'Do Not Love the World' -- An Easter Word

I was wondering why if "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believed in him would not perish but have everlasting life," why is it written in 1 John 2:15-17, "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. For all that is in the world--the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life--is not of the Father but is of the world, and the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever." So I looked up "world" in Strong's Concordance. In the Greek Dictionary of the New Testament, you will find the Greek word for world is "kosmos." It is number 2889 and it says "prob. from the base of 2865." So I looked that up. It is "komizo" from "komeo" meaning (to tend, i.e., to take care of) prop. to provide for, i.e. (by impl.) to carry off (as if from harm..." Back to "kosmos": After "prob. from the base of 2865, "orderly arrangement, i.e. decoration; by impl. the world (in a wide or narrow sense, includ. its inhab. …" There were a couple more references in the explanation of “komizo” that I did not follow up on. If you’re interested, go look up these references, and let me know what you think. I am just sticking with these because I understand what I believe God is saying to us. The word tells us if we lack wisdom to ask of God, so that is what I did. And I'm just going to tell you what he showed me. I think we in the Western world sometimes have difficulty with certain truths from the Bible because we tend to think "linearly" and logically, and as a result, sometimes miss shades of meaning, and this also explains some people's opinion that the Bible "contradicts" itself. Of course, God does not "contradict" himself, and he tells us how to understand what he is saying to us. So, here is how I believe he intends us to understand this apparent contradiction. If God "so loved the world" in John 3:16, why does he say for us not to love it in 1 John 2:15-17? The answer came pretty clearly. If you look at the meaning of both "komizo" and "kosmos" you see that God loved the world and its inhabitants so much that he came to "carry us off from harm", by sending us our Savior. Simply stated, the reason he says not to love the world and the things of the world, he is referring to loving the things he delivered us from by sending us the Savior, in the Person of His Son, Jesus Christ. Some might also see that he wants us to tend to and take care of the world he created (and its inhabitants). The world he created was not evil, but after sin came in when Adam disobeyed God, the beautiful world God created developed a system of sin and corruption, and people could not save themselves from the curse of sin and God’s hatred of and condemnation of sin, and needed to be saved from the curse of sin and the solution was the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which Christians celebrated today. So, in conclusion, the Bible did not contradict itself when we are instructed not to love the world God loves. No. What we are not to love is our sin and the things in the world that we make into idols and everything we love more than we love God—including the things he delivered us from and carried us away from. Remember the first commandment is to love the Lord with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. In our world today, people have fallen very far away from that, but God's expectation and will for us has not changed. That is really all that I have for the moment. I hope that blesses somebody. Goodnight.

Comments

Popular Posts