁ κόσμος the world of matter, including the men who dwell in it, or is it the world of man, including matter as subordinate to man? If the former, we seem in danger of falling into a dualism, in which God and the world of matter should be set over against one another as independent existences: for thus the evil one, the ἄρχων τοῦ κόσμου, and his agents the κοσμοκράτορες, would themselves be included in the κόσμος, and adjuncts to the world of matter: a mode of thought which no where appears in the apostolic writings. We are thus narrowed to our other alternative, that of understanding ὁ κόσμος as of human persons, including the inferior ranks of created being, and the mass of inanimate matter which they inhabit. Let us see whether this view will meet the necessities of our text and of similar passages. Thus understood, the κόσμος was constituted at first in Adam, well-pleasing to God and obedient to Him: it was man’s world, and in man it is summed up: and in man it fell from God’s light into the darkness of selfish pursuits and ἐπιθυμίαι κοσμικαί, in and by which man, who should be rising through his cosmic corporeal nature to God, has become materialized in spirit and dragged down so as to be worldly and sensual and like him who has led him astray, and who now, having thus subjected man’s nature by temptation, has become the ἄρχων τοῦ κόσμου. And thus the κόσμος is “man and man’s world,” in his and its fall from God. It was this world which God loved, in its enmity to Him, with the holy love of Redemption: it is this world which we are not to love, in its alienation from Him, with the selfish love of participation. And this κόσμος is spoken of sometimes as personal, sometimes as material, according to the context in which it occurs. To give but a few decisive examples; of the purely personal sense, Joh 15:18, εἰ ὁ κόσμος ὑμᾶς μισεῖ κ.τ.λ., followed by εἰ ἐμὲ ἐδίωξαν, καὶ ὑμᾶς διώξουσιν, where the singular is broken up into the individual persons: of the purely material, Joh 11:9, ἐάν τις περιπατῇ ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ, οὐ προσκόπτει, ὅτι τὸ φῶς τοῦ κόσμου τούτου βλέπει. And in passages like the present, these two senses alternate with and interpenetrate one another: e. g. in τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, the κόσμος is apparently material and local: in the opposition which follows, between the love of the world and the love of the Father, the personal meaning begins to be evident: in what follows, πᾶν τὸ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, which at first sight seems material, is explained by ἡ ἐπιθυμία τῆς σαρκός, κ.τ.λ., which are the subjective desires of the τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ, not the things themselves: then, finally, in ver. 17 where ὁ κόσμος καὶ ἡ ἐπιθυμία αὐτοῦ is opposed to ὁ ποιῶν τὸ θέλημα τοῦ θεοῦ, it is plain that we have passed, by the transition in the last verse, from the material to the personal sense altogether. This account may serve to explain that which has given so much trouble to Commentators here, the question whether ἐπιθυμία is not put for the thing itself which is desired: the fact being that, the κόσμος including the material world in the men, the ἐπιθυμίαι, which are in the men, are in the κόσμος, as well as the things of which they are the desires, and which are in their turn included in them. See on the whole, the long and elaborate note in Düsterdieck, the results of which are nearly the same as those arrived at above. To detail all the shades of opinion, would be hopeless: they will mostly be found, classified and discussed, in the note referred to), nor yet (not = μήτε, but carrying with it an exclusive and disjunctive force, implying that what follows is not identical with what went before. That was spoken of the world itself, the totality: “have no love for this present world as such.” But an escape from this prohibition might be sought by men who would deny in the abstract the charge of worldly-mindedness, but devoted themselves to some one object of those followed by worldly men: so that it is necessary to add, after “Love not the world,”—“no, nor any thing in it”) the things in the world (explained above: here, the objects after which the ungodly world’s ἐπιθυμία reaches out, and on which its ἀλαζονεία is founded). If any man (see on the same expression above, ver. 1) love the world, the love of the Father is not in him (ἡ ἀγ. τοῦ πατρός, love to the Father, as opposed to his love to the world: not as Luther (2), Seb.-Schmidt, and Calov., the love which the Father hath shewed to us: nor as Bengel, “amor Patris erga suos et filialis erga Patrem.” As Bede, “unum cor duos sibi tam adversarios amores non capit.” Philo says, fragm. ex Joh. Damasceni sacris parallelis, p. 370 b (vol. ii. p. 649), ἀμήχανον συνυπάρχειν τὴν πρὸς κόσμον ἀγάπην τῇ πρὸς τὸν θεὸν ἀγάπῃ, ὡς ἀμήχανον συνυπάρχειν ἀλλήλοις φῶς καὶ σκότος).

