We have been well taught that we are saved by FAITH! “BELIEVE on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved!” (Acts 16:31). But we have not been as well taught what saving faith is. For example, how often do we discuss the relationship between trusting Christ and loving Christ. Can you trust him savingly and not love him? Evidently John doesn’t think so, because the issue in this text is whether you love God or love the world, and the result is whether you die with the world or have eternal life with God. But John knows that eternal life comes through faith.

John says in 5:13, “I write this to you who BELIEVE in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.” So eternal life does depend on believing in the Christ. But what is this “believing”? If we are courteous, and let John speak for himself, his letter fills out what he means. When he says that not loving the world but loving God so much that we do his will is what leads to eternal life, we learn that saving faith and love for God are inseparable. Both are the path to eternal life because they are the same path.

In John 5:42-44 Jesus confronts the Jewish leaders who do not believe on him with these words, “I know that you have not the love of God within you. I have come in my Father’s name and you do not receive me . . . How can you believe, who receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” In other words the reason they do not receive or believe on Jesus is that they do not love God. They love the world—the glory of men—not the glory of God. So Jesus taught his apostles that where there is no love for God, there can be no saving faith. (See John 3:18-19.)

That’s why John, when he comes to write his letter, can take “love for God” and “trust in Christ”, and treat them as one way of salvation. Look how he does this in 5:3-4. “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.” In other words it is our love for God that overcomes the obstacles of disobedience and makes the commandments of God a joy rather than a burden. “Jacob served seven years for Rachel, and they seemed to him but a few days because of the love he had for her” (Genesis 29:20). Love for God makes his service a joy and overcomes the forces of disobedience.

But then look at verse 4. Here he says the same thing but speaks of faith instead of love. “For whatever is born of God overcomes the world; and this is the victory that overcomes the world, our faith.” It is FAITH that overcomes the world—it is faith that conquers disobedience and renders the commandments of God a joy rather than a burden.

What shall we say, then, concerning love for God and faith in Christ? The path of victory that overcomes the world and leads to eternal life is the one path of faith toward Christ and love for God. Saving faith is part of love for God and love for God is part of saving faith. There are not two ways to heaven. There is one narrow way—the way of faith which loves God and the way of love which trusts God.

John Piper

But against the pride of life the apostle says, “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as though it were not a gift . . . Let him who boasts boast in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 4:7; 1:31). So let there be no boasting in possessions. They are all gods.

And against the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes the psalmist says, “Whom have I in heaven but thee? And there is nothing upon earth that I desire besides thee.” Therefore let us desire nothing but God. Possess nothing but God; pursue nothing but God.

But someone will ask, “Should I not desire dinner? Should I not desire a job? Should I not desire a spouse? Should I not desire the child in my womb? Should I not desire a healthy body or a good night’s rest or the morning sun or a great book or an evening with friends?”

And the answer is no—unless it is a desire for GOD! Do you desire dinner because you desire God? Do you want a job because in it you will discover God and love God? Do you long for a spouse because you are hungry for God and hope to see him and love him in your partner? Do you desire the child and the healthy body and the good night’s rest and the morning sun and the great book and the evening with friends for God’s sake? Do you have an eye for God in everything you desire? (See Colossians 3:17; 1 Corinthians 10:31.)

St. Augustine captured the heart of our text when he prayed to the Father and said, “He loves thee too little who loves anything together with thee which he loves not for thy sake.”

Therefore, brothers and sisters, do not love the world or the things in the world. If any one love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. But if the love of the Father is in you, if you love God with all your heart, then every room you enter will be a temple of love to God, all your work will be a sacrifice of love to God, every meal will be a banquet of love with God, every song will be an overture of love to God.

And if there is any desire of the flesh or any desire of the eyes that is not also a desire for God, then we will put it out of our lives, so that we can say with John and with the psalmist,

Whom have I in heaven but thee, and on earth there is nothing
that I desire besides thee.

