Andy and Wes discuss how this world is a triple threat to our souls and relate the Christian journeys of sanctification and evangelism to fierce spiritual battles.
Wes
Welcome to the Two Journeys Bible Study podcast. This is Episode 3 in our 1, 2, and 3 John Bible Study Podcast entitled, Do Not Love the World, where we’ll discuss 1 John 2:15-17. I’m Wes Treadway and I’m here with Pastor Andy Davis.
Andy, what are we going to see in these verses that we’re looking at today?
Andy
Well, this is a very, very important passage which talks about the great threat that the world is to our soul. Now, our ministry is called Two Journeys Ministry, and we present two journeys, an internal journey of holiness and an external journey of gospel advance.
But what we don’t always have the opportunity to say is that both of those journeys that we travel are in enemy territory, basically like through a war zone. The world, the flesh, and the devil are assaulting us on both of those journeys every step of the way. It takes great courage and sacrifice and suffering to make progress in each of those journeys. So, the journey of holiness is opposed by the world system, Satan’s dark world system. And this passage may be one of the clearest in all of the Bible to talk about the threat the world is to our souls.
And then, the gospel advance from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth is over Satan’s territory, taking territory from the evil one who guards it jealously and uses false religions, economic systems, philosophical systems, and all that to oppose the gospel. And so, we’re going to be bumping into the world in the external journey as well. So, it’s vital for us to understand the threat that the world is, and this passage will help us do it.
Wes
Well, let me go ahead and read 1 John 2:15-17.
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. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
Now Andy, right off the bat, as we dive into these verses, we are confronted with this word, world. John uses the word world differently at different times. And we’ve discussed that a little bit already, but how would you compare the world that we should not love with John’s use of the word world in other places, say like John 3:16?
Andy
Yeah. Well, John 3:16 is the most famous verse in the Bible, and people know what it says, “God so loved the world.” So, we even have not just the word world, but we have the word love. And it says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” And so, there God is presented as loving the world.
But the word is used differently here. And so, this teaches us somewhat of the science of Bible interpretation, sometimes called hermeneutics. We want to do a good job. We want to rightly divide the word of truth. And so, we have to understand it pretty clearly here John is defining the world differently than John 3:16.
So, let’s look at John 3:16. What that refers to, I think, is the planet earth, and more specifically the population of humans on it generally. So, God loves human beings. I think that’s generally what he means by the word world in John 3:16. God loved the human race in general in such a way that he sent his Son into the world, into human society on planet earth, so that he could call a people to himself who would not perish but have eternal life. So that’s the use of the word world there. But here, it’s something very different. And John does a good job describing what’s in the world and what it means.
Wes
Now, what does it mean to love the world here then? Because we’re charged not to love the world. So what is John getting at, and why is loving the world in this sense so harmful to the health of our souls?
Andy
we are created to love God. We’re created to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength and secondarily to love each other.
Right. So, we get to the word love, and it’s a very vital concept. I think it’s the centerpiece of human existence. I think we are created to love God. We’re created to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength and secondarily to love each other. And so, love is what it’s all about. Fundamentally, salvation is to fix our hearts so that they love properly.
So having been designed, created in the image of God, central to that is a heart that has the ability to analyze things, to understand their nature, and then to be attracted to or repulsed from those things to a greater or less degree. That’s Jonathan Edwards in Treatise on Religious Affections that taught me that. That’s what the heart does. And so, the attraction would be as liking something or loving it, so it’s a matter of degree. And the opposite would be as disliking or hating something, and the heart is designed for that.
Well, the sad thing is our hearts are corrupted by sin, so we don’t love properly. We don’t love God above everything else as we should. And we know that if we love anything more than we love God, that thing must be first of all a creature, and second of all, an idol if we’re loving it above the Creator. And so, our loving, our hearts that love are seriously degenerated and damaged by sin. We love wrongly and badly. There are some things we should love more and there are some things we should love less. There are some things that we love that we shouldn’t love at all, and other things that we don’t love naturally that we should love greatly.
And so, this whole thing is messed up. And so, the Holy Spirit, when he comes and regenerates us, he takes out the heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh, a living heart. And I think essential to that is to begin to heal our loving mechanism, our ability to love. So, we’re dealing with this issue of love.
Now here, we’re told there is something here that we should not love at all. And so, we have to understand what that is. And so, to love in this sense would be that the heart is attracted to things that it should be repulsed from. The heart is attracted to evil. We are allured by it and enticed by it and yearning for it. And so, some of the translations talk about lust, so we’ll get to that. But the fact is our hearts are drawn magnetically towards something we should be running away from; we should be avoiding. And that’s what we’re talking about here. So, “Do not love the world,” means don’t allow your heart to be attracted to these things.
Now, here’s the thing. We need to understand within this commandment given to Christians is the power to obey it. We can’t say, “I can’t help myself. I can’t control what I love. I can’t control what I yearn for, what I go after.” Well, yes you can. There are such things as evil desires. There are such things as attractions that are repulsive and evil, and we need to kill them. And so, this is essential to that whole issue, is being drawn to darkness and to evil things.
Wes
Now, we want to unpack this a little bit because if our hearts are twisted like that and we have these disordered loves, we’re loving the wrong things, we’re not loving the right things we ought to, how can we determine if we’re sinfully loving the world?
Andy
Right. The word of God gives us all the knowledge that we need. The word of God is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. God’s word, like light shining in a room with furniture in it and tables, chairs, things on the floor, carpets other things, toys that the kids left there, if the lights are out, we’re going to bang our shin against the coffee table. We’re going to step on Lego blocks or whatever. It’s going to be painful. But then, you turn on the light and everything becomes clear. You can see where everything is and how to walk. And so, the word of God is the light to our feet and the lamp to our path. It shows us what things are. And so, we need to be able to see the world properly.