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

15-17. Warning.12. Before passing on to the more direct application of the general principles which he has now stated in outline, the writer reminds his readers of what their position is and what is involved in it. He knows that they are harassed by doubts as to the validity of their Christian position, so he hastens to assure them of it, and to use his assurance as the ground of the appeal which he is making. He writes to them the Epistle which is in course of composition (γράφω), because they are already members of the community of light. In virtue of what Christ is and has done, the sin which separates them from God has been, actually in part, potentially altogether, removed. The old, in their experience, and the young, in their strength, have a power which stands them in good stead. They can enjoy fellowship with God who is light, and in the communion of that fellowship they can see clearly so as to “walk” without stumbling, to avoid the false allurements of the world, and the consequences which would follow their acceptance of the false teaching of the many antichrists whose presence shows that the last hour is come. And the reasons which led him to write that part of his letter which has already been penned (ἔγραψα; cf. 27, where the ταῦτα shows that the reference is to the preceding verses) are similar. Those who have learned by experience the truth of the Fatherhood of God can confess the sins which their Father is faithful and just to forgive, and as παιδία who need and can obtain fatherly discipline and guidance they can go forward in the strength of love. Thus their position as Christians is the ground of his appeal. Much can be said to them which it would be impossible to address to those outside. Most, in fact, of what he has to say is of the nature of calling to remembrance that which they already know. The true safeguard against their present dangers lies in their realizing their Christian position, in carrying out in life the faith and knowledge which they already possess, in rekindling the enthusiasm of earlier days which has now grown cold. The experience of age, and the vigour of youth and early manhood, supply all that is needed to restore health in Christian thought and life. The life of the society is safe if the two classes of which it is composed will contribute of their treasure to the common store, and use for themselves and for the community the powers of which they are in actual possession.γράφω] The present naturally refers to that which is in the course of composition, the letter as a whole. The present tense is used in 1:4, 2:1, 13 (bis). In each case the reference may be to the whole Epistle, though where ταῦτα is used it has suggested to some the probability of a more limited reference. The simplest explanation of the use of the aorist in ver. 14 (ἔγραψα) is that the writer turns back in thought to that part of the letter which he has already finished, the writing of which can now be regarded as a simple complete act. Of the many explanations which have been offered this would seem on the whole to be the most natural, and least unsatisfactory. The suggestion that the author wished to vary the monotony of six repetitions of the same word need hardly be taken seriously. He is afraid neither of monotony nor of repetition, and the slight changes which he introduces into his repetitions are seldom, if ever, devoid of significance. A reference to a former document, either the Gospel, or a lost Epistle, is not probable. The reasons given for having written do not suit the Gospel, while they fit it admirably with the present Epistle, and with that part of it which has already taken shape. The Gospel was undoubtedly written for Christians rather than for those who were still “of the world.” But its object was to instruct, to increase faith and deepen spiritual life, by imparting wider knowledge and clearer understanding of the real meaning of things already known. The aim of the Epistle is to emphasize the important points of what the readers have already grasped, and to persuade them to use their knowledge to meet present dangers. It was because of the knowledge which all possessed, of the Christian experience of the elder, and the strength and achievements in the Christian warfare of the younger among his readers, that he could make his appeal. But for that, he could not have written what he had written. A reference to a former Epistle must almost necessarily have been made clearer and more definite. It is, of course, quite possible that he had written to them before the present occasion. That the Canon has preserved but a selection of the Apostolic and sub-Apostolic correspondence is proved by the references contained in the Pauline Epistles, and probably in 3Jn 1:9. And if such a letter had been written, it might have been misunderstood and have required further explanation or justification (cf. Karl, p. 32), as S. Paul found on two occasions during his correspondence with the Corinthians. But there is nothing in the passage to suggest that this was the case.

