"Do Not Agape the World!" What?!

7/14/2025

Did you know... 1 John 2:15 uses Agapaō, not Phileō? Really? Think about it.

“Do not love (ἀγαπᾶτε) the world...”

Do not agape the world! What?! The use of agapaō in this verse suggests a deep allegiance or VALUE-based devotion to the world system—not just emotional fondness or relational closeness (which would be phileō). That is the meaning of us loving God, in an agape way: our values and priorities and desires align, and He doesn’t have to do anything whatsoever for us to love Him. It is not merit-based love. It is unconditional, truth-based love.

That’s how He loves us. For God so loved, agape’d, the world that He gave His only son as a gift. It certainly is not merit-based that God loves the world, or friendship-based, phileo.

So what is God saying in 1 John 2:15? “Do not love, agape (ἀγαπᾶτε) the world...”

It’s not merely “friendship” or “affection with the world” that’s warned against. Rather, it’s prioritizing the world’s values (pride, lust, materialism, rebellion, self-advancement, self-preservation) over God—misdirected worship or loyalty. One could be a total loner, no social life whatsoever, no “fun”—but still have a priority system that is 100% about Self, rather than God the Creator “who is ever to be praised.” To agape the world is to accept the world as God and an end in itself, the only outcome, the only value, in complete ignorance of, or complete blackout of thoughts that extend beyond this present age. Do not agape this present age, do not think this present age should own your allegiance, even if unmerited.

If the world gives you nothing, just as the world has given God nothing, and you maintain an allegiance to it anyway, you have agape for the world. Agapē-love is a moral choice and willful commitment, a total orientation of the heart.

The Bible does use φιλέω (phileō)*—for emotional attachment, fondness, and “relational love,” including camaraderie and friendship.

“You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.” (James 4:4 )

In the Greek, ἡ φιλία τοῦ κόσμου ἔχθρα τοῦ θεοῦ ἐστίν, “Friendship, love, camaraderie, personal alignment or affectionate connection φιλία (philia) with the world is hostility toward God.”

This phileo relationship of commonality and peace and alignment with the world—is betrayal and hostility and hatred towards God. It is adultery.

Summary? Do not be friends with the world on a camaraderie or alignment basis. That makes you God’s enemy. That’s not a good place to be.

Also, do not agape the world. Even if we have no friends or fun, and we are not digested by friendship with the world and its pleasures, but turn our faces away from God, and we give the world unmerited love by ignoring God and His plans and desires—we are activists who love ourselves and “deliberately forget” and ignore our God and Creator and the Lover of our souls.

For us? Agape God. Love says, “It doesn’t matter what happens to me.” Paul and Silas worshiped while in prison, perhaps awaiting a death sentence or being murdered in their cell. They didn’t sing SO the jail bars would open. They had no such expectation, though they knew God could do anything. It was unlikely that they thought of that specific thing, even though it happened to Peter. Paul and Silas and Peter and the others had no motive—other than they trusted God and any outcome, because all outcomes were in God’s hands. Self preservation was not a goal. They agaped God and not the world.

The world’s priority system meant nothing to them. They owed the world nothing. The world had nothing for them that they wanted, and could take nothing from them that they needed. They did not agape the world.

Stephen felt the same as the rocks were crushing his body. James felt the same as did John the Baptist when the sword was falling on their necks. Tens of thousands of similar stories by honest disciples of Jesus.

“Do not love agape (ἀγαπᾶτε) the world...” (1John 2:15) and ALSO, do not befriend or blend in with the world. “Anyone who chooses to be a friend, phileo, of the world—becomes an enemy of God.”

Suffice it to say, “Come out from among them and be separate says the Lord, and I will be your God and you will be my people.”

We just don’t live in their dimension or realm. We’re not their friends, “If they hated Me they will hate you also.” “Dead to the world, and the world to us.”

The XY axis1, Flatlands, cannot understand the Z axis.

“None of the rulers of this age knew; for had they known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But as it is written: ‘Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.’ But God has revealed them to us through His Spirit. For the Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God. For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one. For ‘who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?’ But we have the mind of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 2:8-16)

1In this conversation, the XY-axis versus the Z-axis is being used as an illustration of the difference between eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil vs eating of the Tree of Life. XY-axis living is a “flat” natural living of good vs evil. Z-axis is a supernatural Zoe life in Jesus. Back

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