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1 John 2:17
“And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.”
The world as the system of fallen humanity, John has told us, seeks to draw us away from the Lord through the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life (1 John 2:15–16). In today’s verse, the Apostle provides a powerful additional reason to refuse the world’s allurements: The world is itself perishing, while those who set their hearts on the will of God abide forever.
“The world is passing away along with its desires,” John writes (v. 17). The present age in its rebellion against God has no future. Its empires will fall, its pleasures will lose their power to satisfy, and the whole structure of human life as it now stands in opposition to its Maker will give way at last to the new heavens and new earth in which righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13). Already, in the coming of Christ, the world has been declared judged.
This truth has profound implications for how the Christian regards the surrounding culture. Believers in every generation have been tempted to invest their hopes in the political arrangements, intellectual fashions, and material prosperity of the present moment. Yet history has repeatedly shown how transient these things are. The mighty empires of the ancient world have crumbled. The philosophical systems that once seemed unanswerable lie in the museums of intellectual history. Whatever appears most enduring in our own moment will, in due time, follow the same path. To pour out our affections on what is destined to perish is folly.
But the Christian has another inheritance. “Whoever does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17). This abiding is not earned by our obedience, as if eternal life were the wage of our works. The whole letter rules out such a reading, for John has already taught that we are forgiven for Christ’s name’s sake and that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from sin (1:7; 2:12). Rather, doing the will of God is the mark of those who have been brought into eternal fellowship with God. Those who belong to Him do His will, however imperfectly, and their lives bear witness to the abiding life that is theirs by grace.
The contrast that John sets before us is therefore stark. On one side stands the world with all its allurements, glittering for a moment but already passing away. On the other stand the people of God, doing the will of their Father, partakers of the life of the age to come. To set our affections rightly is to choose the kingdom that endures forever over the world that even now is fading from the stage.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
The world that we see around us, with all its allurements, is even now slipping toward its end. Let us refuse to invest our deepest hopes in what is passing away. May we set our hearts on the kingdom that endures and on the will of the God in whom alone we abide forever.
For further study
- Psalm 102:25–27
- Ecclesiastes 1:4–11
The bible in a year
- Isaiah 27–28
- Philippians 1
- Isaiah 29–32
- Philippians 2–3