Jesus Only

Love and God

God loves us.

That’s a primary difference between God and anyone else that we would choose to follow with our lives. God really loves us.

READ MORE: IF GOD DOESN’T FEEL LIKE YOUR FATHER

We saw in 1 John 2:12-14 that one of the reasons John is writing his letter is because he wants to affirm the faith of those who “know the Father.” In other words, an essential part of what it means to be in a saving relationship with God through Jesus is that we know God–not just that we know things about Him, but that we actually know Him experientially in relationship. Part of what we know is this incredible love that God has for us.

To be clear, the love of God for us doesn’t come and go with our feelings. He loves us even when we don’t feel it. Along the same lines, the more we know God, the more we will become aware of His love for us. His love for us is always at the same extraordinary, perfect level. But the more we know Him, the more we will experience it.

So as John has written and as we as believers have experienced, God loves us. He loves us uniquely: He loves us like no one else does or ever could.

Love and the World

John builds on this unique love of God for us in 1 John 2:15 and following in a way that is very logical. John says, “Do not love the world or the things in the world.” Here, he’s not talking about loving others with the love that God has shown us. Instead, John is saying our love and worship should be directed at God alone. John goes on by saying, “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in that person.” John is doubling down, saying that love for God cannot share space in our hearts with love for another.

On the one hand, this is very logical. As Jesus said in a slightly more specific context, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matthew 6:24)

We can also see this as an instruction that God put here for our protection: God loves us the most. Everything else is going to hurt us and leave us empty. John seems to have had something like this in mind as he was writing, because he goes on to say, “the world with its lust is passing away, but the one who does the will of God remains forever.” (1 John 2:17) John also describes everything in the world as falling into one of the three groups: the lust of the flesh, which are physical desires filled to excess or fulfilled sinfully; the lust of the eyes, which are things we might long for that are in fact sinful; and the pride in one’s possessions.

There is a temptation to understand these first two “lusts” as referring only to sexual sins. While sexual sin is included, John certainly means more than just sexual sin when he writes, “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes.” John is describing the tendency of our hearts to fulfil our natural desires to excess (the lust of the flesh) or of our eyes to see something that appears good and lose sight of what God wants for us instead (the lust of the eyes). We remember that satan took Jesus to a place and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and offered them to Him in exchange for worship (Matthew 4:8-10). Our temptation may not be this dramatic, but this is the kind of thing John is talking about. The world introduces things to us (through our eyes) that would be sinful for us to reach out and try to take. These are the lusts of the eyes.

The third category John warns us about–pride in one’s possessions–is variously translated as “pride in what one has and does.” When we lose track of what John will say in the next verse, “the world and its lusts are passing away,” we can start to boast like we have something or like we are something, when God and relationship with Him are all that matter.

So John says we must love Jesus only. All that is in the world, he writes, are lusts. Cravings. Pride. Things that will be gone like a mist. These things aren’t from the Father from whom every good and perfect gift comes (James 1:17). We’ll get hurt if we don’t reserve our love for Jesus.

But it’s not just about self-protection. God really is giving us a command here. As followers of Jesus, we do not have the flexibility to choose differently and still abide in God. John uses some remarkably harsh language on this subject. 

Love, Jesus, and Many Antichrists

John writes in 1 John 2:18-23 that “antichrist is coming” and “many antichrists have come.” John has a very important way that he characterizes the antichrist. He says first, “they went out from us but they did not belong to us” (1 John 2:19, more on that in a moment) and second “the one who denies the Father and the Son.” (1 John 2:22)

What John is talking about in verses 19-22 deserves its own teaching another time, but we need to understand some basic implications of it. To walk away from the Church is to do what the antichrist would do. This is not to say there is never a good reason to leave a particular church, but to choose to no longer meet with a community of Christians is not what we should be doing. We need to be abiding in Jesus with the community of faith.

Choosing Jesus

Along the same lines, we cannot reject Jesus or the Father in favor of the world and still claim to have a relationship with Him. We cannot have both either. John has already told us in 1 John 2:15 that if we love the world, we do not have the love of the Father in us. We have to choose! We have to love the world or we have to love God.

There are wonderful logical and relational reasons to choose Jesus. John lays them out for us. In addition, if we choose Jesus, we have a community of faith behind us to support and love us. As we know God more, we will experience God’s love more.

Still we must choose. John pleads with his readers in the final verses of 1 John 2 (verses 24-29) that they “remain in Him.” Remain in God. “What you have heard from the beginning is to remain in you,” John says (1 John 2:24). Don’t be like the antichrist who leaves for something else–who leaves for something new and shiny theologically or mystically or materialistically. Stay. Stay in the truth that you heard from the beginning. God is love. He loves you. God sent His son as the atoning sacrifice for our sin. (1 John 2:2)

There’s a comfort in this sameness. We don’t have to look for a new truth. We just have to remain in Jesus only.