Things of the World

“Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”  1 John 2:15

We must be wary of the world’s “things,” because we are “in the world” not “of the world” (John 17:11-16). The command in our text is that we are not to love the world or its things, not that we should remain blissfully ignorant of them. We are to “be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matt. 10:16).

There are big things of the world like nations and kingdoms (Matt. 4:8; Luke 12:30) as well as worries and riches (Mark. 4:19) which can sap our focus and drain our loyalties. And there are “elements” (Col. 2:20; Gal. 4:3) that can twist our thinking and spoil us (Col. 2:8).

We are warned that friendship with the worldly lifestyle and that which espouses the things of the world, makes us an “enemy of God” (James 4:4). That is because such people embrace the “spirit of the world” and not “the Spirit who is from God” (1 Cor. 2:12). Those people speak about the things of the world, and the world listens to them (1 John 4:5).

God’s people may be “base” and “weak” - even “foolish” - in the eyes of the world (1 Cor. 1:27-28). Since the Father has chosen us out of the world (John 15:19), it should not surprise us that the world “hates” those who belong to the Lord Jesus (John 17:14). Hence the ungodly passions that drive the ungodly behavior of the world, “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world” (1 John 2:16).

Those passions and the people who embrace them will “pass away.” But “the one who does the will of God lives forever” (1 John 2:17).