Now, let me bring in another passage that is very vital to this. It’s important for us. And it has to do with the temptations of Jesus in the desert. And at one point, the devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world and their glories. And he said, “All this I will give you if you’ll bow down and worship me” (Matthew 4:9). So, this is offering to Jesus the things the world has to offer. And so, that’s money, power, pleasures, all of those things. And so, the enticements of the world that are evil and corrupt, we need to understand they begin good, because everything God makes is good. Everything in the universe that God made was good. And so, then they become corrupted.
So we then have to study how do good things that God made good then become evil and corrupted? Well, it has to do with boundaries that God has set up. And from the very beginning, God put Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden and told Adam, He said, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden. There’s your freedom. Eat from them and enjoy them. I made them for you.” So different fruits, you could well imagine. “But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for the day you eat of it, you will surely die” (Genesis 2:17). So that’s boundaries. He’s not allowed to reach across that boundary and take from that tree. It’s forbidden, forbidden fruit.
And so, the idea is there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the fruit. Eve saw that it was attractive, it was beautiful, it was delicious and good for wisdom and all that. But the problem is God had said no. He said, “You shall not do this.” So, there are these boundaries that are set up. And then, once the law multiplies, then there are more and more boundaries that God sets up. So, for example, the Tenth Commandment in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), “You shall not covet.” And what that says is, “You shall not set your desire on your neighbor’s wife,” for example. And earlier he said, “You shall not commit adultery.” So those are boundaries, very clear boundaries. And so, fundamentally, and we’re going to talk more in a moment about lust and its connection to coveting, but it’s the heart’s desire after something that’s forbidden, after something that God has said no, or to desire something that is good in an inordinate way or an excessive way beyond the boundaries that God has set up.
Wes
And that flows from that word that you used in a previous answer, idolatry, right? The idea that we would elevate something to a place that it ought not to have. What is the remedy for us to loving the world sinfully? I think you alluded to this, the idea of having a new heart. And maybe that’s it, but as we think about this warning not to love the world, what’s the remedy for us?
Andy
Yeah. I think what we have to do is just go to the two great commandments and say, first and foremost, “My heart was made for God. My heart was made to love God, to love him above anything else, to love God with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength. And what that means is that I will love the things that God has permitted me to have and enjoy them, but I will not love and go after the things He has forbidden me to have.” So, there are boundaries.
And so, fundamentally it begins vertically. It begins with us having hearts of love for God and for Christ. And so, fundamentally, I believe, and I’ve said this before and I’ve had individuals tell me how painful and convicting it was, because they had ventured into some rather grievous sins. But they were maintaining a Christian confession, and they’re grieved over their sins. But I needed to work with them so that they had genuine repentance for what they had done. And I said, “Sin is what we do when Christ is not enough.” So, I saw a brother wince when I said that to him, and he did not realize that the sin he had committed, in this case was a sin against his wife, was first and foremost a sin against Christ and against God. You were saying to him, “You’re not enough.”
So, we start by loving Christ enough, by saying, “Christ is enough for me. And then, the good gifts he gives, that’s enough for me too.” He does give other things besides. So fundamentally, I think we begin positively. Thomas Chalmers wrote a book called The Expulsive Desire of a Greater Affection [The Expulsive Power of a New Affection]. And so, basically, we drive out dark thoughts and dark desires by good desires and good thoughts.
light drives out darkness. Good, honest, pure desires drive out dark, evil ones.
A good example on this is, “You shall not commit adultery.” The Book of Proverbs says, enjoy your wife, set your heart of affection on her, love her and cherish her and be glad for her, and go after that relationship. So that is part of it. But at any rate, I would say light drives out darkness. Good, honest, pure desires drive out dark, evil ones. But yet, we haven’t defined yet what the world is, and evil is, as John will do in this passage.
Wes
Yeah. Now, John makes some very clear statements that can appear very stark, as if there’s no middle ground. And so, we want to try to unpack the latter half of this first verse here. What does John mean when he says, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him?”
Andy
Yes.
Wes
It sounds like you’re either a Christian or you love the world, and there’s no middle ground.
Andy
Sure. And this is typical of the way that John writes. And we’re going to see this even more in chapter 3, that fundamentally, if you’re in Christ you don’t sin. And it’s like, “Whoa, where’d that come from?” But that’s the way he wrote the book.
And so, I think we have to use ultimate language. If you tell me, “Here’s an individual, and what he loves more than anything else is the world,” then John is going to say, “Well, here’s somebody who’s not a Christian.” All right? So fundamentally, to be a Christian is to love God above everything else, genuinely to love God above all things and to love Christ. And so, fundamentally, if you love the world, I would add a word ultimately or above all or beyond outside of the boundaries that God has set up, et cetera.
So now, in this case you’re saying the word world is just dark and evil and all that. Now if you do that, then it becomes a little easier. You can imagine someone saying back in the day, let’s make it easy so we don’t offend people in our present day. Imagine someone saying, “I really love Baal, and I love Yahweh.” It was like, if you really love Baal, you don’t love Yahweh. You can’t. Or Molech, “I really, really love Molech or Chimosh,” who we’re told is the detestable god of the Moabites or the Ammonites, I don’t remember which one, but detestable. How can you say… That’s a dark evil thing, and you’re telling me you legitimately love that? Well then, love of the Father’s not in you.
Or you could imagine someone who is committing adultery, let’s say, and he will not give up that relationship. He will not forsake that relationship. He will not repent. And he says, “Look, I love the Bible, I love church. I love going to Jesus, and I love my mistress.” And it’s like, “Well, you don’t love Jesus then if you love this evil thing. He has told you this is evil.” So, I think that’s the way I would read it. It’s like if you genuinely love that which the Bible defines as evil, then the love of the Father is not in you.
Wes
Now, we want to take each of the categories that are described in this next verse in turn. But before we do that, what reason does John give for not loving the world in verse 16? And how does this help to explain what the world is as described here?
