This text is almost entirely negative. Do not love the world or the things in the world. Do not love the world or the things in the world because they are not of God. The world passes away. There is a set time when this world and everything in it will be no more. And then we must ask, if this world and everything in it pass away, will there then be nothing but God again? There was a time, if we may speak so foolishly, when only God was. In the beginning already the Word was, and the Word was with God. God alone is eternal.

And where was the world then? The world was in God’s counsel. His counsel was with him as he determined and planned all things in eternity. God not only beheld all things before they occurred, but he also beheld all things as perfect in him. He beheld the world as it was made and as it passed from perfection to sin and the curse. God beheld the world as it passed from creation to the flood to Jesus Christ. God beheld Christ’s incarnation, cross, and resurrection as standing at the very center of God’s plan. God beheld as the world passed from Golgotha to the coming of Christ to judge the quick and the dead. God beheld the world as he rolled back the heavens as a scroll and burned the world with unquenchable fire; as he overthrew sin, death, hell, and the grave; and as he cast all the wicked out of the world into hell. God beheld as he recreated a new heaven and a new earth united in one in Jesus Christ, a world recreated after the pattern of the heavenly to be the everlasting home of his chosen people, in which they live and reign with Christ for the endlessly turning calendar of the everlasting age of perfection. And God beheld the everlasting age from eternity as one indivisible present. All things, all events, and all movements and progression in time and space, God beheld as but a blink before his eternal eyes. All things were before him, and all things were perfect before him—the perfect plan for the revelation of himself as the covenant God, by establishing a covenant of grace and reconciliation with his elect people in Christ Jesus, their head and savior! God beheld the world as the stage!

The text is almost entirely negative, but the standpoint of the text is the positive purpose of God for the everlasting salvation of his people and the whole cosmos made perfect in his Son, Jesus Christ. This is the viewpoint of the text because the apostle says, “He that doeth the will of God abideth forever!” There is a heavenly reality standing behind the text. It is an abiding reality that is developing and being made plain in the world. That reality is God’s eternal kingdom in Jesus Christ—the eternal kingdom that develops and is unfolded on the world stage. Because of the coming of this kingdom, the world perishes. And for the existence of this kingdom, this present world and everything in it must give way at last and be destroyed.

You belong to that abiding heavenly reality! You are not of the world. You are of the Father, and he who does the will of the Father abides forever. The everlasting age that is coming broke into this world with the announcement of the coming of Christ, in the incarnation, and in the crucifixion of Christ in the world. And the everlasting age has come to you, has laid hold on you, and has translated you out of the world into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. Love not the world! Love God! The things in the world are not of God! You are of God! Love not the things that are not of God! Those things perish, but you abide forever!

When the apostle says, “Love not the world,” he uses the word “world” in a comprehensive sense.

The word world has different meanings in scripture. Most basically the word means an organized and harmonious whole.

One meaning of world is this present cosmos as it was created by God and as it is destined to be the eternal dwelling place of Christ and his elect church made perfect. Christ is the head of the cosmos. The members of the elect church are its prophets, priests, and kings. The created world will be united in one in Jesus Christ, and cast out of the new world forever will be all the wicked. God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.

God does not love all men. He loves some and appoints them to everlasting life. God hates others and appoints them to everlasting condemnation. God loves his world that he created and destined to be perfected in Christ along the deep, dark, and mysterious way of sin and grace; death and resurrection; election and reprobation; and turning and hardening for the glory of his holy name as the only good God. Yes, God has an eternal purpose for the world, a grand and glorious purpose, which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered the heart of man to conceive the things that God has prepared for those who love him and are the called according to his purpose.

God originally made the world a harmonious whole. When he made the world, there was no sin in it. When God surveyed the world on the first Saturday as he rested from all the works that he had made, then he pronounced the world to be very good! Understand that the words very good were not the pronouncement merely that the world was without sin. Surely the world was without sin. God made no devils, only angels. God made no sinful men, but he made a perfect man—Adam and his wife, Eve—able in all things to will agreeably to the will of God. God made all things good, each thing standing in its proper place and relationship to all other things. You must also understand that God said that the world was very good because every creature, no matter how small and insignificant, was the embodiment of the Wisdom of God, who had made them, and those creatures spoke the name of God. The whole creation shouted the glory of God. The whole creation shouted the glory of God as created by the Word. And man in the creation was created to love and to serve God his creator and to consecrate everything in creation to the glory of God.

