Last week, we looked at the previous passage of John’s message, which was not to love the world, nor the things of the world.  And we learned that the world was not speaking of creation, nor of the people of the world, but he was speaking of the world system.  We learned that this world system is orchestrated by Satan, to deceive the people of the world, to mislead them, to hold them captive by it’s deceptive philosophies, until it eventually leads to their destruction. 

We said that the world system is in opposition to the heavenly system.  The divine plan of God is diverted to serve the system of this world. It’s a demonic plan designed to mislead and deceive, and ultimately to overturn the plan of God.  And it does so by enticement of the things of this world, things which the world values, that look attractive, that look fulfilling, that promise to bring happiness, but the end results in not a more abundant life, but in fact is death.

So John warns us not to be deceived, and not to fall for the seductive siren of the world system, because he adds in vs 17, that the world is passing away, and also it’s lusts, but the one who does the will of God lives forever. 

Now to give a sense of immediacy to that warning that the world is passing away, John says, “children, it is the last hour.”  The fact that John refers to us as “children” hearkens back to vs 13 in which John had given three characterizations of spiritual maturity. In that analogy of spiritual maturity, John had addressed children, young men, and fathers, each designation representative of a Christian’s spiritual maturity.  This particular word for children is “paidion” which was used to describe a young child of teachable age.  Not an infant, but still a young child that was able to be instructed.  

As parents, in fact, generally speaking as a society, we have a protective attitude towards young children that is appropriate.  We know that children of a young age are particularly vulnerable.  We teach our children not to talk to strangers, not because we want them to be anti-social, but because they are particularly naive at that age, and that naivete makes them especially vulnerable to predators.  And it’s a sad reality that the world is full of predators that prey upon the weak. 

So it’s apropos that John calls Christians “children” in this general way, because we are particularly vulnerable, especially in the beginning stages of our spiritual maturity.  There is nothing wrong per se with being spiritually naive at the first stages of our spiritual growth. A certain degree of that is normal and to be expected. But it makes us especially vulnerable to predators in the spiritual realm.  To people that want to take advantage.  To people that pretend to be friends, but in fact they are foes.

The Bible tells us therefore to be wise as serpents but harmless as doves.  It warns us to be on the alert because the devil goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.  We are in the world, and the world hates us, even as it hated Jesus Christ. And furthermore, we are told that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, so that he might deceive the world and take us captive. Satan doesn’t come dressed in all black, with hooded face, and fangs and a pitchfork that we might recognize him.  Satan comes like a messenger of God, robed in a false piety and false knowledge that beguiles the unwary.

So when John speaks to us as “children” it is not just a term of endearment, but it’s a term that implies a warning not to be naive, not to fall victim to the predators that prey on the church.  And that warning is particularly pertinent because John says it is the last hour.  When he says it’s the last hour, he is speaking not of a literal 60 minutes, but of the last age, or the last day, or last season.  When you study the New Testament, you will see that practically all the writers spoke of the time in which they were living was the last age, or the last day, or the last hour.  It simply refers to this age between the first appearing of Christ at His incarnation, and the last appearing of Christ which is the consummation of this age.

I believe John references this shortness of the time which is left in Rev. 12:12 which says “For this reason, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them. Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, knowing that he has [only] a short time.”  So the fact that it is the last age is yet another aspect of the warning that John is giving to the church. It’s the last hour, and Satan is doubling down, knowing quite well the theology which says that his time is short. The consummation of this age is quickly approaching, and Satan’s time is limited, so we should expect his fury to be fearsome in these last days.

His wrath is focused on us, by the way. We that are Christians are the focus of Satan’s hatred. That’s why the world hates those who are Christ’s.  And because the world hates us, we should be on our guard against the schemes of the devil.

Now the great scheme of the devil ultimately is to deceive and devour, and if possible to deceive even the elect.  Jesus said in Mark 13:22, “for false Christs and false prophets will arise, and will show signs and wonders, in order to lead astray, if possible, the elect.”  That doesn’t mean that it isn’t possible to lead the elect astray. It means that by all means possible Satan’s plan is to lead the elect astray.  Not to perdition, but to confound God’s will for their lives, to make them impotent as Christians.  To ruin their testimony perhaps.  To cause them to fall into sin and ruin their lives and become stumbling blocks to others. To retard their spiritual growth. I”m told that in battle strategy, it costs the enemy more to take care of the wounded than the dead.  So if Satan can’t kill us, then his goal is to wound us, and thus take his toil upon the church.

So John warns of the same thing that Christ warns of in Mark 13.  That false Christs and false prophets will arise, and will show signs and wonders, in order to lead astray, if possible, the elect.  Like the child who is approached by the friendly man at the bus stop and lured away with offers of candy, or  with a special message from Mommy, we should shudder at the deceptive approach of false Christs.  John calls them anti Christs.  He says, “Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour.”  

Jesus warned us that in the last days false Christs and false prophets would abound.  John says that they have already appeared.  And because they have already appeared, we know that it is the last days, the last age.  Now when we read John’s warning we notice that he calls these false Christ’s antichrists.  And immediately in many of your minds the word antichrist conjures up a picture of this figure that according to a popular understanding of end time theology is supposed to come during the tribulation and for three and a half years appear to bring the world peace, and then after 3 1/2 years be revealed for who he is, the enemy of God and he will persecute the world and bring about all sorts of tribulations.