Andy
Well, the reason he gives in verse 16 is because these things, the lust, one translation gives us a lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life. They don’t come from the Father, but they come from the world.
Let me take a step back for a minute and just tell you how I think of the word world. We’re going to talk about these three statements. It’s vital. But to me, the world is everything that is organized by Satan and set up directly against God and Christ. All right? So that would be everything from every non-Christian religion, every pseudo-Christian cult, every philosophical system that is hostile to Christianity, every materialistic drive or motive that has nothing to do with Christ, but that becomes a god. For example, no one can love both God and money or mammon, so to speak, in some of the translations. All of those things that directly compete with God and with Christ, that’s what the world is.
So the world would include Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christless Judaism. I would also include materialistic atheism, agnosticism, any of the philosophies, the Enlightenment philosophies, Kant, Immanuel Kant, all the stuff that those philosophers brought in that was hostile to Christianity. That’s the world. It’s an organized, carefully thought-out dark system of thought. It is brilliant in some sense in a very dark way. Brilliant is bright light. But by this I mean it is clever and well-thought out by Satan.
And Satan is the father of lies. So he’s the one that set up all of those lies. So you’ve got the world and all of its thought systems, and then all of its physical alluring things like gold that glitters and diamonds that glitter and rubies, and you’ve got all kinds of other things: real estate, positions of power, Wall Street, education, all of these things, the universities. This is what the world is when it’s hostile to God and to Christ. That’s how I understand it.
Now, John defines it in verse 16, “The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.” That’s NAS, I think. This translation has, “The cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes, and the boasting of what he has and does.” What does your translation say?
Wes
“The desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life.”
Andy
Okay. Yeah. So, I think it would be beneficial to walk through each of those.
Wes
Let’s start with the first one. What is the lust or desire of the flesh? And how is this a threat to us?
Andy
Okay. So, the flesh is, one of the translations just uses the word flesh. And I think in this case it is the sin nature. But why use the same word as the incarnation? “The Word became flesh.” And so, sometimes flesh just represents meat, like it represents eating the flesh of a deer or cow or something like that. You can eat flesh. When it says, “The Word became flesh,” I think it means that Jesus had a physical body with muscles and nerves and arteries and veins and tendons and bones and all of that. So that’s the physical body.
But in the context here, I think what it means is natural desires that are woven into the biology that then go beyond those boundaries that I talked about earlier. So, for example, a desire for sexual pleasure is set up for what I call marital affection or marital love, those kinds of things. When I use the word marital, I mean sex. Those desires are good and right. God created them. But then, the flesh pushes beyond boundaries into sins known as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, other things like that. So that is a good, God-given desire that is pushed beyond some boundary.
And so, this is what the flesh is: it’s sin nature to violate God’s standards and to eat forbidden fruit and to go after forbidden things, etc. And the first is the lust of the flesh is basically the world is here to stimulate that. It is stimulating those lusts. It’s putting things in front of you. So again, if we’re going to talk about sexual immorality, you’re going to talk about Proverbs 7, where we have the wayward wife who dresses to allure. She dresses herself up in a way that is designed to catch the eye of the young man she’s trying to catch. And so, that represents the world.
We also have, as we saw in the Book of Revelation podcast, the great harlot of Babylon who is dressed to allure. She’s got painted eyes, painted nails. She’s got jewelry, she’s got clothing that’s designed to allure. And these are the very things Peter says that a godly woman’s beauty doesn’t consist of those things. No, we should not misunderstand and say that for a woman to wear cosmetics or do her hair or wear any jewelry at all is wicked or sinful. That’s not biblical. It’s not consistent. But we do see that there are certain ways that women can dress to allure and to entice.
Well, that’s a metaphor. I’m then saying the world does that. The world dresses itself up in such a way as to entice or to allure you. And especially I would say more than anything towards sexual sin. A lot of the internet and a lot of the stuff, it’s designed to stimulate sexual desire and to heat people up. So, I think when it says the lust of the flesh, it’s starting there. But it also goes toward materialism, it goes toward overindulgence, living a life of luxury, things like that.
Wes
Well, let’s talk more about that, because I think that’s where we’re headed even as we get this next description, “the lust of the eyes.” How does Satan use the world’s glittery attractions to lure people into sin?
Andy
Yeah. So, I want to take a moment now and talk about the connection between lust and the lust of the eyes and coveting. So, I think what happens is Satan uses something outside of you, something beyond your boundary lines. And you know about it because of your eyesight. You’re able to see it out there. And so, the eyes here represent your acquisitional ability. So, it’s not just the eyes, but the eyes are the most. You think about the five senses, we get more information through eyesight than any of the other five senses.
But fundamentally, it could be an alluring song, like the proverbial siren song. It could be enticing or alluring or something like that. And the woman in Proverbs 7 uses her honeyed words and her flattery and all that. So, I don’t think eyes is just eyesight, but it is the way by which you know what’s out there. Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then, the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness (Matthew 6:22)?”
So, the eye then I think is the portal into which the world pours its things. And so, the lust of the eyes is frankly, we could start with Jesus talking about adultery. And he said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that if anyone looks at a woman lustfully, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27). So, he’s looking at her and he’s enticed through his eyes.
And I think this goes beyond sexual sin. It might go to a possession. It could be a sports car or something like that. And man, the paint job, it’s glittery, it’s shiny, it looks nice. It’s designed to attract. It’s a nice-looking vehicle. And you look at it and you’re like, “Gotta have it.” And so, it’s the lust of the eyes. So, the coveting is a yearning after something you don’t have. And it becomes an organizing feature of your life. “I’ve got to have it. I’m going after it. I’m going to plan and I’m going to make it happen.” Lust of the eyes.
Wes
It’s amazing how much, as you said, our world is bent toward this. Because it’s the things that we see out there that are attractive to us, and then even a sense of wanting to make ourselves more attractive. I think about things like social media that offer us the ability to present a curated version of our life, whether that’s through filters on images or only reporting those victories. You talk about posting our Ws, the wins that we talk about. And I think that goes to this next category, the third of the three, this boastful pride of life. How does Satan both display this kind of pride and then lure people, lure us into this temptation of pride?
