How you got it, lost it, and how you can find it again
“Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world–the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does–comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” (1John 2:15-17)
By John David Hicks © 1999
“As you know, I have been very fortunate in my career and I’ve made a lot of money–far more than I ever dreamed of, far more than I could ever spend, far more than my family needs.” The speaker was a wealthy businessman at an Oxford University conference. His face showed his determination and strength of character, but what he said next betrayed his emotions. Tears rolled down his well-tanned face.
“To be honest, one of my motives for making so much money was simple–to have the money to hire people to do what I don’t like doing. But there’s one thing I’ve never been able to hire anyone to do for me: find my own sense of purpose and fulfillment. I’d give anything to discover that.” Os Guinness tells this story in his book The Call, and then he adds, “At some point every one of us confronts the question: How do I find and fulfill the central purpose of my life?… God calls us to himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do and everything we have is invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived out as a response to his summons and service.”
This passion for God–a life ablaze with a fire for God–is far beyond what any of us can produce. Passion flows from the very heart of God and is only ours in union with Him in ever-increasing intimacy and self-revelation. This fellowship is the key to igniting passion in every area of life. If passion for God is not the driving force of your life, you’re in trouble as a Christian. You will never start a fire in the world, your church, or your family if you are not passionately burning within.
The Spirit of God is very intense, desiring that Jesus be manifested in mymortal body. Paul explained this mystery as “Christ in you, the hope of glory…. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me” (Colossians 1:27, 29). This enthusiasm that endures and radiates comes from the presence of God within.
The apostle John explains what robs us of passion for God–love for the world (kosmos in Greek). It refers to the “kingdom of darkness,” a system organized around the world’s perspectives, values, and attitudes, warped in sin and in rebellion against God.
“If you love the world, how can the love of God dwell in you?” John asks. He is warning you not to get sidetracked by the allure of the world but to make sure that your affections lead you to God. The world will rob you of passion for God. The culture of this world has the power to shape your behavior, corrupt your character, compromise your faith, and destroy your life. The love of the world will squeeze out your love for God. This argument runs throughout the Bible. It is impossible to have two supreme objects of affection at the same time. The world’s state of mind is greed for me and apathy for others. It is the opposite of God’s agape love. If you are worldly minded, how then can you have the mind of Christ? When you love the world, you are preoccupied with the temporal instead of the eternal. “Don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God”
(James 4:4).
Friendship with the world will cause you to lose your passion for God by making your heart indifferent to the things of God. This friendship will overwhelm you with the worries of life and the deceitfulness of wealth and choke your spiritual growth. A life fruitful in the things of God is not rooted in the world; it is grounded in Christ. If you want to love God MORE, you have to love the world LESS.
When God made the heavens and the earth, He made order out of the chaos. This personal God spoke everything into existence, giving life meaning and purpose. God also laid a moral and ethical foundation when He created human beings in His image and gave them responsibility as His stewards, and as His worshipers. The creation draws its meaning from its Creator. But Satan’s world has robbed humanity of its perspectives, its meaning, its values. He has given us chaos. Many people associate worldliness with the places they go or activities they enjoy.
Worldliness has been used to condemn everything from hairstyles to
dress to activities. But worldliness needs repeated examination. At the heart of worldliness are inward attitudes that reflect your values. It is possible to avoid “worldly activities” while harboring worldly attitudes in your heart. To love the world is to make worldly things the principal objects of your desire and pursuit. Passion for God or for the world comes from the heart (Matthew 15:19).
Worldliness also neutralizes the supernatural aspects of Christianity. At the heart of our faith is the ability to exercise spiritual disciplines and to experience supernatural realities. We enter Christianity only by being supernaturally born again. Through spiritual disciplines, the relationship is strengthened and the reality of His presence experienced. But worldliness has attacked the church, labeling its ideas as marginal and outdated. God is left out. Many who claim to be born again show no signs of living in the supernatural dimensions of reality. Others are virtual atheists in their practice and belief.
John names three things that characterize worldliness: the cravings of
sinful man, the lust of his eyes, and the boasting of what he has and does.