And many preachers and theologians have imagined that various world leaders down through ages were the antichrist, only to have time prove them otherwise. Over time, we have seen people like Hitler, or Mussolini or dozens of other world leaders be suggested that they are the antichrist. 

Now I do not have the time this morning to delve into all the views of eschatology and try to present what I believe the Bible teaches.  But suffice it to say that I think this idea of a specific individual who is the antichrist is not what the Bible teaches, but is the kind of stuff that sells books and movies.  In short, I think what the antichrist represents is the world system that is orchestrated by Satan himself, that uses false religion and world governments for it’s purposes, and it’s purpose is opposed to the purpose and will of God.

This title of antichrist is only found in 1and 2 John.  Jesus calls them false Christs and false prophets.  John calls them antichrists in his epistle in four places.  We just looked at the first one.  The second mention is found in vs 22 “Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.”  

So rather than one individual, it’s anyone that denies Christ, that denies the teaching of Christ, that denies the divinity of Christ. John says there are many antichrists.  Jesus speaks of multiple false Christs. And notice John gives another clue about the nature of the antichrist – he says he is a liar. Jesus said to the Pharisees, the false religious teachers of His day, in John 8:44 “You are of [your] father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies.”  Now that tells us a lot about how to identify false Christ’s or antichrists. They lie, twist the truth, distort the truth in order to deceive the naive.

The third reference to antichrist is in 1John 4:3 “and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the [spirit] of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.”  So here John speaks of a spirit of antichrist that is already in the world.  It’s a spirit that embodies many people at many times. 

That’s why John says in just a couple of verses prior to that, in ch4 vs 1 “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.” We can assume from that the antichrists and the false prophets are virtually the same, empowered by the same spirit, which is the spirit of the devil.  The devil by the way is a spirit.  John says not all spirits are from God. But there are deceiving spirits which seek to lead astray the world, and even the elect. 

That’s one of the great menaces of this fascination today with the spiritual world.  We hear some people say I don’t go to church, but I am spiritual. Or of even more concern, we see and hear of stuff happening in the church that are attributed to the Holy Spirit, but what they are doing causes us to question what spirit they are of.  I can assure you that a lot of the strange things you hear of in some churches that are attributed to the Spirit, are in fact not the Holy Spirit at all, but are evil spirits masquerading as spirits of light.  When I hear of being drunk in the spirit, or holy laughter, or angel dust falling from the rafters, or barking like dogs, or being slain in the spirit, I immediately think of these evil spirits masquerading as spirits of light.  I can assure you that such things are not of God. John says test the spirits to see whether they are from God because many false prophets have gone out into the world.  And how do you test the spirits?  By the word of God.  Not by experience, or supposedly by hearing voices from heaven, but by the word of God.

The fourth reference to antichrist is found in 2John 1:7 which says, “For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ [as] coming in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the antichrist.”  Notice the primary characteristic is that they are a deceiver.  John says it twice, this is the deceiver. And they do not acknowledge Christ as coming in the flesh.  The deny His deity and His incarnation.

Now that’s who the antichrists are. They are liars, deceivers, who deny the incarnation, who deny the deity of Jesus Christ. Back in our text, John gives us another clue to recognize them in vs 19. “They went out from us, but they were not [really] of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but [they went out,] so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.”

The first thing we should notice is that they come from within the church. He says they went out from us.  When the apostle Paul spoke farewell to the church of Ephesus he said in Acts 20:29-30  “I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock;  and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.”  That’s the nature of the false prophets and antichrists.  They come out of the church ranks.  They appear to be sons of light.  They desire to be teachers, to be revered by the church for their piety, by their power.  And by their ability to works signs and wonders will lead many astray.

Now many theologians and commentators want to camp out on these verses and use it as a pretext to talk about the perseverance of the saints. And while I believe in the perseverance of the saints,  I don’t think this is really addressing that doctrine.  Rather, I think this verse makes it clear these people never really were saved.  John says, “but they were not really of us, for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us, but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us.”  

In other words, they never were saved.  And the fact that they did not abide in the truth but departed from the truth is proof that they never were saved.  And that’s what John is referencing here.  They departed from the truth, not just from a particular church.  Some have tried to use this to indict anyone that leaves a particular church organization.  He isn’t talking about a particular local church, but the church universal, which is bound together by the truth.  And that is made clear in the following verses.  Contrary to popular opinion, there is not an injunction in scripture to join a particular church.  But there is an injunction to abide in the truth, to be unified in the truth.

So John says these people abandoned the truth for another gospel.  Paul spoke of the same thing in Gal. 1:6-8 “I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you by the grace of Christ, for a different gospel; which is [really] not another; only there are some who are disturbing you and want to distort the gospel of Christ.  But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you a gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed!”   So false prophets and false Christs preach a false gospel, which some false Christians show by their adherence to, the evidence of their false faith.  And the danger is that they attempt to persuade others to follow them in that false gospel.  Paul says that they do that by distorting the gospel of Christ.  They distort the truth.