But the creation and everything in it did not shout the glory of God in the highest sense as redeemed by the Word made flesh. The creation was good, very good, yet it was not the highest good. God made the world and pronounced it to be very good because it was exactly as he had determined it to be as the stage for the revelation of the wonder of grace! So there was rebellion in heaven and rebellion on earth as Satan and man turned against God, who was their creator. Man allied himself with the devil, who was God’s enemy. This did not happen outside God’s sovereign control but according to his eternal purpose that the world be the stage for the revelation of himself and his glory—the glory of his grace and justice, his omnipotence and sovereignty, his salvation and damnation, and his covenant of grace—that in all things and with all things, he would be praised, worshiped, served, and glorified as the only God. Yes, the creation was set to unfold the eternal purpose of God!

Thus when the text speaks of “world,” you must understand that comprehensively.

The meaning of “world” is, first, the creation as you know it—the creation as it was originally good, as it came under the curse in Adam, and as it now groans and travails under that curse. Love not this world as you know it. Oh, even in its fallen state, there are beauty and attraction to the world: its light and life; its brilliant sunlight and soft, silvery moonlight; its twinkling hosts in heaven; its mountains and valleys; its gurgling streams and roaring rivers; its broad, deep, and powerful oceans; the placid lakes and beautiful beaches; the vast forests and sweeping grasslands; all the birds, flowers, and multitude of animals and fishes; and the treasures of gold, silver, and precious stones mined from the earth. In wisdom God made them all!

Love not the world! Do not set your affections on things here below and on this form of the creation!

Second, the apostle means by “world” the coalition of the ungodly who occupy this world. The world is the world of sinful flesh; it is the world of the ungodly; it is the world of the apostate. It is the world as it is controlled and directed under the power of the prince of this world, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience. They are united together, and they exist in the world in hostility to God. The apostle says that the world is full of lusts. Lust is covetousness. Covetousness is as idolatry and witchcraft, the very antithesis of God!

The heart of the world is full of that covetousness. In that heart man exists in hatred and hostility to the Father. The love of the Father is not in that heart at all. Covetousness is a corruption of the heart, such that man takes the world and seeks himself. God made all things to serve himself. And man in his covetousness takes all the things in the world and seeks himself, his pleasure, his glory, and his name. And covetousness, like witchcraft, casts its spell over the whole life of man, and he lives then in his lusts and in hatred and opposition to God.

Love not the world! The world is the enemy of your Father in heaven!

Then man, as he lives in the world in his lusts, fills the world with the fruits of his covetousness. The things in the world, the Spirit says, are the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life!

The lusts of the flesh are all the things with which man fills the world to satisfy his carnal desires. The lusts of the flesh are the baser desires of man. He takes all his food and drink, and he does not eat unto God but unto himself, so that he satisfies his flesh and its need to be healthy. But man is healthy unto himself. It is a godless kind of eating. He takes his food and drink, and he satisfies his flesh with gluttony and drunkenness and revelry. He takes the good gift of sex, and he satisfies his flesh with lewdness and fornication and adultery. The lusts of the flesh are the bar and the brothel; the upscale, fine-dining restaurant and the exquisite, gourmet dinner; and man’s sensual clothes, opulent houses, and expensive cars. And if man cannot have the finest, then he seeks to satisfy his desires with whatever he can afford.

The lusts of the eyes are the more refined lusts of man—his artistry and philosophy, his science and medicine, and his prose and poetry. Here man seeks himself and his glory. The lusts of the eyes are the theater, the music festival, the laboratory, the hospital, and the university. The lusts of the eyes are all man’s songs and dances, his vain literature and godless philosophy. The lusts of the eyes are all his wicked, false doctrine and false religion. In all of it man seeks himself and his glory; and in all of it, he exists in the creation and with the creation for the satisfaction of himself and for his own glory. Man speaks about and works to establish a heaven on earth that is not only apart from God but is also hostile to God and excludes God. Man would cast God out of God’s own creation.

And the pride of life stands behind all man’s lusts. With the pride of life, man stands boldly in the world that God made and as man is confronted by God in all creation, and man denies God. All sin, all lust, is ultimately the denial of God. Denying God, man seeks to maintain himself in his godless existence in a perishing creation. Yes, man glories in the purely earthly life. He seeks his own honor and glory and not God’s. Pride is the devil’s sin. And the poison of that pride the devil instilled in man from the beginning. The end of this pride will be when wicked man shall sit in the temple of God and announce himself before the world to be God, to whom the great red dragon will give his seat, power, and authority!

