Feb 11, 2012
The Dividing Line
Posted by Michael Howarth in Gospel Living | Comments (0)
As Christians, we live everyday in an atmosphere that is toxic to our spiritual lives. We are surrounded with enticement and temptation, so much so that we’re likely not to realize how much it quietly and daily seeps into our pores. It is like a dense fog of attitudes, popular ideology and anxiety. This is what John means when he says “the world” here:
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
What about “God so love the world…”
God loves the world in the same way he calls us to love the world: by preaching His gospel and by serving and loving people. What John is speaking about above is an infatuation with the way the world operates. This type of love feeds the world’s brokenness, contributing to the rebellion; God’s type of love recognizes and seeks to repair the world’s brokenness through humility and truth, one person at a time.
What we’re called to is a divorce of affection: a constant assessment of our desires and attitudes towards the very atmosphere we live in. This can be very difficult. Like asking a fish to be wary of the water. This is because “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions” are all inside of us. The world is full of these things because we are full of these things. We’re in double the trouble. The world is overflowing with the death we desire: gluttony, lust, greed, disrespect, idolatry, envy, laziness and gossip. It is a free buffet that in the end will cost you everything. And none of it matters. It is all passing away. It literally means nothing.
Salt & Light
Every person is subject to death, but the Christian has been summoned to it. We have received a 66-book invitation to our funeral. And it is beautiful. God has turned the very consequence of our lawlessness into a doorway to life. He reaches into death and raises us anew.
In His coming, Jesus has drawn a dividing line. The toxic atmosphere that is filled with and feeds the worst in us is on one side. The Kingdom of God is on the other. We cannot love them both. One brings death. The other produces life out of death. One is self-centered and will not be remembered. The other is eternal and unfading.
In this, God does not ask us to simply stop loving our sin, but to start loving Him. He fills the void, repairing our broken vessels and filling them with light. Our sinful desires are replaced with His righteous desires. We don’t become cold, finger waving grumps, but flavorful and illuminating ambassadors of grace: salt and light.
To know Him is to truly live. All that the world has to offer us, though it shines and satisfies our lusts in the moment, is dim and emaciated and cheap, and cannot even be compared to the rich and overflowing banquet God has prepared for those who love Him.
15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions--is not from the Father but is from the world. 17 And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
1 John 2:15-17
[This post is a counterpart to the sermon, “A Necessary Divorce,” which can be found here.]
Posted by Michael Howarth in Gospel Living
