Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 John 2:17

And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.

17. and the world passeth away ] Or, is passing away; as in 1Jn 2:8: the process is now going on. We owe the verb ‘pass away’ here to Coverdale: it is a great improvement on Tyndale’s ‘ vanisheth away.’ Comp. ‘The fashion of this world is passing away ’ (1Co 7:31), where the same verb is used, and where the active in a neuter sense is equivalent to the middle here and in 1Jn 2:8.

and the lust thereof ] Not the lust for the world, but the lust which it exhibits, the sinful tendencies mentioned in 1Jn 2:16. The world is passing away with all its evil ways. How foolish, therefore, to fix one’s affections on what not only cannot endure but is already in process of dissolution! ‘The lust thereof’ = ‘all that is in the world.’

the will of God ] This is the exact opposite of ‘all that is in the world’. The one sums up all the tendencies to good in the universe, the other all the tendencies to evil. We see once more how S. John in giving us the antithesis of a previous idea expands it and makes it fructify. He says that the world and all its will and ways are on the wane: but as the opposite of this he says, not merely that God and His will and ways abide, but that ‘he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever’. This implies that he who follows the ways of the world will not abide for ever. Again he speaks of the love of the world and the love of the Father; but as the opposite of the man who loves the world he says not ‘he that loveth the Father,’ but ‘he that doeth the will of the Father’. This implies that true love involves obedience. Thus we have a double antithesis. On the one hand we have the world and the man who loves it and follows its ways: they both pass away. On the other hand we have God and the man who loves Him and does His will: they both abide for ever. Instead of the goods of this life ( ) in which the world would allow him to vaunt for a moment, he who doeth the will of God has that eternal life ( ) in which the true Christian has fellowship with God. ‘For ever’ is literally ‘unto the age’, i.e. ‘unto the age to come’, the kingdom of heaven; the word for ‘age’ ( ) being the substantive from which the word for ‘eternal’ ( ) is derived. He who does God’s will shall abide until the kingdom of God comes and be a member of it. The latter fact, though not stated, is obviously implied. It would be a punishment and not a blessing to be allowed, like Moses, to see the kingdom but not enter it. The followers of the world share the death of the world: the children of God share His eternal life.

Here probably we should make a pause in reading the Epistle. What follows is closely connected with what precedes and is suggested by it: but there is, nevertheless, a new departure, which is made with much solemnity.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

And the world passeth away – Everything properly constituting this world where religion is excluded. The reference here does not seem to be so much to the material world, as to the scenes of show and vanity which make up the world. These things are passing away like the shifting scenes of the stage. See the notes at 1Co 7:31.

And the lust thereof – All that is here so much the object of desire. These things are like a pageant, which only amuses the eye for a moment, and then disappears forever.

But he that doeth the will of God abideth forever – This cannot mean that he will never die; but it means that he has built his happiness on a basis which is secure, and which can never pass away. Compare the notes at Mat 7:24-27.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

1Jn 2:17

The world passeth away, and the lust thereof

River and rock

There are but two things set forth in this text–a great antithesis between something which is in perpetual flux and passage and something which is permanent.

If I might venture to cast the two thoughts into metaphorical form, I should say that here are a river and a rock.

I. The river or the sad truth of sense. The world is in the act of passing away. Like the slow travelling of the scenes of some movable panorama which glide along, even as the eye looks upon them, and are concealed behind the side flats before the gazer has taken in the whole picture, so constantly, silently, and therefore unnoticed by us, all is in a state of continual motion. There is no present, but all is movement. But besides this transiency external to us, John finds a corresponding analogous transiency within us. The world passeth, and the lust thereof. Of course the word lust is employed by him in a much wider sense than in our use of it. With us it means one specific and very ugly form of earthly desire. With him it includes the whole genus–all desires of every sort, more or less noble or ignoble, which have this for their characteristic, that they are directed to, stimulated by, and fed or disappointed on, the fleeting things of this outward life. If thus a man has anchored himself to that which has no perpetual stay, so long as the cable holds he follows the fate of the thing to which he has pinned himself, and if it perish he perishes, in a very profound sense, with it. But these fleeting desires, of which my text speaks, point to that sad feature of human experience, that we all outgrow and leave behind us, and think of very little value, the things that once to us were all but heaven. The self-conscious same man abides, and yet how different the same man is! Our lives, then, will zig-zag instead of keeping a straight course if we let desires that are limited by anything that we can see guide and regulate us. The march of these fleeting things is like that of cavalry with their horses feet wrapped in straw in the night, across the snow, silent and unnoticed. We cannot realise the revolution of the earth because everything partakes in it. We talk about standing still, and we are whirling through space with inconceivable rapidity. By a like illusion we deceive ourselves with the notion of stability when everything about us is hastening away. Some of you do not like to be reminded of it, and think it a killjoy. Now, surely common sense says to all that if there be some fact certain and plain and applying to you, which, if accepted, would profoundly modify your life, you ought to take it into account. Suppose a man that lived in a land habitually shaken by earthquakes were to say, I mean to ignore the fact, and I am going to build a house just as if there was not such a thing as an earthquake expected, he would have it toppling about his ears very soon. And suppose a man says, I am not going to take the fleetingness of the things of earth into account at all, but am going to live as if all things were to remain as they are, what would become of him do you think? Is he a wise man or a fool? And is he you? When they build a new house in Rome they have to dig down through sometimes sixty or a hundred feet of rubbish that runs like water, the ruins of old temples and palaces once occupied by men in the same flush of life in which we are now. We, too, have to dig down through ruins, until we get to rock and build there, and build secure. Withdraw your affections and thoughts and desires from the fleeting, and fix them on the permanent. If a captain takes anything but the pole star for his fixed point he will lose his reckoning, and his ship will be on the reefs. If we take anything but God for our supreme delight and desire we shall perish. There was an old rabbi long ago whose own real name was all but lost because everybody nicknamed him Rabbi This-also. The reason was because he had perpetually on his lips the saying about everything as it came, This also will pass. He was a wise man. Let us go to his school and learn his wisdom.

II. The rock, or the glad truth of faith. We might have expected that Johns antithesis to the world that passeth would have been the God that abides. But he does not so word his sentence, although the thought of the Divine permanence underlies it. Rather over against the fleeting world he puts the abiding man who does the will of God. There is only one permanent reality in the universe, and that is God. All else is shadow. The will of God is the permanent element in all changeful material things, and consequently he who does the will of God links himself with the Divine eternity, and becomes partaker of that blessed Being which lives above mutation. What will you do when you are dead? You have to go into a world where there are no gossip and no housekeeping, no mills and no offices, no shops, no books, no colleges, and no sciences to learn. He that doeth the will of God abideth forever. If you have done your housekeeping, and your weaving and spinning, and your bookkeeping, and your buying and selling, and your studying, and your experimenting with a conscious reference to God, it is all right. That has made the act capable of eternity, and there will be no need for that man to change. The material on which he works will change, but the inner substance of his life will be unaffected by the trivial change from earth to heaven. Whilst the endless ages roll he will be doing just what he was doing down here, only here he was playing with counters and yonder he will be trusted with gold and dominion over ten cities. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

National worldliness

There is one thing makes and keeps a nation great; it is a love of invisible ideas. There is one thing that makes and keeps it base; it is love of the visible and the transient. The one love we call spiritual and the other worldly. The latter, when it is first, excludes the former; the former does not exclude the latter, but ennobles its work by making the motives of it worthy. What is the spiritual life in a nation? That is our first question. It is when there is an ever-present spiritual power in the people which rules and influences their whole national life. I may state what I mean by that in this way. Through knowledge of our nations history in the past, through admiration of her greatness, through love of her scenery, through the subtle traditionary feelings which have been sent down in our blood–through these, and through a crowd of desires and enjoyments and sorrows which are shared by us all as Englishmen, and through a crowd of hopes for the future of our country, there grows up before us an ideal image of our nation. Afterwards we separate the qualities of her character, and from them, seen one by one, we conceive other spiritual ideas. She loves, we say, rightousness in her children, and there are certain ways of action which she has always thought right for Englishmen. Knowing this, her children conceive the idea of duty to her. She says, It is better to die than to be false to these demands; and the ideas of duty and courage are both invisible. Then we conceive that she loves all her children equally, and we believe that; and immediately we conceive the spiritual idea of a brotherhood in which all Englishmen are one. When each man, far beyond his personal interests, beyond his home affections, beyond his passions, feels these things as the power of his life and lives by them, and lives to do them; when the love he has to them is so powerful that he bends to its service all he is and all he has, then the nation that has such men within it lives a spiritual national life and not a worldly one. Can you imagine this or part of it being in a nations life and that nation not being great and keeping great? The nearest approach to the picture was in the days of Elizabeth. Not long after her accession men began to realise the freedom they had won, and passed from despair into a passionate love of their country. They idealised England, and represented their ideal in the queen. And the life that came out of this–the adventure, the sacrifices, the abounding thought, the audacious power–is even to us astonishing. A vehemence of activity and faith tilled the commonest sailor and yeoman with the same spirit as Raleigh and Greville. The intellectual work was just as great. We cannot yet cease to wonder at a time when all men seemed giants, when Elizabeth and Cecil played on Europe as on an instrument, when Spenser recreated romance and wedded her to religion, when Shakespeare made all mankind talk and act upon a rude stage, when Bacon reopened the closed doors of Nature and philosophy, when Hookers judgment made wise the Church, and when among these kings of thought there moved a crowd of princes who in any other age would themselves have been kings of art and song and learning. That was a noble national life, and it was such because it was lived in and for spiritual ideas. Nor because of that was it less practical. The life the ideas made and supported entered into the work of wealth the commerce of England began under Elizabeth, the agriculture of the country was trebled, houses rose everywhere, comfort and luxury and art increased. But, though wealth and comfort grew, they were never the first. Ideal motives ruled them–worship of God and England, and the queen as the image of England. An ideal national life then included all the good of a worldly one. It was no less practical in its results on the spirit of the country. There is none among us who is not the better for the example of that time, who is not prouder of our land with that pride that makes heroic deeds, who does not look back with reverence to the great names that then adorned our country. The opposite life to that is that of national worldliness. It is when there are but very few ideas in a nation, and when these few do not rule it; when its action, thoughts, and feelings are governed by what is present or visible or transitory. It is when the men in it worship as the first thing personal getting on; when wealth is first and any means are good that attain it; when those who have it or rank or position are bowed down to without consideration of character; when art is even stained and men work at it not for love of its own reward but to sell it dearly; when politics are governed solely by desire for the material prosperity of the country; when the commerce of a nation is to be kept at all hazards, even the hazard of disgrace. And as there are a great many among us who are in that condition or tending to it, we should be in bad way were it not that there are numbers who hate that condition, who do not live in it or for it, to whom it is vile and hideous and contemptible. Let all those who think thus do their best to keep the worldly spirit out of the nations life; it will be a sacred duty. And it is one of those things which everyone can do, each in his own society. Take a few instances of it in certain spheres of thought and act that we may know it. Take the scientific world. On one side of it it is quite unworldly. It demands that it should be allowed to do its work without any practical motive, without any end such as, when reached, would increase the wealth or comfort of the world. But in two ways it may become worldly. First, it becomes partially worldly when it tries to put aside all ideal life but its own, when it mocks at any belief in the invisible except its own invisibles, when it is so foolish as to see nothing beyond itself. Secondly, it may become altogether worldly if it should tie itself to the car of the practical man, hire itself out to the manufacturer, or the police, or the politician, or the people who love luxury, making itself like Aladdins lamp in the hands of a clodhopper. Oh, protect it from that fate! Again take art. Of all men it is true, but of the artist it is especially true, that he must not love the world nor the things of the world. He runs passionately towards the ideal beauty. The impossible is his aim; nothing he does should ever satisfy him. If he could say, Now I grasp the perfect; the present is all in all to me; I live in and through the visible thing I have made, then were he really dead in sin; then would art glide away from him forever, and when he knew that misery as his he would die of the knowledge of it. But worse, infinitely worse, than such a death is his becoming worldly, and he may be lured into that by the love of money. He may give up all his own ideas, all the ideal he once had of his work, to do work he hates and despises. He may even get to like the base work for the sake of the goods it brings him. There is no ruin so ghastly as this. Once more, take national economy. There is a good thrift when the money of a people is carefully watched that the greatest amount of reproductive good may be got out of it, when none is wasted, when work is honestly paid its full value and no more, when no money is given for bad work, or, as is often the case, for no work at all. Such economy is ruled by ideas, especially by this main one: All expenditure, even to the last sixpence, must have some relation to the good of England. But there is a base thrift, and that is ruled by this maxim: All expenditure must increase material wealth, or have a visible practical end, practical as enabling men to get on better in this world. Love not the world, nor the things of the world in your nation, any more than in your own heart. You may think this has nothing to do with religion, with the faith and life of Christ. Then you will be much mistaken. Such a national temper will put men into the atmosphere in which a Christian life is possible. If you can get men to live an unworldly national life you have made the first step to get them to live after Christ. (S. A. Brooke, M. A.)

