What Is Worldliness?

A new look at 1 Jn 2.15-17

What is worldliness? The term is among many that seemingly defy precise definition. Many Christians know the “love not the world…” passage in 1 John very well. Many sermons address this passage; it’s a “go-to” passage for Bible-believers. Are we any further along in understanding worldliness today? Could it be that this very famous passage resists our understanding because of much preaching and conflicting views? We understand the language of the passage, but putting our finger on the meaning is a problem.

The commentaries fare no better than we do. One commentary will confidently tell us what “the lust of the flesh” is, while another will tell us that the same thing is “the lust of the eyes.” Different sins find slots under each category in the list, but still confusion abounds through list overlap and contradictory opinions.

One almost hesitates to dip into the passage yet again, possibly only providing one more view to the cacophony of voices opining on what it means to love the world. You will take note of the term, “almost,” for after almost hesitating, we proceed!

The first thing I’d like to do with the passage is work out the logic of the wording. Let’s get clear how the information is organized, and then we’ll talk about meaning.

Command: Love not the world (nor the things…) This is a warning.

Proposition: If any one loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

Reason 1: Because the things in the world … are not from the Father but from the world

Expansion: [the things in the world are]
The lust of the flesh
The lust of the eyes
The pride of life

Reason 2: [Because] the things in the world are passing away (and its lusts)

                     And: the one doing the will of God lives forever

Verse 15 has two separate clauses. One is a prohibition that follows John’s discussion of genuine fellowship with God, beginning with the reality of sin and how to maintain fellowship with God as a sinner (1.5-2.2), and continuing through the proof of fellowship by an obedient life, especially one that shows his love for God by loving his brother (2.3-11). John assures the readers that he has confidence in their testimony (2.12-14), and then turns to the prohibition of 1 Jn 2.15: “Love not the world…”

After the warning comes a conditional statement, which serves as the proposition on which the rest of the passage rests. “If any one loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” There are two reasons this is true. Verse 16 gives the first: “Because the things in the world … are not from the Father but from the world.” The subject of this reason comes first then John interrupts himself with an expansion of the subject, and then closes out the sentence at the end of the verse. The second reason comes from verse 17, “[Because] the things in the world are passing away (and its lusts).” A corollary statement closes the verse, pointing to the eternal relationship of the believer with God: “And: the one doing the will of God lives forever.”

One more preliminary item requires our attention. What is “the world?” This term by itself can cause confusion. There are three uses in the Bible. One use refers to the physical creation, the earth. Another refers to the mass of human beings (for example, see 1 John 2.2). The use we find here we call “the world system,” or “the world-mind.” We mean by that the organized world philosophy or way of life, produced by the activity and business of man, in opposition to God and his will, and ruled by the prince of this world, Satan.

Our passage assures us that the things that come from this world do not come from God, but instead from the world. As such, God prohibits us from loving them. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world.” Since the prohibition is so emphatic, and the matter of our fellowship with God is so important, it behooves us to understand what these “things from the world” really are. We are not to love them, no doubt about that. How can we be sure to avoid loving them if we don’t know what they are?

As mentioned earlier, the commentaries define these “things” differently from one another, and we are confused. Perhaps one reason for our confusion is an error in the way we look at the list. We have a tendency to see a list like this and think in terms of categories or classifications. So we say, “Well, the lust of the flesh, what kind of sins fall under that category?” And we go along, thinking about the different kinds of sins that might fit here, and assigning other sins to the other categories. There are two problems with this approach. First, we can’t be exhaustive. We sinners are creative. We’ve got more sins to catalog than we have room for in our warehouse of sins. The second problem is that when we catalog a few examples in each category (never mind that different commentaries catalog the same sins in different categories), the sins we usually use as examples in each category are sins that we don’t do. Thus, we think we understand the category and we are mostly not doing these things, so we are off the hook. “Worldliness is bad, but those aren’t my sins, I’m good.”

Since agreement on the categories is hard to find, may I suggest we are looking at the passage incorrectly? If commentaries assign the same sins to different categories, perhaps that’s not what the passage is teaching.

By the way, let me say that many good commentaries still have good things to say about the passage and their insights are helpful, even though I think the approach most take usually adds to our confusion about what John means.

Let’s look at the three “things from the world” in the passage and notice the parallel structure:

The lust of the flesh

The lust of the eyes

The pride of life

The similarity in structure suggests that we should understand each one of these “things” in the same way. I found three helpful statements in commentaries.

“‘The lust of the flesh’ (ἡ ἐπιθυμία τῆς σαρκὸς) denotes the desire or craving that has its origin in the flesh.”¹

“It seems better to see it as a subjective genitive describing the lusts the flesh is producing.”²

“The eyes are often the source of desire, and the thought here is of the greed which is aroused by what one sees.”³

Derickson (second quote) calls the usage a “subjective genitive.” The usage works for the first “thing,” i.e. “the flesh is lusting,” but seems off for the other two, “the eyes are lusting,” “the life is proud.” I’m not sure you can make the case for subjective genitive in each clause. However, Derickson is on to something when he describes this “thing” as “the lusts the flesh is producing.” Hiebert (first quote) has a similar notion when he says, “the desire or craving that has its origin in the flesh.” Likewise, Marshall says of the “eyes,” “the eyes are often the source of desire.”