John Piper

According to verse 15 in our text, if your love for God is cool this morning it’s because love for the world has begun to take over your heart and choke your love for God. The love of the world and the love of the Father cannot coexist. And every heart loves something. The very essence of our nature is desire. There is nobody in this room who doesn’t want something. At the center of our heart is a spring of longing. But that’s an awkward image isn’t it? A longing is a craving, a desire, a want, a need. But these aren’t very well described as a spring. A spring of needs is a contradiction in terms. Springs bubble up; needs suck in. A longing is more like a drain—or a vacuum. At the center of our heart is a sucking drain—like at the bottom of a swimming pool. We are endlessly thirsty. But we can’t suck water and air at the same time.

If you try to satisfy your longing by sucking in the air of the world, you will not be able to drink the water of heaven. And eventually your motor will burn up because you were made to pump the water of God not the air of the world.

But now what is this “world” that we are not to love? Verse 16 says it is characterized by three things: “lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.” The word for “life” does not refer to the state of being alive but rather to the things in the world that make life possible. For example, in 3:17 it is translated “goods”—”Any one who has this world’s GOODS and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?” Jesus uses the word in Mark 12:44 when he says that the poor widow in the temple “put in everything that she had, her whole LIVING.”

So the phrase “pride of life” means pride in what you possess—the things you have. Now we can see how the three descriptions of the world relate to each other. The first two—lust of the flesh and lust of the eyes—refer to desires for what we don’t have. And the third—the pride of life—refers to the pride in what we do have. The world is driven by these two things: passion for pleasure and pride in possessions.

And the passion for pleasure is described in two ways because there are two large classes of pleasure—physical and aesthetic. There is the lust of the flesh—bodily pleasures; and the lust of the eyes—aesthetic and intellectual pleasures. John is not naïve. He knows that the world is not limited to Hennepin Avenue.

There is the lust of the gutter and the lust of the gourmet. There is the lust for hard rock and the lust for high Rachmaninoff. There is the lust of Penthouse and the lust of Picasso. There is the lust of the Orpheum and the lust of the Ordway. This book ends with the ringing command: “Little children, KEEP YOURSELVES FROM IDOLS!”—whether they are crude or whether they are cultured.

Anything in this world that is not God can rob your heart of the love of God. Anything that is not God can draw your heart away from God. If you don’t have it, it can fill you with passion to get it. If you get it, it can fill you with pride that you’ve got it.

John Piper

1 John 2:15-17 (NASB)

First, in verse 17a he says, “And the world passes away, and the lust of it.” Nobody buys stock in a company that is sure to go bankrupt. Nobody sets up house in a sinking ship. No reasonable person would lay up treasure where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in and steal, would they? The world is passing away! To set your heart on it is only asking for heartache and misery in the end.

That’s not all: not only is the world passing away, but also the lusts of it. If you share the desires of the world, you will pass away. You will not only lose your treasure. You will lose your life. If you love the world, it will pass away and take you with it. “The world passes away and the lust of it.”

Second, in verse 17b John says, “But he who does the will of God abides for ever.” The opposite of loving the world is not only loving the Father (verse 15), but also doing the will of the Father (verse 17). And that connection is not hard to understand. Jesus said, “If you love me you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). John said in 1 John 5:3, “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.” So loving the Father in verse 15 and doing the will of God in verse 17 are not really separate things.

If you love God, you will love what he wills. It is empty talk to say I love God but I don’t love what God loves. So John is saying in verse 17, “If you love the world, you will perish with the world, but if you don’t love the world but love God, you will do his will and live with him for ever.”

In summary, then, the text contains one commandment and three arguments, or incentives. The commandment is, “Don’t love the world or the things in the world.” The first incentive is that if you love the world, you don’t love God. The second incentive is that if you love the world, you will perish with the world. And the third incentive is that if you love God instead of the world, you will live with God forever.

John Piper

As long as Jesus Christ embodies a radical freedom from the love of things and a deep delight in the service of others, then those who get their joy in life from luxury rather than love will not be able to receive Jesus for who he really is. “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!” (18:24).

