race—that is the recipient of God’s salvation (2:2; 4:9, 14) or to the material necessities of human life (3:17). But most often in 1 John “world” refers to human society that is set against God (3:1), that is the home of sinful patterns of life (2:16) and is under the power of the evil one (4:4). When John calls us to “not love the world or the things of the world,” he is referring not to the created order as such, which is good, but to a system of values and a sphere of temptation in human society