Holy Wit – Reflections
#5 (Walking in the Light: Studies Through 1 John)
Scripture References: 1 John 2:12–17
There was once a man who bought a new chair.
It was not a throne, though he may have looked at it with a throne-like fondness. It was not a family heirloom. It had not crossed oceans, survived wars, or been handed down by a serious-looking grandfather who used words like “stewardship” and “mahogany.” It was just a chair.
But it was a fine chair.
The man saw it in a shop window one afternoon while walking past on an errand that had nothing whatever to do with chairs. That is how these things often begin. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “Today I shall be gently ambushed by furniture.” But there it was.
It had strong arms, good cushions, polished legs, and a look about it that seemed to say, “You have worked hard. You deserve a place to sit with dignity.” This was quite a bold claim for a chair, but the man was in no mood to argue with upholstery.
He went inside.
The shopkeeper, who had clearly dealt before with men who were trying to pretend they were only looking, said, “Very good chair. Very strong. Very comfortable. Will last many years.”
That last phrase did it.
Many years.
The man imagined himself sitting in that chair through storms, festivals, quiet evenings, family visits, cups of tea, books, naps, and important thoughts that would surely come more easily once he owned the correct chair. He imagined grandchildren one day saying, “That was Grandfather’s chair,” with appropriate reverence, as though the chair had helped negotiate peace treaties.
So he bought it.
For the first few weeks, he treated it with the tenderness usually reserved for newborn babies and delicate machinery. No one sat in it without permission. No one placed food near it. Children were warned. Visitors were guided toward other chairs. Cats, who do not recognize human ownership structures, were removed repeatedly and with rising indignation.
Then life happened.
A seam loosened.
One leg began to wobble.
A visitor spilled tea.
A child climbed onto it with shoes that had apparently been walking through every substance known to agriculture.
The sun faded one side.
The cat won.
Within a few years, the chair was still a chair, but it had stopped speaking in the language of permanence. It had become more honest. It no longer said, “I will last many years.” It said, “Everything made of fabric and wood is slowly negotiating with dust.”
This is not a criticism of chairs. Chairs are useful. Some are beautiful. A good chair at the end of a long day is one of those small mercies that reminds us the Lord understands knees, backs, and the strange collapse that overtakes human beings around evening.
The problem was never that the man owned a chair.
The problem began when the chair started carrying more weight than wood and cushion were ever meant to carry.
John writes, “Do not love the world or the things in the world.” That can sound, at first, like a command to frown at creation, mistrust enjoyment, and walk through life suspicious of every mango, sunset, song, and comfortable place to sit.
But John is not condemning God’s good creation.
He is not telling Christians to hate beauty, reject work, avoid family, or treat ordinary human life as something beneath holiness. Scripture begins with God making the world and calling it good. The Christian problem is not that the world exists. The problem is the fallen world-system that trains our hearts to live as though God does not matter.
John is warning us about love misplaced.
The world, in this sense, is not the soil beneath our feet or the neighbor across the road. It is the order of human desire arranged without reference to the Father. It is life organized around appetite, appearance, status, pride, possession, and self-rule. It is the voice that says, “You will be complete when you have this. You will be safe when people admire you. You will be free when no one tells you no. You will endure if you attach yourself to what everyone else is chasing.”
It is a liar with excellent marketing.
John names three great currents running through it: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
The lust of the flesh is desire that refuses to be governed by God. It is appetite climbing into the driver’s seat and insisting it knows the road. It may be sexual sin, drunkenness, greed, laziness, rage, or indulgence. But it may also look quieter than that. It may be the demand for comfort, the refusal to forgive, the need to be served, or the habit of saying, “I want this, therefore it must be right.”
The flesh is not always found in dark alleys.
Sometimes it sits politely in respectable rooms.
The lust of the eyes is desire stirred and ruled by what we see. This is especially dangerous because sight feels so immediate. We see what someone else owns, where they live, how they dress, how they are praised, what they eat, where they travel, and how polished their life appears from a careful distance. Then the heart begins its little calculations.
Why not me?
What has God withheld?
