1 John 2:15-17 (NLT2)
15 Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. 16 For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father but are from this world. 17 And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.
I don’t know about you, but there seems to be something in me that wants to love the world or at least the stuff in it. 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: a craving for physical pleasure
The lust of the eyes – the desire to acquire: a craving for everything I see
The boastful pride of life -- the desire to impress: pride in my achievements and possessions
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 perverted 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 not to 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?
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