Andy
Yeah. We believe that pride was of the essence of Satan’s fall. Okay? If you look at the primordial passages, which many scholars believe are talking about Satan’s fall, there are two of them, the king of Babylon passage in Isaiah 14 and the king of Tyre passage in Ezekiel 28. Pride is at the core of both of those. In the king of Babylon passage, he said, “I will ascend. I will make myself like the Most High. I will set my throne above all the stars. I’m going to become God.” And he is going upward, and God throws him down. He says, “You’re not going to go up. I’m going to cast you to the earth.” But pride, it’s the five “I will” statements there in Isaiah 14, and it’s devastating.
And then, in Ezekiel 28, he is a guardian cherub in Eden, and he is filled with beauty. He’s adorned with radiance, and he is beautiful. And he’s given this key role to play until wickedness is found in him, and he became enamored with his own beauty. And so, we get the sense of Satan enamored in Isaiah 14 with his power and in Ezekiel 28 with his beauty. And he is prideful. And in both cases, in exactly both cases, he’s cast down, thrown down. So that represents, as we saw in Revelation 12, the casting of Satan from heaven to earth.
And so, that pride then extended through Eve’s temptations. It says, when she saw that the fruit was good for food and it was attractive and it would enable her to become wise, to become like God, she ate some and gave some to her husband who was with her. And he also ate some. So, you have to imagine that he had similar temptations, although it isn’t stated about that. He wanted pridefully something that wasn’t his. He wanted to be able to eat from any tree in the garden, not submitting to God’s leadership. So, he sought to topple God from his throne. So basically, he joined Satan in a prideful rebellion.
And so, I think the boastful pride of life here is a godless thing, fundamentally godless. Because how can we creatures be proud of ourselves when we are compared to God? When you look to God as he’s portrayed in the Bible, the infinite majesty, the power, the position, his omnipresence, his omniscience, his omnipotence, what are we but specks of dust? What are we but nothings? And so, it’s because we don’t think about God or believe in God, it’s a godless thing to be prideful. Therefore, when the Holy Spirit works salvation in us, he does it by first and foremost humbling us. “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).
So, in a very simple, practical way, to be an arrogant, boastful person is to fit into this. Just be… and you see it like athletes that beat their own chests after making a basket or a touchdown, or literally point to themselves or go preening around or prancing around so that everyone will look at them. And then, when they’re interviewed afterwards, they can’t stop talking about themselves. And it’s just arrogant. And that’s sports, and we see that, but people do that in the business world, in the academic world, all of these things giving honors to each other and that arrogant pride of life. What God wants instead is for us to be genuinely, truly, and deeply humble before him. So that’s what I think these three things are, the lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.
Wes
Now, what does John say happens to the world and its desires? And why is it good for us to meditate on this reality?
Andy
This present world is destined for fire, and it is so because of sin. Sin entered the world, and death through sin. And as a result, this world is going to die. And we’re told very plainly, if you wonder what that’s going to look like, you can just read about it in 2 Peter 3 and the Book of Revelation. This world is going to be destroyed in a conflagration of fire. The elements are going to melt in the heat.
What does that mean? Everything we interact with with the five senses is temporary. This world, all of its powers and pleasures, and all of these things is going to pass away. What struck me as I was memorizing the Gospel of Luke and looking at Jesus’ parables and his teachings and all that is how eschatological most of them were, like the rich man in Lazarus. The rich man should have been thinking about the next world. Okay? We’ve got the parable of the unrighteous steward, and Jesus directly applies it to the next world. “Use worldly mammon to gain friends for yourself, so they’ll welcome you into eternal habitations” (Luke 16:9).
Almost all of his parables are pointing to the next world. Think about the next world, the world to come and realize now we are aliens and strangers in this world. So, what I get out of 1 John 2:15-17 is this world is not my home. I shouldn’t settle in here. I shouldn’t be comfortable with it. This is alien territory, and it’s essentially wicked. These verses imply this is an essentially wicked thing that we’re immersed in here. It is seeking to destroy our souls.
Let me step back and say we are under constant assault by these three enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil. This is the best passage to describe the world. This is an enemy of your soul. So, we have to be aware of that and be careful how we carry ourselves. And it says plainly in verse 17, “This world in its desires pass away, but he who does the will of God will endure or live forever.”
Wes
How does that final statement give us hope? And what final thoughts do you have for us on these verses that we’ve been looking at?
Andy
Right. So, there’s a contrast, and again, the book of 1 John is given to distinguish between a true and false profession of faith in Christ. So, one of the things is that if we are genuinely Christians, God is light and in him there’s no darkness at all. And we need to walk in the light, as he is in the light. Well, that affects how we live in this world.
So, there is a good world that we live in. That is the world that John 3:16 talks about, and that is planet earth with all of its beautiful creation, the good things that God made, and the good gifts that he gave us to enjoy. So, we are not ascetics here. Paul says in 1 Timothy 4, everything God made is good if it’s received with thanksgiving. So, if it’s within that which is granted to you, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden except this one, then enjoy those trees. Enjoy the good things he’s given.
So, we need to do that, but we need to realize those things that are forbidden, those things that are off limits, those things that are seen to be evil, they are a direct threat to your soul. And you have to fight those temptations every day. And if you do, if put to death the deeds of the flesh, you put to death those earthly desires and drives, if you fight the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life, you will live forever. So it’s the promise of eternal life. This is the kind of life that leads to heaven.
Wes
This has been Episode 3 in our 1, 2, and 3 John Bible Study Podcast. We want to invite you to join us next time for Episode 4, entitled Antichrists and the Antichrist, where we’ll discuss 1 John 2:18-29. Thank you for listening to the Two Journeys podcast. And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
Wes
Welcome to the Two Journeys Bible Study podcast. This is Episode 3 in our 1, 2, and 3 John Bible Study Podcast entitled, Do Not Love the World, where we’ll discuss 1 John 2:15-17. I’m Wes Treadway and I’m here with Pastor Andy Davis.