Why should they have that?
The eye is a useful servant but a poor shepherd. It can notice beauty, but it cannot define goodness. It can see abundance, but it cannot measure contentment. It can observe success, but it cannot judge faithfulness.
The pride of life is perhaps the most dignified-looking of the three. It boasts in what cannot last. It builds identity on position, money, education, achievement, knowledge, family name, influence, spiritual reputation, or the ability to appear untroubled while quietly falling apart.
It does not always shout, “Look at me.”
Sometimes it simply needs to be noticed.
And this is where John’s warning becomes both severe and merciful. “The world is passing away, and the lust of it.”
That chair will wear out.
So will the house around it.
So will the applause, the bank balance, the public image, the strength of the body, the fashion of the age, the reputation carefully polished, and the little kingdom each of us is tempted to build with ourselves at the center.
The world promises permanence while actively decaying. It speaks in the tone of forever while already fading at the edges. It offers security but cannot stop death. It offers pleasure but cannot cleanse guilt. It offers identity but cannot give eternal life.
John does not say this to make believers gloomy.
He says it to make us sane.
The Christian is not called to live with clenched fists against every earthly gift. We may receive the good things of this life with thanksgiving. Food, shelter, friendship, marriage, work, laughter, books, gardens, tools, music, and yes, even a comfortable chair may all be received as gifts from the Father.
But gifts must not become gods.
A gift points beyond itself to the Giver. An idol points back to itself and demands worship.
That is why John first reminds the church who they are. Little children, your sins are forgiven. Fathers, you have known Him who is from the beginning. Young men, you are strong, the Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one.
Before John tells believers what not to love, he reminds them who has already loved them.
Their sins are forgiven.
They know the Father.
They know the eternal Son.
The Word abides in them.
They have overcome the wicked one.
This is not bare moralism. John is not saying, “Try harder to be less worldly so God may accept you.” He is saying, “Because you belong to the Father, do not give your heart to what is passing away.”
The world is already fading.
The will of God is not.
“He who does the will of God abides forever.” This does not mean obedience earns eternal life. Eternal life is in Christ. But obedience shows the direction of the heart. The passing world produces passing desires. The eternal God produces enduring faith, enduring love, and enduring obedience.
So we hold the chair lightly.
We enjoy it, perhaps. We thank God for it. We repair it if we can. We let the cat have its small victories when resistance becomes unreasonable.
But we do not ask it to be eternal.
We do not ask anything in this world to be what only God can be.
The world says, “Hold tightly. This is your life.”
John says, “Look again. It is passing away.”
Christ says, “Follow Me.”
And the one who does the will of God abides forever.
#HolyWitBibleStudy #GordonMcGinnis #WalkingInTheLight #1John2
#5 (Walking in the Light: Studies Through 1 John)
Scripture References: 1 John 2:12–17
There was once a man who bought a new chair.
It was not a throne, though he may have looked at it with a throne-like fondness. It was not a family heirloom. It had not crossed oceans, survived wars, or been handed down by a serious-looking grandfather who used words like “stewardship” and “mahogany.” It was just a chair.
But it was a fine chair.
The man saw it in a shop window one afternoon while walking past on an errand that had nothing whatever to do with chairs. That is how these things often begin. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “Today I shall be gently ambushed by furniture.” But there it was.
It had strong arms, good cushions, polished legs, and a look about it that seemed to say, “You have worked hard. You deserve a place to sit with dignity.” This was quite a bold claim for a chair, but the man was in no mood to argue with upholstery.
He went inside.
The shopkeeper, who had clearly dealt before with men who were trying to pretend they were only looking, said, “Very good chair. Very strong. Very comfortable. Will last many years.”
That last phrase did it.
Many years.
The man imagined himself sitting in that chair through storms, festivals, quiet evenings, family visits, cups of tea, books, naps, and important thoughts that would surely come more easily once he owned the correct chair. He imagined grandchildren one day saying, “That was Grandfather’s chair,” with appropriate reverence, as though the chair had helped negotiate peace treaties.
So he bought it.