What then shall we do to prepare our hearts to receive Christ for who he really is? Perhaps we should take our clue from Abraham in verse 29 of our text: “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” I think that is what we should do—go back to the Scripture and read again:

The Words of Moses . . .

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might . . . And your neighbor as yourself. (Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18)

And the Words of the Prophets . . .

Thus says the Lord: Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, let not the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practice steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight, says the Lord. (Jeremiah 9:23-24)

And the Words of the Apostles . . .

We brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world; but if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs. (1 Timothy 6:7-10)

Turn back from the broken cisterns of materialism and drink freely this morning at the fountain of living water. May God use the words of Moses and the prophets and the apostles to free us from the love of money so that we might receive Christ for who he really is.

John Piper

1 John 2:15-17 (NASB)

The text begins with a command—it’s the only command in the text and therefore probably the main point. Verse 15a: “Do not love the world or the things in the world.” Everything else in the text is an argument, or incentive, for why we should not love the world.

The first incentive John gives is that “if any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him” (verse 15b). In other words the reason you shouldn’t love the world is that you can’t love the world and God at the same time. Love for the world pushes out love for God, and love for God pushes out love for the world.

As Jesus said, “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money” (Matthew 6:24). So don’t love the world, because that would put you in the class with the God-haters whether you think you are or not. “If any one loves the world, love for the Father is not in him.” That’s the first reason John gives not to love the world.

Then in verse 16 comes the support and explanation of that first argument. The reason love for the world pushes out love for God is that “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.” Leave out those three phrases in the middle of verse 16 and it would read like this: The reason love for the world excludes love for God is that all that is in the world is not of God. In other words it’s just empty talk to say that you love God if you love what is not of God.

John could have rested his case at the end of verse 16. Don’t love the world because love for the world can’t coexist with love for God. But he doesn’t rest his case here. He adds two more arguments—two more incentives not to love the world.

John Piper

Let’s sum up, then, the two parables of the chapter. In verses 1-13 Jesus told a parable to make the point that we should use our money shrewdly—not as the world counts shrewdness, but shrewdly for the advancement of the gospel in the lives of more and more people so that they will receive us into eternal habitations (v. 9). Money is a test of our faithfulness to God: if we don’t use it in a way that shows God is more precious than things, then verse 11 says there is no reason to think that we will ever be entrusted with the true riches of heaven. The use of money can make or break your eternal destiny.

To this kind of teaching the Pharisees respond with scoffing in verse 14. Why? Because they are lovers of money and they see in Jesus a threat to the way they live. So in this text the love of money is the root cause of why they will not receive Jesus for who he really is.

Then Jesus tells another parable in verses 19-31 with basically the same point. If we use our money to fatten our cushions instead of seeking every way possible to invest in the hope of others, then we will go to the place of torment. And if our love for money and things is so deep that the writings of Moses and the prophets of God do not change our values, then we will not be changed even if Jesus Christ should rise from the dead. We will not receive him for who he really is.

So now we go back to our question: How must the heart be prepared to receive Christ for who he really is? The answer from today’s text is that the heart must be freed from the love of things—the love of money.

John Piper

Then the rich man asks if Abraham will send Lazarus to warn his five brothers about the danger of hell. Evidently the rich man knew that they were pursuing the same kind of life he was and were doomed.

Abraham answers in verse 29, “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” In other words, God has already provided ample information and evidence about the necessity of love and the danger of judgment. He is not obliged to give any more than what he has given in the scriptures of the Old Testament.

But the rich man knows that his brothers do not listen to the Scriptures. They may have devotions in the morning for a few minutes and they attend church once a week, but he knows that their whole mindset about money is shaped by the world not God. And so the rich man knows it is not going to do any good for Abraham just to say to them: read your Bible—read Moses, read the prophets!

So in verse 30 he advises Abraham (from hell!) about how to get his brothers to repent: “No, father Abraham; but if some one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” If there could just be a resurrection from the dead—something really startling, some miracle—then they would wake up and repent. They would forsake their selfish luxury and start to live for others to the glory of God.

