Outlasting the Last Days, 1 John 2:15-27

I’ve been to a few graduation parties this summer, and I always smile at the snapshots that do their best to capture 18 years of a student’s life up to that point. From chubby baby to present day, so much has happened, and so much has changed! If I know the graduate well enough, this is the moment my eyes well up quite enough. 

At one party, we were given a slip of paper and asked to put a piece of advice for the graduate into a jar. Hmm. I immediately try to summarize just one single, memorable lesson from my life that might be helpful in theirs. What’s the message from me to them as they go out into the world? Because the world certainly has a message for them. If the world strutted into their grad party, it would throw into the jar all the advice it has ever given to billions of graduates across time:

Put yourself first. 

Take whatever looks good. 

Find security in success.  

It’s a message that defines everything about the world, and, upon examination, it’s a message all about what to love. Paul explained the kind of love people would have in the last days, and it sounds strikingly similar to John’s description of the world:

Love of self

Love of pleasure

Love of money

Why is love spoken of with such caution - to the young, to the old, to graduates? Because, what we love takes us along with it for a shared future. If the world can direct our love, it will direct our steps into its own destiny. Illustrating individually what John warned corporately, Paul grieved that Demas “loved this present world”, and it resulted in his desertion of the faith. He didn’t last, because he chased what couldn’t last. To love the world is to reject the Father’s love, most clearly understood in Christ. No one can have the Father’s love without the Son, the only way to the Father.  John says that taking an anti-Christ position reveals a lack of belief in the heart from the beginning and also that the world’s expiration date is near. 

Since the world isn’t forever, don’t love what doesn’t last. 

But the Spirit lasts forever, present in a life from the very beginning of someone embracing Christ, and He is the ultimate teacher regarding who Jesus truly is. His original and genuine gospel message joins believers forever to the Son and to the Father; anyone who teaches something additional or alternate is a counterfeit. In Christ, God’s promise of eternal life becomes personal everlasting life, because He takes us along with Him for a shared future.

And so, graduate, as you go out into the world, love what lasts.