The evanescent and the enduring in human history

I. Everything in worldliness is evanescent.

1. The worldly mans possessions are evanescent. Though he has pyramids of gold they will pass away like a morning cloud.

2. The worldly mans purposes are evanescent. His great schemes are only splendid dreams which pass away in the waking hour.

3. The worldly mans pleasures are evanescent.

4. The worldly mans productions are evanescent. Architecture, painting, commerce, literature, legislation–what are these? A glaring pageant that passeth away.

II. Everything in godliness is enduring. He that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Such a man has received a kingdom that cannot be moved.

1. His principles are abiding.

2. His possessions are abiding. No moth nor rust can corrupt his treasures. The Lord is his portion.

3. His prospects are abiding. His hopes are not fixed on objects that are passing away, but on an inheritance incorruptible, etc. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

But he that doeth the will of God abideth forever—

The guileless spirit, amid the dark worlds flow, established in the light of godliness

I. The characteristic of the world is that it does not do the will of God; it is the sphere or region in which the will of God is not done. As not doing the will of God, the world and its lust must pass away, for it is identical with the darkness which is passing. Passing! But it is passing to where it wilt pass no more, but stay, fixed unchangeably forever. It is not annihilated, it does not cease to be, it only ceases to be passing. Have you ever thought how much of the worlds endurableness–I say not its attractiveness but its endurableness–depends on its being a world that passes, and therefore changes? Is there any sensation, any delight, any rapture of worldly joy, however engrossing, that you could bear to have prolonged indefinitely, forever, unaltered, unalterable? But I put the case too favourably. I speak of your finding the world with its lust, not passing but abiding, in the place whither you yourselves pass when you pass hence. True, you find it there. But you find it not as you have it here. There are means and appliances here for quenching by gratification, or mitigating by variety, its impetuous fires. But there you find it where these fires burn, unslaked, unsolaced, the world being all within and the worlds lust, and nothing outside but the Holy One. Place yourself with your loved world and its cherished lust where you and it and God are alone together, with nothing of Gods providing that you can use or abuse for your relief. Your creature comforts are not there with you. Nothing of this earth, which is the Lords, is there; nothing of its beauty or its bounty, its grace or loveliness or warm affection; nothing of that very bustle and distraction and change which dissipates reflection and drowns remorse; nothing but your worldly lust, your conscience, and your God. That is hell, the hell to which the world is passing.

II. But now let us turn to a brighter picture. He that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Suppose that the world has passed away and the lust thereof. Does it follow that the earth is dissolved or perishes? Nay, it remains. And whatever in it or about it is of God remains. This abode of men is to be assimilated thoroughly to yonder abode of angels in respect of the will of God being alike done in both. That at all events is the heavenly state, let its localities be adjusted as they may. But the precise point of his statement is not adequately brought out unless we connect and identify the future and the present. There may be stages of advancement and varieties of experience, a temporary break, perhaps, in the outer continuity of your thread of life, between the souls quitting the body to be with Christ where now He is and its receiving the body anew at His coming hither again. But substantially you are now as you are to be always. (R. S. Candlish, D. D.)

Obedience and abiding

What God wills He approves or loves. What God wills He is. If, then, He has an express will concerning us, it follows that when we know it we know all that vitally concerns us. There can be nothing above, behind, beyond it. The will of God is all. Knowing that, we know the nature of things; we know the character of virtue, we know what truth is, and goodness. We get to the source of law, obligation, authority. All are inseparably connected with, all indeed are contained in, the will of God. We ask, now, what the natural will of man is? Is it for or against the will of God? Against, unquestionably. Not that there is declared, or even in most cases very conscious, opposition. For it is not true that men to their own consciousness, and by direct acts of their own will, go against God. They fill their lives, or strive to do, without Him who is the alone abiding fulness, and direct their conduct without reference to His authority, and habitually act from principles which He condemns, and seek after ends which are different from and inconsistent with the great ends He has put before us all. Now remember that as in God, so in man, will is character. What a man wills settles what he is. And since men do will against the will of God the character and condition of man must be evil. What could be sin if this is not sin? And since God did not design man for this, since His ideal of the human creature and life is just the opposite of this, it follows that we are justly and honestly described as fallen, alienated, depraved. It is always more or less touching to see feebleness matched against strength, even when the feebleness is all in the wrong and the strength is all in the right; and therefore, simply as a conflict, it is pitiful enough to see man in his frailty matching himself against the omnipotence and justice of God. But, viewed from the higher ground, it is even more terrible than it is touching. What can come of it? Nothing but destruction, nothing but the fate of that which changeth and passeth away. Can a man will against time so as to stop the flow of its moments? Can a man will against space and put himself out of it, in thought even, not to say in act? Can a man will against mathematical or necessary truth by making two and two into five, or by changing himself into another being? He may do any of these things as soon as will against the will of God, and make his will prevail and succeed. Surely, then, it is evident that if there be a gospel–a message from God that shall be good news to a man–it must bear directly and effectually upon mans evil will. There are many ways of compendiously expressing the gospel, but a better it would be hard to find than this–that it is the good will of God overcoming the evil will of man. By means, no doubt, wondrous means! By His own self-sacrifice, by suffering love, by revelation of truth, by donation of the Spirit, because these are necessary elements for the case, the nature of man being such as to forbid the hope of any change being wrought in it by mere strength, by what we call omnipotence. Then the question of questions to a man must be this, Am I now with my will doing the will of God? Not, Have I undergone a certain spiritual change? and have I had, subsequently, a requisite amount of spiritual experience? But just this, Am I yet a self-willed creature, or have I become one of the Saviours willing people? Am I still keeping up the black, silent controversy of a misjudging heart with and against God? Or have I been won over, at least in spirit and will, although not yet perfectly in feeling and act, from self and sin to truth and love and God? Happy he who can at once say, I am of those who do the will of God. Through grace I am aiming at the life of whole and constant obedience. Happy he, for whoso thus doeth the will of God has entered the world of reality and permanence as one belonging to it. He, too, is going to abide forever, is now already in the ever-abiding state. (A. Raleigh, D. D.)

The abiding life

Like most writers and speakers, John had favourite expressions. One of his pet words is this abide, significant of the quiet, contemplative temper of the man, but significant of a great deal more. He uses it, if I reckon rightly, somewhere between sixty and seventy times in the Gospel and Epistles. And he almost always employs it in metaphorical, or, if you like the word better, a mystical sense. The frequency of its recurrence is masked to an English reader by the variety of translation which our renderers have chosen to adopt, but wherever you find in Johns writings the synonyms dwell, abide, continue, remain, it is pretty safe to conclude that he is using this word. To John one great characteristic of the Christian life was that it was the abiding life.

I. The Christian life is a life of dwelling in Christ. I have said that this is one of Johns favourite words. He learnt it from his Master. It was in the upper room where it came from Christs lips with a pathos which was increased by the shadow of departure that lay over His heart and theirs. Abide in me, and I in you. No doubt the old apostle had meditated long on the words. Abide in me and I in you. That is the ideal of the Christian life, a reciprocal mutual dwelling of Christ in us and of us in Christ. These two thoughts are but two sides of the one truth, the interpenetration by faith and love of the believing heart and the beloved Saviour, and the community of spiritual life as between them. The one sets forth more distinctly Christs gracious activity and wondrous love by which He condescends to enter into the narrow room of our spirits, and to communicate their life and all the blessings that He can bestow. The other sets forth more distinctly our activity, and suggests the blessed thought of a home and a shelter, an inexpugnable fortress and a sure dwelling place, a habitation to which all generations may continually resort. Christ for us is the preface and introduction. I do not want that that great truth should be in any measure obscured, but I do want that, inseparably connected with it in our belief and in our experience, there should be far more than there is, the companion sister thought, Christ in us and we in Christ. I need not remind you how this great thought of mutual indwelling is, through Johns writings, extended not only to our relation to Christ, but to our relations to God the Father and God the Spirit. The apostle almost as frequently speaks about our dwelling in God and Gods dwelling in us, as he does about our dwelling in Christ and Christs dwelling in us. Let me say one word about the ways by which this mutual indwelling may be procured and maintained. You talk about the doctrine as being mystical. Well, the way to realise it as a fact is plain and unmystical enough to suit anybody. There are two streams of representation in Johns writings about this matter. Here is a sample of one of them, He that eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood abideth in Me, and I in him. Similarly He says, If that which ye have heard from the beginning abide in you, ye also shall abide in the Son and in the Father. And, still more definitely, Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. So, then, the acceptance by our understandings and by our hearts of the truth concerning Jesus Christ, and the grasping of these truths so closely by faith that they become the nourishment of our spirits, so that we eat His flesh and drink His blood, is the condition of that mutual indwelling. And if that seems to be too far removed from ordinary moralities to satisfy those who will have no mysteries in their religion, and will not have it anything else than a repetition of the plain dictates of conscience, take the other stream of representations, If we love one another, God abideth in us. He that abideth in love abideth in God. If ye keep My commandments ye shall abide in My love. The harm of mysticism is that it is divorced from common pedestrian morality. The mysticism of Christianity enjoins the punctilious discharge of plain duties. He that keepeth His commandments abideth in Him, and He in him.

II. The Christian life should be one of steadfast persistence. One of the synonyms with which our translators have represented this word of which I am speaking is continue. You will find that the same double representation which I have spoken of is kept up with regard to other matters belonging to the Christian life. For instance, we sometimes read of Gods word, Christs sayings, or the truth–as John puts it–abiding in us; and as frequently we read of our abiding in these–the words of God, the teaching of Christ, the truth. In the one ease something is represented as permanently establishing itself in my nature and operating there. In the other case I am represented as holding fast by and perseveringly attending to something which I possess. Ah! I am afraid that there are few things which the average Christian man of this generation more needs than the exhortation to steadfast continuance in the course which he says he has adopted. Most of us have our Christianity by fits and starts. It is spasmodic and interrupted. We grow as the vegetable world grows, in the favourable months only, and there are long intervals in which there is no progress. A Christian life should be one of steadfast, unbroken persistence. Oh! but you say, that is an ideal that nobody can get to. Well, I am not going to quarrel with anybody as to whether such an ideal is possible or not. It seems to me a woful waste of time to be fighting about possible limits when we are so far short of the limits that are known.

