First John

I John 2:15-17, Life and Love

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: I John 2:15-17, Life and Love

Genre: Sermon

Lesson: 4 of 16

Track: #4

Year:

Dictation Name: RR308B4

[Introducer] Let us worship God. I will come into Thy house in the multitude of Thy mercy, and in {?} will I worship toward Thy holy temple, that the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable into Thy site oh Lord my strength and my redeemer. Let us pray.

Our most good and glorious God and heavenly Father we praise You for Your goodness’s to us each day which are more than we can number. We thank You that you have called us to be your children. We pray that You would help us to understand more and more as we go on in our Christian life, what it means to be your children not just for eternity but for here and now, and we pray that You would help us to focus our thoughts and our perspective on life in terms of that meaning. We pray that you would help us to focus now on our worship of you and our study of your word. We thank You that You have given us your word, that you have not left us to wander or to speculate through human wisdom about what you would have us to do. We thank You that You have given us Your word, Your truth so that we might understand what You have done throughout all history and what you will yet do, and what our responsibility is for You in this life here and now. We pray that you would encourage us, we pray that you would encourage us as individuals, as families, as workers in your kingdom. We pray that you would guard us from the temptation that would keep us from fellowship with You, we pray that You would guard our children from the temptations of youth, we pray that You would draw us ever nearer to You as individuals and as families. Bless now this time we have together in worship and praise of You, in Christ our Savior’s name, amen.

The scripture for this morning’s sermon is I John, chapter two, verses 15-17 and the subject is life and love. First John chapter 2 verses 15-17.

“15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”

[Rushdoony] In our last session we discussed a problem with regard to I John, mainly the meaning of the word “love”. Now before we go back to that let us consider a very important fact. The extent to which languages wherever Christianity has gone has been revised by Biblical faith. Once the word of God is translated into a language and more and more people believe it, the more that language is molded by the Bible. If you want to read something in English that sounds like the Hebrew and is very faithful to it, read Isaiah. The languages of the Western world, and now increasingly languages the world over, are being reshaped by the Bible, consider what the King James Version has done to English. The last four hundred years English has not changed substantially. When faith has declined English has started to change, but when faith has revived English has reverted to a more Biblical premise, more understandable.

Now the King James Version is about 400 years old. In that time English is completely understandable. But if you go back a hundred years before the Kings James you will have trouble understanding it. In fact what is closer to our language then we realize, both in pronunciation and in sight, it is radically different. For example if we go to Chaucer when he writes “[proceeds to read some excerpt from Chaucer in the old English which is indecipherable for transcribing purposes]” Now that’s English [chuckles from audience] not long before the King James version. If you go back to Beowulf you won’t get a word of it. Languages have always changed very rapidly until the culture is Christianized and then the language becomes fixed.

What the Soviet Union did when it took power was immediately, without saying a word against any one of the many, many languages within the Soviet Union, was to institute changes in them. I know that when I heard a professor from Armenia lecture in Armenian I had trouble following what she said. But what I learned subsequently that in the home, in the family circle, the old-fashioned form of Armenian was spoken, and that happened throughout the Soviet Empire. They hoped in time to break down the old language and step by step make all the languages one. Well, they were going against the Bible because the Bible has shaped the languages of the world wherever it has gone. And that’s why, unlike past history, the English of four-hundred years ago is very understandable to us, we read it every time we open the Bible. But five hundred years ago is another matter, six hundred and it’s all Greek to you.

