Before John gives a command, he gives reassurance. His readers had watched their church split, and the departing teachers left a nagging suggestion that those who stayed were second-class. So John writes in a chant: 12"I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake." He addresses fathers and young men the same way, then runs the three again in the past tense, adding a line for each. Children 13"know the Father." Young men are 14"strong, and the word of God abides in you."
John says the same sentence to the fathers twice, word for word: 14"you know him who is from the beginning." The young men are given strength and victory, and the children forgiveness and the Father. The oldest believers are given a deeper grip on the one thing they already had. Maturity here sounds like returning to the same truth with more years behind it. Whether the groups are literal ages or stages of growth, the point holds that forgiveness, knowledge, and victory belong to every believer. No inner circle holds what John's readers have.
Then comes the command. 15"Do not love the world or the things in the world." The word needs care. The Greek, *kosmos*, is the word Jesus used when he said God so loved the world (John 3:16), where it means the people God came to save. Here it names the organized system of values and appetites that runs without God. Loving the world for its values and loving the world to win it are different things, and John means the first.
He names what the world offers: 16"the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life." The flesh wants comfort, the eyes want what they see, and the pride of life is the swagger of someone who trusts their own resources. John describes a pull that works on all of us through the body, the eyes, and the ego.
The reason for refusing it is in the last verse. 17"The world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever." The verb for passing away, *paragetai*, is present tense, so the passing is already underway. John used it in 2:8 for the darkness. The same motion carries off both the darkness and the world. Against that stands the one who does God's will and abides, using the verb John has used throughout the letter for staying in Christ.
John asks his readers to see clearly what has a future and what does not. A love for the Father cannot share a heart with a love for what is leaving. Two loves are competing here, and only one of them outlasts the other. Ask what you are loving this week that is passing away, and what Christ has already given you that will not pass.
Prayer
Father, thank you that our sins are forgiven for the sake of your name, that we know you, and that the evil one has been overcome. Keep us from loving the world and the things in the world. Loosen our grip on what is passing away, and give us a steady love for you that does your will and abides forever. In Jesus' name, amen.