III. The Christian life may be one of abiding blessedness. Our Lord in that same discourse in which he spoke about abiding in us and we in Him, used the word very frequently in a great variety of aspects, and amongst them He said, These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy may abide in you. And in other places we read about abiding in the light, or having eternal life abiding in us. And in all these various places of the use of this expression there lies the one thought that it is possible for us to make, here and now, our lives one long series of conscious enjoyment of the highest blessings. And even if there be a circumference of sorrow, joy and peace may be the centre, and not be truly broken by the incursions of calamities. There are springs of fresh water that dart up from the depths of the salt sea and spread themselves over its waves. It is possible in the inmost chamber to be still whilst the storm is raging without. It is our own fault if ever external things have power over us enough to shake our inmost and central blessedness. As sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

IV. Lastly, the Christian life will turn out to be the one permanent life. So say the words which I have taken as a text. he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. That implies not so much dwelling or persistence or continuousness during our earthly career as, rather, the absolute and unlimited permanence of the obedient life. It will endure when all things else, the world, and the lust thereof, have slid away into obscurity and have ceased to be. Now of course it is true that Christian men, temples of Christ, are subject to the same law of mutation and decay as all created things are. But still, whilst on the one hand Christian men share in the common lot, and on the other hand non-Christian men endure forever in a very solemn and dreadful sense, the word of my text reveals a great truth. The lives that run parallel with Gods will last, and when everything that has been against that will, or negligent of it, is summed up and comes to nought, these lives continue. The life that is in conformity with the will of God lasts in another sense, inasmuch as it persists through all changes, even the supreme change that is wrought by death, in the same direction, and is substantially the same. If we grasp the throne of God we shall be co-eternal with the throne that we grasp. We cannot die, nor our work pass and be utterly abolished as long as He lives. Some trees that, like sturdy Scotch firs, have strong trunks and obstinate branches and unfading foliage, looking as if they would defy any blast or decay, run their roots along the surface, and down they go before the storm. Others, far more slender in appearance, strike theirs deep down, and they stand whatever winds blow. So strike your roots into God and Christ. He that doeth the will of God abideth forever. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The moral only permanent

The first affirmation of this sentence is common enough and obvious enough. And yet perhaps it might be questioned whether any of us truly and profoundly believe it. Ask us whether we believe that the world passes away, and pointing to these lapsing years we unhesitatingly say Yes, but encounter us twelve hours after the now year is born in Cheapside or on Change, and you will see no diminution of our eager pursuit, no relaxation of our eager grasp of it. Not only does the world pass away, but the lust thereof–the very thoughts and passions with which we desire it. I know no more affecting affirmation concerning death than one that is made in one of the Psalms, In that very day his thoughts perish. The man as we knew him and could recognise him has perished, his palpable body is no longer conscious of thought and passion. So far as the world is concerned, and so far as we look at him, his thoughts have perished, he is only dust–the eye, the hand, the tongue, and, above all, the mysterious brain, have forgotten their functions. And more than this, the thoughts of the man are perished in fact as well as in seeming, for although we believe the thinking, loving man to live in the unseen world, active from the very necessity of their nature, yet how few of the particular thoughts and desires that a man entertains here does he retain after he dies! How many of them perish! too vain, too foolish, too sinful to be retained in the light and under the conditions of another world. How few of our conscious thoughts and affections can we even now reasonably hope to retain! They are possible for this life of ignorance and sin, but possible for no other. Ay, and before a man dies the lust of the world may perish out of him. Difficult as it is to cure a man of an undue love of the world, disappointment and suffering may do it, and disgust may succeed to desire. Possession may bring a hatred and disgust surpassing our love and desire, and thus even before the world itself passes away the lust of it may. But this is true of things only in part, true only as to their outward seeming, true only of their material and external element. There is an element of everything that a moral being touches and is related to that is unchanging and eternal; that, namely, which expresses or addresses itself to his moral feeling. The material Element of this worlds things passes away, the moral abides forever. This is, I think, what is meant by the second member of this sentence. And there is a moral element in everything. Everything that conies to us comes with a moral lesson and influence from God–a teaching of duty or a test of temper: and everything that goes from us carries with it a record of our moral principles and tempers. There is nothing so material and so trivial as not to be a possible means of grace to us. Let us be careful not to err, therefore, in our estimates of the transitoriness of things. Just as we do not all die because the material body dies, so we do not all pass away because the material externals of things do; there is a kind of moral soul of the world as well as a material body. Our pure thoughts, our loving affections, our holy actions, our penitence and prayer and communion with God, our service of God, our self-denial and self-consecration, all enabled by the things of the world around us, these are the elements of the things of the world that will live and abide forever.

I. Take, first, the general history of the year, the public deeds that have been done, the national and social movements that have been effected, the sum total of what has been contributed to the worlds history, wisdom, and goodness. We need attempt no enumeration of these; it is enough to say of them that all that is merely material and external in them has passed away, only that which is moral abides. There is no moral influence, no moral life in the mere record of an event upon the page of history; it may lie there a dead fact, without a living pulse, without a particle of quickening power. Only so far as moral principles were exercised in it, only so far as it was an example of virtue or a beacon of vice, an illustration of obedience or an instance of sin, has it power to appeal to and quicken us. How, then, shall we estimate the history of the past year? We will brush away its surface of mere phenomena, and look into the worlds moral life and try to understand what the year has added to the worlds holiness or sin, how far Christian civilisation has been extended and Christian piety increased. Is the world purer and more elevated? It has an additional record of sin, what additional record has it of virtue, obedience, and faith?

II. Take next your own individual history through the year. Now, whatever may have befallen you, whatever sorrows or joys, pains or pleasures, the only permanent result of the year is its sum of moral actions and experiences. Of how little value now apart from it are your toils for the perishing body, your care for the physical wants of your mortal condition, your ploughing the earth, your barter of merchandise, your hoarding of money, your toil as an orator, scholar, or statesman! So far as you have done these things without spiritual feeling and reference, how little they all appear now. And as with our possessions, so with our self-culture, both of mind and of heart. How much of what a man acquires is mere properly, never entering into the essence of his moral life. Suppose that you have been a student during the year, acquiring knowledge of history, science, philosophy, well, how much of what you have acquired is mere knowledge, the mere chattel of the man? How little of it has been incorporated with your moral life! And all that has not shall pass away, save as mere memory. Whether it be knowledge, it shall fail; whether they be prophecies, they shall cease; only Divine charity, only that which is inwrought moral feeling, shall abide. Or suppose that you are a religious man, cultivating a religious character, and seeking to make your calling and election sure. You have read your Bible, you have uttered prayers, you have helped in Christian labour. Well, as mere acts these have all passed away, congregations have broken up, duties have been finished. What, then, remains? Only the moral element that there was in all these things, only the inward religious feeling that prompted them or that they expressed. And it abides in two ways. First, all the moral element and influence of your religious acts produces an effect upon others–upon those who are the objects of your act, and upon others who behold it. Not merely does it relieve poverty or pain–that is only the material form and effect that will perish when pain shall end; but it exhibits a moral principle or feeling, and men are morally moved by it–moved to moral admiration and imitation. And then upon yourself the moral influence of your act is very mighty. Every exercise of virtue or a vice acts inwardly far more powerfully than it acts outwardly; it strengthens and expands your moral principle, it enlarges and deepens your brotherly sympathies. (H. Allon, D. D.)

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 17. The world passeth away] All these things are continually fading and perishing; and the very state in which they are possessed is changing perpetually, and the earth and its works will be shortly burnt up.

And the lust thereof] The men of this world, their vain pursuits, and delusive pleasures, are passing away in their successive generations, and their very memory perishes; but he that doeth the will of God-that seeks the pleasure, profit, and honour that comes from above, shall abide for ever, always happy through time and eternity, because God, the unchangeable source of felicity, is his portion.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

He sets the difference in view, of living according to the common genius, will, or inclination of the world, (which is lust), and according to the Divine will, that he who unites himself in his will and desire with the former, which vanishes, (objects and appetite altogether), must (which is implied) perish therewith; but he that unites himself with the supreme eternal good, by a will that is guided by and conformed to the Divine will,

abideth for ever, partakes a felicity coeternal with the object and rule upon which his heart was set, and which it was guided by.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

17. the worldwith all who areof the world worldly.

passeth awayGreek,“is passing away” even now.

the lust thereofin itsthreefold manifestation (1Jo 2:16).

he that doeth the will ofGodnot his own fleshly will, or the will of the world,but that of God (1Jn 2:3;1Jn 2:6), especially in respectto love.

abideth for ever“evenas God also abideth for ever” (with whom the godly is one;compare Ps 55:19, “God,even He that abideth of old): a true comment, which CYPRIANand LUCIFER have added tothe text without support of Greek manuscripts. Incontrast to the three passing lusts of the world, the doer ofGod’s will has three abiding goods, “riches, honor, andlife” (Pr 22:4).

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

And the world passeth away,…. Not the matter and substance, but the fashion, form, and scheme of it, 1Co 7:31; kingdoms, cities, towns, houses, families, estates, and possessions, are continually changing, and casting into different hands, and different forms; the men of the world, the inhabitants of it, are continually removing; one generation goes, and another comes, new faces are continually appearing; the riches and honours of the world are fading, perishing, and transitory things; everything is upon the flux, nothing is permanent; which is another argument why the world, and the things of it, are not to be loved:

and the lust thereof; also passes away; and objects of lust are fading and fleeting, as beauty, and riches, and honours; these are continually taking away from men, or men are taken away from them, and will not be hereafter; and even the pleasure of lust itself passes away as soon as enjoyed; the pleasures of sin are but for a season, and a very short one; and are indeed but imaginary, and leave a real bitterness and sorrow behind them, and at length bring a man to ruin and destruction:

but he that doeth the will of God; not perfectly as contained in the law, which is the good, and perfect, and acceptable will of God; for no man can do that in such a manner, though a regenerate man desires to do it, even as it is done in heaven, and serves the law of God with his mind, and under the influence of the Spirit of God; and does walk in his statutes, and keeps his judgments from a principle of love, in faith, and without mercenary views and sinister ends, without depending on what he does for life and salvation; and such an one may be said to be a doer of the will of God: though rather here it intends such an one as believes in Christ, as the propitiation for his sins, and as his advocate with the Father, and who, makes Christ his pattern and example, and walks as he walked; and particularly observes the new commandment of love, loves God, and Christ, and his fellow Christians, and not the world, and the things of it: and such a man is happy, for he

abideth for ever; in the love of God, which will never depart from him, nor shall he be separated from that; and in the hands and arms of Christ, out of which none can pluck him; and in the family and household of God, where he, as a son, abides for ever, and shall never be cast out; and in a state of justification, and shall never enter into condemnation; and in a state of grace and holiness, from whence he shall never fall totally and finally; and in heaven with Christ to all eternity: the reason of this his abiding is not his doing the will of God, which is only descriptive of him manifestatively, and not the cause of his perpetuity and immovableness; but his eternal election of God, which stands sure, not on the foot of works, but of him that calleth; and the covenant of grace in which he is interested, and which is immovable, sure, firm, and inviolable; and the foundation Jesus Christ, on which he is built; and the principle of grace in him, which always remains, and is connected with eternal life.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Passeth away (). “Is passing by” (linear action, present middle indicative), as in verse 8. There is consolation in this view of the transitoriness of the conflict with the world. Even the lust which belongs to the world passes also. The one who keeps on doing ( present active participle of ) the will of God “abides for ever” ( ) “amid the flux of transitory things” (D. Smith).

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Forever [ ] . The only form in which aijwn age, life, occurs in the Gospel and Epistles of John, except ejk tou aijwnov since the world began (Joh 9:32). Some old versions add, “as God abideth forever.”

