Wednesday 22 April 2015

Don't love the world

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 lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever. – 1 John 2.15-17

Do not love the world. That sounds great, but I find that it is a lot harder to apply than we may think about. I don’t know what it is so hard to not love the world. I guess it is because sin is appealing for a season. The world has a real draw. It appeals to the lust of our flesh and the lust of our eyes and the pride of our life. That’s always been a draw – its exactly the way that Satan appealed to Eve.  It is exactly the way that Satan tempted Christ.

If sin was ugly it wouldn’t appeal to us. Back in October I was at a church function with Holly and Mary and the lads. There was a puppet there called ‘Mr Sin.’ He was really scary – he even sacred me, but he terrified my grandsons. I understood the purpose was to show sin in its true nature, but the bad thing is that the sins that the world offers are not ugly and scary. The world appears to be beautiful and alluring and tempting and lovely. If sin were as ugly as Mr Sin no one would be drawn to him. We would run in fear, like my grandsons did.

The problem with loving the world is that it is not going to last. It is already passing away and will one day be gone. All of the beauty and attraction is going to disappear and all of our love of the world will have been in vain – or worse.

But those who do the will of God abide forever.

The world is temporary. Why do we waste time on the temporary stuff when we are going to live forever? Shouldn’t our love be focused on that which will abide with us forever?

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