Then comes Abraham’s final, utterly stunning statement (v. 31): “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if some one should rise from the dead.” Isn’t that incredible! If a person is so in love with money that he is deaf to the commands and warnings and promises of Moses and the prophets, then even a resurrection from the dead will not bring about repentance.

So here we have the same point that we saw earlier in verse 14, only here it’s intensified because of the resurrection. Suppose Jesus should rise from the dead—this is what Luke wants his readers to think about—and suppose he should reveal himself to five brothers like these. Will they receive him for who he is?

O, they might be utterly knocked out of their senses by the miracle of an irrefutable resurrection. But the question is, Will they be knocked out of their sins? Will they repent? Abraham says no. They will not repent. Why not? What will keep them from receiving Jesus for the financial radical that he really is? Answer: the love of money, the love of things.

John Piper

What would be the counterpart to this attitude in the church today? It would be professing Christians who read these parables and say, “I am an eternally secure child of God. I am justified by faith alone. Don’t tell me that the way I use my money could jeopardize my eternal destiny.”

The answer to this contemporary form of cheap grace is this: the faith which justifies PURIFIES—it purifies from the love of money. Or as Galatians 5:6 says, when it comes to justification before God, “neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is of any avail but faith working through love.” The point of this parable is that the rich man is in hell because he delighted more in luxuries for himself than in love for Lazarus. It didn’t make any difference that he thought he had a secure standing as a son of Abraham.

And so in hell he looks up and pleads for some mercy from Abraham. Abraham responds in verse 25 by telling him why he is in hell and in verse 26 by telling him that there is absolutely no way out.

In verse 25 Abraham says, “Son, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish.” In other words if during our time on earth we pursue after “things” instead of God—after luxury for ourselves instead of love for others—then earth will be the extent of our heaven and eternity will be our hell. But if during our time on the earth God is our treasure no matter how many bad things happen, then earth will be the extent of our hell and eternity will be our heaven.

Then verse 26 adds, “Besides all this [i.e., besides the fact that your own love for money and lovelessness toward Lazarus consigns you to hell], between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.” In other words any thought of a temporary purgatory is out of the question. Death is utterly final. The bed we make in this life we sleep in forever.

This does not mean that, by using your money for the good of others in the cause of Christ, you buy a spot in heaven or earn your way to paradise. Not at all! What it means is that the way you use your money shows whether your heart has been changed so that love for others and not luxury for yourselves is what you long for and delight in. And this is no more legalism or salvation by works than it is to say that to go to heaven you have to be the kind of person who prefers what is there—or better, who prefers Who is there.

John Piper

In verses 19-31 Jesus tells another story about money. Verse 19 presents us with a rich man who used his money to put the finest clothes on his back and the finest foods on his table every day—”clothed in purple and fine linen and feasting sumptuously every day.”

In verses 20-21 we meet a poor man with a disease of sores. He lay at the gate of the rich man where he would be seen each day as the rich man went in and out. All he wanted was to eat what was left over from the rich man’s table. He was so destitute that dogs licked his sores.

Then (in v. 22) the inexorable end comes to both, as it will to every one of us: they die. The poor man goes to paradise where Abraham is. The rich man goes to Hades where there is fire and torment.

Then the rich man calls out in verse 24, “Father Abraham!” In other words, this man is a Jew. And his Jewishness has not saved him. Do you remember what John the Baptist preached in Luke 3:8-11?

Bear fruits that befit repentance, and do not begin to say to yourselves, “We have Abraham as our father,” for I tell you, God is able from these stone to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire . . . He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none.

So the rich man in the parable is one of those who presumed to say, “I am secure as a child of Abraham.” But he bore no fruit that befits repentance, he shared no food, no clothes, and the axe fell and now he’s in hell. And this is no doubt the very mockery that that the Pharisees threw back at Jesus in verse 14: “We are the children of Abraham! Don’t threaten us that the use of our money might change our eternal destiny.”

John Piper