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “And the world passeth away”. John asserts that the world – the world-system (kosmos) – (Greek paragetai) is passing away. Like leprosy, like cancer, like tuberculosis to the human body, the ravages of sin are causing the present world order to pass to its graveyard Mat 24:35; 2Pe 3:12-13.

2) “And the lust thereof”. (Greek kai heepithumia autou) means, “and the lust of it.” The sin contaminated present world order. This involves the covetous, self-will-lust in fallen man and the curse of sin in the earth, the entire universe. Gen 3:17-19.

3) “But he that doeth the will of God.” The one actively engaged in performing the (Greek thelema) high, holy, spiritual desire of God. Eph 5:17; 2Co 6:14-17.

4) “Abideth forever”. Remains on into the age. Eternal life in every believer, manifested thru deeds of obedient service to God, certifies that one shall never die – glorious joy, blessed assurance. Joh 11:26; Joh 10:27-29.

WARNING AGAINST INFIDELITY

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

17 And the world passeth away As there is nothing in the world but what is fading, and as it were for a moment, he hence concludes that they who seek their happiness from it, make a wretched and miserable provision for themselves, especially when God calls us to the ineffable glory of eternal life; as though he had said, “The true happiness which God offers to his children, is eternal; it is then a shameful thing for us to be entangled with the world, which with all its benefits will soon vanish away.” I take lust here metonymically, as signifying what is desired or coveted, or what captivates the desires of men. The meaning is, that what is most precious in the world and deemed especially desirable, is nothing but a shadowy phantom.

By saying that they who do the will of God shall abide for ever, or perpetually, he means that they who seek God shall be perpetually blessed. Were any one to object and say, that no one doeth what God commands, the obvious answer is, that what is spoken of here is not the perfect keeping of the law, but the obedience of faith, which, however imperfect it may be, is yet approved by God. The will of God is first made known to us in the law; but as no one satisfies the law, no happiness can be hoped from it. But Christ comes to meet the despairing with new aid, who not only regenerates us by his Spirit that we may obey God, but makes also that our endeavor, such as it is, should obtain the praise of perfect righteousness.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

17. Passeth away It is transitory. It passeth away from the grasp of earth’s successive and dying generations. Its fashions and phases, its crises and epochs, are perpetually undergoing changes and revolutions.

Lust thereof Our pursuits and passions are as transitory as the world neither is worthy so much excitement. Tranquil Christian life, fixing its eye on a heavenly future, ready for suffering or duty or enjoyments as this brief scene requires, and just as ready to leave at any moment, is safest and far the happiest. It is thus we can make the best of both worlds.

Abideth forever In this changing state of things every thing goes under save the man of God. The wicked go down to everlasting death; the objects of human lust perish and go into other forms; the earth will dissolve, the sun be extinguished, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever. Most ample reason is here against love of the world.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

A warning against anti-Christian teaching:

v. 18. Little children, it is the last time; and as ye have heard that Anti-Christ shall come, even now are there many antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last time.

v. 19. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us

v. 20. But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things

With all its seriousness, this warning is couched in affectionate terms: Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that Anti-Christ is coming, and now many antichrists have appeared; whence we know that it is the last hour. The apostle opens also this paragraph with a reminder of our fellowship with God, of our sonship toward God. The last period of the world was ushered in with the coming of the Savior in the flesh, and St. John, in using the terminology of God, fitly calls this period the last hour, for it is a short, a very brief time until the Lord will return in glory to judge the quick and the dead. It is the period of the world’s existence in which, as St. Paul had taught and the Christians had heard from all their teachers, the great Anti-Christ was to make his appearance, 2Th 2:3-7. And even as the mystery of iniquity was already at work, preparing the way for the rise of the one great Anti-Christ, the Pope of Rome, so the Christians of those days saw, and were brought into contact with, many small antichrists, many false teachers whose doctrines were at variance with the eternal truths of the Gospel. All these factors were, even to the Christians of the early Church, signs of the end. Note: The great Anti-Christ as been revealed as such by the work of Martin Luther, whence we have evidence that we are living in the last days of the world.. This impression, moreover, is made an absolute certainty when we contemplate the number of small antichrists, minor false teachers, that are denying the truth of Scriptures and thus aiding the Pope in his destruction of souls.

Of the anti-Christian teachers St. John says: Out from us they went, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but in order that it might be shown that they are not all of us. There are numerous passages to show that the most dangerous enemies and opponents of the Christian congregations in the early days were those men that were members and then apostatized from the truth, going astray from the sound doctrine which they had been taught, whereupon they promptly attempted to lead others, too, away with them into error. Of course, they could not remain members under such circumstances, they were excommunicated, they had to leave; in a majority of cases they probably went of their own accord. In any event, their becoming manifest as enemies of the Lord by their leaving the congregation made the great contrast between them and the true Christians apparent. Mark: Also in our days there are a great many antichrists, false believers, false teachers in the very midst of Christendom, within the ranks of those that profess to be members of the Christian Church. And in many places the outward organization of the Church is so badly degenerated that these anti-Christian forces are at work practically without hindrance, as just at present the exponents of social Christianity. Our duty is to expose such antichrists by means of the Word of God, and to keep ourselves strictly uncontaminated with their vile activity.

This is possible for us, since the apostle writes: And you have received the anointing from the Holy One, and all of you have knowledge. This is an expression of confidence in the Christians which may well serve as an encouragement to them not to be led astray. They have received the enlightening grace of the Holy Spirit, through faith they are the anointed of the Lord, Christians in the literal sense of the word. This same faith also gives to all believers not merely an outward knowledge, a mere understanding of the mind, but a true inward certainty of the divine and saving truth, based upon the Word of the Gospel. That is the advantage which every Christian has over against the powers of darkness that are trying to overwhelm him.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

1Jn 2:17. And the world passeth away, &c. The short continuance of this life is here alleged as another reason against worldly-mindedness. See Psa 37:36. 2Pe 3:7. In this and the two foregoing verses there is an antithesis, which helps to fix the sense: this world is opposed to the future state; the inordinate love of the world, to doing the will of God. The springs of action in good and bad men are also set in opposition; the one is of God, the other is of the world: and finally, we are presented with their different ends. This world, and its enjoyments, together with the desires thereof, soon pass away; the enjoyments of the holy and faithful will endure for ever. The good man as well as the bad must pay the great debt of nature; but he that now perseveringly doeth the will of God is to be raised to a glorious immortality, and then abide in that happy state for ever.

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

1Jn 2:17 adds a new element to the preceding, whereby the exhortation of 1Jn 2:15 is strengthened and confirmed.

] is frequently taken by commentators, with an appeal to 1Co 7:31 , as an expression of the transitoriness of the world; either the present being changed into the future (Bede: mundus transibit, quum in die judicii per ignem in meliorem mutabitur figuram, ut sit coelum novum et terra nova), or the peculiar nature of the world being regarded as described in it (Oecumenius: , ); Dsterdieck combines both; the apostle, according to him, expresses a truth “which holds good with ever present meaning, and which will thereby show itself some time in fact” (so also Ebrard and Braune). But 1Jn 2:8 and the following make it more than probable that the apostle here also uses in the consciousness of the approaching second advent of Christ and the judgment on the which is connected with it, thus: “ the world is in the state of disappearing; ” in 1Co 7:31 : is said with the same feeling.

] With the world passes away also the which dwells in it; whereby the apostle briefly refers to the threefold form previously named: is not genitive of the object (Lcke, Neander, Sander, Besser), but of the subject (Dsterdieck, Braune); though there is mention previously of an , yet there is none of an directed towards the ; the contrary view rests on an erroneous interpretation of .

] antithesis to , which in its does not do the will of God. It is true, “ ” is previously put as antithesis to the , but it does not follow from this that the antithesis here is not to be taken as fully corresponding, and “ ” to be taken out of (Lcke); the appearance of this arises only from the fact that is taken as something concrete. The expression used by the apostle is synonymous with ; for the doing of the divine will is the effect of love to Him.

] antithesis of ; the expression signifies, as frequently, eternal, infinite endurance, comp. Joh 6:51 ; Joh 6:58 ; Joh 8:35 , etc. That John regarded this abiding for ever as the eternally happy life in the fellowship of God is certain, but is not contained in the expression. [153] To the is assigned , to the children of God .

[153] Ebrard arbitrarily explains that by is to be understood “the Aeon which will begin with the visible establishment in glory of Christ’s kingdom on earth,” and that . therefore means: “he who does the will of God shall remain till the establishment of the kingdom of Christ he will be permitted to see the victory of Christ’s kingdom.”

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

17 And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

Ver. 17. And the world passeth away ] As the stream of a swift river passeth by the side of a city. Animantis cuiusque vita in fuga est, Life itself wears out in the wearing, as a garment; all things below are mutable and momentary. Wilt thou set thy heart upon what is not? saith Solomon.

And the lust thereof ] So that although thou wert sure to hold all these things of the world, yet they may be suddenly lost to thee, because thou canst not make thine heart delight in the same things still. Not the world only, but the lust thereof, passeth away; there is a curse of unsatisfiableness lies upon the creature, , saith the orator; There is a satiety of all things. The world’s comforts are sweeter in the ambition than in the fruition; for after a little while we loathe what we lusted after, as Amnon did Tamar. Men first itch, and then scratch, and then smart. Dolor est etiam ipsa voluptas. Even sorrow itself is enjoyable. Crueiger used often to say,

” Omnia praetereunt, praeter amare Deum. “

They pass by all things except to love God.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

17 .] And the world is passing away, and the lust of it ( is subjective again: not as Lcke, Neander, Sander, objective, “ the lust after it ,” but as in 1Jn 2:16 , which see on the construction: . summing up in one the three which are there mentioned. as in 1Jn 2:8 ; not declaring merely an attribute, that it is the quality of the world and its lust to pass away, but a matter of fact, that it is even now in act so to pass. See Meyer on 1Co 7:31 . It is no objection to this, that the , which is opposed to , contains, not a matter of fact, but a qualitative predication. This is made necessary by the words which that clause contains): but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever (in this latter member of the contrast, we have a clearly personal agent introduced: and therefore, as above remarked, we may expect that the former member also will have a like personal reference. But this expectation must not be pushed too far : seeing that in the , the ungodly men, who are in all their desires and thoughts , are included. They and their lusts belong to, are part of, depend on, a world which is passing away. On the other hand, eternal fixity and duration belongs only to that order of things, and to those men, who are in entire accordance with the will of God. And among these is he that doeth that will , which is (see 1Jn 2:3-6 ) the true proof and following out of love towards Him. As God Himself is eternal, so is all that is in communion with Him: and this are they who believe in Him and love Him, and do His will).

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

1Jn 2:17 . An explanation, especially of . To set one’s affection on the things in the world is “braggart boasting”; for they are not ours, they are transient. Cf. Mohammed: “What have I to do with the comforts of this life? The world and I what connection is there between us? Verily the world is no otherwise than as a tree unto me: when the traveller hath rested under its shade, he passeth on.” Aug. on 1Jn 4:4 : “Mundus iste omnibus fidelibus qurentibus, patriam sic est, quomodo fuit eremus populo Israel”. subjective genitive like and . , alone permanent amid the flux of transitory things. Cf. Aug.: “Rerum temporalium fluvius trahit: sed tanquam circa fluvium arbor nata est Dominus noster Jesus Christus. Assumpsit carnem, mortuus est, resurrexit, ascendit in clum. Voluit se quodammodo circa fluvium temporalium plantare. Raperis in praeceps? tene lignum. Volvit te amor mundi? tene Christum.”

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

Ecclesiastes

WHAT PASSES AND WHAT ABIDES

Ecc 1:4 . – 1Jn 2:17 .

