Do Not Love the World
Love not the... Two things not to love:
1. Greek: kosmos, the order, behavior, fashion, and government of this world system (Mat. 4:8; 13:22; Eph. 2:1-3; Jas. 4:4; 2Pet. 1:4; 2:20)
2. The things that make up the world system of evil and rebellion against God.
Is a command implying that action now in progress must cease: Stop loving the world! There is, of course, one sense in which Christians should love the world, since God Himself did and does (John 3:16). But in the sense of pledging personal loyalty and devotion of one’s whole being and means, Christians are to love God first and foremost (Deut. 6:5; Mark 12:30).
The world (τὸν κόσμον)
As in John 1:3, the creation was designated in its several details by πάντα, all things, so here, creation is regarded in its totality, as an ordered whole. See on Acts 7:24; see on Jas. 3:6. Four words are used in the New Testament for world:
(1) γῇ , land, ground, territory, the earth, as distinguished from the heavens. The sense is purely physical.
(2) οἰκουμένη, which is a participle, meaning inhabited, with γῆ ,earth, understood, and signifies the earth as the abode of men; the whole inhabited world. See on Mat. 24:14; see on Luke 2:1. Also in a physical sense, though used once of the world to come (Heb. 2:5).
(3) αἰών, essentially time, as the condition under which all created things exist, and the measure of their existence: a period of existence; a lifetime; a generation; hence, a long space of time; an age, era, epoch, period of a dispensation. On this primary, physical sense there arises a secondary sense, viz., all that exists in the world under the conditions of time. From this again develops a more distinctly ethical sense, the course and current of this world's affairs compare the expression, the times, and this course as corrupted by sin; hence the evil world. So Gal. 1:4; 2Cor. 4:4.
(4) κόσμος, which follows a similar line of development from the physical to the ethical sense; meaning (a) ornament, arrangement, order (1Pet. 3:3); (b) the sum-total of the material universe considered as a system (Mat. 13:35; John 17:5; Acts 17:24; Phlp. 2:15). Compare Plato. He who is incapable of communion is also incapable of friendship. And philosophers tell us, Callicles, that communion and friendship and orderliness and temperance and justice bind together heaven and earth and gods and men, and that this universe is therefore called Cosmos, or order, not disorder or misrule (Gorgias, 508). (c) That universe as the abode of man (John 16:21; 1Jhn. 3:17). (d) The sum-total of humanity in the world; the human race (John 1:29; 4:42). (e) In the ethical sense, the sum-total of human life in the ordered world, considered apart from, alienated from, and hostile to God, and of the earthly things which seduce from God (John 7:7; 15:18; 17:9, 17:14; 1Cor. 1:20, 1:21; 2Cor. 7:10; Jas. 4:4).
This word is characteristic of John, and pre-eminently in this last, ethical sense, in which it is rarely used by the Synoptists, while John nowhere uses αἰών of the moral order. In this latter sense the word is wholly strange to heathen literature, since the heathen world had no perception of the opposition between God and sinful man; between the divine order and the moral disorder introduced and maintained by sin.
Christians are in the world, but not of the world. Our home is in heaven. We need to keep our thoughts and desires set on things above. World in this example here, is speaking of the sin of the world. It is speaking of worldliness and fleshly lives.If any man... This is the reason men must not love the world system or the things in it. Love of God and love of these things are not compatible. Loving the world, in this sense, would be trying to please the desires of our flesh. To love the world, would make us a flesh man. Christians should be spirit men. The world and the things of the world are carnal.
This does not mean that we cannot enjoy the families God has given us, or the blessings we have received from Him. It does mean that we should not be caught up in worldly living. God must be first in our lives. We should not be hanging on to the world but should eagerly await our home in heaven with Him.
The love of the Father (ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ πατρὸς)
The phrase occurs only here in the New Testament. It means love towards the Father, yet as generated by the father's love to man. Compare 1Jhn. 3:1.
Is the love of God perfected (ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ Θεοῦ τετελείωται)
Rev., rendering the perfect tense more closely, hath the love of God been perfected. The change in the form of this antithetic clause is striking. He who claims to know God, yet lives in disobedience, is a liar. We should expect as an offset to this: He that keepeth His commandments are of the truth; or the truth is in him. Instead we have, in him has the love of God been perfected. In other words, the obedient child of God is characterized, not by any representative trait or quality of his own personality, but merely as the subject of the work of divine love: as the sphere in which that love accomplishes its perfect work.
The phrase ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ Θεοῦ the love of God, may mean either the love which God shows, or the love of which God is the object, or the love which is characteristic of God whether manifested by Himself or by His obedient child through His Spirit. John's usage is not decisive like Paul's, according to which the love of God habitually means the love which proceeds from and is manifested by God. The exact phrase, the love of God or the love of the Father is found in 1Jhn. 3:16; 4:9, in the undoubted sense of the love of God to men. The same sense is intended in 1Jhn. 3:1, 3:9, 3:16, though differently expressed. The sense is doubtful in 1Jhn. 2:5; 3:17; 4:12. Men's love to God is clearly meant in 1Jhn. 2:15; 5:3. The phrase occurs only twice in the Gospels (Luke 6:42; John 5:42), and in both cases the sense is doubtful. Some, as Ebrard, combine the two, and explain the love of God as the mutual relation of love between God and men.