First, the cravings of sinful man (“lust of the flesh” in KJV) is to judge
everything by purely material standards. William Barclay comments:”It is to live a life which is dominated by the senses. It is to be gluttonous in food, effeminate in luxury, slavish in pleasure, lax in morals, selfish in the use of possessions, extravagant in the gratification of worldly, earthly, and material desires. The flesh’s desire is forgetful of, blind to, or regardless of the commandments of God, the judgment of God,
the standards of God, and the very existence of God. We need not think of this as the sin of the gross and blatant and notorious sinner.
Anyone who demands a pleasure which may be the ruin of someone else, anyone who has no respect for the personalities of other people in the gratification of his desires, anyone who lives in luxury while others live in want, anyone who has made a god of his own comfort, and of his own ambition, in any part of life, is the servant of the flesh’s desire.”
By contrast, God values self-control, one of the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:24). The Greek word translated “self-control” is egkrateia, which means the virtue of one who masters his desires and passions, especially his sensual appetites. But apart from God, self-control is an impossibility (John 15:5). You cannot overcome the “works of the flesh” in your life without self-control. You must draw upon the power of the Spirit. Where there is self-control, temptation will have little influence. The gift of divine grace produces the grit of discipline (Philippians 2:12-13). If you would live your life to please God, you must have self-control to do what you ought, not what you please. Hell is the lack of self-control and the knowledge of opportunity lost, the place where the man “I am” comes face to face with the man “I might have been.”
Second, the lust of his eyes is to covet possessions and accumulate things based on appearance. It is living according to false values, judging by the outward show of pomp and vanity, being concerned for your image and appearance. Moses warned the people of Israel about the dangers of affluence, the very real danger of worshiping the god of materialism as they entered the Promised Land. Prosperity can make you feel self-sufficient, thus robbing your faith and dulling your spiritual vision (Deuteronomy 6:10-13).
Your eyes have an appetite. “Feast your eyes on this,” we say. Lustful eyes want more and more and more–a greed that is never satisfied. Those eyes are captivated by outward show without inquiring into real worth. Television is the major secularizing influence promoting materialism and social evil. Few can watch it and keep their spiritual fervor. Worldly eyes look for beauty without the love of goodness. Paul says that a godly man can put the right price tag on anything (1 Corinthians 2:15). But to love and desire things, to spend your time with and prefer them more than God, indicates Satan’s values, priorities, pleasures, and pastimes dominate your life. This produces indifference and carelessness.
In contrast to materialism and secular values, God values a spirit of
generosity. “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” (1 John 3:17). Generosity expresses the character of God.
God has made us stewards of our time, talent, and treasure. The Christian lifestyle is not one of receiving but of giving. A giving attitude purifies your motives and keeps you from greed. Generosity also defeats materialism. Winston Churchill said it well: “We get to make a living; we give to make a life.”
Third, the boasting of what he has and does (“the pride of life” in KJV) is pride of the soul–boasting in your importance and possessions. This is perhaps the ultimate sin, because it is self-glorifying. It insists that what I have done is better than what you have done. It is a compelling need to come out on top, to outrank and outshine everyone else. It can be pridein your heritage, education, accomplishments, influence, acquaintances, wealth, or possessions. It corrupts your soul with a false standard. This lustful pride awakens envy and flattery. Pride will lie and exaggerate to look good. Pride is self-sufficiency and self-reliance (Jeremiah 49:4). By its very nature pride refuses to trust in God (Proverbs 28:25).
By contrast, God values humility in your soul. It is hard for humility to
survive outside the presence of God. Humility is as much a part of God as is love. God is the heartbeat of humility. Without God humility disappears, and its opposite, pride, takes its place. Oswald Chambers said, “Humility is not an ideal, it is the unconscious result of the life being rightly related to God.” Jesus is God’s humility embodied in human nature–God humbling Himself in meekness and gentleness to serve and to save us. Jesus modeled humility by giving up the honor of men and seeking the honor that comes from God alone. He had a humility that counted itself as nothing, a servant, so that God may be all and be exalted.