A great river may run through more than one kingdom, and bear more than one name, but its flow is unbroken. The river of time runs continuously, taking no heed of dates and calendars. The importance that we attach to the beginnings or endings of years and centuries is a sentimental illusion, but even an illusion that rouses us to a consciousness of the stealthy gliding of the river may do us good, and we need all the helps we can find to wise retrospect and sober anticipation. So we must let the season colour our thoughts, even whilst we feel that in yielding to that impulse we are imagining what has no reality in the passing from the last day of one century to the first day of another.

I do not mean to discuss in this sermon either the old century or the new in their wider social and other aspects. That has been done abundantly. We shall best do our parts in making the days, and the years, and the century what they should be, if we let the truths that come from these combined texts sink into and influence our individual lives. I have put them together, because they are so strikingly antithetical, both true, and yet looking at the same facts from opposite points of view, But the antithesis is not really so complete as it sounds at first hearing, because what the Preacher means by ‘the earth’ that ‘abideth for ever’ is not quite the same as what the Apostle means by the ‘world’ that ‘passes’ and the ‘generations’ that come and go are not exactly the same as the men that ‘abide for ever.’ But still the antithesis is real and impressive. The bitter melancholy of the Preacher saw but the surface; the joyous faith of the Apostle went a great deal deeper, and putting the two sets of thoughts and ways of looking at man and his dwelling-place together, we get lessons that may well shape our individual lives.

So let me ask you to look, in the first place, at-

I. The sad and superficial teaching of the Preacher.

Now in reading this Book of Ecclesiastes-which I am afraid a great many people do not read at all-we have always to remember that the wild things and the bitter things which the Preacher is saying so abundantly through its course do not represent his ultimate convictions, but thoughts that he took up in his progress from error to truth. His first word is: ‘All is vanity!’ That conviction had been set vibrating in his heart, as it is set vibrating in the heart of every man who does as he did, viz., seeks for solid good away from God. That is his starting-point. It is not true. All is not vanity, except to some blase cynic, made cynical by the failure of his voluptuousness, and to whom ‘all things here are out of joint,’ and everything looks yellow because his own biliary system is out of order. That is the beginning of the book, and there are hosts of other things in the course of it as one-sided, as cynically bitter, and therefore superficial. But the end of it is: ‘Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter; fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.’ In his journey from the one point to the other my text is the first step, ‘One generation goeth, and another cometh: the earth abideth for ever.’

He looks out upon humanity, and sees that in one aspect the world is full of births, and in another full of deaths. Coffins and cradles seem the main furniture, and he hears the tramp, tramp, tramp of the generations passing over a soil honeycombed with tombs, and therefore ringing hollow to their tread. All depends on the point of view. The strange history of humanity is like a piece of shot silk; hold it at one angle, and you see dark purple, hold at another, and you see bright golden tints. Look from one point of view, and it seems a long history of vanishing generations. Look to the rear of the procession, and it seems a buoyant spectacle of eager, young faces pressing forwards on the march, and of strong feet treading the new road. But yet the total effect of that endless procession is to impress on the observer the transiency of humanity. And that wholesome thought is made more poignant still by the comparison which the writer here draws between the fleeting generations and the abiding earth. Man is the lord of earth, and can mould it to his purpose, but it remains and he passes. He is but a lodger in an old house that has had generations of tenants, each of whom has said for a while, ‘It is mine’; and they all have drifted away, and the house stands. The Alps, over which Hannibal stormed, over which the Goths poured down on the fertile plains of Lombardy, through whose passes mediaeval emperors led their forces, over whose summits Napoleon brought his men, through whose bowels this generation has burrowed its tunnels, stand the same, and smile the same amid their snows, at the transient creatures that have crawled across them. The primrose on the rock blooms in the same place year after year, and nature and it are faithful to their covenant, but the poet’s eyes that fell upon them are sealed with dust. Generations have gone, the transient flower remains. ‘One generation cometh and another goeth,’ and the tragedy is made more tragical because the stage stands unaltered, and ‘the earth abides for ever.’ That is what sense has to say-’the foolish senses’-and that is all that sense has to say. Is it all that can be said? If it is, then the Preacher’s bitter conclusion is true, and ‘all is vanity and chasing after wind.’

He immediately proceeds to draw from this undeniable, but, as I maintain, partial fact, the broad conclusion which cannot be rebutted, if you accept what he has said in my text as being the sufficient and complete account of man and his dwelling-place. If, says he, it is true that one generation comes and another goes, and the earth abides for ever, and if that is all that has to be said, then all things are full of labour. There is immense activity, and there is no progress; it is all rotary motion round and round and round, and the same objects reappear duly and punctually as the wheel revolves, and life is futile. Yes; so it is unless there is something more to be said, and the life that is thus futile is also, as it seems to me, inexplicable if you believe in God at all. If man, being what he is, is wholly subject to that law of mutation and decay, then not only is he made ‘a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death,’ but he is also inferior to that persistent, old mother-earth from whose bosom he has come. If all that you have to say of him is, ‘Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,’ then life is futile, and God is not vindicated for having produced it.

And there is another consequence that follows, if this is all that we have got to say. If the cynical wisdom of Ecclesiastes is the ultimate word, then I do not assert that morality is destroyed, because right and wrong are not dependent either upon the belief in a God, or on the belief in immortality. But I do say that to declare that the fleeting, transient life of earth is all does strike a staggering blow at all noble ethics and paralyses a great deal of the highest forms of human activity, and that, as has historically been the case, so on the large scale, and, speaking generally, it will be the case, that the man whose creed is only ‘To-morrow we die’ will very speedily draw the conclusion, ‘Let us eat and drink,’ and sensuous delights and the lower side of his nature will become dominant.

So, then, the Preacher had not got at the bottom of all things, either in his initial conviction that all was vanity, or in that which he laid down as the first step towards establishing that, that man passes and the earth abides. There is more to be said; the sad, superficial teaching of the Preacher needs to be supplemented.

Now turn for a moment to what does supplement it.

II. The joyous and profounder teaching of the Apostle.

The cynic never sees the depths; that is reserved for the mystical eye of the lover. So John says: ‘No, no; that is not all. Here is the true state of affairs: “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”‘ The doctrine of the passing generations and the abiding earth is fronted squarely in my second text by the not contradictory, but complementary doctrine of the passing world and the abiding men. I do not suppose that John had this verse of Ecclesiastes in his mind, for the word ‘abide’ is one of his favourite expressions, and is always cropping up. But even though he had not, we find in his utterance the necessary correction to the first text. As I have said, and now need not do more than repeat in a sentence, the antithesis is not so complete as it seems. John’s ‘world’ is not the Preacher’s ‘earth,’ but he means thereby, as we all know, the aggregate of created things, including men, considered apart from God, and in so far as it includes voluntary agents set in opposition to God and the will of God. He means the earth rent away from God, and turned to be what it was not meant to be, a minister of evil, and he means men, in so far as they have parted themselves from God and make up an alien, if not a positively antagonistic company.

Perhaps he was referring, in the words of our text, to the break-up of the existing order of things which he discerned as impending and already begun to take effect in consequence of the coming of Jesus Christ, the shining of the true Light. For you may remember that in a previous part of the epistle he uses precisely the same expression, with a significant variation. Here, in our text, he says, ‘The world passeth away’; there he says, ‘The darkness has passed and the true light now shineth.’ He sees a process installed and going on, in which the whole solid-seeming fabric of a godless society is being dissolved and melted away. And says he, in the midst of all this change there is one who stands unchanged, the man that does God’s will.

But just for a moment we may take the lower point of view, and see here a flat contradiction of the Preacher. He said, ‘Men go, and the world abides.’ ‘No,’ says John; ‘your own psalmists might have taught you better: “As a vesture shalt Thou change them, and they shall be changed.”‘ The world, the earth, which seems so solid and permanent, is all the while in perpetual flux, as our later science has taught us, in a sense of which neither Preacher nor Apostle could dream. For just as from the beginning forces were at work which out of the fire-mist shaped sun and planets, so the same forces, continuing in operation, are tending towards the end of the system which they began; and a contracting sun and a diminished light and a lowered temperature and the narrower orbits in which the planets shall revolve, prophesy that ‘the elements shall melt with fervent heat,’ and that all things which have been made must one day cease to be. Nature is the true Penelope’s web, ever being woven and ever being unravelled, and in the most purely physical and scientific sense the world is passing away. But then, because you and I belong, in a segment of our being, to that which thus is passing away, we come under the same laws, and all that has been born must die. So the generations come, and in their very coming bear the prophecy of their going. But, on the other hand, there is an inner nucleus of our being, of which the material is but the transient envelope and periphery, which holds nought of the material, but of the spiritual, and that ‘abides for ever.’

But let us lift the thought rather into the region of the true antithesis which John was contemplating, which is not so much the crumbling away of the material, and the endurance of the spiritual, as the essential transiency of everything that is antagonism to the will of God, and the essential eternity of everything which is in conformity with that will. And so, says he, ‘The world is passing, and the lust thereof.’ The desires that grasp it perish with it, or perhaps, more truly still, the object of the desire perishes, and with it the possibility of their gratification ceases, but the desire itself remains. But what of the man whose life has been devoted to the things seen and temporal, when he finds himself in a condition of being where none of these have accompanied him? Nothing to slake his lusts, if he be a sensualist. No money-bags, ledgers, or cheque-books if he be a plutocrat or a capitalist or a miser. No books or dictionaries if he be a mere student. Nothing of his vocations if he lived for ‘the world.’ But yet the appetite is abiding. Will that not be a thirst that cannot be slaked?

‘The world is passing and the lust thereof,’ and all that is antagonistic to God, or separated from Him, is essentially as ‘a vapour that appeareth for a little time, and then vanishes away,’ whereas the man who does the will of God abideth for ever, in that he is steadfast in the midst of change.

‘His hand the good man fastens on the skies,

And lets earth roll, nor heeds its idle whirl.’

He shall ‘abide for ever,’ in the sense that his work is perpetual. In one very deep and solemn sense, nothing human ever dies, but in another all that is not running in the same direction as, and borne along by the impulse of, the will of God, is destined to be neutralised and brought to nothing at last. There may be a row of figures as long as to reach from here to the fixed stars, but if there is not in front of them the significant digit, which comes from obedience to the will of God, all is but a string of ciphers, and their net result is nothing. And he ‘abideth for ever,’ in the most blessed and profound sense, in that through his faith, which has kindled his love, and his love which has set in motion his practical obedience, he becomes participant of the very eternity of the living God. ‘This is eternal life,’ not merely to know, but ‘to do the will’ of our Father. Nothing else will last, and nothing else will prosper, any more than a bit of driftwood can stem Niagara. Unite yourself with the will of God, and you abide.

And now let me, as briefly as I can, throw together-

III. The plain, practical lessons that come from both these texts.

May I say, without seeming to be morbid or unpractical, one lesson is that we should cultivate a sense of the transiency of this outward life? One of our old authors says somewhere, that it is wholesome to smell at a piece of turf from a churchyard. I know that much harm has been done by representing Christianity as mainly a scheme which is to secure man a peaceful death, and that many morbid forms of piety have given far too large a place to the contemplation of skulls and cross-bones. But for all that, the remembrance of death present in our lives will often lay a cool hand upon a throbbing brow; and, like a bit of ice used by a skilful physician, will bring down the temperature, and stay the too tumultuous beating of the heart. ‘So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.’ It will minister energy, and lead us to say, like our Lord, ‘We must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day; the night cometh.’