It is not possible to settle the point decisively, but I incline to the view that the fundamental idea of the love of God as expounded by John is the love which God has made known and which answers to His nature. In favor of this is the general usage of ἀγάπη love, in the New Testament, with the subjective genitive. The object is more commonly expressed by εἰς towards, or to. See 1Thes. 3:12; Col. 1:4; 1Pet. 4:8. Still stronger is John's treatment of the subject in chap. 4. Here we have, 1Jhn. 4:9, the manifestation of the love of God in us ἐν ἡμῖν by our life in Christ and our love to God we are a manifestation of God's love. Directly following this is a definition of the essential nature of love. In this is love, i.e., herein consists of love: not that we have loved God, but that He loved us (1Jhn. 4:10). Our mutual love is a proof that God dwells in us. God dwelling in us, His love is perfected in us (1Jhn. 4:12). The latter clause, it would seem, must be explained according to 1Jhn. 4:10. Then (1Jhn. 4:16), We have known and believed the love that God hath in us see on John 16:22, on the phrase have love. God is love; that is His nature, and He imparts this nature to be the sphere in which His children dwell. He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God. Finally, our love is engendered by His love to us. We love Him because He first loved us (1Jhn. 4:19).
In harmony with this is John 15:9. As the Father loved me, I also loved you. Continue ye in my love. My love must be explained by me loved you. This is the same idea of divine love as the sphere or element of renewed being and this idea is placed, as in the passage we are considering, in direct connection with the keeping of the divine commandments. If ye keep my commandments ye shall abide in my love.
This interpretation does not exclude man's love to God. On the contrary, it includes it. The love which God has, is revealed as the love of God in the love of His children towards Him, no less than in His manifestations of love to them. The idea of divine love is thus complex. Love, in its very essence, is reciprocal. It's perfect ideal requires two parties. It is not enough to tell us, as a bare, abstract truth, that God is love. The truth must be rounded and filled out for us by the appreciable exertion of divine love upon an object, and by the response of the object. The love of God is perfected or completed by the perfect establishment of the relation of love between God and man. When man loves perfectly, his love is the love of God shed abroad in his heart. His love owes both its origin and its nature to the love of God.
The word verily ἀληθῶς is never used by John as a mere formula of affirmation, but has the meaning of a qualitative adverb, expressing not merely the actual existence of a thing, but its existence in a manner most absolutely corresponding to ἀλήθεια truth. Compare John 1:48; 8:31. Hath been perfected. John is presenting the ideal of life in God. This is the love of God that we keep His commandments. Therefore whosoever keepeth God's word, His message in its entirety, realizes the perfect relation of love.
Although John often repeats the importance of love and that God is love (4:7-8), he also reveals that God hates a certain type of love: love of the world (John 15:18-20). In this text, John expresses a particular form of the fourth test i.e. the test of love.Is not in him.
This means more than that he does not love God: rather that the love of God does not dwell in him as the ruling principle of his life. Westcott cites a parallel from Philo: It is impossible for love to the world to coexist with love to God, as it is impossible for light and darkness to coexist. Compare Plato. Evils, Theodorus, can never pass away; for there must always remain something which is antagonist to good. Having no place among the gods in heaven, of necessity they hover around the earthly nature, and this mortal sphere. Wherefore we ought to fly away from earth to heaven as quickly as we can; and to fly away is to become like God, as far as this is possible; and to become like Him is to become holy and just and wise (Theaetetus, 176).
Positively, the Christian loves God and fellow Christians. Negatively, an absence of love for the world must habitually characterize the love life of those to be considered genuinely born again. Love here signifies affection and devotion. God, not the world, must have the first place in the Christian’s life (Mat. 10:37-39; Phil. 3:20).The world is not a reference to the physical, material world but the invisible spiritual system of evil dominated by Satan and all that it offers in opposition to God, His Word, and His people. The love of the Father is not in him: Either one is a genuine Christian marked by love and obedience to God, or one is a non-Christian in rebellion against God.
Meaning in love with and enslaved by the satanically controlled world system (Eph. 2:1-3); Col. 1:13; Jas. 4:4). No middle ground between these two alternatives exists for someone claiming to be born again. The false teachers had no such singular love, but were devoted to the world’s philosophy and wisdom, thereby revealing their love for the world and their unsaved state. (Mat. 6:24; Luke 16:13; 1 Tim. 6:20; 2 Pet. 2: 12-22).
In light of the world’s allurements
The writer was not dissatisfied with the spiritual state of his readers. Much less did he question or doubt their salvation, as some expositors of this epistle imply. On the contrary, his readers may even be viewed as having matured in the faith. John wrote precisely because their present state was so good. But he wished to warn them about dangers which always exist, no matter how far one has advanced in his Christian walk.
He turned now to a warning. Do not love the world or anything in the world. The world kosmos, thought of here as an entity hostile to God cf. 1Jhn. 4:4, is always a seductive influence which Christians should continually resist (cf. John 15:18-19; Jas. 4:4. In other NT verses world kosmos means people, e.g., John 3:16-17.) The world competes for the love of Christians, and one cannot both love it and the Father at the same time. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. As James also had told his Christian readers, Friendship with the world is hatred toward God (Jas. 4:4).
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