¹⁵ Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. ¹⁶ For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. ¹⁷ The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

–1 John 2.15-17 (NIV)

In today’s lesson from 1 John, we are told not to love the world, but as we saw in yesterday’s reflection this is not a command for Christians to withdraw from the world or to make their faith some kind of private, introspective, and navel-gazing exercise. To the contrary, because God raised Jesus from the dead and showed us that his creation is important to him, we who profess to follow Jesus must do likewise. We must allow ourselves to be open to God’s guidance so that he can use us to be agents of his Kingdom and New Creation, of which Jesus is the preview of coming attractions.

So what is John talking about here? What does he mean when he tells us that anyone who loves the world does not have the Father’s love in them? Is he contradicting what he wrote elsewhere? No he is not. If we look at the following two verses in today’s passage it is clear that John is talking about the choice each of us must make about who or what we are going to follow in this life. Are we going to make the values of God’s fallen world our master or are we going to make God and his values our master?

If we choose to try and find life, happiness, and security in money or power or fame or sex or drugs or a host of other things, then we are going to make life all about us and we likely will not care who we have to run over to acquire what we see as necessary for our happiness. In doing so, we in effect are making gods out of the things we pursue and this is called idolatry. In the final analysis, we must ask ourselves if these things can raise us from the dead and give us real life, meaning, and purpose, both here in this world and after we die.

If we choose to make God our master, then it makes sense that we will try to be obedient to his wishes, just as we try to obey those whom we love so that we can please them. I am not talking about some unhealthy dynamic here; I am talking about the healthy behavior that flows naturally from our love for another. We must always remember that when Scripture talks about love, it is talking more about action than emotion. True love always manifests itself in action and if we are to love God with our whole being, then the first thing we must do is to acknowledge that we are not God’s equals. He is our Creator and we are his creatures. God created us for relationship, but it is a relationship between Creator and creatures, not of equals, and that will necessarily change the dynamics of our relationship with God. God’s love for us is perfect and we can therefore have confidence in obeying his will for us because we know that God never, ever wishes us harm.

How do we know this? We have seen the cross of Christ and his empty tomb in which God validated all that Jesus said he was and all that he did in his earthly life and ministry.

This, then, is what John is talking about when he is telling us not to “love the world.” He is not talking about people or God’s good creation. John is talking about the values of this fallen world, values that make it all about us and our selfish desires, values that seek to elevate us to God’s level so that we replace him and make ourselves gods, values that seek to dehumanize us and make us slaves to things that will inevitably destroy us. This ongoing rebellion (and that is what sin is at its very core) must necessarily lead to alienation and exile from the one and only Source and Author of all life, which will eventually lead to our death. That is what John is talking about here when he talks about doing the Father’s will. We respond in obedience to God’s gracious initiative to us in Jesus by saying yes to God and his values so that we can live and enjoy life.

Let me give you an example that might be helpful. Last night I was watching a lively discussion on the O’Reilly Factor between Mr. O’Reilly and a Roman Catholic priest regarding the spontaneous celebrations that erupted when Americans learned about the death of Osama bin Laden. What is an appropriate Christian response to this news (I am not talking about the morality of bin Laden’s killing here)? Whose or what values will guide and shape our behavior (which is exactly what John is addressing in today’s lesson)?

If I am indicative of the average American, my first impulse after hearing about bin Laden’s death was to jump up and rejoice. Justice had finally been executed on a mass murderer. But just as I was getting ready to celebrate the news, this verse from Scripture popped into my head: God takes no pleasure in the death of sinners (Ezekiel 18.32). This was quickly followed by the recollection of Jesus’ parable about the shepherd leaving the 99 sheep to seek after the 1 who had strayed away and the scandalous parable of the prodigal son in which the wayward son was restored. Then, Genesis 1.27 came to mind, reminding me that every human being is an image bearer of God, no matter how badly distorted or defaced the image has become (and in bin Laden’s case, I would say that God’s image had been almost obliterated). This reminded me that I dare not gloat over, abuse, or despise any human being permanently, no matter how much I might like to do that. (For a nice summary of verses related to how we might reflect on bin Laden’s death, go to this article at Christianity Today online.)

Now I don’t know about you, but when God speaks to me through his word like this and spoils the fun I was just about to have, I find it quite irritating. But here’s the point. As a Christian, I made a conscious choice in this particular case not to follow my fallen human instincts and instead act more circumspectly in accordance with God’s commands that came to me through my remembering these passages from Scripture.