But to the faithful Christians John is writing to, that have not abandoned the truth, he says in vs 20 “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know.”  Now the translators seem to have a problem with this verse.  Many of them add an implied context to the Greek text to help us understand the intent.  The NIV says for instance, “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.”  When you study the context it’s clear that John is speaking of the truth of the gospel, and not just saying that you know all things, or that you are all knowing or something like that.  And that’s made even more clear by the next verse.  

But don’t miss out on the main point that he is making.  He says you know the truth, because you have an anointing.  Anointing is another of those words that gets used in the wrong way in a lot of times in the church. The Greek word translated anointing is “chrisma”.  The KJV makes it even more confusing and translates it an unction. 

But “chrisma” is a word related to the word Christ. Christ means the anointed one, Christos, Jesus the anointed one. So this is an anointing, a christening in one sense.  But when you consider all that the Lord said in the upper room, and other parts of the New Testament, it’s clear that the the anointing is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, that which the Lord Jesus had promised. He said, “I will pray the Father he will give you another Comforter, the Spirit of truth and he will abide with you forever.” That’s the unction that comes from the Holy One, the anointing, the indwelling of the Spirit of truth.

And it’s so important that we see that in Jesus speaking of this anointing which was to come in the presence of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus called Him the Spirit of Truth. This is how we as Christians come to know the truth, through the indwelling we have through the Holy Spirit at your new birth.  He leads us and guides us in all truth.  That is the purpose of the Holy Spirit.  

If we skip ahead to next week’s passage we can see in vs 27 it says the purpose of the Holy Spirit, to guide us into the truth.  To open our hearts and minds to receive the truth.  vs 27 says,  “As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.”  HIs anointing teaches you the truth of God’s word.  That’s why when you become saved, when you receive the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, we suddenly have the word of God opened up to us.  It becomes so clear.  Without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit we cannot know the truth. 

So because we have this anointing of the Holy Spirit, John says in vs 21, “I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth.”  John loves to show contrasts in order to teach a principle.  And that’s what he is doing here and in vs 22.  He is showing a contrast between the truth and the lie.  The truth is from God, the lie is from the antichrist, or from Satan, the father of lies.  

The contrast in vs 22, “Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.”  The Spirit of truth versus the spirit of the world, the antichrist.  And the antichrist denies the Father and the Son. The world doesn’t necessarily deny God, or despise the teaching that there is a God. All the false religions of the world believe in a god.  Some teach that you are god. But they all teach about god, and they love to teach that god is not exclusive, but inclusive.  That all roads lead to God.  Allah is god, Buddha is a god.  The Great Spirit is a god.  Whatever god they teach, they tend to embrace an ambivalent, inclusive God. 

But Christianity teaches an exclusive God. That God was manifested in the flesh in the man Jesus Christ, and no one can come to the Father except through Him.  Peter preaching in the power of the Holy Spirit after Pentecost said concerning Jesus Christ in Acts 4:12  “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” That’s pretty exclusive, isn’t it? That’s the truth that will make you free.  And that’s what the antichrists want to distort and to change.

But the principle of our gospel is simply stated in vs 23 “Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also.”  To confess Jesus as the Son of God, as God incarnate, as having come in the flesh and died on the cross as a substitute for our sins.  To confess Jesus as Lord, as Master, as Sovereign. Romans 10:9-10 says “that if you confess with your mouth Jesus [as] Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;  for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”  That’s the gospel in a nutshell, its the truth which sets us free from the condemnation of sin and the captivity of Satan.  And believing in Him, confessing Jesus as Lord, results in righteousness which is imputed to our account, and that righteousness results in eternal life.

 John closes out this principle by saying in vs 24 “As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father.”  What is that which is to abide in you which you heard from the beginning?  It’s simply the truth of the gospel, the word of God, which you heard at the beginning of your salvation, at the beginning of your new birth.  

Don’t be deceived into thinking that there is another level of truth, a greater body of knowledge that you can somehow achieve or learn about through some mystical, spiritual experience which will really establish your faith and validate your Christianity.  The goal of John in this passage is to lead us to maturity, and what he is indicating here is that maturity comes through abiding in the purity of the word of truth.  

Peter speaks of it this way in 1Peter 2:2  “like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation.”  That’s the goal, spiritual maturity.  And it can only come through two ways, through the anointing of the Holy Spirit working through the purity of the word of truth.

If you abide in the truth, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father.  Jesus prayed in the upper room before His death concerning the disciples, which is found in John 17. I will read His prayer as our closing prayer today.  

John 17:14-21 Father, “I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil [one.] They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth. I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word;  that they may all be one; even as You, Father, [are] in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me.”  In the name of Jesus Christ the Son of God, we pray and believe, Amen.

Last week as we looked at the preceding verses, we talked about spiritual maturity. After our new birth, when we are born again spiritually, John described  three stages of spiritual growth which he titled as little children, young men and fathers.  And what we determined last week was that the goal of spiritual maturity is to become like Jesus Christ.  That is what spiritual maturity accomplishes in our lives.  We grow spiritually to become conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.  That process of becoming like Christ is what the Bible calls sanctification.  Sanctification is becoming more like Christ.  Sanctification is a process which begins at new birth and matures as we grow spiritually to be like Christ.