Let me say again-a very plain, practical lesson is to dig deep down for our foundations below the rubbish that has accumulated. If a man wishes to build a house in Rome or in Jerusalem he has to go fifty or sixty feet down, through potsherds and broken tiles and triturated marbles, and the dust of ancient palaces and temples. We have to drive a shaft clear down through all the superficial strata, and to lay the first stones on the Rock of Ages. Do not build on that which quivers and shakes beneath you. Do not try to make your life’s path across the weeds, or as they call it in Egypt, the ‘sudd,’ that floats on the surface of the Nile, compacted for many a mile, and yet only a film on the surface of the river, to be swept away some day. Build on God.

And the last lesson is, let us see to it that our wills are in harmony with His, and the work of our hands His work. We can do that will in all the secularities of our daily life. The difference between the work that shrivels up and disappears and the work that abides is not so much in its external character, or in the materials on which it is expended, as in the motive from which it comes. So that, if I might so say, if two women are sitting at the same millstone face to face, and turning round the same handle, one of them for one half the circumference, and the other for the other, and grinding out the same corn, the one’s work may be ‘gold, silver, precious stones,’ which shall abide the trying fire; and the other’s may be ‘wood, hay, stubble,’ which shall be burnt up. ‘He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.’

So let us set ourselves, dear friends! to our several tasks for this coming year. Never mind about the century, it will take care of itself. Do your little work in your little corner, and be sure of this, that amidst changes you will stand unchanged, amidst tumults you may stand calm, in death you will be entering on a fuller life, and that what to others is the end will be to you the beginning. ‘If any man’s work abide, he shall receive a reward,’ and he himself shall abide with the abiding God.

The bitter cynic said half the truth when he said, ‘One generation goeth, and another cometh; but the earth abides.’ The mystic Apostle saw the truth steadily, and saw it whole when he said, ‘Lo! the world passeth away, and the lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.’

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

1 John

RIVER AND ROCK

1Jn 2:17 .

John has been solemnly giving a charge not to love the world, nor the things that are in it. That charge was addressed to ‘children,’ ‘young men,’ ‘fathers.’ Whether these designations be taken as referring to growth and maturity of Christian experience, or of natural age, they equally carry the lesson that no age and no stage is beyond the danger of being drawn away by the world’s love, or beyond the need of the solemn dehortation therefrom.

My text is the second of the reasons which the Apostle gives for his earnest charge. We all, therefore, need it, and we always need it; though on the last Sunday of another year, it may be more than usually appropriate to turn our thoughts in its direction. ‘The world passeth away, and the lust thereof.’ Let us lay the handful of snow on our fevered foreheads and cool our desires.

Now there are but two things set forth in this text, which is a great and wonderful antithesis between something which is in perpetual flux and passage and something which is permanent. If I might venture to cast the two thoughts into metaphorical form, I should say that here are a river and a rock. The one, the sad truth of sense, universally believed and as universally forgotten; the other, the glad truth of faith, so little regarded or operative in men’s lives.

I ask you, then, to look with me for a few moments at each of these thoughts.

I. First, then, the river, or the sad truth of sense.

Now you observe that there are two things in my text of which this transiency is predicated, the one ‘the world,’ the other ‘the lust thereof’; the one outside us, the other within us. As to the former, I need only, I suppose, remind you in a sentence that what John means by ‘the world’ is not the material globe on which we dwell, but the whole aggregate of things visible and material, together with the lives of the men whose lives are directed to, and bounded by, that visible and material, and all considered as wrenched apart from God. That, and not the mere external physical creation, is what he means by ‘the world,’ and therefore the passing away of which he speaks is not only although, of course, it includes the decay and dissolution of material things, but the transiency of things which are or have to do with the visible, and are separated by us from God. Over all these, he says, there is written the sentence, ‘Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.’ There is a continual flowing on of the stream. As the original implies even more strongly than in our translation, ‘the world’ is in the act of ‘passing away.’ Like the slow travelling of the scenes of some moveable panorama which glide along, even as the eye looks upon them, and are concealed behind the side flats before the gazer has taken in the whole picture, so equably, constantly, silently, and therefore unnoticed by us, all is in a state of continual motion. There is no present time. Even whilst we name the moment it dies. The drop hangs for an instant on the verge, gleaming in the sunlight, and then falls into the gloomy abyss that silently sucks up years and centuries. There is no present, but all is movement.

Brethren, that has been the commonplace of moralists and poets and preachers from the beginning of time; and it would be folly for me to suppose that I can add anything to the impressiveness of the thought. All that I want to do is to wake you up to preach it to yourselves, for that is the only thing that is of any use.

‘So passeth, in the passing of an hour

Of mortal life, the leaf, the bud, the flower.’

But besides this transiency external to us, John finds a corresponding transiency within us. ‘The world passeth, and the lust thereof.’ Of course the word ‘lust’ is employed by him in a much wider sense than in our use of it. With us it means one specific and very ugly form of earthly desire. With him it includes the whole genus–all desires of every sort, more or less noble or ignoble, which have this for their characteristic, that they are directed to, stimulated by, and fed or starved on, the fleeting things of this outward life. If thus a man has anchored himself to that which has no perpetual stay, so long as the cable holds he follows the fate of the thing to which he has pinned himself. And if it perish he perishes, in a very profound sense, with it. If you trust yourselves in the leaky vessel, when the water rises in it it will drown you, and you will go to the bottom with the craft to which you have trusted yourselves. If you embark in the little ship that carries Christ and His fortunes, you will come with Him to the haven.

But these fleeting desires, of which my text speaks, point to that sad feature of human experience, that we all outgrow and leave behind us, and think of very little value, the things that once to us were all but heaven. There was a time when toys and sweetmeats were our treasures, and since that day how many burnt-out hopes we all have had! How little we should know ourselves if we could go back to the fears and wishes and desires that used to agitate us ten, twenty, thirty years ago! They lie behind us, no longer part of ourselves; they have slipped away from us, and

‘We all are changed, by still degrees,

All but the basis of the soul.’

The self-conscious same man abides, and yet how different the same man is! Our lives, then will zig-zag instead of keeping a straight course, if we let desires that are limited by anything that we can see guide and regulate us.

But, brethren, though it be a digression from my text, I cannot help touching for a moment upon a yet sadder thought than that. There are desires that remain, when the gratification of them has become impossible. Sometimes the lust outlasts the world, sometimes the world outlasts the lust; and one knows not whether is the sadder. There is a hell upon earth for many of us who, having set our affections upon some creatural object, and having had that withdrawn from us, are ready to say, ‘They have taken away my gods! And what shall I do?’ And there is a hell of the same sort waiting beyond those dark gates through which we have all to pass, where men who never desired anything, except what the world that has slipped out of their reluctant fingers could give them, are shut up with impossible longings after a for-ever-vanished good. ‘Father Abraham! a drop of water; for I am tormented in this flame.’ That is what men come to, if the fire of their lust burn after its objects are withdrawn.

But let me remind you that this transiency of which I have been speaking receives very strange treatment from most of us. I do not know that it is altogether to be regretted that it so seldom comes to men’s consciousness. Perhaps it is right that it should not be uppermost in our thoughts always; but yet there is no vindication for the entire oblivion to which we condemn it. The march of these fleeting things is like that of cavalry with their horses’ feet wrapped in straw, in the night, across the snow, silent and unnoticed. We cannot realise the revolution of the earth, because everything partakes in it. We talk about standing still, and we are whirling through space with inconceivable rapidity. By a like illusion we deceive ourselves with the notion of stability, when everything about us is hastening away. Some of you do not like to be reminded of it, and think it a killjoy. You try to get rid of the thought, and hide your head in the sand, and fancy that the rest of your body presents no mark to the archer’s arrow. Now surely common sense says to all, that if there be some fact certain and plain and applying to you, which, if accepted, would profoundly modify your life, you ought to take it into account. And what I want you to do, dear friends, now, is to look in the face this fact, which you all acknowledge so utterly that some of you are ready to say, ‘What was the use of coming to a chapel to hear that threadbare old thing dinned into my ears again?’ and to take it into account in shaping your lives. Have you done so? Have you? Suppose a man that lived in a land habitually shaken by earthquakes were to say, ‘I mean to ignore the fact; and I am going to build a house just as if there was not such a thing as an earthquake expected’; he would have it toppling about his ears very soon. Suppose a man upon the ice-slopes of the Alps was to say, ‘I am going to ignore slipperiness and gravitation,’ he would before long find himself, if there was any consciousness left in him, at the bottom of a precipice, bruised and bleeding. And suppose a man says, ‘I am not going to take the fleetingness of the things of earth into account at all, but intend to live as if all things were to remain as they are’; what would become of him do you think? Is he a wise man or a fool? And is he you? He is some of you! ‘So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.’

Then let me say to you, see that you take noble lessons out of these undeniable and all-important facts. There is one kind of lesson that I do not want you to take out of it. ‘Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,’ or, to put it into a more vulgar formula, ‘A short life and a merry one.’ The mere contemplation of the transiency of earthly things may, and often does, lend itself to very ignoble conclusions, and men draw from it the thought that, as life is short, they had better crowd into it as much of sensual enjoyment as they can.

‘Gather ye roses while ye may’ is a very common keynote, struck by poets of the baser sort. And it is a thought that influences some of us, I have little doubt. Or there may be another consideration. ‘Make hay whilst the sun shines.’ ‘Hurry on your getting rich, because you have not very long to do it in’; or the like.

Now all that is supremely unworthy. The true lesson to be drawn is the plain, old one which it is never superfluous to shout into men’s ears, until they have obeyed it–viz., ‘Set not thine heart on that which is not; and which flieth away as an eagle towards heaven.’ Do you, dear brother, see to it, that your roots go down through the gravel on the surface. Do you see to it that you dig deeper than that; and thrusting your hand, as it were, through the thin, silk-paper screen that stands between you and the Eternal, grasp the hand that you will find on the other side, waiting and ready to clasp you, and to hold you up.

When they build a new house in Rome they have to dig down through sometimes sixty or a hundred feet of rubbish that runs like water, the ruins of old temples and palaces, once occupied by men in the same flush of life in which we are now. We too have to dig down through ruins, until we get to the Rock and build there, and build secure. Withdraw your affections and your thoughts and your desires from the fleeting, and fix them on the permanent. If a captain takes anything but the pole-star for his fixed point he will lose his reckoning, and his ship will be on the reefs. If we take anything but God for our supreme delight and desire we shall perish.

Then let me say, too, let this thought stimulate us to crowd every moment, as full as it can be packed, with noble work and heavenly thoughts. These fleeting things are elastic, and you may put all but infinite treasure into them. Think of what the possibilities, for each of us, of this dying year were on the 1st of January; and of what the realisation has been by the 28th of December. So much that we could have done! so little that we have done! So many ripples of the river have passed, bearing no golden sand to pile upon the shore! ‘We have been’ is a sad word; but oh, the one sad word is, ‘We might have been!’ And, so, do you see to it that you fill time with that which is kindred to eternity, and make ‘one day as a thousand years’ in the elastic possibilities and realities of consecration and of service.

Further, let the thought help us to the conviction of the relative insignificance of all that can change. That will not spoil nor shade any real joy; rather it will add to it poignancy that prevents it from cloying or from becoming the enemy of our souls. But the thought will wondrously lighten the burden that we have to carry, and the tasks which we have to perform. ‘But for a moment,’ makes all light. There was an old rabbi, long ago, whose real name was all but lost, because everybody nick-named him ‘Rabbi Thisalso.’ The reason was because he had perpetually on his lips the saying about everything as it came, ‘This also will pass.’ He was a wise man. Let us go to his school and learn his wisdom.

II. Now let me say a word, and it can only be a word, about the second of the thoughts here, which I designated as the Rock, or the glad truth of Faith.

We might have expected that John’s antithesis to the world that passeth would have been the God that abides. But he does not so word his sentence, although the thought of the divine permanence underlies it. Rather over against the fleeting world he puts the abiding man who does the will of God.

