In my previous post I looked at some very sensible and logical reasons why we should obey God’s command given in 1 John 2:15-17 to not love this world nor the things of this world.
Love for the world is seen in these verses as being contrary to love for God. In fact, James 4:4 tells us that friendship with the world makes us an enemy of God. This should be reason enough for us not to love this world. However, a second Biblical reason for our not loving this world nor the things of this world would be that the world we live in is not the world that God created in the beginning in which He called all things “good”. It was a world magnificently designed by God to display His glory, the infinite perfections of His being; a world of exquisite beauty and wonder, excitement and adventure, some of which it retains even in its present sin corrupted, sin cursed condition. It was a world created for the unbounded joy for all of its inhabitants, particularly men and women created in the image and likeness of an infinitely glorious God, with the perfection of being necessary to live in His immediate presence, governed in their hearts and actions by love for God and faith in the love of God for them. They would live for the glory of God, finding their ultimate and eternal joy, pleasure and fulfilment in relationship with God and one another as image bearers of God.
But that is obviously not the world of today. Instead the world of today, what is referred to in Galatians 1:4 as this present evil world, is a sin corrupted, disordered and dangerous version of that world; a world populated by corrupted, disordered and dangerous versions of the men and women God created in the beginning in His image and likeness who are no longer governed in their hearts and in their actions by love for God and trust in His love for them, but are governed in their hearts and motivated in their actions by what the Bible refers to as lust.
The term lust in itself is a neutral term with no moral connotation. It is defined generally as a passionate or obsessive desire for a person, object, position or experience.
In the Bible however, the term lust represents the passionate or obsessive pursuit of the satisfaction of our God-given needs and desires for love and acceptance, beauty and pleasure, significance and security, independent of God; in the things, relationships and activities that have been forbidden by God or that take the place of God in our hearts.
In 1 John 2:16 we are given the three prevailing experiences of lust in this world, namely lust of the eyes (a consuming desire for riches/possessions), lust of the flesh (a consuming desire for sensual pleasures), and the boastful pride of life (a consuming desire for status/fame and power). Each of these lusts can be found all the way back in the Devil’s temptation of man to rebel against God, (Genesis 3:6), which Adam did, as well as the Devil’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness which, thankfully, Jesus did not (Matthew 4:1-11).
Lust is essentially love turned inward. We look at life through the lens of what’s in it for me, how am I benefitted, how am I blessed, how can I profit by my actions or the actions of others. Thus, a life governed by lust is a life focused on living self for self. We strive for and value SELF sufficiency, SELF reliance, SELF determination, SELF esteem, SELF confidence, above the value set of the Kingdom of God which values humility, contriteness, love for and dependence upon God.
In 2 Peter 1:4, and James 1:13-15 we are told that all of the corruption of this world, and all of the sin behind that corruption, has its origin in lust. And we are told in 1 John 2:17, that this world and all who are being controlled by its lusts are passing away, ultimately perishing under the wrath and judgement of God, wherein this world will experience a final judgement and all who identify with it, including the one who the Bible refers to as the “god of this world” the devil, will be consigned forever to eternal punishment.
The good news is that Jesus Christ, God the Son, came into this present evil world to deliver us from our love for it, our dependence upon it and God’s eternal punishment of it, saving us for a world of infinitely greater joy, pleasure and fulfilment than anything that could be conceived of or imagined in this one (Galatians 1:3-4) (John 3:16).
Grace and Truth ×