The reason we are not to love the world is that the world’s values are in opposition to God. The cravings of sinful man are the sinful interests and desires that draw us away from God. The lust of [the] eyes refers to sinful desires that corrupt us. The eye is often used as a figure of speech to refer to sinful passions (Matt. 5:28).

When Eve looked at the forbidden fruit, it was “pleasing to the eye.” David’s sin with Bathsheba started when he looked on Bathsheba taking a bath (2 Sam. 11:2). It might be translated, “the desires that originate in what we see.” The boasting of what he has and does refers to the arrogance and pride that can overtake us as we try to “get ahead of the Joneses” and when we rely on ourselves rather than God for our material possessions and worldly positions.

These values are foolish for two reasons. First, they do not come from the Father. Therefore, they interfere with our fellowship with the Father. Second, we are all going to die, and what we are living for will come to nothing. The well-known saying of slain missionary Jim Elliot seems appropriate here: “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to get what he cannot lose.”

We might paraphrase this whole passage: “Do not embrace the world’s ways or goods. When you do, it squeezes out your love for God. When you live for ‘getting your own way,’ and for ‘getting everything you want,’ and for ‘looking good compared to others,’ you are not living for God but for the world. This is foolish because it suffocates your relationship with God, and in the end, it will all go up in smoke anyway.”^[4]

This verse clarifies in vivid terms those things that come from the evil world and attempt to lead astray those who have believed in Jesus Christ. Again it must be emphasized that this condemnation of everything that is in the world is not a declaration that the world created by God is evil. John fully embraced the doctrine of the goodness of creation as taught in Genesis 1–2 (see John 1:1–18). Rather, it is a proclamation that humanity in its sinfulness has followed evil rather than good and has worshiped the created things rather than the Creator (Rom 1:20). The problem is not that God created the material things of the world. The problem is that people have made these things into idols. The three things listed in this verse—“the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does”—should not be seen as a comprehensive list of vices. These are avenues by which sinful humanity is especially prone to pervert the goodness of God’s creation.

John first mentions the “cravings” or “lust” (the NIV translates two occurrences of the Gk. word epithymia by these two English words) of “sinful man” (Gk. sarx, “flesh”). The terms John uses in the Greek text, epithymia and sarx, are basically neutral terms. Epithymia can be used to describe both positive and negative human desires (cf. 1 Thess 2:17, which relates Paul’s “desire” to see his readers; Phil 1:23, where Paul relates his desire to be with Christ; and negatively Rom 1:24, which describes the “sinful desires” of the pagan heart). Most often it is used in the negative sense. The term sarx is not necessarily negative in that it may denote the idea of the whole person in his or her strengths and weaknesses. Yet it is obvious that in our present text John emphasizes the negative meaning of these terms that arises from the tendency of human beings to fulfill the natural desires they have that are contrary to God’s will. We are not sinful because we sin. We sin because we are sinful. We enter the world with a nature and bent predisposed to sin (cf. Rom 3:9–20). The only remedy for this sin condition, which results in both physical and spiritual death, is to become a child of God through faith in Jesus Christ. Schnackenburg argues that John has in mind “the overwhelming sexual desires which drive human beings to excess, the consequences of which can be devastating.”²⁴⁷ Although these types of desires must certainly be included, even emphasized in what John describes, one narrows the meaning of the phrase too much if this becomes the exclusive meaning of the text. John would include anything and any way in which humans improperly fulfill fleshly desires (overeating, drunkenness, etc.).

John then moves to address the “lust of his eyes,” which can be seen as an aspect of the “cravings of the sinful man” that he previously discussed. The eyes in and of themselves cannot be said to be guilty of sinful desires. Our eyes are a precious gift from God (Prov 20:12). They are, however, often the means by which sinful desires are introduced into the mind of the individual. Eyes are windows into the soul. “It is the eyes that lead most directly and quickly from the external observation to evil thoughts latent in the human heart” (cf. Mark 7:21–23). This reality is affirmed in the teachings of Jesus, who in the antitheses in the Sermon on the Mount equates adultery with the lustful look (5:27–30). Again one must be careful not to limit this area of temptation to sexual desire. Dodd notes that the desire of the eyes can be understood as “the tendency to be captivated by the outward show of things, without enquiring into their real values.” This insight cuts to the heart of the issue in that all of these temptations of the world focus on enjoyment in the present without an analysis or understanding of the future ramifications. How an action, or its value, compares with the worth of the eternal things that come from God must always be factored into the equations of life.

The final temptation that John cites is the “boasting of what he [man] has and does.” This translation of the phrase alazoneia tou biou (“the pride or vain glory of life”) focuses on an objective understanding of the genitive construction to condemn pride and boasting about having and doing things this worldly system deems important. Again one should not be too quick to dismiss the subjective genitive interpretation, for it is likely that John is also condemning the pride that results from giving false value to the things of the world. This pride that results from and in worldly possession is an affront to God, for it leads to a glorification of the self and a failure to realize the dependence of humanity upon God, the Creator, for existence. In this area of temptation, individuals make idols of their livelihood, social standing, and any other status symbol that the world determines is important but that matters little to God.²⁵² Pride, prestige, power, and position count for nothing in the kingdom of God. The value system of this world is turned on its head when God provides the evaluation.^[5]