Andy, what are we going to see in these verses that we’re looking at today?
Andy
Well, this is a very, very important passage which talks about the great threat that the world is to our soul. Now, our ministry is called Two Journeys Ministry, and we present two journeys, an internal journey of holiness and an external journey of gospel advance.
But what we don’t always have the opportunity to say is that both of those journeys that we travel are in enemy territory, basically like through a war zone. The world, the flesh, and the devil are assaulting us on both of those journeys every step of the way. It takes great courage and sacrifice and suffering to make progress in each of those journeys. So, the journey of holiness is opposed by the world system, Satan’s dark world system. And this passage may be one of the clearest in all of the Bible to talk about the threat the world is to our souls.
And then, the gospel advance from Jerusalem through Judea and Samaria to the ends of the earth is over Satan’s territory, taking territory from the evil one who guards it jealously and uses false religions, economic systems, philosophical systems, and all that to oppose the gospel. And so, we’re going to be bumping into the world in the external journey as well. So, it’s vital for us to understand the threat that the world is, and this passage will help us do it.
Wes
Well, let me go ahead and read 1 John 2:15-17.
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. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
Now Andy, right off the bat, as we dive into these verses, we are confronted with this word, world. John uses the word world differently at different times. And we’ve discussed that a little bit already, but how would you compare the world that we should not love with John’s use of the word world in other places, say like John 3:16?
Andy
Yeah. Well, John 3:16 is the most famous verse in the Bible, and people know what it says, “God so loved the world.” So, we even have not just the word world, but we have the word love. And it says, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” And so, there God is presented as loving the world.
But the word is used differently here. And so, this teaches us somewhat of the science of Bible interpretation, sometimes called hermeneutics. We want to do a good job. We want to rightly divide the word of truth. And so, we have to understand it pretty clearly here John is defining the world differently than John 3:16.
So, let’s look at John 3:16. What that refers to, I think, is the planet earth, and more specifically the population of humans on it generally. So, God loves human beings. I think that’s generally what he means by the word world in John 3:16. God loved the human race in general in such a way that he sent his Son into the world, into human society on planet earth, so that he could call a people to himself who would not perish but have eternal life. So that’s the use of the word world there. But here, it’s something very different. And John does a good job describing what’s in the world and what it means.
Wes
Now, what does it mean to love the world here then? Because we’re charged not to love the world. So what is John getting at, and why is loving the world in this sense so harmful to the health of our souls?
Andy
we are created to love God. We’re created to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength and secondarily to love each other.
Right. So, we get to the word love, and it’s a very vital concept. I think it’s the centerpiece of human existence. I think we are created to love God. We’re created to love him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength and secondarily to love each other. And so, love is what it’s all about. Fundamentally, salvation is to fix our hearts so that they love properly.
So having been designed, created in the image of God, central to that is a heart that has the ability to analyze things, to understand their nature, and then to be attracted to or repulsed from those things to a greater or less degree. That’s Jonathan Edwards in Treatise on Religious Affections that taught me that. That’s what the heart does. And so, the attraction would be as liking something or loving it, so it’s a matter of degree. And the opposite would be as disliking or hating something, and the heart is designed for that.
Well, the sad thing is our hearts are corrupted by sin, so we don’t love properly. We don’t love God above everything else as we should. And we know that if we love anything more than we love God, that thing must be first of all a creature, and second of all, an idol if we’re loving it above the Creator. And so, our loving, our hearts that love are seriously degenerated and damaged by sin. We love wrongly and badly. There are some things we should love more and there are some things we should love less. There are some things that we love that we shouldn’t love at all, and other things that we don’t love naturally that we should love greatly.
And so, this whole thing is messed up. And so, the Holy Spirit, when he comes and regenerates us, he takes out the heart of stone and gives us a heart of flesh, a living heart. And I think essential to that is to begin to heal our loving mechanism, our ability to love. So, we’re dealing with this issue of love.
Now here, we’re told there is something here that we should not love at all. And so, we have to understand what that is. And so, to love in this sense would be that the heart is attracted to things that it should be repulsed from. The heart is attracted to evil. We are allured by it and enticed by it and yearning for it. And so, some of the translations talk about lust, so we’ll get to that. But the fact is our hearts are drawn magnetically towards something we should be running away from; we should be avoiding. And that’s what we’re talking about here. So, “Do not love the world,” means don’t allow your heart to be attracted to these things.
Now, here’s the thing. We need to understand within this commandment given to Christians is the power to obey it. We can’t say, “I can’t help myself. I can’t control what I love. I can’t control what I yearn for, what I go after.” Well, yes you can. There are such things as evil desires. There are such things as attractions that are repulsive and evil, and we need to kill them. And so, this is essential to that whole issue, is being drawn to darkness and to evil things.
Wes
Now, we want to unpack this a little bit because if our hearts are twisted like that and we have these disordered loves, we’re loving the wrong things, we’re not loving the right things we ought to, how can we determine if we’re sinfully loving the world?
Andy
Right. The word of God gives us all the knowledge that we need. The word of God is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. God’s word, like light shining in a room with furniture in it and tables, chairs, things on the floor, carpets other things, toys that the kids left there, if the lights are out, we’re going to bang our shin against the coffee table. We’re going to step on Lego blocks or whatever. It’s going to be painful. But then, you turn on the light and everything becomes clear. You can see where everything is and how to walk. And so, the word of God is the light to our feet and the lamp to our path. It shows us what things are. And so, we need to be able to see the world properly.
