I. The world is nature's heaven. It is a carnal copy of a spiritual joy. It is a figment which he who is the prince of it sets up, whereby, indulging our senses, or pleasing our imaginations, or gratifying our vanity, he makes us rest in happiness which imitates heaven, but is not heaven, because it wants the essence of heaven it has not God.
II. Observe that that which is forbidden us is not going into the world, but the love of it. It is a very easy thing for a person used to the restraint of a religious education, or from a regard to the opinion of those whom he respects, never to enter into the world's dissipation, but yet all the while to come to the full under the condemnation of the text because he loves it and cherishes it in his heart. He has a world within. On the other hand, a man, from his necessary employment or a sense of duty, may go into many a worldly scene; he may appear to others a man of the world; but all the while his tastes and desires are away from it; his affections are above; the world is not his joy. And "the love of the Father" may be resting on that man only the more for his relation to that world to which he is unwillingly bound by circumstances over which he has no control.
III. Love is the resting of the affections. Where the heart settles and abides, there we say it lives. It is the satisfying point of desire. There are two great antagonistic principles in every man's heart, and the only way to expel the one is to bring the other to bear, for they will never long remain together. If we love God, we shall not want the world. As the child's toy grows valueless to the man, as the track we leave glistening behind us across the ocean, as the dark pit from which we mount up into daylight such, and less than such, when you have once felt a Father's mercy and tasted a Father's love, will all this world seem to you.
J. Vaughan, Sermons,1865.
Worldly Affections Destructive of Love to God.
There are things in the world which, although not actually sinful in themselves, do nevertheless so check the love of God in us as to stifle and destroy it. They will, by a most subtle but inevitable effect, stifle the pure and single love of our hearts towards God, and that in many ways. For, in the first place, they actually turn away the affections of the heart from God. Love of worldly things plainly defrauds Him of our loyalty, and checks, if it does not absolutely thrust our love to Him out of our hearts. And, in the next place, it impoverishes, so to speak, the whole character of the mind. Even the religious affections which remain undiverted are weakened and lowered in their quality. They are like the thin fruits of an exhausted soil. Consider somewhat more closely the particular consequences of this love of the world.
I. It brings a dulness over the whole of a man's soul. To stand apart from the throng of earthly things and to let them hurry by as they will and whither they will is the only sure way to calmness and clearness in the spiritual life. It is by living much alone with God, by casting off the burden of things not needful to our inner life, by narrowing our toils and our wishes to the necessities of our actual lot, that we become familiar with the world unseen.
II. As we grow to be attached to the things that are in the world, there comes over us what I may call a vulnerableness of mind. We lay ourselves open on just so many sides as we have objects of desire. We give hostages to this changeful world, and we are ever either losing them or trembling lest they be wrested from us. Every earthly fondness is an ambush for the solicitations of the wicked one. We can with great care in due season disentangle ourselves from all needless hindrances. The rest will be no let to the love of God. All pure loves may dwell under its shadow. Only we must not suffer them to shoot above and to overcast it, for the love of God will not grow in the shade of any worldly affection. Above all, let us pray Him to shed abroad in our hearts more and more of His love, that is, a fuller and deeper sense of His exceeding love towards us.
H. E. Manning, Sermons,vol. i., p. 62.
Reference: 1 John 2:15. E. J. Hardy, Faint yet Pursuing,p. 222.