For the first few weeks, he treated it with the tenderness usually reserved for newborn babies and delicate machinery. No one sat in it without permission. No one placed food near it. Children were warned. Visitors were guided toward other chairs. Cats, who do not recognize human ownership structures, were removed repeatedly and with rising indignation.
Then life happened.
A seam loosened.
One leg began to wobble.
A visitor spilled tea.
A child climbed onto it with shoes that had apparently been walking through every substance known to agriculture.
The sun faded one side.
The cat won.
Within a few years, the chair was still a chair, but it had stopped speaking in the language of permanence. It had become more honest. It no longer said, “I will last many years.” It said, “Everything made of fabric and wood is slowly negotiating with dust.”
This is not a criticism of chairs. Chairs are useful. Some are beautiful. A good chair at the end of a long day is one of those small mercies that reminds us the Lord understands knees, backs, and the strange collapse that overtakes human beings around evening.
The problem was never that the man owned a chair.
The problem began when the chair started carrying more weight than wood and cushion were ever meant to carry.
John writes, “Do not love the world or the things in the world.” That can sound, at first, like a command to frown at creation, mistrust enjoyment, and walk through life suspicious of every mango, sunset, song, and comfortable place to sit.
But John is not condemning God’s good creation.
He is not telling Christians to hate beauty, reject work, avoid family, or treat ordinary human life as something beneath holiness. Scripture begins with God making the world and calling it good. The Christian problem is not that the world exists. The problem is the fallen world-system that trains our hearts to live as though God does not matter.
John is warning us about love misplaced.
The world, in this sense, is not the soil beneath our feet or the neighbor across the road. It is the order of human desire arranged without reference to the Father. It is life organized around appetite, appearance, status, pride, possession, and self-rule. It is the voice that says, “You will be complete when you have this. You will be safe when people admire you. You will be free when no one tells you no. You will endure if you attach yourself to what everyone else is chasing.”
It is a liar with excellent marketing.
John names three great currents running through it: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
The lust of the flesh is desire that refuses to be governed by God. It is appetite climbing into the driver’s seat and insisting it knows the road. It may be sexual sin, drunkenness, greed, laziness, rage, or indulgence. But it may also look quieter than that. It may be the demand for comfort, the refusal to forgive, the need to be served, or the habit of saying, “I want this, therefore it must be right.”
The flesh is not always found in dark alleys.
Sometimes it sits politely in respectable rooms.
The lust of the eyes is desire stirred and ruled by what we see. This is especially dangerous because sight feels so immediate. We see what someone else owns, where they live, how they dress, how they are praised, what they eat, where they travel, and how polished their life appears from a careful distance. Then the heart begins its little calculations.
Why not me?
What has God withheld?
Why should they have that?
The eye is a useful servant but a poor shepherd. It can notice beauty, but it cannot define goodness. It can see abundance, but it cannot measure contentment. It can observe success, but it cannot judge faithfulness.
The pride of life is perhaps the most dignified-looking of the three. It boasts in what cannot last. It builds identity on position, money, education, achievement, knowledge, family name, influence, spiritual reputation, or the ability to appear untroubled while quietly falling apart.
It does not always shout, “Look at me.”
Sometimes it simply needs to be noticed.
And this is where John’s warning becomes both severe and merciful. “The world is passing away, and the lust of it.”
That chair will wear out.
So will the house around it.
So will the applause, the bank balance, the public image, the strength of the body, the fashion of the age, the reputation carefully polished, and the little kingdom each of us is tempted to build with ourselves at the center.
The world promises permanence while actively decaying. It speaks in the tone of forever while already fading at the edges. It offers security but cannot stop death. It offers pleasure but cannot cleanse guilt. It offers identity but cannot give eternal life.
John does not say this to make believers gloomy.
He says it to make us sane.
The Christian is not called to live with clenched fists against every earthly gift. We may receive the good things of this life with thanksgiving. Food, shelter, friendship, marriage, work, laughter, books, gardens, tools, music, and yes, even a comfortable chair may all be received as gifts from the Father.
But gifts must not become gods.
