True Love

Read: 1 John 2:15-17

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. 1 John 2:15

IN WORD

God loves the world. One of the New Testament’s most famous verses says so; He loves the world so much that He sent His Son to die on our behalf. But when John tells us not to love the world or anything in the world, he’s referring to an entirely different concept. God loves the world to redeem it; we human beings often love the world—including its corrupt ways and human-devised systems—in order to feed our own idols with its offerings. He loves it sacrificially; we tend to love it selfishly. In other words, we have cravings we think the world can fulfill, so we exploit it as much as we can. And that isn’t really love at all.

The Kingdom culture is filled with love for human beings and God’s creation—a beautiful world full of precious souls. It’s others-centered. But competing cultures, still capable of reflecting beauty, truth, and love at times, are nevertheless fundamentally self-centered. Political systems and economic systems tend to gravitate toward the pitfalls of power and greed. Religious systems tend to gravitate toward attempts to achieve salvation by discipline and effort rather than receiving it by grace. Relational dynamics are often infected with self-love rather than sacrificial love. Over time, the world looks very different from the Kingdom of God.

Therefore, the love of one excludes the love of the other. We can’t embrace both the ways of the world and the ways of the Kingdom. They conflict with each other. We can love the world as God loves it, but we can’t pursue its offerings as others do. We have to choose where to root our hearts.

IN DEED

Root your heart in eternity. We can experience plenty of blessings in this age as we engage in the world, but we can’t set our hearts on them. We look exclusively to the hand of God for all we need, knowing the difference between what lasts and what doesn’t. Our love for the Father eclipses all rival loves.

ADDITIONAL READING: James 4:4-6

A man’s spiritual health is exactly proportional to his love for God.

C. S. LEWIS