How Shall We Live?

John makes an interesting statement in 1 John 2:15-17. He says that we are not to love the world, because if you do God’s love is not in you. Everything related to the world that we see is passing away, but the one who does God’s will lives forever. John’s statement seems pretty straight forward, but then compare what John wrote here to John 3:16, where he wrote that God loved the world so much that he sent his Son so that whoever believes in him/Jesus will never perish. In 1 John 2:15, John said not to love the world, but in John 3:16 he said that God loved the world and demonstrated it by sending Jesus. John used the same word for “love” and the same word for “world” in both passages. In one he declared that God loved the world, the same world he told his readers not to love. How do we reconcile this inconsistency? John is speaking to two different types of love, even though he is using the same exact words.

The difference is in his explanation. In 1 John 2, John addresses a type of love that desires to receive something. In this case John mentions the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and the pride of life. John is warning us to avoid thinking that the purpose of life is found in the world. Jesus put it differently, that we are to be in the world but not of the world. The world and what it offers does not define who we are, because we are of another kingdom. Peter refers to us as strangers and aliens in this land. One of the biggest challenges that I face living in United States is the lie that I fit in; that this is my nation and my home, just because I was born here and grew up here. I never thought about it until we lived in Italy. When we first went to Italy, we had to get a visa from the Italian consulate in Chicago. When we got to Italy, we had to report to the Questura, the police station in Florence to apply for a Permesso di Soggiorno, Sojourners Permit. That gave us permission to reside in Italy for 1 year. Each year we had to renew that permit, in whatever city we were living in. For the entire time we lived in Italy, we were recognized as foreigners living in a foreign country. We were “stranieri”, foreigners. This was one of the most difficult things of living in Italy, the daily knowledge that we didn’t fit in, we were constantly viewed as outsiders.

The biggest challenge when we returned to this country in 2000, was feeling like we were home, when we really weren’t. We were no longer outsiders in the same way that we felt in Italy, but I should have felt that way. It is very much like living a lie. If you are a follower of Jesus, then you are very much like a foreigner living in a foreign land, even though you know the culture, you know the language, you know the history and you don’t speak with an accent. Even though you may carry a passport, you and I are what Peter called strangers living in a foreign country. That is the meaning of the words Peter used to describe the people to whom he was writing in 1 Peter. This is why John instructs his readers that we are not to love the world by desiring the things of this world. If we feel comfortable in this world, then there is something amiss.

So why did John write that God loved the world, when he tells us not to? Well, God loved and loves the world not to receive anything from the world. He has no desire to receive what this world offers or to fit in this world. God loves this world because he desires to transform it. This is also how you and I are to live, this is the type of life that God calls us to live. We are to live differently, even though we look like Americans, we are still to be different, because we desire and live for things from heaven and not earth.