A gift points beyond itself to the Giver. An idol points back to itself and demands worship.
That is why John first reminds the church who they are. Little children, your sins are forgiven. Fathers, you have known Him who is from the beginning. Young men, you are strong, the Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one.
Before John tells believers what not to love, he reminds them who has already loved them.
Their sins are forgiven.
They know the Father.
They know the eternal Son.
The Word abides in them.
They have overcome the wicked one.
This is not bare moralism. John is not saying, “Try harder to be less worldly so God may accept you.” He is saying, “Because you belong to the Father, do not give your heart to what is passing away.”
The world is already fading.
The will of God is not.
“He who does the will of God abides forever.” This does not mean obedience earns eternal life. Eternal life is in Christ. But obedience shows the direction of the heart. The passing world produces passing desires. The eternal God produces enduring faith, enduring love, and enduring obedience.
So we hold the chair lightly.
We enjoy it, perhaps. We thank God for it. We repair it if we can. We let the cat have its small victories when resistance becomes unreasonable.
But we do not ask it to be eternal.
We do not ask anything in this world to be what only God can be.
The world says, “Hold tightly. This is your life.”
John says, “Look again. It is passing away.”
Christ says, “Follow Me.”
And the one who does the will of God abides forever.
#HolyWitBibleStudy #GordonMcGinnis #WalkingInTheLight #1John2
Holy Wit – Reflections
#5 (Walking in the Light: Studies Through 1 John)
Scripture References: 1 John 2:12–17
There was once a man who bought a new chair.
It was not a throne, though he may have looked at it with a throne-like fondness. It was not a family heirloom. It had not crossed oceans, survived wars, or been handed down by a serious-looking grandfather who used words like “stewardship” and “mahogany.” It was just a chair.
But it was a fine chair.
The man saw it in a shop window one afternoon while walking past on an errand that had nothing whatever to do with chairs. That is how these things often begin. No one wakes up in the morning and says, “Today I shall be gently ambushed by furniture.” But there it was.
It had strong arms, good cushions, polished legs, and a look about it that seemed to say, “You have worked hard. You deserve a place to sit with dignity.” This was quite a bold claim for a chair, but the man was in no mood to argue with upholstery.
He went inside.
The shopkeeper, who had clearly dealt before with men who were trying to pretend they were only looking, said, “Very good chair. Very strong. Very comfortable. Will last many years.”
That last phrase did it.
Many years.
The man imagined himself sitting in that chair through storms, festivals, quiet evenings, family visits, cups of tea, books, naps, and important thoughts that would surely come more easily once he owned the correct chair. He imagined grandchildren one day saying, “That was Grandfather’s chair,” with appropriate reverence, as though the chair had helped negotiate peace treaties.
So he bought it.
For the first few weeks, he treated it with the tenderness usually reserved for newborn babies and delicate machinery. No one sat in it without permission. No one placed food near it. Children were warned. Visitors were guided toward other chairs. Cats, who do not recognize human ownership structures, were removed repeatedly and with rising indignation.
Then life happened.
A seam loosened.
One leg began to wobble.
A visitor spilled tea.
A child climbed onto it with shoes that had apparently been walking through every substance known to agriculture.
The sun faded one side.
The cat won.
Within a few years, the chair was still a chair, but it had stopped speaking in the language of permanence. It had become more honest. It no longer said, “I will last many years.” It said, “Everything made of fabric and wood is slowly negotiating with dust.”
This is not a criticism of chairs. Chairs are useful. Some are beautiful. A good chair at the end of a long day is one of those small mercies that reminds us the Lord understands knees, backs, and the strange collapse that overtakes human beings around evening.
The problem was never that the man owned a chair.
The problem began when the chair started carrying more weight than wood and cushion were ever meant to carry.
John writes, “Do not love the world or the things in the world.” That can sound, at first, like a command to frown at creation, mistrust enjoyment, and walk through life suspicious of every mango, sunset, song, and comfortable place to sit.
But John is not condemning God’s good creation.
