Reading: 1 John 2:15–17
Christmas season in our city’s malls presents some intriguing contrasts to my mind. On one hand, we have a sense that the commercialisation and materialism represented by the gaudy decorations and overstated advertising are both unhealthy and alien. (What’s Black Friday supposed to be about again?) On the other hand, it’s understandable to want to meet year-end sales targets, and something extra for the kids does make the time feel special. So whether you are buying or selling, “‘Tis the season,” is a good enough excuse. But then you read a passage that begins, “Do not love the world,” and it takes you back again; it heightens the unease we have about how our local shopping centres handle the holidays.
While covetousness and stinginess would certainly come under John’s condemnation here, he does help his readers come to a very important conclusion about worldliness; namely, it’s a heart battle. Read his description again; what are “the things that are in the world”? They are not specific artefacts of wealth or craftsmanship. Masterpieces of human imagination or engineering are not John’s problem here. Perhaps the ones who denied the Son and abandoned the community (2:18–23) had a superficial view of worldliness. It would certainly not be the first time in the New Testament that false teachers gained credibility by refusing to partake of God’s good gifts. See Colossians 2:16–23 and 1 Timothy 4:1–5. But for John the problem is much more dangerous and sinister. Worldliness as John outlines it here is something that we cannot escape. It’s as present in the most remote monastery as it is in the middle of Dubai, Hollywood, or Rio de Janeiro. It’s something we take with us wherever we go: “a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions” (2:16, NLT).
Worldliness sets the gift over the Giver. While it seeks to satisfy appetites, “the lusts of the flesh,” it rails against submission and trust in the Creator who has “come in the flesh” to “destroy the works of the devil” (4:2, 3:7). While it seeks to grab “everything we see,” and while it builds arrogance on the ground of accomplishments and acquisitions, it fails to recognize “the true light is already shining” and so “the world and its lusts are passing away” (2:8, 2:17). Thus a life set on the world is opposed to the Father, set against the mission on which he sent his Son. These lusts and this pride are at war with the Father, so the one who loves the Father must put them to death.
In addition precisely because they are at war with the Father and the Son, they are destined to vanish under their flaming gaze. Christ’s coming sounded the death knell of judgement for the world system set against the Father. It’s right and good to enjoy God’s good gifts as we celebrate his greatest Gift. But it is also important to remember that it is only those whose hearts are fleeing Babylon who will escape its destruction. So John exhorts us to love the Life that keeps on living.