Love not the world or the things in the world!

Do not set your affections on this world as it now stands and moves along in its history.

Do not seek your own glory along with the world.

Do not make the world your friend.

Do not let your flesh reign, so that your eyes are turned to the world’s glittering sights and your ears are tuned to the world’s siren song and the world casts its spell over you and you turn your eyes from heaven and your ears from the word of God. Do not revel in the world’s pleasures and seek happiness in the world’s unrighteousness. Do not give yourselves to the world’s pleasures and lusts. Do not seek this world and its goods.

Love not the world!

For all that is in the world is not of God.

Not that God did not create the world! The world and all that it contains are God’s. The world’s wealth, secrets, and powers are of God.

All that man develops of the world in his lusts is not of God. All that the world uses to seek its own glory and good is not of God. The things that constitute the world’s existence, for which the world lives, and by which the world shows its hatred of God, are not of God but are of the world.

All the things of the world are not of God. God did not command these things. He does not love these things. He despises them and damns them. He has nothing to do with the darkness. He hates the darkness; for he is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

These things are out of the world. The world devised these things with its wicked and depraved imagination and in deliberate opposition to God and his will. Those of the world use these things in their covetousness for the satisfaction of their own lusts. The world’s life and experiences, entertainment and recreation, business and industry, art and culture, education and philosophy, and religion and doctrine are not of God.

And the world’s hopes and dreams—the world also hopes and dreams—are not of God. The world’s hopes and dreams are of a heaven on earth—an earthly paradise. The world dreams of one united world government where the peace and wisdom of man reign and in which there is no God, no Christ, and no church that lives in antithetical separation from the world of sin and darkness. All these hopes and dreams of the world are not of God.

Love not the world or the things in the world because they are not of God!

And the world passes away!

That the world passes away seems untrue from the viewpoint of your lives and experiences. You seem to pass away, and your time here is like a dream. In your brief and fleeting lives, you pass through births and deaths, joys and sorrows, pleasant experiences and painful ones, sicknesses and health, and fruitful years and barren ones. Throughout the quick passage of your lives, there are desires, thoughts, plans, purposes, and labors to complete. In them all, you experience that part of the sorrow of the world that is allotted to you; and like a shadow that passes away, so you pass from this earth. And the earth apparently remains.

Such is this the viewpoint of man that scoffers arise and say that all things continue as they have from the beginning. But it is an illusion to think that the world remains. It is part of the illusion that holds men’s minds and hearts here on earth enraptured by the world and the things of the world. Belonging to the illusion is the lie that the world is progressing and advancing toward a golden age. But the world passes away. The world is at present passing swiftly away as God directs the world and all its things to their appointed and fiery end.

Oh, believers enjoy the use of the world in the light of scripture. They use the world and experience its delights, but they do not love the world. Do not love this world as that in which you have all your hopes and dreams; as that place where you want to stay for as long as you can; as that place where your horizon stops, so that you cannot see past it to another.

For there is another world you seek. This world groans and travails now. This creation is only temporary and passes away, and it will pass away with a great noise. All its elements will melt with a fervent heat. From a natural viewpoint the creation as a stage is temporary and was intended to be so. Soon the creation will be no more.

And all that is in the world—its lusts; covetousness; ungodliness; all the products that man has developed in this creation to satisfy his lust for power, sex, health, wealth, order, and advancement—perishes too. Nothing of this world enters God’s everlasting creation. All must be consumed in the final conflagration. All the world’s working, struggling, laboring, and advancing; all its power, praise, and honor; and all its hopes and dreams—all perish.

Lusts will not be in hell either, for there is no coveting in hell! There is only the terrible wasting of the sinner under the wrath of God, an absolute death.

Love not the world or the things in the world because the world and all its things pass away.

Love God!

Love not the world; love God. That is the antithesis. That is the positive command of the text. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. Yes, that is true absolutely. There is an absolute antithesis in these words. The love of the world and the love of the Father are antithetical to one another. There is war between them. There is hatred, hostility, and a gulf so great that it cannot be passed over. You cannot serve God and mammon. If you love the world, then you hate the Father. If you love the Father, then you hate the world and the things of the world. It cannot be otherwise.

There is not in you a certain measure of love for the Father and a certain measure of love for the world, which two things are in constant flux—first the one dominating, then the other dominating. John is speaking—and so the Spirit is speaking—in absolute terms.