It is still more difficult to suppose that the presents and the aorists have exactly the same reference. The use of the “epistolary aorist” by which the author mentally transfers himself to the position of the recipients of the letter, or “regards his letter as ideally complete,” is established. But it does not give us a satisfactory explanation of the change from present to aorist. Law’s suggestion (The Tests of Life, p. 309), that after writing as far as the end of ver. 13 “the author was interrupted in his composition, and that, resuming his pen, he naturally caught up his line of thought by repeating his last sentence,” is ingenious. But again it must be noticed that there is nothing to indicate that such a break actually took place. Repetition with slight changes not insignificant is a regular feature of the author’s style.On the whole, the explanation to which preference has been given above is the best solution of a difficult problem, unless we prefer to leave it in the class of problems insoluble without the fuller knowledge of the exact circumstances, which doubtless made the writer’s meaning, and reasons for writing as he did, quite clear to those who read his words.

τεκνία] The use of the diminutive is confined in the New Testament to the Johannine writings, with the exception of one passage in S. Paul (Gal 4:19) where the reading is doubtful. It occurs only once in the Gospel. Its use is comparatively frequent in the Epistle (2:1. 12, 28, 3:7, 18, 4:4, 5:21). It is a natural word for the aged disciple, or Apostle, to use when addressing the members of a Church of whom many were no doubt his “sons in the Faith,” and practically all must have belonged to a younger generation than himself. Differences of meaning must not always be pressed, but the word expresses community of nature, as contrasted with παιδία, which suggests the need of moral training and guidance (cf. 1Co 14:20, μὴ παιδία γίνεσθε ταῖς φρεσίν). Throughout the Epistle the word seems to be used as a term of affection for the whole society to which the author writes. The final warning of the Epistle (v. 21) against idols, literal or metaphorical, could hardly be addressed to the children as opposed to the grown-up members of the community.

The regular usage of the word in the Epistle has an important bearing on the next difficulty which these verses present, the question whether a double or triple division of the readers is intended. In the former case the clauses containing the vocatives τεκνία and παιδία are addressed to the whole community, which is then divided into the two classes of πατέρες and νεανίσκοι. This is now generally recognized as the most satisfactory interpretation. A triple division in which fathers are the middle term, could only be accepted as a last necessity. It might be possible, as Karl maintains, that the writer should first state the two extremes and then add the mean. But it is in the last degree improbable. Augustine’s explanation, “Filioli, quia baptismo neonati sunt, patres, quia Christum patrem et antiquum dierum agnoscunt, adolescentes, quia fortes sunt et ualidi,” fails to justify the relative position of the last two terms. And both terms, τεκνία and παιδία, have their significance as addressed to the whole body. All the children of the Kingdom share in the forgiveness of sins which Christ has won for them, and all are παιδία; for the teaching and exhortation, which he has found it necessary to impart to them, show that none of them has finished his Christian education. Not even the eldest of them is as yet τέλειος.ὅ ι] The third difficulty of the passage is the meaning of ὅτι. Does it introduce the contents of what is written, or the reasons for writing? Usage is probably in favour of the “causal” meaning. There is no certain instance in the Epistle of the use of ὅτι after γράφω in the “declarative” sense (cf. ver. 21). The “contents” are generally expressed by an objective accusation (ταῦτα, ἐντολὴν καινήν). But this is not decisive. It is a question which must be decided by the general meaning of the individual passage. In these verses the causal meaning certainly gives the better sense. Rothe, indeed, makes out a case for the declarative. “Here again (as in 1:5) John gives expression in another pregnant formula to that which he has to say to them. Shortly summarized it is this. He would have them know that in their case none of the necessary conditions for a complete Christianity are wanting, in all its real earnestness and joyful confidence. He adds further that this is not the first time that he has written this to them” (Der erste Brief Johannis, p. 61 f.). In other words, he has nothing new to tell them as Christians. He is merely reminding them of what they are. But surely the writer is doing more than this. He does not merely remind them of their Christian standing. He is trying to show them how their position as Christians enables them to meet the dangers to which they are exposed, and so to justify and enforce the appeal which he is making. It is because they are in fellowship with God and have real experience of the Fatherhood of God that he can appeal to them with confidence that his appeal will meet with a response.