Now, let me bring in another passage that is very vital to this. It’s important for us. And it has to do with the temptations of Jesus in the desert. And at one point, the devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world and their glories. And he said, “All this I will give you if you’ll bow down and worship me” (Matthew 4:9). So, this is offering to Jesus the things the world has to offer. And so, that’s money, power, pleasures, all of those things. And so, the enticements of the world that are evil and corrupt, we need to understand they begin good, because everything God makes is good. Everything in the universe that God made was good. And so, then they become corrupted.
So we then have to study how do good things that God made good then become evil and corrupted? Well, it has to do with boundaries that God has set up. And from the very beginning, God put Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden and told Adam, He said, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden. There’s your freedom. Eat from them and enjoy them. I made them for you.” So different fruits, you could well imagine. “But you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for the day you eat of it, you will surely die” (Genesis 2:17). So that’s boundaries. He’s not allowed to reach across that boundary and take from that tree. It’s forbidden, forbidden fruit.
And so, the idea is there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the fruit. Eve saw that it was attractive, it was beautiful, it was delicious and good for wisdom and all that. But the problem is God had said no. He said, “You shall not do this.” So, there are these boundaries that are set up. And then, once the law multiplies, then there are more and more boundaries that God sets up. So, for example, the Tenth Commandment in the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20), “You shall not covet.” And what that says is, “You shall not set your desire on your neighbor’s wife,” for example. And earlier he said, “You shall not commit adultery.” So those are boundaries, very clear boundaries. And so, fundamentally, and we’re going to talk more in a moment about lust and its connection to coveting, but it’s the heart’s desire after something that’s forbidden, after something that God has said no, or to desire something that is good in an inordinate way or an excessive way beyond the boundaries that God has set up.
Wes
And that flows from that word that you used in a previous answer, idolatry, right? The idea that we would elevate something to a place that it ought not to have. What is the remedy for us to loving the world sinfully? I think you alluded to this, the idea of having a new heart. And maybe that’s it, but as we think about this warning not to love the world, what’s the remedy for us?
Andy
Yeah. I think what we have to do is just go to the two great commandments and say, first and foremost, “My heart was made for God. My heart was made to love God, to love him above anything else, to love God with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength. And what that means is that I will love the things that God has permitted me to have and enjoy them, but I will not love and go after the things He has forbidden me to have.” So, there are boundaries.
And so, fundamentally it begins vertically. It begins with us having hearts of love for God and for Christ. And so, fundamentally, I believe, and I’ve said this before and I’ve had individuals tell me how painful and convicting it was, because they had ventured into some rather grievous sins. But they were maintaining a Christian confession, and they’re grieved over their sins. But I needed to work with them so that they had genuine repentance for what they had done. And I said, “Sin is what we do when Christ is not enough.” So, I saw a brother wince when I said that to him, and he did not realize that the sin he had committed, in this case was a sin against his wife, was first and foremost a sin against Christ and against God. You were saying to him, “You’re not enough.”
So, we start by loving Christ enough, by saying, “Christ is enough for me. And then, the good gifts he gives, that’s enough for me too.” He does give other things besides. So fundamentally, I think we begin positively. Thomas Chalmers wrote a book called The Expulsive Desire of a Greater Affection [The Expulsive Power of a New Affection]. And so, basically, we drive out dark thoughts and dark desires by good desires and good thoughts.
light drives out darkness. Good, honest, pure desires drive out dark, evil ones.
A good example on this is, “You shall not commit adultery.” The Book of Proverbs says, enjoy your wife, set your heart of affection on her, love her and cherish her and be glad for her, and go after that relationship. So that is part of it. But at any rate, I would say light drives out darkness. Good, honest, pure desires drive out dark, evil ones. But yet, we haven’t defined yet what the world is, and evil is, as John will do in this passage.
Wes
Yeah. Now, John makes some very clear statements that can appear very stark, as if there’s no middle ground. And so, we want to try to unpack the latter half of this first verse here. What does John mean when he says, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him?”
Andy
Yes.
Wes
It sounds like you’re either a Christian or you love the world, and there’s no middle ground.
Andy
Sure. And this is typical of the way that John writes. And we’re going to see this even more in chapter 3, that fundamentally, if you’re in Christ you don’t sin. And it’s like, “Whoa, where’d that come from?” But that’s the way he wrote the book.
And so, I think we have to use ultimate language. If you tell me, “Here’s an individual, and what he loves more than anything else is the world,” then John is going to say, “Well, here’s somebody who’s not a Christian.” All right? So fundamentally, to be a Christian is to love God above everything else, genuinely to love God above all things and to love Christ. And so, fundamentally, if you love the world, I would add a word ultimately or above all or beyond outside of the boundaries that God has set up, et cetera.
So now, in this case you’re saying the word world is just dark and evil and all that. Now if you do that, then it becomes a little easier. You can imagine someone saying back in the day, let’s make it easy so we don’t offend people in our present day. Imagine someone saying, “I really love Baal, and I love Yahweh.” It was like, if you really love Baal, you don’t love Yahweh. You can’t. Or Molech, “I really, really love Molech or Chimosh,” who we’re told is the detestable god of the Moabites or the Ammonites, I don’t remember which one, but detestable. How can you say… That’s a dark evil thing, and you’re telling me you legitimately love that? Well then, love of the Father’s not in you.
Or you could imagine someone who is committing adultery, let’s say, and he will not give up that relationship. He will not forsake that relationship. He will not repent. And he says, “Look, I love the Bible, I love church. I love going to Jesus, and I love my mistress.” And it’s like, “Well, you don’t love Jesus then if you love this evil thing. He has told you this is evil.” So, I think that’s the way I would read it. It’s like if you genuinely love that which the Bible defines as evil, then the love of the Father is not in you.
Wes
Now, we want to take each of the categories that are described in this next verse in turn. But before we do that, what reason does John give for not loving the world in verse 16? And how does this help to explain what the world is as described here?
Andy
Well, the reason he gives in verse 16 is because these things, the lust, one translation gives us a lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life. They don’t come from the Father, but they come from the world.
