"It is useless to urge those who are still of the world not to love the world. We can never hope to pluck figs from thistles or grapes from thorns. Only when people have overcome the wicked one, know the Father, know the son, have the remission of sins, can we admonish them as John does here.

John uses [Grk. agapan], the love that indicates direction of the will and intelligent, purposeful choice, and not love [Grk. filia] which is used to denote natural, friendly affection. John might have used the latter. James 4:4 reads "The friendship [Grk. filia] friendly affection) for the world is enmity against God; whoever then intends to be a friend [Grk. filos] of the world establishes himself an enemy of God." What James inserts by means of the "intends to be" lies in the verb that John uses, namely intention, purpose, choice, will.

World [Grk. kosmos] (originally: ornament, order) has a variety of meanings in the New Testament: the universe, the earth, the whole human race, the ungodly that are far from God, finally, in the ethical sense, all that is opposed to Christ on earth. John refers to this last, not to the world as God made it but as the wicked one corrupted all that is in it so that it now lies in the wicked one (5:19), is ruled by him as the prince of the world, as a kingdom that is opposed to the Father and the kingdom in which Christ rules with grace. As children of God we have been delivered from the world in this sense, have conquered the wicked one; the world, in the sense of corrupt, ungodly men, hates us, knowing that we do not belong to their number, John 15:18, 19. Luther: "To be in the world, to see the world, to feel the world, is a different thing from loving the world; just as to have and to feel sin is a different thing from loving sin." John might have used the decisive aorist imperative which is used in so many New Testament admonitions. He uses the present imperative which forbids a course of action. This matches the idea of the verb, for loving is continuous.

"Nor the things of the world" points to the individual deceptive treasures, pleasures, honors of the world, its wealth, its power, its wisdom, etc. We are not forbidden to admire, appreciate, use aright the natural things of this earth such as relative, friends, fatherland, the beauties and the grandeur of nature, home, occupation, and the thousands of useful, attractive, valuable things which God has put all around us. But whatever in is connection, tendency, and influence is hostile to God, to Christ, and to his kingdom, however alluring or attractive it may otherwise appear, is 'a thing of the world,' to which we must be hostile since we belong to God, to Christ, and to his kingdom."—R.C.H. Lenski

The Chestnut Mare