See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.
Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.
Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: anyone who does not do what is right is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their brother and sister, (1 John 3, NIVUK).
John, whose Gospel and three letters we have today, was one of the first to follow Jesus, one of the three closest disciples who – along with Peter and James – witnessed the Glory of Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration, he sat next to Jesus at the Last Supper, and he was the one to whom Jesus committed His mother as He was dying on the cross; and John was the one to whom Jesus gave the endtime prophecies of the Book of Revelation when he was a prisoner in exile for his faith in the Island of Patmos in his old age. He had such an experience of who Jesus really is!
This is what he wrote in 1 John 3:1: “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called the sons of God!” Can you imagine how great the Love of God is in calling us ‘sons of God’?! This is a tremendous gift, a demonstration of His unlimited Love!
But this is the downside: John says, the world doesn’t know us – because the world doesn’t recognise who God is! People of this world don’t recognise us as children of God, though they may consider us to be ‘Christian’ and ‘religious’. But the reality is, we are children of God. We are! We’re born again as God’s sons and daughters!
This is who we are now, but, John says in v2, we don’t know what we, one day, will be like… When Christ appears, we shall see Him, as He really is, and we shall be ‘like Him’! But what will this be is a mystery. In the beginning, in Genesis, God said, “Let US create man in Our Own Image”! And when the disciples asked Jesus, “Show us the Father”, He replied, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father!” Now, when Jesus comes back, we shall be ‘like Him’... I don’t think this means we lose our individual appearance, but rather that our earthly bodies will be transformed to be like His Resurrection Body… Remember, Jesus was able to ‘appear in their midst’ after His resurrection – without opening the doors! Because He was fully spirit, as well as flesh… So will we be.
John goes on, v3, that everyone who has this hope of being like Jesus, of having an eternal body, ‘purifies himself’. Because the Lord is pure! If we want to be like Him, literally, physically, spiritually, then we have to purify ourselves, just as He is pure! Just as He, in His flesh, also had to resist the devil’s temptations, so must we! John is clear, v4, “Whoever commits sin transgresses also the Law…” Jewish converts were often uncertain of their relationship with the old Jewish Law. Jesus and the early apostles made it clear, in Christ we are not bound by the Law of Moses. But if we commit sin, we also sin against the old Jewish Law.
John says, v5, “You know that Jesus, who is sinless, came to take away our sin!” There is no sin in Him! V6, John says, “Whosever abides in Him does not sin!” This is why Jesus said to Nicodemus, “You must be born again, from above!” John is dealing with a very serious issue: that what we have is not religion, not ritual, not rules. We have Christ. We are born again now, with His sinless nature. When we believed, we died to sin, to self, to the old life, and we are born again as sons and daughters of God! And if we are born of Him, then just as Jesus did not sin, neither can we! John says, v6, “Whosever abides in Him does not sin! And whoever does sin, has not seen Him or known Him!” This is strong! We have to crucify the old nature, it’s a battle we have to fight. We have to live and walk ‘in the Spirit’. Galatians 5:16-25.
You can be very religious, you can be in a religious position, you can be a priest or a pastor - but unless you are born again, you do not have the life of Christ in you! There are too many ‘in the Church’ who are not born again, and therefore are not set free from the life of sin.
V7ff, “Little children, don’t let anyone deceive you: he who does what is right, is righteous, even as Christ is righteous. But he that commits sin is of the devil: for the devil sins from the beginning.”
We all need salvation, we all need to be born again
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters, (v16): It’s very clear – we need to show the love that we have in a very practical way and demonstrate that love even to those outside of Christ – that’s the only way we can show that the Love of God is in us. If we have more than we need and fail to supply the need of others, we fail to demonstrate God’s Love!
John is trying to teach us, as spiritual children, born into this new life, into the Family and Kingdom of God, what God expects of us, His children. This is life within the Church, in the heart of the individual. John is writing to the believers, to you and to me, as to little children, born again as sons and daughters of God, v18, “Little children, let us not love in word or in speech, but in what we DO in Truth.” It’s so easy for us, who consider ourselves to be born again from above, to speak a lot... Talk, talk, talk… But God requires of us more than talk… He requires action.
Words without action are meaningless. How we live here on earth matters to Christ; we must live our lives abiding in Him.
And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him, (1 John 2:28-29, NKJV).
This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us, (1 John 3:19-24, NIVUK).