Let me take a step back for a minute and just tell you how I think of the word world. We’re going to talk about these three statements. It’s vital. But to me, the world is everything that is organized by Satan and set up directly against God and Christ. All right? So that would be everything from every non-Christian religion, every pseudo-Christian cult, every philosophical system that is hostile to Christianity, every materialistic drive or motive that has nothing to do with Christ, but that becomes a god. For example, no one can love both God and money or mammon, so to speak, in some of the translations. All of those things that directly compete with God and with Christ, that’s what the world is.
So the world would include Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christless Judaism. I would also include materialistic atheism, agnosticism, any of the philosophies, the Enlightenment philosophies, Kant, Immanuel Kant, all the stuff that those philosophers brought in that was hostile to Christianity. That’s the world. It’s an organized, carefully thought-out dark system of thought. It is brilliant in some sense in a very dark way. Brilliant is bright light. But by this I mean it is clever and well-thought out by Satan.
And Satan is the father of lies. So he’s the one that set up all of those lies. So you’ve got the world and all of its thought systems, and then all of its physical alluring things like gold that glitters and diamonds that glitter and rubies, and you’ve got all kinds of other things: real estate, positions of power, Wall Street, education, all of these things, the universities. This is what the world is when it’s hostile to God and to Christ. That’s how I understand it.
Now, John defines it in verse 16, “The lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.” That’s NAS, I think. This translation has, “The cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes, and the boasting of what he has and does.” What does your translation say?
Wes
“The desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and the pride of life.”
Andy
Okay. Yeah. So, I think it would be beneficial to walk through each of those.
Wes
Let’s start with the first one. What is the lust or desire of the flesh? And how is this a threat to us?
Andy
Okay. So, the flesh is, one of the translations just uses the word flesh. And I think in this case it is the sin nature. But why use the same word as the incarnation? “The Word became flesh.” And so, sometimes flesh just represents meat, like it represents eating the flesh of a deer or cow or something like that. You can eat flesh. When it says, “The Word became flesh,” I think it means that Jesus had a physical body with muscles and nerves and arteries and veins and tendons and bones and all of that. So that’s the physical body.
But in the context here, I think what it means is natural desires that are woven into the biology that then go beyond those boundaries that I talked about earlier. So, for example, a desire for sexual pleasure is set up for what I call marital affection or marital love, those kinds of things. When I use the word marital, I mean sex. Those desires are good and right. God created them. But then, the flesh pushes beyond boundaries into sins known as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, other things like that. So that is a good, God-given desire that is pushed beyond some boundary.
And so, this is what the flesh is: it’s sin nature to violate God’s standards and to eat forbidden fruit and to go after forbidden things, etc. And the first is the lust of the flesh is basically the world is here to stimulate that. It is stimulating those lusts. It’s putting things in front of you. So again, if we’re going to talk about sexual immorality, you’re going to talk about Proverbs 7, where we have the wayward wife who dresses to allure. She dresses herself up in a way that is designed to catch the eye of the young man she’s trying to catch. And so, that represents the world.
We also have, as we saw in the Book of Revelation podcast, the great harlot of Babylon who is dressed to allure. She’s got painted eyes, painted nails. She’s got jewelry, she’s got clothing that’s designed to allure. And these are the very things Peter says that a godly woman’s beauty doesn’t consist of those things. No, we should not misunderstand and say that for a woman to wear cosmetics or do her hair or wear any jewelry at all is wicked or sinful. That’s not biblical. It’s not consistent. But we do see that there are certain ways that women can dress to allure and to entice.
Well, that’s a metaphor. I’m then saying the world does that. The world dresses itself up in such a way as to entice or to allure you. And especially I would say more than anything towards sexual sin. A lot of the internet and a lot of the stuff, it’s designed to stimulate sexual desire and to heat people up. So, I think when it says the lust of the flesh, it’s starting there. But it also goes toward materialism, it goes toward overindulgence, living a life of luxury, things like that.
Wes
Well, let’s talk more about that, because I think that’s where we’re headed even as we get this next description, “the lust of the eyes.” How does Satan use the world’s glittery attractions to lure people into sin?
Andy
Yeah. So, I want to take a moment now and talk about the connection between lust and the lust of the eyes and coveting. So, I think what happens is Satan uses something outside of you, something beyond your boundary lines. And you know about it because of your eyesight. You’re able to see it out there. And so, the eyes here represent your acquisitional ability. So, it’s not just the eyes, but the eyes are the most. You think about the five senses, we get more information through eyesight than any of the other five senses.
But fundamentally, it could be an alluring song, like the proverbial siren song. It could be enticing or alluring or something like that. And the woman in Proverbs 7 uses her honeyed words and her flattery and all that. So, I don’t think eyes is just eyesight, but it is the way by which you know what’s out there. Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then, the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness (Matthew 6:22)?”
So, the eye then I think is the portal into which the world pours its things. And so, the lust of the eyes is frankly, we could start with Jesus talking about adultery. And he said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that if anyone looks at a woman lustfully, he has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:27). So, he’s looking at her and he’s enticed through his eyes.
And I think this goes beyond sexual sin. It might go to a possession. It could be a sports car or something like that. And man, the paint job, it’s glittery, it’s shiny, it looks nice. It’s designed to attract. It’s a nice-looking vehicle. And you look at it and you’re like, “Gotta have it.” And so, it’s the lust of the eyes. So, the coveting is a yearning after something you don’t have. And it becomes an organizing feature of your life. “I’ve got to have it. I’m going after it. I’m going to plan and I’m going to make it happen.” Lust of the eyes.
Wes
It’s amazing how much, as you said, our world is bent toward this. Because it’s the things that we see out there that are attractive to us, and then even a sense of wanting to make ourselves more attractive. I think about things like social media that offer us the ability to present a curated version of our life, whether that’s through filters on images or only reporting those victories. You talk about posting our Ws, the wins that we talk about. And I think that goes to this next category, the third of the three, this boastful pride of life. How does Satan both display this kind of pride and then lure people, lure us into this temptation of pride?
