Key Verse: "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him."
- 1 John 2:15 KJV
This is a very wide sentence. It stretches forth a hand
of vast grasp. It places us, as it were, upon a high mountain, such as the
Lord stood upon when tempted of Satan, and it says to us, "Look around
you--now there is not one of these things which you must love." It takes us,
again, to the streets of a crowded city; it shows us shop windows filled
with objects of beauty and ornament; it points us to all the wealth and
grandeur of the rich and noble, and everything that the human heart admires
and loves. And having thus set before us, as Satan did before our Lord upon
the high mountain, the kingdoms of the world, it says, not as he did, "All
this will I give you," but, "All this I take from you. None of these things
are for you. You must not love one of these glittering baubles; you must not
touch one of them, or scarcely look at them, lest, as with Achan, the golden
wedge and the Babylonish garment should tempt you to take them and hide them
in your tent."
The precept takes us through the world as a mother takes a child through a bazaar, with playthings and ornaments on every side, and says, "You must not touch one of these things." In some such similar way the precept would, as it were, take us through the world, and when we had looked at all its playthings and its ornaments, it would sound in our ears, "Don't touch any one of them; they are not yours; not for you to enjoy, not for you even to covet." Can anything less than this be intended by those words which should be ever sounding in the ears of the children of God, "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world?"
