“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world – the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life – is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”
1 John 2:15-17
As many Christians consider New Year’s resolutions , let’s consider as we move toward 2015 what 19th Century Scottish theologian Thomas Chalmers wrote in sermon titled “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection,” where he expounds on 1 John 2:15.
“There are two ways in which a practical moralist may attempt to displace from the human heart its love of the world – either by a demonstration of the world’s vanity, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon simply to withdraw its regards from an object that is not worthy of it; or, by setting forth another object, even God, as more worthy of its attachment, so as that the heart shall be prevailed upon not to resign an old affection, which shall have nothing to succeed it, but to exchange an old affection for a new one,” Chalmers wrote.
The human heart, like nature itself, abhors a vacuum, he contended.
He noted that a man asked to give up the love of the world – “the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life” – might be compared to someone asked to trade Earth’s abundance for the unknown of outer space, until he gets a glimpse of what God is and what God offers, when a man will gladly trade things of temporal value for eternal ones.
Chalmers makes a case that salvation, when viewed as a bargain between man and God, continues their separation – and man’s attachment to the world.
While Chalmers makes his case in the wordy, formal style common to the 19th Century pulpit, a more recent Christian restates the principle more succinctly.
The missionary Jim Elliot, who would be martyred in 1956, wrote this encouragement for those seeking to lose their love of this world: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.”