1 John 2:15-17
15 Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 The world is passing away, and also its lusts, but the one who does the will of God lives forever.
I don’t know about you but there seems to be something in me that wants to love the world. Since I’ve been a Christian there’s something that doesn’t too. I can feed the desires and make them stronger or I can starve them and make them weaker. John lists the desires of the world:
The lust of the flesh – the desire to indulge
The lust of the eyes – the desire to acquire
The boastful pride of life - the desire to impress
Each lust is a perversion of a legitimate need or desire. You need food, the lust wants the whole cake. You need shoes, the lust wants to fill a closet with them. You need a vehicle, the lust wants to show off and put your neighbor down with a few hundred horsepowers beyond what you need.
These lusts don’t come from God, but from the cosmos, the organized system of thinking, invented by satan, promulgated by the world through lust. The next time you watch TV notice which lust(s) are driving the commercials. You can’t have worldly lust ruling your mind and emotions and love God at the same time, they are mutually exclusive. God says to not love the world or the stuff in it. Why not? Because the world is decaying and its lust with it. But the one who lives the will of God lives forever.
A Christian is called to reject the world and all of its philosophy in favor of loving God and His viewpoint. How do you respond?