b. ii. 12-28. What Walking in the Light excludes: the Things and Persons to be avoided.
- Three-fold Statement of Reasons for Writing (ii. 12-14).
- Things to be avoided: the World and Its Ways (ii. 15-17).
- Persons to be avoided: Antichrists (B. 18-26).
- [Transitional.] The Place of Safety: Christ (ii. 27, 28).
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
15. "Love not the world." The sum of secular influences hostile to God, "the world is the order of finite being regarded as apart from God. Whatever is treated as complete without reference to God is so far a rival to God" (Westcott), instead of being the true expression of God's will under the conditions of its creation. Some exegetes harmonize this prohibition, "love not the world," with the statement, "God so loved the world" (John iii. 16), by saying, "That which man may not do, being what he is, God can do, because He looks through the surface of things by which man is misled to the very being which He created." A better harmony of these Scriptures is found in the fact that love has two meanings : (1) a love of pity, and (2) a love of complacency and delight. In the first meaning we not only may love the world, but we ought to love the world, if we are in sympathy with God, and we are under obligation to evince our pitying love by godlike self-sacrifice for the salvation of the fallen world. The more Christ-like we are the more perfectly will we fulfil this obligation. But this material world, as an object of delight in preference to its Creator, we may not love. Augustine finely illustrates this point: "If the bridegroom should make for his bride a ring and give it to her, and if she should love the ring more than her husband who made it for her, would not an adulterous disposition be detected by means of this very gift of her bridegroom, although she was loving what he gave to her?"
"The love of the Father is not in him." One heart cannot contain two loves so hostile to each other as the love of light and the love of darkness. John assumes that there can be no vacuum in the soul. Says Augustine to the young convert, "Thou art a vessel, but hitherto thou hast been full. Pour out what thou hast that thou mayest receive what thou hast not. Exclude the evil love of the world, that thou mayest be filled with the love of God." All other loves must be secondary, must be in harmony with love to God, and must be referred to Him. But supreme love to the finite is antagonistic to love of the infinite One, because the sense of personal relationship to Him is lost. The exact order of the Greek is remarkably suggestive: "There exists not (whatever he may say) the love of the Father in him." Says Philo, as quoted by John of Damascus, "It is as impossible for love toward the world to co-exist with love toward God as it is impossible for light and darkness to dwell with each other." The philosophy of this negation is given in the next verse.
16. "Because everything in the world . . . is passing away." The stream never rises higher than the fountain. Supreme love to the world being limited by the perishing world is incompatible with love toward the eternal Father. This incongruity relates not only to the inequality in the duration of the two objects of love, but also to their characters. Supreme love to a finite object is a degrading idolatry; supreme love to God is a most elevating and transforming virtue. Hence the prohibition of love toward the world is prompted by a benevolent desire in the heart of God to avert from us an unspeakable evil and to bestow that happiness which shall be as lasting as His own eternal existence.
"The lust of the flesh." The flesh is the subject in which the desire dwells. It seeks to appropriate that which is like itself, material rather than spiritual. It is not sin, but has a natural leaning toward sin in fallen humanity. But all unlawful pleasures are sinful and lawful gratifications of sense may become sinful by being excessive, as gluttony. St. John rarely uses the term "flesh" in the same way that St. Paul generally does, to denote that portion of man's nature which has an hereditary proclivity toward sin. The removal of it by entire sanctification is called "the crucifixion of the flesh." Rarely, if ever, is "the body" thus used. The phrase "vile 'body" is an erroneous translation of "the body of our humiliation." (Phil. iii. 21, R. V.) The body is not to be crucified or flagellated, but sanctified by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, otherwise it will be polluted and degraded by the tyranny of the flesh.
"The lust of the eyes." The eye is the inlet of much innocent pleasure. But this pleasure becomes idle and prurient curiosity, when it craves unlawful sights, inflaming pictures, nude statuary, polluting scenic displays, the foul exhibitions of the circus, the cruel and savage exhibitions of the ancient amphitheatre and the murderous excitements of the modern prize fight. The college regattas, baseball matches and deadly football contests make their appeals, through the eyes of myriads of spectators, to the bestial rather than the angelic in human nature. The public competitions of modem athleticism have degenerated into what Augustine aptly styles, "sacraments of the devil." The lust of the eyes also includes the leprous novel, in which scenes of debauchery are spread out before the imagination, the eye of the mind. The lust of the flesh seeks to appropriate the object of its desire, while the lust of the eyes is satisfied by enjoyment under the form of contemplation. The first is physical, the second is mental. Both are hostile to true spirituality, which lives only in the atmosphere of holiness.
"The vainglory of life." Priding one's self on a false view of what things are in themselves, empty, unstable and unsatisfying. The Greek word for "life" frequently signifies, as it does here, "the means of life." (Mark xii. 44; Luke viii. 43, xv. 12, 30; 1 John iii. 17.)
"Is of the world." This is the derivation of the perversities just named. From it they take their moral character; they inherit the destiny of the world, the fashion of which "is passing away." "Not only is the love of the world irreconcilable with the love of the Father, but also yet further, the fate of the world is included in its essential character." (Westcott.) The world is a screen which hides from unbelievers the presence of God. They have eyes to see not spiritual realities, but their perishable material semblances.
17. "And the lust thereof." The desire for the world is as unsubstantial as the world itself, which awakened it. But the desire will remain forever an aching void in the spirit bereft of its idol by death.
"But he that doeth . . . abideth." Doing God's will is the strongest proof of supreme love. The contrast of a world loved as an idol is not God, as we might expect, but the obedient believer brought into vital sympathy with Him, so that he partakes of His eternal blessedness as a kinsman of His eternal Son. (Mark iii. 35.)
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