ἀφέωνται] Cf. Luk 5:20, Luk 5:23, Luk 5:7:47, 48, and (probably) Joh 20:23. The present is used in Matthew and Mark.

διὰ τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ] The “name” always stands for that which is implied by the name. In Jewish thought the name is never merely appellative. Because Christ is what He is, and has done what He has done, true relations between God and man have again become possible. If any definite name is intended, it is probably the name “Jesus Christ” (cf. 2:1). The expression is not the mere equivalent of “because of His position as Paraclete and Propitiation.” See Briggs, The Messiah of the Apostles, p. 475.The origin of the phrase is probably to be found in the Old Testament doctrine that God continued His kindness to Israel, in spite of their rebelliousness, for His name’s sake. Cf. especially Eze 20:8, Eze 20:9, “They rebelled—but I wrought for My name’s sake”; 36:22, “I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for Mine holy name.” It has, however, acquired a somewhat different meaning as used by the author. We may also compare the Rabbinic parallel, quoted by Schlatter, “The wise say, For His name’s sake He dealt with them (עָשָׁה עִמָּהֶם לַמַען שְׁמוֹ, Mechilta, Exo 14:15, Exo 14:29 b).

τεκνια] τεκνα1. 10. 40: παιδια27. 29. 66**. 68. 103. 106 Rev_10 sah. cat. Sev.

υμιν] υμων L 31. 68. 99 ascr jscr kscr sahd.

15-17. Warning against love of the world.

The writer appeals to his readers, on the ground of their Christian standing, to avoid the love of the world. For him the world is the whole created system, considered as apart from God and opposed to God. But there is a tendency to narrow down its meaning either to humanity as estranged from God or regardless of God, or to all that is opposed to the Christian view. Such love for the present and finite, either as a whole or in its several parts, excludes the possibility of the higher love, of God and of men as brethren in Christ, which is the essential characteristic of “walking in light,” and the observance of which sums up the whole of Christian duty in one command, at once old and new. The evil desires which assail men through the lower part of their nature in general, or through the sense of vision in particular, or through the external good which falls to their lot, if regarded and used as opportunities for display, have their origin not in the Father, but in the world which has broken loose from Him. And the world and the desires which it fosters are alike transitory. Only that which falls in with God’s will, and carries forward His purpose, is of permanent value and lasting character.

15. ὁ κόσμος is not merely “an ethical conception” in the Johannine system, “mankind fallen away from God.” Such an interpretation leaves no intelligible sense to the phrase τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ. It is the whole system, considered in itself, apart from its Maker, though in many cases the context shows that its meaning is narrowed down to “humanity.” In the view of the writer, no doubt man is its most important part, the centre of the whole. But here it is used in its wider sense. The various interpretations which have been given of the phrase can be found in Huther and elsewhere. The majority of them are in reality paraphrases of particular instances of its use. As contrasted with ὁ κόσμος, τὰ ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ are the individual objects which excite admiration or love. In the next verse they are spoken of collectively. Comp. Jas 1:27, Jas 4:4.

ουκ εστιν] post πατρος P Aug.: post αυτω 31.

του πατρος א B K L P al. pler. cat. vg. sah. cop. syrutr arm. Or. Dam. Thphyl. Oec. Aug.] του θεου A C 3. 13. 43. 65. 58lect dscr harl. aethutr: του θεου και πατρος15. 18. 26. 36 boh-cod. (uid.).

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The world [τον κοσμον] . See on Joh 1:9.

The love of the Father [η αγαπη του πατρος] . The phrase occurs only here in the New Testament. It means love towards the Father, yet as generated by the Father 's love to man. Compare 1Jo 3:1. See on love of God, ver. 5.

Is not in him. This means more than that he does not love God : rather that the love of God does not dwell in him as the ruling principle of his life. Westcott cites a parallel from Philo : "It is impossible for love to the world to coexist with love to God, as it is impossible for light and darkness to coexist." Compare Plato. "Evils, Theodorus, can never pass away; for there must always remain something which is antagonist to good. Having no place among the gods in heaven, of necessity they hover around the earthly nature, and this mortal sphere. Wherefore we ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like Him is to become holy and just and wise" (" Theaetetus, " 176).