Now let me tell you about yourselves. The Bible must tell us who we are. We are strange creatures, very strange. It appears that we are stuck between two worlds. There are strange thoughts and desires that go on in the Christian. The most contradictory, antithetical things are ascribed to this one person. What I do, I do not allow, recognize, or approve. What I will to do, I do not do. What I hate, that is what I do. And then most mysterious of all, what I do, I do not do but sin in me! This all seems to be an impossibility. This willing, hating, doing, and not doing are all attributed to the very same person. In that sphere the one person wills the good but does not do it. He does what he does not recognize. He hates what is evil and does it. And most marvelous and strangest of all, he does not do what he does. I do not do it but sin in me!

You are not stuck between two worlds. You have been translated out of the kingdom of Satan and into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. You have been called out of darkness into God’s marvelous light. You have passed from the sphere of that which passes away into the sphere of that which abides. You have the love of the Father in you. The love of the Father is God’s own love of himself. God loves himself. He seeks himself and his own glory. He seeks his good and glory in everything. And it cannot be otherwise, for he is the only good and ever-blessed God. He cannot seek anything but himself and his glory, or he is not God.

And in this love God loved you. The great manifestation of that love is the incarnation, the crucifixion, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There is the love of God for you. He spared not his own Son. And that love of God he sheds abroad in your hearts by the Holy Ghost, who is given to you, so that you love the Father. God loves himself in and through you in such a way that you love God with God’s own love of himself. Yes, the Holy Ghost, who in God is the eternal love of the Father breathed between the Father and the Son, is breathed by the Son into you; and the Holy Ghost is breathed from your hearts back to God. That is the love of the Father in you.

And the apostle says that you do the will of God! Do not go to your works when the apostle says that. Do not say, “I love God because I obey him.” No, no, the will of God is faith. This is the will of God, that you believe on him whom God sent, even Jesus Christ. You have passed from death to life, and the love of God is shed abroad in your hearts, and you love God because of Jesus Christ. God forgave your sins because Christ paid for those sins, so that you are perfect in God’s sight with Christ’s perfect love and his perfect obedience to God. And God has translated you out of darkness into God’s marvelous light, in which you now stand and in which you walk even as sinners. God has shed his love in your hearts by the Spirit, who is given to you. That is who you are: sinners who have been translated from death to life. Believing in Jesus Christ, in the depth of your beings, in your hearts, you love God in thankfulness for his salvation of you from the world. And there is no love of the world in your hearts! And those who do the will of God abide forever! Yes, Christ in you!

Why then are you so attracted to the world? Because you have that love of God in your hearts with flesh that loves the world. Yes, when you love not the world, then you must hate your own flesh and crucify it. In that flesh there is no love of God but only the love of the world. The flesh loves the world, and the flesh does not love God. The flesh loves the things of the world and does not love the things of God.

You belong to that which abides! You have passed from death to life. You sit now in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. And on earth you are pilgrims and strangers. Here you have no abiding place.

The world perishes. Oh, yes! Everything that you see around you perishes. Not that it will perish at one point in history, but it is passing away now already. From the moment of the fall until now, the world has been passing away. Nothing in the world is permanent. All the things of the world and that fill the world perish as well. The sun, moon, and stars perish. The earth in its present form perishes. The sciences, philosophies, religions, works, and wonders of men perish. Finally, they shall all melt with a fervent heat.

In this world you must live as pilgrims and strangers. You must be fathers, mothers, students, laborers, business owners, church members, and so forth. But you must do that as those who have received this world as an eternal inheritance that will be made new. You must do that as those who love God and seek his glory in everything. And this world you may not love. This world perishes.

Live in the world as those who seek the eternal and the heavenly. Do not set your affections here below. Do not gratify your flesh with the lusts of the flesh. Do not fill your eyes and ears with the lusts of those eyes and ears. Do not stand in God’s world with the pride of life, proudly maintaining yourselves and your lusts over against the living God. No, no, do not love the world. Love God. Yes, you must be carpenters, masons, farmers, businessmen, clerks, mechanics, magistrates, and obedient citizens. You must be husbands, wives, and children, but you must live as those who have passed from death to life and who are in Christ and who do the will of God.

All these things and relationships are but pilgrims’ staffs and cruses. You are traveling to a new world, a new heaven and earth, where righteousness will dwell. Do the will of God. Believe in God’s only-begotten Son, trusting that all your sins are forgiven and that you are righteous before God and heirs of eternal life. Love God. Yearn for him. You are those who have the new world already in your hearts!