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Today’s reading is from 1 John 2: 15-17:

15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; 16 for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17 And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live forever.

Today we see John tell us something interesting – we are not to love the world.  To better understand this, let’s talk about what it means in the context of that day to love the world.  For Jesus and for His followers, love and hate have a different meaning and context than do for us today.  For us, when we think of love or hate, we think of emotion.  To love someone is to think about the lovey-dovey kind of emotion. And to hate is to think about anger and malice.  

That is not what Jesus is talking about.  He tells us to hate our parents.  It’s kind of hard to square that away with the command to honor our father and mother.  We are told to hate our lives in this world to gain it in the next.  We hear this and are confused.  Today we are told what we can’t love the world? 

But what about the people in the world?  

What about the things in the world that aren’t necessarily Christian that we enjoy?  

What about all of this?  For Jesus, and for John, when they are talking about this concept of love and of hate they are talking about what is our primary loyalty.  To hate your parents is not to be filled with rage towards them, but it is to understand that they are not your first choice, Jesus is.  

Likewise to hate your life is not to make yourself miserable in life and to not take care of yourself, but it is to understand that you are not the first choice in all your life, Jesus is. 

This passage today is not a choice to “hate” the world in the way that we think of, it is not a choice to hate people, but what it is is a call to understand our primary loyalty. We are loyal to Jesu before anything else in this world.  He is our first choice.  He is our foundation, our life, our rock, our everything. 

We do love people. We do love life. We do love relationships.  We can even love rock and roll music.  And movies. And all kinds of things. 

But our primary loyalty is to Jesus. That’s what John wants us to know today. It always, always, always starts with Jesus. 

May we choose Him first, in all things.  

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