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

15. Μὴ ἀγαπᾶτε] Nolite diligere V., Love not. The command is not given to any particular class (as to the young) but to all That which man may not do, being what he is, God can do, John iii. 16 (ἠγάπησεν τὸν κόσμον). God looks through the surface of things by which man is misled to the very being which He created.

τὸν κόσμον] mundum V., the world, the order of finite being regarded as apart from God. The Roman empire with its idolatry of the Emperor as the representative of the State, presented the idea in a concrete and impressive form. See Essay I.

The system as an organised whole (κόσμος) is in other places considered as the dominant form of life, the age (ὁ αἰὼν οὗτος, ὁ νῦν αἰών). Comp. Rom. xii. 2; 2 Tim. iv. 2.

For the use of κόσμος see John i. 10 note.

_With ‘the world’ are joined ‘the things in the world, all, that is, which

finds its proper sphere and fulfilment in a finite order and without God. ‘To be in the world’ is the opposite to ‘being in God.’ The question is not of the present necessary limitations of thought and action but of their aim and object. Whatever is treated as complete without reference to God is so far a rival to God. This thought is brought out in the words which follow.

Augustine illustrates the idea in respect of the love of nature: Non te prohibet Deus amare ista sed non diligere ad beatitudinem, sed ad hoc probare et laudare ut ames creatorem. Quemadmodum...... si sponsus faceret sponses suse annulum et illa acceptum annulum plus diligeret quam sponsum qui illi fecerit annulum ; nonne in ipso dono sponsi anima adultera deprehenderetur quamvis hoc amaret quod dedit sponsus?

ἐάν tis...] There can be but one supreme object of moral devotion. All secondary objects will be referred to this. The love of the finite as an absolute object necessarily excludes the love of the Creator (the Father). Comp. Rom. i. 25; James iv. 4 (ἡ φιλία τοῦ κόσμου), Unum cor duos tam sibi adversarios amores non capit : Matt. vi. 24 (Bede, ad loc.).

Here as elsewhere St John places the contrast before his readers in its ultimate essential form, as of light and darkness, love and hatred. He assumes that-there cannot be a vacuum in the soul. So Augustine writes: Noli diligere mundum. Exclude malum amorem mundi ut implearis amore Dei. Vas es sed adhuc plenus es; funde quod habes ut accipias quod non habeas.

It will be observed also that he speaks here of the love of the Father

pia).

Under this category are included all desires which involve the appropriation of the object to which they are directed. By the separate mention of of ὀφθαλμοί the sense of σάρξ is proportionately limited.

In St John generally σάρξ is used to express humanity under the present

These characteristic feelings of want and of wealth, the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes, and the vainglory of life, are said to be, as man now is naturally, ef the world (c. iv. 5 note; John xv, 19; xvii. 14, 16; xviii. 36). The declaration marks the false position into which man has come. In his original

Jacit (fecerit Aug.) V., but he that doeth.. .abideth... While the fabric of ‘the world’ is being removed the Christian suffers no disturbance. The present in this sense is eternal. When all else changes the obedience of love continues unchanged. This abides in the new order to which indeed it properly belongs. The contrast to the world converted into an idol is not God, but the believer who in action strives to do God’s will. Hence St John does not say ‘he that loveth God,’ which might have been suggested by Ὁ. 15, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever. Sucha one is truly akin to the Son of man: Mk. iii. 35.

Compare John iv. 34; vi. 38; Vili. 17; 1x, 31.

The will of God expresses the true end of all things, and is opposed to ‘the desire’? which springs from a finite source as its ultimate origin. At the same time ‘the will of God’ includes the right use of all natural powers, faculties, instincts, which in

their essential nature answer to it: ©

Apoc. iv. 11. Compare 1 Thess. iv. 3.

