Love The World, Or Hate It?

What I think about the world.

In many of my posts, I talk about the world misleading us. I say the world is against us. I've even been known to claim the world is evil, corrupt, and bound for judgment. You may think I don't have any love for the world, and you'd be correct. I don't.

I John 2:15 tells us, "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in Him. That's pretty strong language John's using. If you love the world, God's love does not dwell inside you. He also says in I John 4:16, "God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him." If God's love isn't in you, God isn't in you. If God isn't in you . . . you're lost.

So, no, I don't love the world. I make every effort to not love the world, or anything in it.

But doesn't God love the world?

John 3:16 says, For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life, doesn't it? Of course it does. And yet throughout John's Gospel and his other writings in the Bible, the world is pictured as being in opposition to God. To that point, John records Jesus as saying the world hates Him, and will hate all who follow Him (John 15:19).

What's going on here?

First, the fact that God loves the world even though it hates Him is evidence of His infinite grace. Paul says in Romans 5:10 that the world was God's enemy when He sent His Son to die for our sins. That's grace. That's love. Sacrificing His Son for His enemies.

Secondly, when we read I John 2:15, which tells us not to love the world or anything in the world, we can't stop there. We need to read the next verse which says, "For everything in the world--the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does--comes not from the Father but from the world."

There is a difference between the world and people.

John tells us not to love anything in the world, and then identifies everything in the world as cravings, lust, and boasting--in other words, sin. You see, God sent His Son to die for the people of the world because He loves them, just as we are called to love one another (our friends and our enemies!). When John speaks of us not loving anything in the world, he is referring to the system of rebellion against God that leads us to sin.

That's what I mean when I talk about the world. Just as the word "kingdom" can refer to a group of people, a geographical region, or a system of authority, so the phrase the world means different things based on context. I am called to love the people of the world. I am instructed to not love the system of the world, the pattern of the world, the desires and cravings of the world. In that sense, the world is the dominion of Satan (John 12:31, 16:11, 2 Corinthians 4:4).

That's the world for which I have no love. I would even go so far as to say I hate it, as Romans 12:9 tells us to Hate what is evil. The dominion of Satan, the system of rebellion and sin against God that is the world, is evil and I hate it. Not the people. They may be lost, they may be conformed to the world, but it is not them I hate. Them I love.

 Sometimes, to be honest, keeping the two separate isn't easy.

Are we supposed to hate the world?

Yes. As meaning the influences and attitudes, the pattern of the world, as Paul puts it, we are. But the people of the world--them we are to love. For as John says in I John 4:19, "We love because He first loved us."  If God so loved the world . . . then so should I.