Now there is another factor in Biblical languages that is important for us to know, they have been remarkable in re-making each new language so that English is English as we know it because of the King James Bible. German has been re-made by the German translation of Luther, and so on, and today this is happening everywhere in the world where the Bible goes, but at one point as we saw in our last session, the translations have failed to give the full meaning of the original, that’s in first John. It has to do with one word in the English, love. Well, in the Coina Greek the popular, or business Greek of the new Testament, which was understandable everywhere in the Roman Empire, we have three words that our translatable as love. One is eros, as in our word “erotic” and it refers in the Greek as it does in the English, to sexual love, and sexual love of a not particularly moral character. The other and more common word in the Greek is “phileo”. We have it in this country in the name “Philadelphia” and the word Philadelphia means “Phila”, phileo, love, “Adelphia” from “adelphos”, brother –the city of brotherly love. And that word, phileo, is very common because it translates so much of what in everyday life goes for love, it’s connotation is not bad, it is essentially good. However a third word while rarely used did exist in the Coina Greek, that word was “agape” a-g-a-p-e. Why it was there we don’t know, it was rarely used, but it was the word that was waiting for the New Testament to come along because what agape means is the selfless, uncaused love of God, a love that is not earned, a love that is really grace. “While we were yet sinners Christ died for us” Paul says. That’s what God’s love, “agape” means. There’s no reason for it, but God loved us, redeemed us, made us His people.

Now these words are important as we study first John because as we saw contrary to the popular opinion that this letter is about love, it’s about the nature of God, it is against antinomianism, anti-lawism.

Now accordingly John in verse 15 says “15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” Well we’re strictly commanded here, as a matter of law, that our love is to move in another direction than the world. In other words, our love is to be centered on God, on Christ and what Christ has done for us while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” This is totally different from the world’s idea of love, this kind of love is to determine the whole of our lives so that even our everyday, ordinary love, phileo, is governed by agape, God’s love manifested to us and be manifested by us in the totality of our lives. So we are to love not the world, our love is to begin with the Father. Now all we have to do day by day to understand the difference in the faith and life and love of the world and ourselves is to watch television or listen to the radio because the language there has a different orientation. God has no place in it, you might as well be speaking a remote dialect of Chinese because God is totally absent, and this is not the kind of love we are to manifest.

“16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.” Here he switches from the word “love” to “lust” because John says what is of the world has no connection with what is of God, and so our language reflects it. All you have to do is to listen to the speech of your family, and then listen to the speech of the outside world. You may not be talking in your everyday conversation and table talk about the Bible or Jesus Christ, but your language, your speech, is governed by Him, because He loves you. All that is in you is changed, it reflects something else; the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. The center is then ourselves, we live and think totally in terms of “my will be done” not the will of the Father. All this is of the world, and as we look around us we see it on all sides. The love of the world which ultimately amounts to a love of oneself “my will be done, ye shall be as gods, knowing (or determining) for yourselves what is good and evil.”

“17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.” There is a difference, the world passeth away. That’s a very familiar saying, most people who know anything about the Bible know that it tells us the world passeth away. It’s transitory, everything is here today and gone tomorrow. But have you ever consider it’s that way because the world wants it, because it has no capacity for true love? When you look back over your life, whether short or long, it is amazing how often the language has changed. The popular language of the 20’s was not of that of the 30’s, and so on decade after decade. There is a passing away continually, there is a constant emphasis on the present and on fades, there is a dislike of anything that is permanent and is a hatred of the eternal.

I once heard someone say when he was asked what he thought about life after death, that what the Bible presented was horrible. The only kind of life he wanted was the kind he had now, where everything was forever changing, forever new. He did not want eternal life, and people change constantly so that the things of the 90’s are already out of date. The language, the songs, everything, because people want change, they don’t want commitment to the same thing over and over again. One of the things that is noticeable is how the very idea of permanency has dropped out of popular music. If you go back to World War I and the 20’s you still have a little bit in popular songs of the idea of permanency. For example the 20’s song quite popular, but I can recall a few words from it “just Molly and Me and baby makes three, we’re as happy as can be in my blue heaven.” From beginning to end that song talked about being happily in love forever. But you don’t hear that note in popular music anymore, because the more man departs from Christ the more he replaces eternity with time, permanency with the changeable, in effect life with death.