He is not telling Christians to hate beauty, reject work, avoid family, or treat ordinary human life as something beneath holiness. Scripture begins with God making the world and calling it good. The Christian problem is not that the world exists. The problem is the fallen world-system that trains our hearts to live as though God does not matter.
John is warning us about love misplaced.
The world, in this sense, is not the soil beneath our feet or the neighbor across the road. It is the order of human desire arranged without reference to the Father. It is life organized around appetite, appearance, status, pride, possession, and self-rule. It is the voice that says, “You will be complete when you have this. You will be safe when people admire you. You will be free when no one tells you no. You will endure if you attach yourself to what everyone else is chasing.”
It is a liar with excellent marketing.
John names three great currents running through it: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
The lust of the flesh is desire that refuses to be governed by God. It is appetite climbing into the driver’s seat and insisting it knows the road. It may be sexual sin, drunkenness, greed, laziness, rage, or indulgence. But it may also look quieter than that. It may be the demand for comfort, the refusal to forgive, the need to be served, or the habit of saying, “I want this, therefore it must be right.”
The flesh is not always found in dark alleys.
Sometimes it sits politely in respectable rooms.
The lust of the eyes is desire stirred and ruled by what we see. This is especially dangerous because sight feels so immediate. We see what someone else owns, where they live, how they dress, how they are praised, what they eat, where they travel, and how polished their life appears from a careful distance. Then the heart begins its little calculations.
Why not me?
What has God withheld?
Why should they have that?
The eye is a useful servant but a poor shepherd. It can notice beauty, but it cannot define goodness. It can see abundance, but it cannot measure contentment. It can observe success, but it cannot judge faithfulness.
The pride of life is perhaps the most dignified-looking of the three. It boasts in what cannot last. It builds identity on position, money, education, achievement, knowledge, family name, influence, spiritual reputation, or the ability to appear untroubled while quietly falling apart.
It does not always shout, “Look at me.”
Sometimes it simply needs to be noticed.
And this is where John’s warning becomes both severe and merciful. “The world is passing away, and the lust of it.”
That chair will wear out.
So will the house around it.
So will the applause, the bank balance, the public image, the strength of the body, the fashion of the age, the reputation carefully polished, and the little kingdom each of us is tempted to build with ourselves at the center.
The world promises permanence while actively decaying. It speaks in the tone of forever while already fading at the edges. It offers security but cannot stop death. It offers pleasure but cannot cleanse guilt. It offers identity but cannot give eternal life.
John does not say this to make believers gloomy.
He says it to make us sane.
The Christian is not called to live with clenched fists against every earthly gift. We may receive the good things of this life with thanksgiving. Food, shelter, friendship, marriage, work, laughter, books, gardens, tools, music, and yes, even a comfortable chair may all be received as gifts from the Father.
But gifts must not become gods.
A gift points beyond itself to the Giver. An idol points back to itself and demands worship.
That is why John first reminds the church who they are. Little children, your sins are forgiven. Fathers, you have known Him who is from the beginning. Young men, you are strong, the Word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one.
Before John tells believers what not to love, he reminds them who has already loved them.
Their sins are forgiven.
They know the Father.
They know the eternal Son.
The Word abides in them.
They have overcome the wicked one.
This is not bare moralism. John is not saying, “Try harder to be less worldly so God may accept you.” He is saying, “Because you belong to the Father, do not give your heart to what is passing away.”
The world is already fading.
The will of God is not.
“He who does the will of God abides forever.” This does not mean obedience earns eternal life. Eternal life is in Christ. But obedience shows the direction of the heart. The passing world produces passing desires. The eternal God produces enduring faith, enduring love, and enduring obedience.
So we hold the chair lightly.
We enjoy it, perhaps. We thank God for it. We repair it if we can. We let the cat have its small victories when resistance becomes unreasonable.
But we do not ask it to be eternal.
We do not ask anything in this world to be what only God can be.
The world says, “Hold tightly. This is your life.”
John says, “Look again. It is passing away.”
Christ says, “Follow Me.”
And the one who does the will of God abides forever.
#HolyWitBibleStudy #GordonMcGinnis #WalkingInTheLight #1John2
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