Living in the Light - Part 3

Love God, Not the World - 1 John 2:15-17

15 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. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

Continuing from where I last left off, I have a question. How can we show people in this world God's love if we do not know it ourselves? We have to make sure that we have experienced the love that God has for us. Now despite what we do, God still loves us. We are His creation, and He longs to be our Savior. But we must return the affection to our Lord. We cannot express the love of God to others if we do not love Him. The command John gives us in these verses is to love God and not love the world (the ways of the world). If we do this, we can live in the light.

So what do I mean by not loving the world? Yesterday, I said that it was important to love others and show them the love of God. But today I am saying do not love the world. Is this contradiction? Does John contradict himself? No. Instead, it is the exact opposite. Yes, we are to love our neighbors and those around us. But that does that mean that we should love the ways of the world. We cannot fall into the sins of those around us. In that sense, we cannot love the world. If we do, we will fall back into the entrapment of sin, and we said the first day that we must not sin.

Once again, we can see how these are all starting to connect. God first loved us. As a result, He died for our sins. We must now be careful not to sin while loving God. We can show God our love by not sinning. This shows that we are willing to sacrifice the old habits of our life for Him. By knowing the love that God has for us, we can show it to others. We can know and give that love to everyone around us.

The challenge I have for you today is to check yourself. Do you truly love God? Are you thankful for all that He did for you (dying for your sins)? Do your actions show that you love God? And can people around you tell that you love God? Do you show them the love of God? Think about these questions, and be sure that you are living in the light and are not being entrapped by darkness.

If we can truly say that we are loving God, loving people, and commit not to sin, then we are ready for the fourth and final step in living in the light. Next time, I will discuss the idea of following God. Part 4 will pull all of this together.

Matt