RADICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MAN AND CHILD OF GOD

RADICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN MAN AND CHILD OF GOD AND THEIR LOVES

"If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him" 1 John 2:15

Frederick Maurice said of this text: “John is never afraid of an apparent contradiction, when it saves his readers from a real contradiction." The importance of remembering this is recognized when we place these words, by the side of those with which we so constantly comfort and assure our hearts, that “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son." (John 3:16) It is always necessary to distinguish clearly what the term the world connotes in the particular sentence in which it is used. The world which God so loved as to give His only-begotten Son, is the whole order of His creation, at the summit of which, under Himself, is man. He gave His Son to redeem and reinstate man; and through him, thus redeemed and reinstated, to redeem and reinstate the whole creation (Rom. 8:19, 21-22). The world which we are not to love, is that same totality which to use a later statement of John, "lieth in the wicked one" (1 John 5:19). When that is recognized, this statement is seen to be, not a contradiction to the one we have quoted, but in strict harmony with it. To love this world as it is, alienated from God, and in rebellion against His government, is impossible to the man who loves it with the love of the Father, which is a love that seeks its highest good, and therefore can make no terms with evil, but is willing to die in order that it may live. HEREIN IS THE RADICAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE MAN OF THE WORLD AND THE CHILD OF GOD. The man of the world loves a fallen creation with its god and the Child of God awaits a redeemed creation being a new heaven and a new earth and its Ruler. See Romans 8 passages mentioned above.