There was no individual too sinful, no place too inferior, and no service too lowly for Jesus. He said, “I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:27). To humble yourself and to become the servant of all is to become God-like. This is the pathway to the presence of God. “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble…. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up” (James 4:6, 10). God will not use a man who is not crushed or humbled. Humility is essential to a Christian’s life because humility is a confession of emptiness. As water seeks to fill the lowest place, so God seeks to find an empty individual to fill, exalt, and bless with His glory and power.
Look at John’s closing argument on why you should not love the world:
First, the world and its desires will pass away. No one in his right mind buys stock in a bankrupt company or builds a house on sand.
When you are attached to your possessions, it’s hard to believe that this world will decay and turn to dust. The world says that the one who dies with the most toys wins. God says if you live for this world, you will lose everything. Only what you have in Christ is eternal. Jim Elliot, the missionary martyr, understood this, writing, “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.” Martin Luther said, “I have held many things in my hands and I have lost them all. But the things I have placed in God’s hands I still possess.”
Second, if you do the will of God, you will live with God forever. A. W.
Tozer asks, “Why do we struggle to relinquish our will to the one whose will is going to be done anyway?” When you truly love the Father, you desire to do His will. The world has lost its appeal. “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). But how? “This is love for God: to obey his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith” (1 John 5:3-4).
Love for God gives you the power to overcome the obstacles of disobedience and makes the will of God a joy rather than a burden. Jesus said to the Father, “As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world” (John 17:18). He has given us the same assignment that the Father gave Him, to reconcile the people of the world to God. We are to be in the world but not of the world.
God’s love within motivates you to action (1 Thessalonians 1:3). When you offer your body as a living sacrifice, you will not be conformed any longer to the pattern of this world, but will be transformed by the renewing of your mind and able to approve God’s good, pleasing, and perfect will (Romans 12:1-2). You will see how worthy of love God is–how merciful, how kind, how pure and holy, how just.
Worldliness produces a plague, making Christians feeble in their love and commitment to God. Seeking first God’s kingdom is difficult even for the most faithful Christian because our flesh and the world war against our spirit. You can grow lazy and indifferent in your study of Scripture, which alone teaches you how to please God. You are tempted by the world to be more concerned about your physical needs than your spiritual ones.
Paul writes sorrowfully about his disciple Demas, who “because he loved this world…deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica” (2 Timothy 4:10). Demas moved in the best circles, heard some great sermons, and witnessed some mighty miracles (Colossians 4:14; Philemon 24). He had every opportunity to become a truly great disciple. What happened to him? He could have been allured by the things of this world and become lukewarm, like the church in Laodicea. Or he could have become so busy for God that he had no time for God and left his first love, like the church in Ephesus. It could have been envy or resentment or pride. Paul said he went to Thessalonica, known for its sexual sin. Somewhere the world got
into his heart and the cost of discipleship became too high. He followed the lusts of the world, and Demas the disciple became Demas the dropout. He deserted Paul in an hour of need and left his ministry for worldly pleasure.
Jesus asks, “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Mark 8:36-37). Whoever centers on possessions, position, or power in this world will find it ultimately worthless. Everything on this earth is temporary. Only what you have in God is eternal. You too must choose. Jesus made it clear: “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters” (Luke 11:23).
John has told us what robs us of passion for God–and he has told us how to renew that passion. Loving God is the way you overcome worldliness. When you are passionately in love with all your heart, there is no room for the world and what it offers. To behold the Lord in His beauty makes the customs, values, and priorities of the world lose all their luster. Do you have a passion for God? Don’t love the things of this world or its ways. The love of the world will squeeze out your love for God.
The ways of the world are seen in the craving lust for physical pleasures, the coveting of sinful things, and the boasting in your importance and possessions. This does not come from God, but the
world. The world and its desires will pass away, but if you do the will of God, you will live with God forever.
Paul told Timothy that in the last days men will be conceited, lovers of
pleasure rather than lovers of God (2 Timothy 3:4). That is true today in the world and the church. Is it true with you? Are you striving to amass things? Do you love luxury and ease? Are you striving to outshine others? Are you seeking man’s approval? Do your actions reflect God’s values or the world’s? Your condition is revealed by
the choices you make. Has the world robbed you of your passion for God? Repent and let God restore your passion.
(To be continued in next issue)