Now in this passage we are looking at today, John gives the antithesis for spiritual maturity.  The antithesis for spiritual maturity is to become like the world.  Instead of becoming like Christ, we become conformed to the world. The apostle Paul warned against that in Romans 12:2 saying, “And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”  So the hindrance to spiritual maturity is being conformed to the world.  Instead of loving Christ and loving what He loved, we love the world and we love what the world loves.  So there are two opposing ways to walk, two opposing ways to live.  You cannot walk north and south at the same time, can you? Neither can you walk after the Spirit and walk after the flesh.

Paul refers to that contrast of flesh and spirit. He says the flesh and the Spirit are opposed to one another.  In Gal 5:17 he says,  “For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another.”

Now that’s what John has been teaching since the beginning of his epistle.  That light and darkness cannot have fellowship together.  He says in chapter 1: vs5-6  “This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and [yet] walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.”

So John is concerned that we walk in the Spirit.  His concern is that we walk in the light, not in darkness. His concern is that we keep the commandments of God, and not do the works of darkness.  He says you cannot say you have fellowship with God and walk in the darkness.  John wants to help bring us to spiritual maturity in Christ, to become like Christ.  And so to do that, he has said that we must not walk in darkness.  He has said that we must not practice sin but practice the truth.  And now he speaks of this contrast in another dimension, and says that we must not love the world.

He says in vs 15, “Do not love the world nor the things in the world.”  It’s necessary for us to define what he means by the world. The Greek word is kosmos.  And there are numerous ways in which this word world are used in the Bible.  It can refer to the physical earth, it can refer to people, it can refer to a system.  

Now when John says here to “do not love the world,” he’s not talking about the world of individuals, because we know that God Himself loves the world of individuals, and we are told to love one another.  Everyone should be familiar with John 3:16 which says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”  So if God loves the world, then John must not be saying we should not love the individuals of the world.

And he must not be speaking of the physical world which is the earth and the plants and the creatures God has created. For we know that the heavens declare the glory of God, and as Romans 1:20 says, the creation teaches us about the invisible attributes of God. “For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.”

But what the world refers to in this context is the world system that is in opposition to the heavenly system.  It is the natural, sinful nature of mankind acting in opposition to the spiritual, godly nature.  It is a world system that has been orchestrated by Satan to bring about the rebellion of man against God. In Col 1:13 it is described as two opposing kingdoms.  It says, “For [God] rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.”  The apostle Paul spoke of it this way in Ephesians 2:1-2  “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins,  in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.”

This idea which Paul refers to as the course of this world, can be likened to a river that runs in it’s course, the rushing water having eaten out a course in which the water is carried along in a path.  In other places, it is called an age, this present age, or this present world.  Paul says it’s a satanically devised course that carries along the people in a current, rushing them towards an inevitable end which is destruction.

So the world system, this age, this course that is moving, sweeping along all who are held within it, which is going in the opposite direction than what it means to walk with God.  It’s a system that has blinded the eyes of those who are in it.  It’s a system that captivates and enslaves those that are in it. And it’s a system that leads to their destruction.  John calls it simply the world.  And he warns us – do not love the world.

Well, why would a person love the world to begin with?  The answer is because everyone is doing it. Have you ever been rafting down a river?  My family was talking the other day about going on a short trip this summer, and we talked about going to Harper’s Ferry.  The big thing to do there is you rent a inner tube and they take you way up the Shenandoah River and drop you off and you float down the river with the current.  I went over the bridge there once on a sunny, summer day and there looked like hundreds of people floating downstream enjoying the river.

The funny thing is when you are floating down the river with all these people you don’t have the sense that you are going all that fast.  You’re all floating along together.  It’s fun.  It doesn’t seem dangerous. But once you are in the current, it’s going to take you where it wants to take you, and as you are caught up in it, it has control of you. 

Now that may be fine for an afternoon on the Shenandoah, but it’s another thing to be floating on the Niagara River and not know that the falls are up ahead. That’s what it’s like to be caught up in the world and being swept along to an eventual end which the Bible calls death.  So John says do not love the world. Don’t let yourself be enamored by what the world system is selling. It’s alienation from God. It’s life which is in opposition to God. It’s living by the world’s standards, by what the world says is fun, by what the world says is fulfilling, by what the world says is acceptable. But it’s in opposition to God.  In fact, the world is orchestrated by Satan himself to take us captive and destroy us.  John says later in chapter 5 vs 19 of this epistle, “We know that we are of God, and that the whole world lies in [the power of] the evil one.”

So John adds, “Do not love the world, nor the things of this world.” The things of this world is just an expansion on the world.  John’s not talking about the things that God created, but it’s the things that this world system values.  Such things could be money, luxury items, homes, a certain life-style.  These things of the world could even be people.  It could be woman or a man that you desire, that you think if I could just have this person, then I would be happy, my life would be perfect. I think the things of this world could be thought of as shiny, seductive lures which the devil uses to draw you into his world system. They are the attractive things of this world that you desire, that promise fulfillment, but in fact just get you hooked into the devil’s system, that gets you caught up in chasing things that never fulfill what they promise.

Jesus said if you love Me, you will keep My commandments.  So to love the world and the things of the world is to have a love for the things of the world that supersedes the love which we should have for God.  The things of this world are not necessarily bad in and of themselves.  There is nothing wrong with having a nice house, or a nice car, or having a wife or husband. But what is wrong is when you put those things above the love for God that should be preeminent.  

Jesus said in Matt. 10:37 “He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.” And then again in Matt. 19:29 “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name’s sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life.”

The point being that anything that supersedes our love for God is sinful.  It’s not the thing that is necessarily sinful, it’s the love of those things which is sinful. 1 Timothy 6:10 says, “For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil.”   It’s not money that is sinful, it’s the love of money that is sinful. So it’s not the world that is sinful, it’s loving the world that is sinful.

When I was growing up as a pastor’s kid in the church, there was a lot of talk about worldliness. Anything that looked cool was considered worldly.  Anything that seemed like fun was worldly.  And there was a pretty long list of things that were considered worldly.  Some of those things seem so antiquated now.  Dancing was worldly.  Movies were worldly. I wanted to join the Boy Scouts when I was a young kid, but my dad said it was worldly.  Knowing what we know about the Boy Scouts that have come out lately, maybe it wasn’t a bad idea to keep me out of it. But the warnings against worldliness for the most part missed the mark.  They focused too much on the external and not enough on the internal. It’s not the things of the world that’s the problem as much as it is our affection for the world.  So the important distinction to this warning is what do you love? What has first place in your heart?

John then goes on to say, “If any one loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” The first thing he says is that loving the world and loving the Father are incompatible. These two loves cannot go together. They are contradictory, very much like our Lord speaks in Matthew 6:24 when he says, “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.” 

We are to be in the world, but not of the world.  In John 17:14 Jesus prayed in the upper room for the disciples saying, “I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them from the evil [one.] They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.”  So we are in the world, but not of the world.  If we love the world, then we cannot love God.  Our love for God is to be preeminent.  If we love God we obey God’s commandments.  If we love the world, then God’s love is not in us. That simply means that the our love is the evidence of our faith.  If we love the world and obey it’s desires, then we are not God’s children.  The evidence of our salvation is proven by what we love.

So John goes on to give further justification of the incompatibility of these two loves.  He says in vs 16 “For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.”

It’s almost as if he sums up all the things of the world as being in one of these three categories;   the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life.  One writer called them a trinity of evil.  They are in opposition to the Holy Trinity.  Or as John writes, they are not of the Father, but of the world.

So what does he mean when he says lusts of the flesh? When we hear the word lust we tend to think of sexual sins.  And while it certainly includes that, lusts are really just desires that are in opposition to godly desires. They are sensual desires, desires of the senses.  You can lust after food, lust after sex, lust after power, lust after fame or fortune.  Desires of the flesh then are those that would appear to satisfy the physical body.  Sexual desires outside of marriage are lusts of the flesh, but so are the desires for food which are gluttony. It might also be a desire for drink, for drugs, for anything that serves the body, the senses.  These are desires that are in excess, that are outside of the way that God ordained for our senses to operate. It’s a love for such things that exceeds or perverts God’s created intention.

The next category John gives is “the lust of the eyes.” I think what this refers to is coveting.  It’s desiring what you see, what is not yours, but which you want. It’s like being married and as you and your wife are walking through the mall, your head is swiveling around to look at another woman. You may not act upon it, but you nevertheless desire it, and that desire is sin.  Coveting is the sin of the heart.  It’s a desire for that which is not yours, being unsatisfied with what God has given you, and desiring more than you should.

Now that covers a lot of territory. It covers pornography, or coveting your neighbors things, or desiring anything that does not belong to you.  Lust is a perversion of love.  So it’s a perverse desire for what is not yours, but which you wish was.  The lust of the eyes is the sin of the heart before it becomes a sin of the flesh.  Before Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, she looked with her eyes and saw that the fruit of the tree was desirable. 

Genesis 3:6 “When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make [one] wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.”  God had forbidden the fruit, but Eve looked with her eyes, it delighted her eyes, and she desired it so she took it and sinned against God.

The last category of this illicit love of the world that John warns against is the pride of life.  The pride of life can cover a wide gamut of things.  For instance, it can be arrogance, which is the lack of humility. It’s thinking you are better than others, more deserving.  It can be a lack of love for others.  It can be a spirit of competition, always trying to outdo someone. Keeping up with the Jones.  Whatever form it takes, it is not expressive of a love for God and a love for one another.  Instead it is a love of one’s self.  It’s self love, or selfishness.  That is contrary to the love of God which is a sacrificial love for others.

So this love of the things of the world is not from the Father, but from the satanic system of the world.  And the end of those things is death, but the end result of our love for God is life.  John states this principle in 1John 2:17 “The world is passing away, and [also] its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever.”

The world is passing away… the clock is ticking, time is passing, and the time of the end is approaching.  It’s possible that you might even say that the earth is dying, as everything in it eventually dies, as everything is corrupted by death. The environmentalists think that somehow we can stop the world from dying.  But this world is not going to last forever.  At the fall, sin entered the world and death by sin. And it’s headed towards it’s inevitable conclusion.  The culmination of this age will coincide with the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Peter said that the world and it’s works will be burned up. In 2 Peter 3:10 he says, “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.” Everything that is in the world, everything that was so desirable, that caused men to lust after them, all those things are passing away.  They are all in the process of death.  Why would we want to be chasing those things which are destined to be destroyed? 

Jesus said in Matthew 16:26  “For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”  What good does it do to spend your life chasing after the things of this world, trying to fulfill the lusts of this world? They are passing away.  And one day you also will pass away.  There is a popular bumper sticker which says, “He who dies with the most toys wins.”  That’s actually a pretty sick joke. There are no winners in the system of the world.  There are only losers.  And as Jesus said, in the pursuit of the world, you also lose your own soul.  Even if you manage to get more than your fair share in this world, you cannot take it with you in the next.  The world’s currency has no value in heaven.  Money cannot buy eternal life.

But John says the one who does the will of God lives forever.  What is the will of God? To love God and love the Son. To obey Him, to abide with Him, to walk with Him, to worship Him, to have faith in Him. And he who has faith in Jesus Christ and follows Him will live forever.  Jesus said in John 11:25, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Do you believe this?  Do you believe that Jesus is God in the flesh, that He came to earth to live a perfect life, and to be your substitute, to pay the penalty for your sins by His death on the cross?  Do you believe that God raised Him from the dead and that He lives and stands at the right hand of the Father making intercession for us?  Do you believe in Him, if so, then He gives life to them that believe.  Life that continues after the grave.  Life that is not of this world, but spiritual.  And He freely gives it to all who confess their sins and believe in Him.  

You cannot love the world and love God.  Choose this day whom you will serve, whom you will love.  Are you loving the world and the things of the world, or will you love and serve the Lord?  Chose to love God, and receive everlasting life in Christ.

What John has been teaching up to this point is that a life of sin and new life in Christ are incompatible.  He says in chapter 1 vs 6 that you cannot walk in darkness, that means walk in sin, and say that you have fellowship with  God.  He also makes it clear in the next verse that fellowship with one another is predicated on being right with God.

Now that is the positive perspective, being right with God is being in fellowship with God and with one another.  From a negative perspective, John says that sin breaks fellowship with God and with one another.  And sin is defined by the commandments.

You cannot determine sin apart from the commandments of God. Now God did plant in the heart of man a conscience which is supposed to make us feel guilty for our sin, but we can’t actually rely on our conscience to do that, because it’s possible for the conscience to become so callused by sin that it no longer does what it should. 1Tim. 4:1-2 says, “But the Spirit explicitly says that in later times some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, by means of the hypocrisy of liars seared in their own conscience as with a branding iron.”  So false teaching, demonic doctrines, and the lies of the enemy can cause the conscience to stop working, so that a person no longer feels any remorse or not even any consciousness of sin.

John indicates that the most reliable way we come to know sin is through the commandments. Paul agreed with that principle.  He said I would not have come to know sin except through the commandment.  Romans 7:7 “What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “YOU SHALL NOT COVET.”  So the law is not sin, but the law is good, and the law defines sin as sin.

Listen, it’s important to recognize sin as sin. I don’t think you can be saved unless you recognize you are a sinner.  I think that’s why John deals first of all in his epistle with the issue of sin.  Paul does the same thing in the first chapters of Romans, defining sin.  The lie of Satan is to debunk the law and thereby attempt to nullify sin.  The lie of the false teachers and false prophets abounding in the church in America today is to in effect say that there is no sin, or to legitimize sin, or say that what the Bible calls sin is not really sin at all.  

So starting in chapter 2 vs 3 John shows that fellowship with God is contingent on not living in sin, and that sin is defined by the commandments.  Vs 3 “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.  The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; . but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected, or completed.”  In other words, the love of God is received by us, which sets off a chain reaction in us, that completes the transformation that God initiated in us, which is that we love like He loves us.

So that, to use the metaphysical language of John in vs 6,  we walk as Christ walked. We walk in the light as He is in the light.  We become like Christ. We love like Christ loves.

Now I warned you last time at the end of my message that it’s possible to misinterpret the message of John and get the idea that you had to keep the commandments and try to be a better person in hope that you earn the right to fellowship with God.  But if you do that then you miss the essential point of salvation.  The essential point in salvation is that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And that happens by faith in what Jesus did on the cross as our propitiation, as the satisfaction for the judgment of God towards sin.

That cleansing, that forgiveness of sins, produces in us a righteousness from God, not on the basis of what we have done, but on the basis of what Christ has done. But it also produces in us a transformation; change of heart, a change of our nature, a change from death to life.  This new heart is the key to keeping the commandments.  It’s not just mustering up enough will power to overcome your natural tendencies and become by an act of self will and discipline a nicer person. 

Rather God changes our heart.  He gives us a new spirit and puts His Spirit within us.  The result is that we are a new creation.  We have a new nature, new desires, new attitudes informed by the Spirit of God, so that we might be empowered to do His will.  And so as a regenerated child of God, we are able to keep His commandments because we want to please Him.  The product of our regeneration is sanctification.  We learn to act like children of God.