In speaking of the divine will St John says ‘the will of God’ and not ‘the will of the Father’ as might seem to be suggested by 7. 16. Stress

is laid upon the divine majesty rather

than upon the divine love. ‘The will of the Father’ is found only in St Matthew (vi. 10 our Father, vii. 21; xii. 50 my Father; comp. xviii. 14; xxvi. 42). The will of our God and Father occurs Gal. i. 4 (comp. Eph. i. 5,9, 11). The will of God is not unfrequent: 1 Pet. ii. 15; iii. 17; iv. 19; Rom. i. 10; xii. 2; Heb. x. 36. In the Gospel of St John the phrase which isalways used by the Lord is the will of Him that sent me: iv. 34; V. 30; Vi. 38 fff. (vii. 17).

μένει els τ. αἰ. abideth for ever. Comp. John viii. 35; xii. 34; 2 Cor. ix, 9 (LXx.); 1 Pet. i. 25 (uxx.). The

absolute use of μένειν is not unfrequent: John xv. 16; 1 Pet. i. 23; Heb. x. 34. . εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα] in eternum VY. This is the only form in which alwy occurs in the Epistles (here and 2 John 2) and Gospel (12 times) of St John, except the correlative ἐκ τοῦ αἰῶνος (John ix. 32). The phrase occurs independently of the Lxx. (1 Pet. i. 25; 2 Cor. ix. 9; Hebr. v. 6; vi. 20; vii. 17 ff.) only (with negative) in Matth. xxi 19/|Mk. xi. 14; Mk. iii. 29; 1 Cor. viii. 13 (Jude 13 εἰς αἰῶνα). [1 Pet. i. 23 and 2 Pet. ii. 17 are false readings.] It is very common in the Lxx. as the rendering of o>iy, opiw>, ndiy Ty. The thought contained in the words here is given by the addition which is found in Thebd. and Old Lat. ‘as God also abideth for ever’ (sicut et ipse manet in eternum), Augustine reads the addition and remarks on the whole passage: Voluit te amor mundi, tene Christum. Propter te factus est temporalis ut tu fias seternus; quia et ille sic factus est temporalis ut maneret sternus.

And again: Terram diligis, terra eris. Deum diligis: quid dicam, Deus eris? Non audeo dicere ex me: scripturas audiamus Ego dizi, dit estis et filrt altiesimi omnes.

B. THE OONFLICT oF TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD WITHOUT AND WITHIN (ii. 18—iv. 6).

The broad contrast which has’ been drawn in the last section between things temporal and eternal, between the world and the Church, leads to the central subject of the Epistle, the great conflict of life, which is treated of in ii, 18—iv. 6. In this the hostile power is seen to arise from within the Christian society. The world has found expression in an anti-Christian system which lays claim to spiritual endowment and authority. False prophetic power (Apoc. xiii. 1 ff.) takes its place by the side of the

remind Christians of the gift which they have received for the discernment of the Truth. The essence of the Truth lies in the acknowledgment of the Messiahship of Jesus. The confession of the Son gives fellowship with the Father; issuing in the life eternal. This knowledge of God then Christians have to keep firmly, that they may face their Lord at His appearance. And true knowledge has the seal of righteousness, likeness to God, the mark of divine sonship.

1. Antichrists and Christians (18 —21).

The necessity of conflict which has been laid down on general grounds in φῦ. 15—17 is enforced by the special circumstances of the age. It is ‘a last hour,’ and as such marked by divisions, errors, temptations in the Christian society itself (18, 19). At the same time, as answering to this special peril, Christians have a gift of spiritual discernment which it is their privilege to use as a decisive criterion of error (20, 21).

1 My little ones, it ts a last hour, and as ye heard that Antichrist cometh, even now many Antichrists have arisen ; whence we perceive thai at is a last hour. They went out Jrom us, but they were not of us; for uf they had been of us,.they would have remained with us; but they went out that they may be made manifest that they all are not of us. 2% And ye have an unction from the Holy One; and ye all know—2I have not written to you because ye know not the truth, but because ye know it, and because no lie is of the truth.

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825–1901), The Epistle to the Hebrews (1889) and The Epistles of St John (1883) — public domain (pre-1929). Text recovered from Internet Archive / Google Books OCR scans. Westcott’s Gospel of John commentary is not included (its OCR lost the chapter running-heads required for reliable verse-keying). Some Greek quoted in the Hebrews volume is imperfectly rendered by the OCR.