Of course there is a very solemn sense in which all men, even they who have most exclusively lived for what they call the present, do last for ever, and in which their deeds do so too. After death is the judgment, and the issues of eternity depend upon the actions of time; and every fleeting thought comes back to the hand that projected it, like the Australian savage’s boomerang that, flung out, returns and falls at the feet of the thrower. But that is not what John means by ‘abiding for ever.’ He means something very much more blessed and lofty than that; and the following is the course of his thought. There is only one permanent Reality in the universe, and that is God. All else is shadow and He is the substance. All else was, is, and is not. He is the One who was, is, and is to come, the timeless and only permanent Being. The will of God is the permanent element in all changeful material things. And consequently he who does the will of God links himself with the Divine Eternity, and becomes partaker of that solemn and blessed Being which lives above mutation.

Obedience to God’s will is the permanent element in human life. Whosoever humbly and trustfully seeks to mould his will after the divine will, and to bring God’s will into practice in his doings, that man has pierced through the shadows and grasped the substance, and partakes of the Immortality which he adores and serves. Himself shall live for ever in the true life which is blessedness. His deeds shall live for ever when all that lifted itself in opposition to the Divine will shall be crushed and annihilated. They shall live in His own peaceful consciousness; they shall live in the blessed rewards which they shall bring to the doers. His habits will need no change.

What will you do when you are dead? You have to go into a world where there are no gossip and no housekeeping; no mills and no offices; no shops, no books; no colleges and no sciences to learn. What will you do there? ‘He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.’ If you have done your housekeeping, and your weaving and spinning, and your book-keeping, and your buying and selling, and your studying, and your experimenting with a conscious reference to God, it is all right. That has made the act capable of eternity, and there will be no need for such a man to change. The material on which he works will change, but the inner substance of his life will be unaffected by the trivial change from earth to heaven. Whilst the endless ages roll he will be doing just what he was doing down here; only here he was playing with counters, and yonder he will be trusted with gold, and dominion over ten cities. To all other men the change that comes when earth passes from them, or they from it, is as when a trench is dug across a railway, into which the express goes with a smash, and there is an end. To the man who, in the trifles of time, has been obeying the will of God, and therefore subserving eternity and his interests there, the trench is bridged, and he will go on after he crosses it just as he did before, with the same purpose, the same desires, the same submission, and the same drinking into himself of the fulness of immortal life.

Brother, John tells us that obedience to the will of God brings permanence into our fleeting years. But how are we to obey the will of God? John tells us that the only way is by love. But how are we to love God? John tells us that the only way to love–which love is the only way to obedience–is by knowing and believing the love that God hath to us. But how are we to know that God hath love to us? John tells us that the only way to know the love of God, which is the only way of our loving Him, which in its turn is the only way to obedience, which again is the only way to permanence of life, is to believe in Jesus Christ and His propitiation for our sins. The river flows on for ever, but it sweeps round the base of the Rock of Ages. And in Him, by faith in His blood, we may find our sure refuge and eternal home.

Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren

will. App-102.

for ever. App-151. a.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

17.] And the world is passing away, and the lust of it ( is subjective again: not as Lcke, Neander, Sander, objective, the lust after it, but as in 1Jn 2:16, which see on the construction: . summing up in one the three which are there mentioned. as in 1Jn 2:8; not declaring merely an attribute, that it is the quality of the world and its lust to pass away,-but a matter of fact, that it is even now in act so to pass. See Meyer on 1Co 7:31. It is no objection to this, that the , which is opposed to , contains, not a matter of fact, but a qualitative predication. This is made necessary by the words which that clause contains): but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever (in this latter member of the contrast, we have a clearly personal agent introduced: and therefore, as above remarked, we may expect that the former member also will have a like personal reference. But this expectation must not be pushed too far: seeing that in the , the ungodly men, who are in all their desires and thoughts , are included. They and their lusts belong to, are part of, depend on, a world which is passing away. On the other hand, eternal fixity and duration belongs only to that order of things, and to those men, who are in entire accordance with the will of God. And among these is he that doeth that will, which is (see 1Jn 2:3-6) the true proof and following out of love towards Him. As God Himself is eternal, so is all that is in communion with Him: and this are they who believe in Him and love Him, and do His will).

Fuente: The Greek Testament

1Jn 2:17. , and) An abbreviated expression: that is, the world passeth away, and the lust thereof, and he also who loves the world; but God, and he who doeth, etc.-, doing) as the love of the Father brings with it [requires of necessity].- , the will) This will requires from us self-restraint, temperance, modesty, which are contrary to the world.-, abideth) and has abiding goods, truly to be wished for, opposed to those three mentioned before; namely, riches, and glory, and life: Pro 22:4.- , even as God also abideth for ever) A various reading of great beauty, and undoubtedly true. It is found in Latin fathers of no mean authority.[3]

[3] Nevertheless it is not marked either in the margin of the larger Ed., or in the context of the Germ. Version (but only in a note). In fact, it wants the authority of Greek MSS. and Editions in its support.-E. B.

Cypr. and Lucifer add the words, Quomodo et Deus manet in ternum.-E.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

the world: Psa 39:6, Psa 73:18-20, Psa 90:9, Psa 102:26, Isa 40:6-8, Mat 24:35, 1Co 7:31, Jam 1:10, Jam 1:11, Jam 4:14, 1Pe 1:24

but: Psa 143:10, Mat 7:21, Mat 21:31, Mar 3:35, Joh 7:17, Rom 12:2, Col 1:9, Col 4:12, 1Th 4:3, 1Th 5:18, Heb 10:36, 1Pe 4:2

abideth: Psa 125:1, Psa 125:2, Pro 10:25, Joh 4:14, Joh 6:58, Joh 10:28-30, 1Pe 1:5, 1Pe 1:25

Reciprocal: Psa 37:27 – do good Ecc 2:11 – I looked Mat 12:50 – do 1Co 6:2 – the smallest 1Co 7:29 – the time 2Co 4:18 – for Eph 6:6 – doing Heb 13:21 – to do 2Jo 1:2 – which Rev 18:14 – thy soul Rev 21:4 – the former

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

1Jn 2:17. World is still from the word that means the inhabitants pf the earth, and the lusts are the practices of the same which confirms the comments on the preceding verse. Since this world and its practices are to pass away, it is great folly for a disciple to let his affections be attached thereto. But the doer of God’s will abideth for ever and hence that is the proper subject to receive our sincere interests.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

2:17 {15} And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.

(15) He shows how much better it is to obey the Father’s will, than the lusts of the world, by both their natures and unlike event.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

Another reason we should not pursue the desires of the world is that this system, along with its desires, is in the process of passing out of existence. Really we are living in what John called the "last hour" of the world’s existence (1Jn 2:18). The world is only temporary and ephemeral (cf. 1 Pet.).

Notwithstanding, those who do God’s will abide (remain, live) forever. Since all Christians will live forever (Joh 10:28), John was not saying we attain eternal life by our obedience. However, we abide (i.e., enjoy intimate relationship with God, experience our eternal life abundantly) now as well as after death when we obey God.

"Just as Abraham through obedience to God obtained the title ’the friend of God’ (cf. Jas 2:21-23), by which he is known today in three world religions and will be known forever, so too the obedient Christian can attain this same identity by obedience (Joh 15:14-15). Likewise, it would be reasonable to conclude that the Christian’s identity in eternity will be determined by obedience to God in time. And since all lives of obedience are unique in their particulars, each eternal ’identity’ will be as unique as the snowflakes that fall from heaven." [Note: Idem, The Epistles . . ., p. 105.]

Resisting the appeal of the world is difficult for every believer. John urged his readers in view of its attractiveness to understand the avenues of its temptation and to remember four things. Love for the world indicates lack of love for God (1Jn 2:15). It results in consequences that are not what our loving heavenly Father desires for our welfare (1Jn 2:17). It lasts only a short time (1Jn 2:17), and it precludes intimate fellowship with God (1Jn 2:15).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Chapter 11

USE AND ABUSE OF THE SENSE OF THE VANITY OF THE WORLD

1Jn 2:17

The connection of the passage in which these words occur is not difficult to trace for those who are used to follow those “roots below the stream,” those real rather than verbal links latent in the substance of St. Johns thoughts. He addresses those whom he has in view with a paternal authority, as his “sons” in the faith-with an endearing variation as “little children.” He reminds them of the wisdom and strength involved in their Christian life. Theirs is the sweetest flower of knowledge-“to know the Father.” Theirs is the grandest crown of victory-“to overcome the wicked one.” But there remains an enemy in one sense more dangerous than the Evil One- the world. By the world in this place we are to understand that element in the material and human sphere, in the region of mingled good and evil, which is external to God, to the influence of His Spirit, to the boundaries of His Church-nay, which frequently passes over those boundaries. In this sense it is, so to speak, a fictitious world, a world of wills separated from God because dominated by self; a shadowy caricature of creation; an anti-kosmos, which the Author of the kosmos has not made. What has been well called “the great love not” rings out-“love not the world.” For this admonition two reasons of ever enduring validity are given by St. John.

(1) The application of the law of human nature, that two master passions cannot coexist in one man. “If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”

(2) The unsatisfactory nature of the world, its incurable transitoriness, its “visible tendency to nonexistence.” “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof.”

It will be well to consider how far this thought of the transitoriness of the world, of its drifting by in ceaseless change, is in itself salutary and Christian, how far it needs to be supplemented and elevated by that which follows and closes. the verse.

I There can be no doubt, then, that up to a certain point this conviction is a necessary element of Christian thought, feeling, and character; that it is at least among the preliminaries of a saving reception of Christ.

There is in the great majority of the world a surprising and almost incredible levity. There is a disposition to believe in the permanency of that which we have known to continue long, and which has become habitual. There is a tale of a man who was resolved to keep from his children the knowledge of death. He was the Governor of a colony, and had lost in succession his wife and many children. Two only, mere infants, were left. He withdrew to a beautiful and secluded island, and tried to barricade his daughters from the fatal knowledge which, when once acquired, darkens the spirit with anticipation. In the ocean island death was to be a forbidden word. If met with in the pages of a book, and questions were asked, no answer was to be given. If some one expired, the body was to be removed, and the children were to be told that the departed had gone to another country. It does not need much imagination to feel sure that the secret could not be kept; that some fish on the coral reef, or some bright bird in the tropic forest, gave the little ones the hint of a something that touched the splendour of the sunset with a strange presentiment; that some hour came when, as to the rest of us, so to them, the mute presence would insist upon being made known. Ours is a stranger mode of dealing with ourselves than was the fathers way of dealing with his children. We tacitly resolve to play a game of make believe with ourselves, to forget that which cannot be forgotten, to remove to an incalculable distance that which is inexorably near. And the fear of death with us does not come from the nerves, but from the will. Death ushers us into the presence of God. Those of whom, we speak hate and fear death because they fear God and hate His presence. Now it is necessary for such persons as these to be awakened from their illusion. That which is supremely important for them is to realise that “the world” is indeed “drifting by”; that there is an emptiness in all that is created, a vanity in all that is not eternal; that time is short, eternity long. They must be brought to see that with the world, the “lust thereof” (the concupiscence, the lust of it, which has the world for its object, which belongs to it, and which the world stimulates) passes by also. The world, which is the object of the desire, is a phantom and a shadow; the desire itself must be therefore the phantom of a phantom and the shadow of a shadow.