God spoke of this supernatural change of heart which would come about through salvation previously in the Old Testament.  The first reference to it is found in Jeremiah 31:31, which says, “Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the LORD, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.”

Notice that in the new covenant, God not only forgives their sin, but writes HIs laws upon their heart, puts His law within them. That speaks of a heart change, from a heart of stone to a heart that is in tune with God, a heart that loves God, and consequently a heart that obeys God.

There are three references in Ezekiel to this heart transformation resulting in keeping the commandments.  The first is found in Ezekiel 11:19-20 which says, “And I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them. And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh,  that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances and do them. Then they will be My people, and I shall be their God.” Then further down in vs 27 God says,  “I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”  

So not only is the regenerated man given a new heart, by which he has a love for God and a desire to keep the commandments of God, but he is also given the Holy Spirit, who gives us the power to keep God’s commandments.  We get a new heart, and a new spirit, plus the Holy Spirit to indwell us.  That’s the difference between the old and new covenant.  In the old covenant, they were given the law and the penalty for not keeping the law.  In the new covenant, we are given the law, Jesus paid the penalty due because of the law, and we are given a new heart, a new spirit, and the Holy Spirit to enable us to keep His word.

The last reference to this transformation is Ezekiel 36:26 which basically says the same thing as those previous references.  Ezekiel 36:25-27  “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”

Now that’s such a tremendously important doctrine that God repeats it no less than three times in the Old Testament.  And it’s important to comprehend this doctrine because that truth is the basis for understanding what John is teaching here in 1 John 2.  As we understand that doctrine, we can now read vs 7 and 8 with discernment.  

Listen to vs 7 and 8. “Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard.  On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.”

Without the insight given us through the Spirit as we consider the promises of God in Ezekiel and Jeremiah, we might be scratching our heads over this idea of an old commandment and new commandment.  And perhaps because of that many commentators have tried to find some sort of distinction being made here between the old covenant and the new covenant.  They say that under the old covenant there are given 613 or so laws, but under the new covenant we are given only two; love God and love one another.  And so they seek to explain it as if in the new covenant there are only two, easier commandments that we are obligated to keep, and everything else is just legalism that has now been eliminated by grace.

But that, of course, is the wrong exegesis.  What John is actually saying here is that the difference between the old commandment and the new commandment is simply that there is a new way of keeping it.  In the old covenant there was just the law given, and the penalty given for not keeping it.  In the new covenant, we are given the means by which to keep the commandments.  Under the old covenant, the only incentive was to avoid punishment.  In the new covenant, the incentive is love, which comes from a regenerated heart, and a new spirit, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to help us.  In the old covenant, you were legally bound to keep the law, but you didn’t have the resource to keep it.  In the new covenant, you have the all the resource you need, which is the power of the Holy Spirit in you.

That’s where the modern charismatic movement misses the boat on the purpose of the Holy Spirit.  They think the Holy Spirit is given to give us a feeling, an ecstatic experience which validates that we know God.  But in fact the Holy Spirit is given to give us the power to keep the commandments of God, to be our Helper that we might do the deeds of God.

Notice also John says in vs 8, that he is “writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.” Now what is he saying?  I submit that when he speaks of that which is true in Him and in you, He is speaking of the Word of God. Another analogy which we saw earlier in Ezekiel talked of sprinkling clean water on you.  That is another reference to the word of God as evidenced by Eph. 5: 25 “Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her,  so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,  that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.”  Sanctification, holiness, which is keeping the commandments, comes as a result of the washing of water with the word.  

So we are able to keep the commandment because we have the cleansing power of the word of God at work in our lives, which John says means that the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.  The word of God is the truth, is the light, which makes the darkness, the sin and ignorance flee.  Peter speaks of this in 2Peter 1:19 saying,  “And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”  

Peter goes on to say the subsequent verses that the scripture is given by the Holy Spirit. So we see there how the word of God is used by the Holy Spirit to work in us, which in produces good works from us, so that we keep the commandments.

So the evidence that you know God, the evidence that you have fellowship with God, the evidence that you have the Spirit of God, is that you keep the commandments. John has made that very clear. It’s not in some feeling you have, or some experience you had, or some claim that you are on intimate terms with God and He talks directly to you.  The evidence  that you know God is that you walk according to the word, that you keep His commandments.

Now last week we concluded that all the commandments were able to be summarized in what Jesus said in response to the lawyer.  That the foremost commandment was to love God with all your heart, and the second was like it, which was to love your neighbor as yourself. He said, on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.  So love is the summary of the law.  It doesn’t diminish the law, but in fact, it encompasses all of the law, and the prophets, so all of the Old Testament.  Paul speaks of this law of love in Rom. 13:10, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfillment of [the] law.”  So in both the Old and New Testaments, love is the summary, the fulfillment of the law.