As John says “and the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.” The world is constantly changing because it wants change. We as Christians if we love something good we love it today, tomorrow, and the next day. We’re very happy that we have this or that personal association, or that there are certain things and the like that we are especially fond of. We want permanency, eternity, whereas the world wants change, and in effect hell, because what is permanent about hell, and in hell, except that it’s always there? But heaven, the love of God governs all. “He that doeth the will of God abideth forever” as against this love of change the love of God, when it is in us, when it is agape, governs our lives, we are here or we live for all eternity, and that eternity is the new creation which fulfills everything we know and love in this world, and yet represents much, much more.

And so John is contrasting a love that is not a love, a love that does not the truth or permanency as against the love God, which when it governs our lives gives us a stability and an unchanging character. This is why John will go on to speak a great deal about love, about the law. In chapter three verse four he writes “whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law, for sin is a transgression of the law.” This is the heart of John’s letter, the law, this is what we should love and if we love God we love the law. We don’t want a different kind of world, and a different love, or a different law every day, we want something that, like God, abideth forever. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee for the majesty and beauty of Thy word. We thank Thee that Thy love governs us, remakes us, and gives us an eternal place in Thy kingdom. Give us joy therefore in Thee and in Thy love, in Thy law, in Thy kingdom, that we may gladly and joyfully serve Thee as Thy sons and daughters in Jesus Christ. In His name we pray, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

Yes?

[Audience member] In verse fifteen,

[Rushdoony] Could you speak up a bit?

[Audience member] In verse 15 of chapter 2, is the word, is it sort of “agape” not the world?

[Rushdoony] Verse 15 the word love is, as I recall it, I should of brought my Greek testament, phileo and in 17 is agape.

Are there...yes?

[Audience member] This is a question about the King James. The King James was a 200 year old dead language at the time they translated it. What were the reasons behind…?

[Rushdoony] Could you speak up, tell me what {?} had to say, I couldn’t hear.

[moderator] Yes, he’ll repeat it louder.

[Audience member] This question is about the King James. The language that was used in the King James was a two hundred year old dead language at the time they translated the Bible, could you go over the reasons why they used that?

[Rushdoony] The King James English was old fashioned when it was used. It was old fashioned and not only so, but in the sense primitive. It was the language of ordinary people living in ordinary villages so that on the day it was first published it was not the language of London. If you read the language at that time it’s pretty hard to follow, so what happened was by deliberately going to a basic, a simplified English, they reshaped the language for the best. If we had not had that happen English today would be a pretty poor language to communicate with. What’s happening now is that even languages like Chinese have been affected. One thing for example, it used to be that that the literate in Chinese you had to know thousands upon thousands of ideograms, or characters. Now they’ve simplified it. That was the effect of the missionary word there, and the emphasis on a general learning and some of the early translators of the Bible into Chinese worked towards that goal, to simplify the language. All the languages of the world are in process of being altered in terms of the Bible so that more than dictionaries what shapes the language is the Bible and Bible reading.

[Audience member] Thank you.

[Rushdoony] Yes?

[Audience member] In verse 16 John says that all that’s in the world, and then he lists these three things.

[Rushdoony] What was that?

[Audience member] In verse 16 John says “all that is in the world” and he says “the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the {?} pride of life.” Do you think that that is comprehensive of all the sins that he’s trying to encompass in that world all?

[Rushdoony] Yes because he sees all sin as coming from our human nature, that’s what flesh means, and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, the pride of life apart from God, the belief that we are gods ourselves knowing good and evil, so he thereby classifies all sin in terms of these things, that is of the world and its origin. It is a part of the desire of fallen human nature apart from God, and the pride of life, man’s pride in himself as though he were his own God, that he does not need God, that he can do very well without Him.

Any other questions or comments?

If not, let us conclude with prayer.

Our Lord and our God we give thanks unto Thee for the majesty, the glory, and the truth of Thy word. We thank Thee that Thou hast in Thy mercy spoken to us, redeemed us, given us Thy name, and summoned us to live eternally with Thee. We praise Thee oh God and we rejoice in Thee and in Thy works. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, this day and always, amen.