Love God, Not the World

When my son played rec league baseball, his league named its teams after professional clubs. He played for the Rays, Mets, Yankees, Red Sox, and a few more. Each year, I bought the baseball cap of his team and wore it to his games. Of course, I’d wear those caps even when I wasn’t at a game. You can’t pay that much for a baseball cap and not wear it. 

One day I ran into a friend who was a lifelong Boston Red Sox fan who, of course, had no love for the New York Yankees. She said, “Wait a minute, last week you were wearing a Red Sox cap, now you’re wearing a Yankees cap.” I tried to gently explain that these were the teams my son had played on, but she said, “Look, you can’t wear Yankees gear and Red Sox gear. That’s not acceptable. You have to choose!” 

It was all said in fun, of course, though I understood the sentiment. While I lived in Alabama, I never knew anyone who would wear Auburn gear one day and Alabama gear the next. Maybe if I had children at each school I might. Nah, I couldn’t do it. 

In 1 John, the writer gives us the same choice my friend gave me. He says, look, you can do this or that, but you can’t do both. You can either love the world or love God. You can’t love both.

We saw in 1 John 2:7-11 where John stated that one test of true Christianity is whether a person loves his fellow believers. Before continuing that thought, John wants to make sure his readers don’t get the impression that he doubts their faith is genuine. He’s not questioning their salvation, he’s showing them how to evaluate those who have left the church and are teaching false doctrine. At the same time, these tests force the reader to ask the question, “Does my life reflect my relationship to Jesus?”

It’s the former members that John regards as false, not the church members, so he pauses in his argument to let them know this:

I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. (1 John 2:12-14)

The best thing John can say about these people is that their sins have been forgiven and they know God. Do people know that about you? If they were asked to describe you, would folks around you say that you’re someone whose sins are forgiven and who knows the Father personally? Does your lifestyle show that to be the case?

Note also that John states it’s by making his word an ongoing part of your life that you gain the strength to overcome the evil one (v. 14). Are you constantly reading, studying, and meditating over the Bible? Are you asking God to help you apply its truths to your life? It’s difficult to grow spiritually if we don’t make Bible reading a regular part of our lives.

Now John turns back to his argument about love. He’s already said that a sign of a true believer is love for fellow Christians, and here he offers a warning about loving the wrong thing: 

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. 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. (1 John 2:15-16)

This may sound confusing for someone who knows that John also wrote John 3:16. If God loves the world, shouldn’t his followers do so as well? Is he saying we shouldn’t love other people? Or that we shouldn’t love the beauty of creation? Of course not. John is referring to the “world” as human society under the power of our enemy, Satan. It’s the evil world system that opposes everything God is for. While Satan doesn’t rule our world since he is powerless save for what strength God allows him to have, he does rule over all opposition to God.

John is saying that as we grow in our love for God and fellow believers, as we move forward in sanctification, we’ll see that we’re growing less and less in love with the things of the world and more and more in love with our Savior. 

Still, we struggle with sin in part because we cling too tightly to the world. We’re tempted by “desires of the flesh,” which are human cravings that may not be evil themselves but get twisted when they aren’t directed by God. “Desires of the eyes” are temptations that come to us through what we see. “Pride of life” is a sinful pride in things we have and a sinful longing for things we don’t have.

The point John is making is that we cannot love the world and love God. Whether you can wear both Yankees gear and Red Sox gear is debatable. What isn’t debatable is who you love. You can either love God or the world, not both. 

The world isn’t neutral toward God, it’s at war with God, wanting to bring down everything God stands for. We see this all around us today. It’s happening before our eyes. Beliefs that we took for granted as common sense fifteen years ago have been turned completely upside down by our culture. We used to hear that Christians were wrong because they ignored science. Now the world is completely ignoring science to satisfy its desires. 

Christians standing for the things of God have now somehow become the “bad guys.” The kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God can never and will never co-exist peacefully, so we shouldn’t even attempt to love both worlds. 

Notice that John never says that we are to withdraw from the world. He doesn’t tell us to move into monasteries. He never says Christians are to live in a Christian bubble, working at Christian jobs, living in Christian communities, shopping at Christian stores, and eating at Christian restaurants. Even I might get tired of Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A after a while. A long while, but still. 

John doesn’t tell believers that we should isolate ourselves from the world. He simply says we are not to love it. You can’t love the world and “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37-38). 

By the way, the world? John says it won’t be around forever (v. 17). The world’s days are numbered. It may be tomorrow, it may be a thousand years from now, but one day all that we know will cease to exist. God and, by his grace, his children, will be here for eternity. So choose wisely what it is that you love.

Too often we love, but it’s the world we love. It’s sin we love. It’s acceptance or comfort or popularity or income or food on our table that we love. 

But do we love God? Only if it doesn’t cost too much. 

What if things were different? 

Imagine what the world would be like if every believer turned away from a love for this world and loved God with all of our hearts and our neighbors the way we love ourselves. 

Maybe that’s a pipe dream. But what if it started with you?

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