1 John 2:16

One of the most well-known verses in 1 John, and in the NT, is 1 John 2:16.  However, it is commonly mis-taught, possibly because of translation limitations.  Let’s look at the verse together and see what God is saying…

For all that is in the world,
the lust of the flesh, and
the lust of the eyes, and
the pride of life,
is not of the Father,
but is of the world.  (KJV)

Seems pretty simple.  There are three things named that are “in the world,” (flesh, eyes, life itself), using every day words that leads us to be believe we can easily grasp the teaching.  Anyone reading these words has flesh, eyes, and life itself.

And we likewise think we understand the two words modifying the above three, namely: “lust” and “pride.”

But, let’s dig deeper.

“World” (Gr. kosmos, κόσμος,  Strong’s number G2889)

The “world” bookends the verse, as the first line defines the realm being addressed–“all that is IN”–and the last line addresses “all that is OF” signifying the possession “of the world.”  The world, the kosmos, holds lust and pride, and such lust and pride belong to it.

The word kosmos does not mean the planet earth and all the stuff residing on it or even our period of time; there are other Greek words not used here for these ideas.  The word kosmos used here is freighted with the underlying idea of beauty, order, system, organization, purposefulness.  (It is the root of our English word “cosmetics”).  So this verse is talking about the ordered world system, which makes a claim on it being well-done, commendable, something that looks, feels, seems good, even beautiful.

Let’s now turn to what the verse tells us that is “in” the kosmos, and by which it is ordered, made (according to man’s view) into something good, commendable.

“Lust” (epithymia, ἐπιθυμία, G1939)

The verse first highlights a passion (“lust”) from two sources, flesh and eyes.  The word lust in English has a strong negative connotation, and a root connection to sex.

The Greek NT word, epi-thumyia however, means the thing on which or by which I express a powerful, driving passion, a deep longing, even craving, but which can be a good thing or an evil thing depending on the context.  Consider Jesus’s words with His disciples in Luke 22:15 “With epithumia I have epihumeoo to eat this passover with you before I suffer.” (Ephithumeoo is the verb form of epithumia).  If we were simply to use the gloss “lust” for this word in Luke 22, we would read that Jesus was with lust, lusting to eat the passover with His disciples.  This would be a serious mis-translation.

So, it is best to translate epithumia somewhat awkwardly (which is why translators don’t typically do so) as follows:  “the driving passions of the flesh,” and likewise for “the eyes.”  So doing makes it clear that the problem is not the driving passion itself (epithumia); it is the source, the environment, from which should passion originates and to which it is directed.

Now, let’s turn to the first such driver, the flesh.

Flesh (sarx, σάρξ, G4561)

The word translated flesh typically carries the idea of something beyond genuine, naturally biological needs.  So this reference here is not to the passion one might have for food after not having eaten for most of a day, or for water after a long run on a hot day.  Sarx is the idea of that demand of living things way beyond anything naturally needed.  Although it does not mean some like drug addiction, as such would be a visible and obvious example of sarx; the limitation of a drug addition example is that it is obviously something wrong, evil.  But sarx can be, and is in this context of “in” and “of” the kosmos, something that appears and is claimed to be a good, even a great thing.

Eyes (ophthalmic, ὀφθαλμός, G3788)

The literal use of “eyes,” like “flesh,” just makes reference to a body part.  Of course something deeper is in view here.  Let us go back to the very first sin, the act of Eve to the temptation of The Serpent:

Genesis 3:6 So when the woman saw

that the tree was good for food,

that it was pleasant to the eyes, and

a tree desirable to make one wise,

she took of its fruit and ate.

She also gave to her husband with her,

and he ate. 

7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and

they knew that they were naked; and

they sewed fig leaves together and

made themselves coverings.  NKJV

Clearly the eyes were a sensory agent that connected to an innermost processor of the images viewed, which then concluded that it was good “to see” (know) what God had expressly forbidden, with the horribly ironic end that Eve, and Adam, did not want “to see” the result such that they were impelled to cover up, hide from their sin, from each other, and from God as the next verses show.  (We’ve been seeking “to see” that which is not good, and suffering the deepest distress from so doing, ever since.  Adam, by the way, “saw” fallen Eve, like what he saw so much that he chose her rather than God, so he was not deceived but willful; and so it has been ever since).

Pride (alazoneia, ἀλαζονεία, G212)

Now, we reach the crescendo of the three-part list of “the world” and its content and possessions, “pride.”  This translated word is most unhelpful and the source of much mis-teaching about this verse.

“Pride” as we customarily use the term is indeed a source of much conflict and evil.  A typical dictionary defines “pride” as inordinate or excessive self-esteem, ostentatious (elaborate) display or drawing attention to oneself or one’s achievements as something far more commendable than the ordinary, and than ordinary men (and women).

There is a wonderful Greek word for such definition that occurs often in the Bible, and which has a direct transliterated use in English:  it is the word “hubris.”  However, it is not “hubris” that occurs in this verse, but a quite rare word–alazoneia–which means something importantly distinct from “hubris.”

Alazoneia only occurs one other time in the NT, James 4:16.  It does occur in other Greek literature and derives from the root word alazon, which means someone who is a boastful pretender.

So “the pride of life,” is about the pretending that everything looks good, even great, usually by drawing attention away from that which shows the true condition to be just the opposite.  It is exactly what Adam and Eve did in Eden upon their sin, hiding to make things look differently and better than they truly were.  They had become fakes.  And, so have we all; that’s the nature of fallen man at work in the kosmos, where he is always hiding his sin and making the place look ordered, and beautiful, all without, even despite, God.

It is our heart to make it appear that the passions we are driven to follow by the flesh and the eye are creating for us all something about which we can boast by pretending.  Fallen mankind is everyone in our normal state, mask-wearers hiding from others and God, and even trying our best to hide from ourselves.

When John the Baptist arrived on the scene he was in a kosmos of Jewish legalism whereby man was commonly deluded (pretending) to be righteous under the law.  Consider the parable Jesus gave about the Pharisee and the (despised) Tax Collector praying at and near the Temple in Jerusalem:

Luke 18:9 Also He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, ‘God, I thank You that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’ 13 And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”  NKJV

The Pharisee was being alazoneia, that he was a righteous before God and man, while he was neither, while the Tax Collector, who was despised because such men were powerful authorities, agents of Rome’s demand for taxes to support their Empire, and who were often crooks exploiting their power for personal gain, was at this moment stripped of his natural alazoneia to see his true standing before God.  Jesus said that it was the Tax Collector, not the Pharisee, who was justified in God’s sight.  It is God’s ways that are the opposite of man’s.

John the Baptist was God’s forerunner preaching repentance.  But it was a repentance from alazoneia that our keeping the Law could ever make us right before God.  It is why Jesus began the magnificent Sermon on the Mount with “Blessed are the poor in spirit…”  Because being in such condition, which is the opposite of the alazoneia of life, that gets us to see God truly, and thus our fallen condition and nature truly, and so long for the Saviour Who alone can do what we cannot do and in ourselves do not even desire to do; we are all too comfortable hiding, pretending.