---
title: 1 John 2:15
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-john-2-15/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/1-john-2-15.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: 1 John 2:15
testament: NT
section: Letters
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# 1 John 2:15

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

## JW Usage

JWs use 1 John 2:15 — "do not love either the world or the things in the world" — as a categorical warrant for separation from outside society. The "world" in JW publications is regularly treated as everything outside the organisation: secular education, careers in armed service, organised sports, non-Witness friendships, holidays, civic engagement. The verse functions alongside John 17:16 ("no part of the world") as a proof-text for the wider neutrality and association doctrines.

## Protestant Usage

John defines what he means by "world" in the very next verse — "the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the pretentious display of one's means of life" (v.16). The reference is to the world's idolatrous and self-indulgent value system, not to the persons within it. Jesus loved "the world" he came to save (John 3:16), ate with tax collectors and sinners, and prayed "I do not ask you to take them out of the world" (John 17:15). John's "do not love the world" is a moral category — guarding the heart from the world's appetites — not a membership category that brackets out every non-Christian neighbour as forbidden company.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [Words That End the Conversation — JW Vocabulary as Thought-Control](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/loaded-language-thought-control.md) — 1 Peter 3:15 — Gentleness and Respect, Not Labels [Authority]