Thank you to John for this week’s MWB
Demas
From prison in Rome, the apostle Paul writes to Timothy, in probably the last letter of his life, “Do your best to come to me quickly, for Demas, because he loved this world, has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica…” (2 Timothy 4:10).
Those words must be among the saddest in the Bible. The desertion of Demas is clearly very painful to Paul. Demas was previously one of Paul’s close associates, a “fellow-worker” (Philemon 24). But now he has fallen “in love with this present world” (literally “the now age”). We don’t know exactly how or why this happened: maybe Demas was scared of being associated with Paul, and was unwilling to suffer for the gospel (cf. 2 Timothy 1:8). However it happened, Demas fell in love with “the now age”.
How about us? In many ways our western culture encourages us to regard this age as the only age, this world as the only world. A popular car-sticker asserts “One life – live it!” Funerals nowadays tend to look only back, rather than forwards to the world to come. Many people have a “bucket list” of things they must do or see before they die. The strong message is “This world is all there is, so you’d better make the most of it!”
The apostle John wrote to Christian believers “Do not love the world or anything in the world…For all that is in the world – the cravings of sinful man, the desire of the eyes and the boasting of what he has and does, is not from the Father but is from the world” (1 John 2:15f).
Sadly, Demas loved the world: his mindset was just on the “now”. What about us?
“We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come” (Nicene Creed)