Make no mistake. I am supremely satisfied that justice was executed on bin Laden and am proud of the President for making a bold and terribly risky decision. I am proud of the SEALs who executed the mission with breathtaking precision and courage and I see both as being in accordance with Romans 13.1-4 in which Paul reminds us that the state is God’s appointed agent to execute God’s wrath on evildoers in this world. I think this is precisely what happened in bin Laden’s case.

I also respect those who did go out and celebrate, even though I do not agree with them. They were following their fallen human instincts just like I was when I first heard the news and I can appreciate that because I seem to follow my fallen nature more often than I like to admit. I don’t agree with the celebrations for the reasons I have already stated but I realize emotions run high when we are talking about justice served on a mass murderer and hate-monger like bin Laden.

So what can we learn from this? First, if we are going to follow Jesus we must obey his commands and seek to imitate his life. As I said in yesterday’s reflection, that means we are to bring his values to bear on the problems of this world. We are not to put our hope in political or economic ideology or anything else of this world. We are to put our hope in Christ and his values and we can only do that by obeying him. It has been my experience that this will result in us being all over the political and economic map because Jesus will not be pigeonholed as a conservative, moderate, or liberal on the political and economic spectrums, and neither should we who claim to follow him.

For example, the passage from Romans I quoted above also has these verses in the chapter before it.

³ For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. ⁴ For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, ⁵ so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. ⁶ We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your^[a] faith; ⁷ if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; ⁸ if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully. ⁹ Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. ¹⁰ Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. ¹¹ Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. ¹² Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. ¹³ Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. ¹⁴ Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. ¹⁵ Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. ¹⁶ Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. ¹⁷ Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. ¹⁸ If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. ¹⁹ Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. ²⁰ On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (Romans 12.3-21).

This passage, along with countless others in the NT, make it clear that as individuals, Christians are not to be hatemongers or seek to exact revenge on our enemies. We are to love and pray for them instead (before his death, had you been praying for the conversion of bin Laden and his ilk that they might be saved from eternal separation from the Source and Author of life? It’s a terribly hard thing to do but if you want to call yourself a Christian you must). The state has the God-given authority to execute justice. Christians do not. We are to be like Jesus and love our enemies and pray for them. This is hard and personally costly work, but we must do it if we want to follow Jesus because that is exactly what he did in his earthly life.

Second, what follows logically from the point above is that we must become biblically literate so that we can better know what is God’s will for us. Scripture, of course, being God’s word can provide us with guidance regarding God’s general will for all people. God’s people therefore cannot be Bible illiterates. We must learn to assimilate as much Scripture as we can into our memories so that God can use this to speak to us in ways similar to the way he spoke to me on Sunday night. Folks who want to take their faith seriously dare not be cherry-pickers of Scriptural passages to try to prove their particular point of view.

Scripture must shape and fashion us. We dare not try to shape and fashion Scripture into our image.

Accordingly, we had better be able to lay out holistic and cogent arguments for our conduct and positions that are based on Scripture if we want to follow Jesus. Why? Because it is awfully hard to follow someone if you don’t know much about that person. This, of course, is going to require a lot of time and effort on our part. Are you ready to take the time necessary and give the required effort to make God’s word a living, breathing part of you?

Finally, the reason we would want to do any of this in the first place is because we have seen the cross of Christ, we have seen God’s great love for us poured out in his blood shed on the cross. We have seen the empty tomb and through the mediating presence of the Holy Spirit we know that Jesus is alive and well in his body, the Church. Yes, we the Church act badly from time to time (perhaps more often than not). But we do so not because of any fault of God’s but because we are at heart stubborn and rebellious people who want to follow our own desires and devices more than we want to follow our Lord. This is precisely one of the points John was trying to make to the churches of his day through this circular letter.

But the glory of the Gospel and of God is that God does not give up on us. He keeps reaching out to us and when we say yes to his invitation and open ourselves up to his Presence in us, we allow him to transform us into the people he created us to be. We allow him to make us like Jesus and when that happens it will turn heads in a big way.

Each one of us has to make a choice about how we live our lives and for whom or what. Sometimes we do not make the choice consciously; we just act. But not choosing is choosing and it will not turn out well in the end for us if we do not choose to follow Jesus. He is the way, the truth, and the life and no one comes to the Father except through him. If we choose life, if we choose to follow Jesus, he calls us to obey him and make him Lord, not ourselves. As we have seen, this is terribly hard and painful work but we have the hope and promise of his Presence in our lives to help us become his. And we have the glorious hope of being part of God’s New Creation of which Jesus’ resurrection allows us to get a glimpse.

So who’s your daddy? Does the daddy you follow lead to life, meaning, purpose, and hope or does he lead you to darkness, despair, hopelessness, and death? Think deeply about these things because they really are a matter of life and death. And then if you have not already done so, ask God to give you the grace to choose life.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!