1John 2:15-17
Big Idea: The Spirit admonishes us not to give our love to the world because the world can never fulfill us. Instead, God must be the ultimate object of our satisfaction. If at any moment we find ourselves pursuing worldly pleasures, we must reassess our hearts and turn them back to love for God.
_____________________
1 John 2:15–16 (ESV) — 15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
Agape love toward others is a sacrificial commitment to the spiritual well-being of another that compels us to act on their behalf for their flourishing.
John 3:16 (NET) — 16 For this is the way God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
Luke 10:27 (ESV) — 27 And he answered, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”
Agape love toward God is a sacrificial commitment to God as the object of our greatest well-being that compels us to move toward God for our spiritual flourishing.
What the Spirit is telling us in our passage is that we should not love the world in the same way as we love God.
1John 2:15 Be not loving the world neither the things in the world. For if anyone is loving the world, love for the Father is not being in him.
Matthew 6:19–24 (ESV) — 19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. 22 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, 23 but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! 24 “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
____________________________
1John 2:16 (ESV) For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.
“The main thing we notice in all of these usages of world is that when John uses this term he is always thinking character not scope. The character of the world is embodied in a people who do not know God, who walk in darkness, who hate Jesus and his followers, who remain in judgement and who are ruled not by Jesus but the prince of the power of the air, as Paul says it. When John says world, he almost always has in mind quality not quantity, kind not population, character not scope.”
When we try to fulfill eternal appetites with temporal tidbits, it is like feeding a single gold fish cracker to a man dying of starvation, it does not satisfy.
Jeremiah 2:12–13 (ESV) — 12 Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, 13 for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.
Psalm 90:14 (ESV) — 14 Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
Questions to Consider
What is the problem with giving our hearts to the world?
What are some things in the world that you are tempted to give your heart to? What is it about those things that have captured your affections? How might you repent before God and turn to him for the things you are seeking in the world?
What Scripture might you memorize in order to constantly combat a heart that longs for worldly things?