Andy
Yeah. We believe that pride was of the essence of Satan’s fall. Okay? If you look at the primordial passages, which many scholars believe are talking about Satan’s fall, there are two of them, the king of Babylon passage in Isaiah 14 and the king of Tyre passage in Ezekiel 28. Pride is at the core of both of those. In the king of Babylon passage, he said, “I will ascend. I will make myself like the Most High. I will set my throne above all the stars. I’m going to become God.” And he is going upward, and God throws him down. He says, “You’re not going to go up. I’m going to cast you to the earth.” But pride, it’s the five “I will” statements there in Isaiah 14, and it’s devastating.
And then, in Ezekiel 28, he is a guardian cherub in Eden, and he is filled with beauty. He’s adorned with radiance, and he is beautiful. And he’s given this key role to play until wickedness is found in him, and he became enamored with his own beauty. And so, we get the sense of Satan enamored in Isaiah 14 with his power and in Ezekiel 28 with his beauty. And he is prideful. And in both cases, in exactly both cases, he’s cast down, thrown down. So that represents, as we saw in Revelation 12, the casting of Satan from heaven to earth.
And so, that pride then extended through Eve’s temptations. It says, when she saw that the fruit was good for food and it was attractive and it would enable her to become wise, to become like God, she ate some and gave some to her husband who was with her. And he also ate some. So, you have to imagine that he had similar temptations, although it isn’t stated about that. He wanted pridefully something that wasn’t his. He wanted to be able to eat from any tree in the garden, not submitting to God’s leadership. So, he sought to topple God from his throne. So basically, he joined Satan in a prideful rebellion.
And so, I think the boastful pride of life here is a godless thing, fundamentally godless. Because how can we creatures be proud of ourselves when we are compared to God? When you look to God as he’s portrayed in the Bible, the infinite majesty, the power, the position, his omnipresence, his omniscience, his omnipotence, what are we but specks of dust? What are we but nothings? And so, it’s because we don’t think about God or believe in God, it’s a godless thing to be prideful. Therefore, when the Holy Spirit works salvation in us, he does it by first and foremost humbling us. “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6).
So, in a very simple, practical way, to be an arrogant, boastful person is to fit into this. Just be… and you see it like athletes that beat their own chests after making a basket or a touchdown, or literally point to themselves or go preening around or prancing around so that everyone will look at them. And then, when they’re interviewed afterwards, they can’t stop talking about themselves. And it’s just arrogant. And that’s sports, and we see that, but people do that in the business world, in the academic world, all of these things giving honors to each other and that arrogant pride of life. What God wants instead is for us to be genuinely, truly, and deeply humble before him. So that’s what I think these three things are, the lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life.
Wes
Now, what does John say happens to the world and its desires? And why is it good for us to meditate on this reality?
Andy
This present world is destined for fire, and it is so because of sin. Sin entered the world, and death through sin. And as a result, this world is going to die. And we’re told very plainly, if you wonder what that’s going to look like, you can just read about it in 2 Peter 3 and the Book of Revelation. This world is going to be destroyed in a conflagration of fire. The elements are going to melt in the heat.
What does that mean? Everything we interact with with the five senses is temporary. This world, all of its powers and pleasures, and all of these things is going to pass away. What struck me as I was memorizing the Gospel of Luke and looking at Jesus’ parables and his teachings and all that is how eschatological most of them were, like the rich man in Lazarus. The rich man should have been thinking about the next world. Okay? We’ve got the parable of the unrighteous steward, and Jesus directly applies it to the next world. “Use worldly mammon to gain friends for yourself, so they’ll welcome you into eternal habitations” (Luke 16:9).
Almost all of his parables are pointing to the next world. Think about the next world, the world to come and realize now we are aliens and strangers in this world. So, what I get out of 1 John 2:15-17 is this world is not my home. I shouldn’t settle in here. I shouldn’t be comfortable with it. This is alien territory, and it’s essentially wicked. These verses imply this is an essentially wicked thing that we’re immersed in here. It is seeking to destroy our souls.
Let me step back and say we are under constant assault by these three enemies: the world, the flesh, and the devil. This is the best passage to describe the world. This is an enemy of your soul. So, we have to be aware of that and be careful how we carry ourselves. And it says plainly in verse 17, “This world in its desires pass away, but he who does the will of God will endure or live forever.”
Wes
How does that final statement give us hope? And what final thoughts do you have for us on these verses that we’ve been looking at?
Andy
Right. So, there’s a contrast, and again, the book of 1 John is given to distinguish between a true and false profession of faith in Christ. So, one of the things is that if we are genuinely Christians, God is light and in him there’s no darkness at all. And we need to walk in the light, as he is in the light. Well, that affects how we live in this world.
So, there is a good world that we live in. That is the world that John 3:16 talks about, and that is planet earth with all of its beautiful creation, the good things that God made, and the good gifts that he gave us to enjoy. So, we are not ascetics here. Paul says in 1 Timothy 4, everything God made is good if it’s received with thanksgiving. So, if it’s within that which is granted to you, you are free to eat from any tree in the garden except this one, then enjoy those trees. Enjoy the good things he’s given.
So, we need to do that, but we need to realize those things that are forbidden, those things that are off limits, those things that are seen to be evil, they are a direct threat to your soul. And you have to fight those temptations every day. And if you do, if put to death the deeds of the flesh, you put to death those earthly desires and drives, if you fight the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life, you will live forever. So it’s the promise of eternal life. This is the kind of life that leads to heaven.
Wes
This has been Episode 3 in our 1, 2, and 3 John Bible Study Podcast. We want to invite you to join us next time for Episode 4, entitled Antichrists and the Antichrist, where we’ll discuss 1 John 2:18-29. Thank you for listening to the Two Journeys podcast. And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
