1 John 2:15
1 John 2:1515Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
JWs use — "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 ("no part of the world") as a proof-text for the wider neutrality and association doctrines.
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 (), ate with tax collectors and sinners, and prayed "I do not ask you to take them out of the world" (). 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.