So keeping the commandments, especially the law of love which is the summary of the commandments, is a test by which we may prove that we know God. John gives us two tests, both a negative test and a positive test by which we may know that we know God.  He states the negative first in vs 9 “The one who says he is in the Light and [yet] hates his brother is in the darkness until now.”  John goes back to this metaphor of light and darkness to illustrate our relationship with God.  It’s almost a restatement of chapter 1 vs 6, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and [yet] walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.”  So to hate your brother is darkness.  To hate is sin. 

Back in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus equates anger towards a brother with the sin of murder.  Matt. 5:21-22  “You have heard that the ancients were told, ‘YOU SHALL NOT COMMIT MURDER’ and ‘Whoever commits murder shall be liable to the court.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be guilty before the court; and whoever says to his brother, ‘You good-for-nothing,’ shall be guilty before the supreme court; and whoever says, ‘You fool,’ shall be guilty [enough to go] into the fiery hell.”

Now vehemence, or anger towards a brother may be the manifestation of hate. When we think of hate we tend to think of it that way, a violent, vehement, anger towards someone.  But hate is actually broader than that.  Hate may be disdain, contempt.  It may not manifest itself outwardly at all.  It may just be an attitude of contempt for someone, as if they were beneath you, as if they are not worthy of your attention.  That also may be considered hate. 

But I would suggest that hate in the usage of this verse is even broader and seemingly more innocuous than that.  I would suggest that hate in this context may be the opposite of love.  Hate is the opposite of love.  We can see that in the next verse, as John contrasts love with hate.  He is contrasting the man who hates, versus the man who loves.  So hate is whatever love is not.  

That being the case then, it is necessary to define love if we are to define hate.  In vs 10, we have the introduction to the law of love. John says, “The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.”  The word love is from the Greek word agapaō.  It’s a very familiar word for most Christians, I’m sure.  But nevertheless, let me give a synopsis of the word as a refresher so that we might be able to better define what love is not.

Agape is a divine love, the kind of love which God has for the world, which was manifested by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  So this love is a self sacrificing love for another that puts their good above your own. In the KJV it was translated as charity.

In 1Cor. 13:4-7 Paul gives an even fuller account of love, saying “Love is patient, love is kind [and] is not jealous; love does not brag [and] is not arrogant,  does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong [suffered,]  does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth;  bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

That sets love at a pretty high standard.  It’s the law of love.  Jesus said in John 13:34 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”  Jesus loved us with an unconditional, sacrificial love.  And we are to love one another like that.  We are to love our brother like that.

So based on that definition of love, hate then is what love is not. Hate is not caring about the better good of your brother but only caring about your good.  Seeking your own interests and not seeking your brother’s best interests is hate. Hate is being unforgiving towards another.  Hate is being provoked towards another.  Hate does not act becomingly towards another. Hate is being jealous of another. Hate is arrogance towards another. Hate rejoices in unrighteousness.  Another way of saying that is hate condones unrighteousness.   

So John says the person who says he is in the Light, that says he is a Christian, he is in fellowship with God, and yet he acts in any of those ways which are the opposite of the way love operates, then he is actually in the darkness.  He is in sin.  Love is righteousness, but hate is sin.  Such a person who hates is in sin.  And sin has no fellowship with God, even as darkness and light cannot coexist at the same time.

John continues on that theme in vs 11, saying, “But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”  Sin has blinded his eyes so that he doesn’t know where he is going. I think that’s a reference to what we spoke of earlier about the conscience being calloused, being seared continuing in sin.  Notice here John speaks of not only being in darkness, but walking in darkness.  That’s a continuing life style.  To continue in sin is to harden your heart, sin builds up a callous on your heart which keeps you from feeling remorse or guilt.  And so in their sin, their heart becomes hardened, calloused, and they continue on in the way of darkness, believing a lie, and not knowing that where they are going is the path of destruction.

But in contrast to the person who hates, John presents the person who loves in vs 10. “The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.”

To abide means to continue, to dwell in the Light.  This is fellowship with God. To be in the Light, and to dwell in the Light.  It’s to walk in the light.  And we do this by walking in the word. Psalm 119 says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”  To walk according to the word is to walk in the Spirit.  This is how we stay close to the Lord.

And because we are in fellowship with God we love our brother.  We love because He first loved us. Abiding in the Light produces love towards one another.  Love is the manifestation of our faith.  It’s the product of our love for God.  Jesus said if you love Me, then you will keep My commandments.  

And abiding in the Light and loving one another, gives no cause for stumbling in us.  What that means is our life is not a stumbling block to one another.  Because love is giving preferential treatment to another.  It’s not holding a grudge, it’s not being jealous.  All those things Paul says love is not back in 1 Cor. 13, those are things that end up being a stumbling block to the other person.  A stumbling block causes them to fall into sin.  Being a stumbling block to others is the result of hate. Its the result of selfishness, not love.  But when we love the way Christ loved us, then the stumbling block is removed.  And the other person is edified.  

So if we abide in the Light, we love one another, and do not put a stumbling block in front of them by our behavior, but we actually encourage and strengthen and edify one another.  That is the fulfillment of the law, and that is the evidence that we are in fellowship with God. I pray that you are walking in the Light, as He is in the Light.  That you walk by the Spirit, and in the power of the Spirit within you are being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ as we obey Him, and keep HIs commandment to love one another, even as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her.