This conviction has a thousand times over led human souls to the one true abiding centre of eternal reality. It has come in a thousand ways. It has been said that one heard the fifth chapter of Genesis read, with those words eight times repeated over the close of each record of longevity, like the strokes of a funeral bill, “and he died”; and that the impression never left him, until he planted his foot upon the rock over the tide of the changing years. Sometimes this conviction is produced by the death of friends-sometimes by the slow discipline of life-sometimes no doubt it may be begun, sometimes deepened, by the preachers voice upon the watch night, by the effective ritualism of the tolling bell, of the silent prayer, of the well-selected hymn. And it is right that the worlds dancing in, or drinking in, the New Year, should be a hint to Christians to pray it in. This is one of the happy plagiarisms which the Church has made from the world. The heart feels as it never did before the truth of St. Johns sad, calm, oracular survey of existence. “The world passeth away, and the lust thereof.”

II But we have not sounded the depth of the truth-certainly we have not exhausted St. Johns meaning-until we have asked something more. Is this conviction alone always a herald of salvation? Is it always, taken by itself, even salutary? Can it never be exaggerated, and become the parent of evils almost greater than those which it supersedes?

We are led by careful study of the Bible to conclude that this sentiment of the flux of things is capable of exaggeration. For there is one important principle which arises from a comparison of the Old Testament with the New in this matter.

It is to be noticed that the Old Testament has infinitely more which corresponds to the first proposition of the text, without the qualification which follows it, than we can find in the New.

The patriarch Jobs experience echoes in our ears. “Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.” The Funeral Psalms make their melancholy chant. “Behold, Thou hast made my days as it were a span long. Verily every man living is altogether vanity. For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain spare me a little that I may smile again.” Or we read the words of Moses, the man of God, in that ancient psalm of his, that hymn of time and of eternity. All that human speech can say is summed up in four words, the truest, the deepest, the saddest, and the most expressive, that ever fell from any mortal pen. “We bring our years to an end, as a sigh.” Each life is a sigh between two eternities!

Our point is that in the New Testament there is greatly less of this element-greatly less of this pathetic moralising upon the vanity and fragility of human life, of which we have only cited a few examples-and that what there is lies in a different atmosphere, with sunnier and more cheerful surroundings. Indeed, in the whole compass of the New Testament there is perhaps but one passage which is set quite in the same key with our familiar declamations upon the uncertainty and shortness of human life-where St. James desires Christians ever to remember in all their projects to make deduction for the will of God, “not knowing what shall be on the morrow.” In the New Testament the voice which wails for a second about the changefulness and misery is lost in the triumphant music by which it is encompassed. If earthly goods are depreciated, it is not merely because “the load of them troubles, the love of them taints, the loss of them tortures”; it is because better things are ready. There is no lamentation over the change, no clinging to the dead past. The tone is rather one of joyful invitation. “Your raft is going to pieces in the troubled sea of time; step into a gallant ship. The volcanic isle on which you stand is undermined by silent fires; we can promise to bring you with us to a shore of safety where you shall be compassed about with songs of deliverance.”

It is no doubt true to urge that this style of thought and language is partly to be ascribed to a desire that the attention of Christians should be fixed on the return of their Lord, rather than upon their own death. But, if we believe Scripture to have been written under Divine guidance, the history of religion may supply us with good grounds for the absence of all exaggeration from its pages in speaking of the misery of life and the transitoriness of the world.

The largest religious experiment in the world, the history of a religion which at one time numerically exceeded Christendom, is a gigantic proof that it is not safe to allow unlimited license to melancholy speculation. The true symbol for humanity is not a skull and an hourglass.

Some two thousand five hundred years ago, towards the end of the seventh century before Christ, at the foot of the mountains of Nepaul, in the capital of a kingdom of Central India, an infant was born whom the world will never forget. All gifts seemed to be showered on this child. He was the son of a powerful king and heir to his throne. The young Siddhartha was of rare distinction, brave and beautiful, a thinker and a hero, married to an amiable and fascinating princess. But neither a great position nor domestic happiness could clear away the cloud of melancholy which hung over Siddhartha, even under that lovely sky. His deep and meditative soul dwelt night and day upon the mystery of existence. He came to the conclusion that the life of the creature is incurably evil from three causes-the very fact of existence, desire, and ignorance. The things revealed by sense are evil. None has that continuance and that fixity which are the marks of Law, and the attainment of which is the condition of happiness. At last his resolution to leave all his splendour and become an ascetic was irrevocably fixed. One splendid morning the prince drove to a glorious garden. On his road he met a repulsive old man, wrinkled, toothless, bent. Another day, a wretched being wasted with fever crossed his path. Yet a third excursion and a funeral passes along the road with a corpse on an open bier, and friends wailing as they go. His favourite attendant is obliged in each case to confess that these evils are not exceptional-that old age, sickness, and death are the fatal conditions of conscious existence for all the sons of men. Then the Prince Royal takes his first step towards becoming the deliverer of humanity. He cries-“woe, woe to the youth which old age must destroy, to the health which sickness must undermine, to the life which has so few days and is so full of evil.” Hasty readers are apt to judge that the Prince was on the same track with the Patriarch of Idumea, and with Moses the man of God in the desert-nay, with St. John, when he writes from Ephesus that “the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.”

It may be well to reconsider this; to see what contradictory principle lies under utterances which have so much superficial resemblance.

Siddhartha became known as the Buddha, the august founder of a great and ancient religion. That religion has of later years been favourably compared with Christianity – yet what are its necessary results, as drawn out for us by those who have studied it most deeply? Scepticism, fanatic hatred of life, incurable sadness in a world fearfully misunderstood; rejection of the personality of man, of God, of the reality of Nature. Strange enigma! The Buddha sought to win annihilation by good works; everlasting non-being by a life of purity, of alms, of renunciation, of austerity. The prize of his high calling was not everlasting life, but everlasting death; for what else is impersonality, unconsciousness, absorption into the universe, but the negation of human existence? The acceptance of the principles of Buddhism is simply a sentence of death intellectually, morally, spiritually, almost physically, passed upon the race which submits to the melancholy bondage of its creed of desolation. It is the opium drunkenness of the spiritual world without the dreams that are its temporary consolation. It is enervating without being soft, and contemplative without being profound. It is a religion which is spiritual without recognising the soul, virtuous without the conception of duty, moral without the admission of liberty, charitable without love. It surveys a world without nature, and a universe without God. The human soul under its influence is not so much drunken as asphyxiated by a monotonous, unbalanced, perpetual repetition of one half of the truth-“the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.”

For let us carefully note that St. John adds a qualification which preserves the balance of truth. Over against the dreary contemplation of the perpetual flux of things, he sets a constant course of doing-over against the world, God in His deepest, truest personality, “the will of God”-over against the fact of our having a short time to live, and being full of misery, an everlasting fixity, “he abideth forever”-(so well brought out by the old gloss which slipped into the Latin text, “even as God abideth forever”). As the Lord had taught before, so the disciple now teaches, of the rocklike solidity, of the permanent abiding, under and over him who “doeth.” Of the devotee who became in his turn the Buddha, Cakhya-Mouni could not have said one word of the close of our text. “He”-but human personality is lost in the triumph of knowledge. “Doeth the will of God”-but God is ignored, if not denied. “Abideth forever”-but that is precisely the object of his aversion, the terror from which he wishes to be emancipated at any price, by any self-denial.

It may be supposed that this strain of thought is of little practical importance. It may be of use, indeed, in other lands to the missionary who is brought into contact with forms of Buddhism in China, India, or Ceylon, but not to us in these countries. In truth it is not so. It is about half a century ago since a great English theologian warned his University that the central principle of Buddhism was being spread far and wide in Europe from Berlin. This propaganda is not confined to philosophy. It is at work in literature generally, in poetry, in novels, above all in those collection of “Pensees” which have become so extensively popular. The unbelief of the last century advanced with flashing epigrams and defiant songs. With Byron it softened at times into a melancholy which was perhaps partly affected. But with Amiel, and others of our own day, unbelief assumes a sweet and dirge-like tone. The satanic mirth of the past unbelief is exchanged for a satanic melancholy in the present. Many currents of thought run into our hearts, and all are tinged with a darkness before unknown from new substances in the soil which colours the waters. There is little fear of our not hearing enough, great fear of our hearing too much, of the proposition-“the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.”

All this may possibly serve as some explanation for the fact that the Christian Church, as such, has no fast for the last day of the year, no festival for New Years Day except one quite unconnected with the lessons which may be drawn from the flight of time. The death of the old year, the birth of the new year, have touching associations for us. But the Church consecrates no death but that of Jesus and His martyrs, no nativity but that of her Lord, and of one whose birth was directly connected with His own – John the Baptist. A cause of this has been found in the fact that the day had become so deeply contaminated by the abominations of the heathen Saturnalia that it was impossible in the early Church to continue any very marked observation of it. This may well be so; but it is worth considering whether there is not another and deeper reason. Nothing that has now been said can be supposed to militate against the observance of this time by Christians in private, with solemn penitence for the transgressions of the past year, and earnest prayer for that upon which we enter-nothing against the edification of particular congregations by such services as those most striking ones which are held in so many places. But some explanation is supplied why the “Water-night” is not recognised in the calendar of the Church.

Let us take our verse together as a whole and we have something better than moralising over the flight of time and the transitoriness of the world; something better than vulgarising “vanity of vanities” by vapid iteration.

It is hard to conceive a life in which death and evanescence have nothing that enforces their recognition. Now the removal of one dear to us, now a glance at the obituary with the name of some one of almost the same age as ourselves, brings a sudden shadow over the sunniest field. Yet surely it is not wholesome to encourage the perpetual presence of the cloud. We might impose upon ourselves the penance of being shut up all a winters night with a corpse, go half crazy with terror of that unearthly presence, and yet be no more spiritual after all.

We must learn to look at death in a different way, with new eyes. We all know how different dead faces are. Some speak to us merely of material ugliness, of the sweep of “decays effacing fingers.” In others a new idea seems to light up the face; there is the touch of a superhuman irradiation, of a beauty from a hidden life. We feel that we look on one who has seen Christ, and say-“We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” These two kinds of faces answer to the two different views of life.

Not the transitory, but the permanent; not the fleeting, but the abiding; not death, but life, is the conclusion of the whole matter. The Christian life is not an initial spasm followed by a chronic dyspepsia. What does St. John give us as the picture of it exemplified in a believer? Daily, perpetual, constant doing the will of God. This is the end far beyond-somewhat inconsistent with-obstinately morbid meditation and surrounding ourselves with multiplied images of mortality. Lying in a coffin half the night might not lead to that end; nay, it might be a hindrance thereto. Beyond the grave, outside the coffin, is the object at which we are to look. “The current of things temporal,” cries Augustine, “sweeps along. But like a tree over that stream has risen our Lord Jesus Christ. He willed to plant Himself as it were over the river. Are you whirled along by the current? Lay hold of the wood. Does the love of the world roll you onward in its course? Lay hold upon Christ. For you He became temporal that you might become eternal. For He was so made temporal as to remain eternal. Join thy heart to the eternity of God, and thou shalt be eternal with Him.”

Those who have heard the Miserere in the Sistine Chapel describe the desolation which settles upon the soul which surrenders itself to the impression of the ritual. As the psalm proceeds, at the end of each rhythmical pulsation of thought, each beat of the alternate wings of the parallelism, a light upon the altar is extinguished. As the wail grows sadder the darkness grows deeper. When all the lights are out and the last echo of the strain dies away, there would be something suitable for the penitents mood in the words-“the world passeth away, and the lust thereof.” Upon the altar of the Christian heart there are tapers at first unlighted, and before it a priest in black vestments. But one by one the vestments are exchanged for others which are white; one after another the lamps are lighted slowly and without noise, until gradually, we know not how, the whole place is full of light. And ever sweeter and clearer, calm and happy, with a triumph which is at first repressed and reverential, but which increases as the light becomes diffused, the words are heard strong and quiet-a plain song now that wilt swell into an anthem presently-“he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.”

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary