I John 2:15 (NIV) Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
The spirit of the world is all around us in our society, active and vigorous in its appeal to the residue of the old nature within us (Eph. 4:22; Col. 3:5-9). So even Christians are in danger of loving the world. But love for the world is incompatible with love for God, which cannot co-exist with a world-order that is antagonistic to God in a sphere in which only self-seeking self-interests are the law of life, a world of busy, human concerns indifferent to both the will and glory of God. Once the love of the world takes the place of God, sinful tendencies and pursuits multiply (II Cor. 6:14-18). This is not prohibiting the possession or appreciation of things given to us to enjoy (nature’s beauty, which is God’s handiwork). It is a prohibiting of an affection and attachment for those things which rival God and exclude the love of God, things which displace God as the center of one’s life to become the center themselves. Often we do not recognize the seduction. Invite the Holy Spirit to be your accountability partner. He will teach you how to overcome appetites which “war against the soul” (I Pet. 2:11).
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