Rather than a subjective genitive, I’d like to suggest these are genitives of source: the lust that has its source in the flesh (i.e. the sin nature), the lust that has its source in the eyes (i.e. the external world we see). One source of lust is our own self, our inordinate cravings for things that might even be good in themselves. Another source is external to us, the things we see. We see something, and we want it. We have to have it. We desire it. We follow it. We adore it. You can see how inordinate desires are incompatible with the Father and are consistent with the world of men in hostility to God. In fact, they are part and parcel of that world.

What about “the pride of life?” Can we say that there is a pride sourced in life? I think we can.

The Greeks had two terms for life, zoē and bios. The ancient Greeks used zoē to refer to life of all kinds, human life, animal life. Zoē ends with death. In their minds, zoē wasn’t anything special, it was just the “life principle” that animated living things. Bios, on the other hand referred to life in its expanse and breadth. Some people had a particularly good bios, which was valuable and desired. Richard Trench explains the difference:

“The distinction … displays itself with singular clearness in our words ‘zoology’ and ‘biography;’ but not in ‘biology,’ which, as now used, is a manifest misnomer. We speak, on one side, of ‘zoology,’ for animals (ζῶα) have the vital principle; they live, equally with men, and are capable of being classed and described according to the different workings of this natural life of theirs: but, on the other hand, we speak of ‘biography;’ for men not merely live, but they lead lives, lives in which there is that moral distinction between one and another, which may make them worthy to be recorded.”⁴

In the Greek world, a slave could share life in the same house as his master (zoē), but he couldn’t share the same kind of life (bios). In other words, though both were living beings, the master had a better biography. Even a short zoē could end up having a better bios if, for example, the zoē was cut off (died) in a noble way.

Thus, “bios” is the story of a life, one that held value and was worth talking about.

Come back to 1 Jn 2.16, “the [boastful] pride of life.” The word for pride is that particularly vainglorious pride that must be on about itself. Why? Because it has a good biography! Really, we are all subject to this pride. What do we love to talk about? Ourselves. What stories do we like to tell? Our stories, particularly our triumphs over other people. Perhaps we consider ourselves particularly witty. We love to say something smart, then tell everyone else about it for the rest of the day. The boastful pride of biography – the lust whose source is our bios, our biography.

So you see, the things in the world are things that produce inordinate desires in us, either from our flesh (our sin nature), from the things on display in the world (the lust of the eyes), or from our marvelous biography, from our life. These are the things from the world. This is what makes up the world system.

The world isn’t “out there,” beyond our walls and outside our churches. The world lives right in among us, in our own hearts. It is for this we receive the command, “Love not the world.”

In place of loving the world, God commands us to love God and our neighbour. We turn away from loving the world by the upward and outward love.

That, however, doesn’t complete the passage. There is one more reason for the command. I’ll try to be brief!

The world is passing away, and its lusts. The lusts that seem so important at the moment are simply ashes in the end, and often are seen to be ashes much sooner than that. Solomon, in his studied examination of the world, found the world to be vanity. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. The lusts that our flesh, our eyes, our life produces are empty thrills that mean nothing in the end.

On the other hand, the man who does the will of God will live forever. The word “live” here is neither zoē or bios, rather it is the word John often uses that is translated “abide.” This man will abide forever. However, we need to touch on one more detail about our synonyms in connection with our passage. The Greek world valued the biography over mere life. The Bible reverses this usage. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the zoē, the life.” You see, God breathed into Adam’s nostrils the breath of life. The Lord did not intend for life to end. Death came because of sin. The mere life became an endless cycle of birth, life, death. Then Jesus came. He restores life to its rightful place. Now the life the believer has is the life that lasts forever. The only biography we need is the one belonging to Jesus. We can spend our life (our eternal zoē) praising and serving the one person who is the Prince of Zoē, the Prince of Life!

Can you imagine any Christian allowing himself to fall captive to the world when he gets this truth in his heart?

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Don Johnson is the pastor of Grace Baptist Church of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada.

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For the audio version of this message (and an outline) click here.

1. D. Edmond Hiebert, “An Exposition of 1 John 2:7-17,” Bibliotheca Sacra : Dallas Theological Seminary 145, no. 579 (1988): 434. [↩]
2. Gary W Derickson, First, Second & Third John, Evangelical Exegetical Commentary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012), 203. [↩]
3. I. Howard Marshall, The Epistles of John, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1978), 145. [↩]
4. Richard Chenevix Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament (London: Macmillan and Co., 1880), 92–93. [↩]