1 John 3:1-2: “How great is the 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. {2} Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

Reading: (Psalms 103:8-18 )  The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. {9} He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; {10} he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. {11} For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; {12} as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. {13} As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him; {14} for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. {15} As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; {16} the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. {17} But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him, and his righteousness with their children’s children– {18} with those who keep his covenant and remember to obey his precepts.

There is no greater subject in all the world than the subject of the love of God. Why? Because if God loves us, it means that He is not far off in outer space someplace. It means that God is not distant, unreachable, and unconcerned with the world.

One would think that after an undeserving sinner experienced this love, he/she would never desire to turn to the old paths of sin again.  The thought of what God did for us through Christ ought to be enough to keep us walking with the Lord until we meet Him face to face. But this is not always the case.

Because God loves us and has demonstrated His love to us, then He must expect us to respond. He must expect us to love Him. Love expects to be loved in return. In fact, if someone loves us and we do not receive his love, then his love never touches us. We never experience his love.

We could go on and on listing the things that a person has to face if he does not love God. And note: he has to face them all alone. But thanks be to God, He loves the world. He loves all of us. Therefore, any of us who want to know God’s love and care can do so. All we have to do is respond to His love—open up our lives and receive His love and love Him in return.

John spent time as he closed the second chapter of his epistle with instruction concerning the ‘counterfeit’ nature of Satan, as compared to the truth about the deity of Jesus Christ. 1 John 3 warns us that in today’s world there are counterfeit Christians—“children of the devil” (1 John 3:10). But instead of listing the evil characteristics of Satan’s children, the Scripture gives us a clear description of God’s children. The contrast between the two is obvious.

Practicing righteousness and loving the brethren, of course, are not new themes. These two important subjects are treated in the first two chapters of this epistle, but in 1 John 3 the approach is different. In the first two chapters the emphasis was on fellowship: a Christian who is in fellowship with God will practice righteousness and will love the brethren.

But in 1 John 3-5, the emphasis is on sonship: because a Christian is “born of God,” he will practice righteousness and will love the brethren.

Every great personality mentioned in the Bible sinned at one time or another. Abraham lied about his wife (Gen. 12:10-20). Moses lost his temper and disobeyed God (Num. 20:7-13). Peter denied the Lord three times (Matt. 26:69-75). But sin was not the settled practice of these men. It was an incident in their lives, totally contrary to their normal habits. And when they sinned, they admitted it and asked God to forgive them.

The difference is that a true Christian knows God. A counterfeit Christian may talk about God and get involved in “religious activities,” but he does not really know God. The person who has been “born of God” through faith in Christ knows God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And because he knows them, he lives a life of obedience: he does not practice sin.

John begins by demanding that his people should remember their privileges. It is their privilege that they are called the children of God.

There is something even in a name. Some parents give their children some great scriptural name, to teach them repeatedly the story of the original bearer of the name, and so to give them a standard to live up to when he grows to manhood.

So the Christian has the privilege of being called the child of God. Just as to belong to a great school, a great regiment, a great church, a great household is an inspiration to fine living, so, even more, to bear the name of the family of God is something to keep a man’s feet on the right way and to set him climbing.

But, as John points out, we are not merely called the children of God; we are the children of God.

There is something here which we may well note. It is by the gift of God that a man becomes a child of God. By nature a man is the creature of God, but it is by grace that he becomes the child of God.

There are two English words which are closely connected but whose meanings are widely different, paternity and fatherhood. Paternity describes a relationship in which a man is responsible for the physical existence of a child; fatherhood describes an intimate, loving, relationship. In the sense of paternity all men are children of God; but in the sense of fatherhood men are children of God only when he makes his gracious approach to them and they respond.

While all men are children of God in the sense that they owe their lives to him, they become his children in the intimate and loving sense of the term only by an act of God’s initiating grace and the response of their own hearts.

Immediately the question arises: if men have that great honour when they become Christians, why are they so despised by the world? The answer is that they are experiencing only what Jesus Christ has already experienced. When he came into the world, he was not recognized as the Son of God; the world preferred its own ideas and rejected his. The same is bound to happen to any man who chooses to embark on the way of Jesus Christ.

The world does not know nor understand believers. This explains why believers are ridiculed, mocked, ignored, opposed, abused, rejected, and persecuted by the world. The persecution may come at work, at school, in the neighborhood, or anywhere else; the world just does not understand why believers act and live the way they do.

The world does not understand…

• why believers separate themselves from the pleasures and things of the world.
• why believers deny themselves and live sacrificially so that they can carry the message of Christ to the world and meet the needs of the desperate.
• why believers go to church so much and talk so much about Christ.

Note why the world does not understand believers: because the world did not know Jesus Christ. Think about it: God’s very own Son came into the world, but the world did not know Him. They wanted nothing to do with Him; they rejected Him. Now if the world rejected Jesus Christ, God’s very own Son, they are bound to reject God’s adopted children. The world is just unwilling to recognize and acknowledge that God is righteous and pure and just. They want nothing to do with a life-style that demands all that a person is and has.

What is in our future?

(i) When Christ appears in his glory, we shall be like him. Surely in John’s mind there was the saying of the old creation story that man was made in the image and in the likeness of God (Genesis 1:26). That was God’s intention; and that was man’s destiny.

(ii) When Christ appears, we shall see him and be like him. The goal of all the great souls has been the vision of God. The end of all devotion is to see God. But that vision of God is not for the sake of intellectual satisfaction; it is in order that we may become like him. There is a paradox here. We cannot become like God unless we see him; and we cannot see him unless we are pure in heart, for only the pure in heart shall see God (Matthew 5:8).

Paul said: For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18 )

The believer is to be made just like Christ, conformed to His very image. This means that believers shall be like Christ in person and in character. Believers shall possess a perfect body and being (1 Cor. 15:51-57).

This is a precious thought. It is more than just a general idea that believers are to be like Christ. It is a definite idea—the idea that what Christ is, believers shall be.

The emphatic word is that sentence is the word now. It is the first word in the Greek structure, and that is always the most emphasized word in a sentence. “Now we are the children of God.” Eternal life belongs to us now. We are not waiting until we die to get it, but we are born again right now. We have the life of Jesus Christ in us now. We are the heirs of all God’s glory and promises now. This is his theme throughout the whole letter.

We do not know everything, but we do know three definite things about the future:

Certainty #1: We know that he will appear. I wonder if there is anyone here who doubts that. This is the most certain fact of all history. You think death and taxes are sure — they are nothing compared to this. This is an absolutely inescapable fact in God’s program for mankind; he will appear. He appeared once, he will appear the second time. Of this there is no doubt. All history is moving to this goal. You who know your Bibles well know that even the apparent confusion that exists today is but creating the conditions predicted in the Scriptures, and are working out the great purposes of God. Remember, as we saw earlier in John’s letter, all this as far as your experience is concerned is no further away than your own death, and you do not know how soon that will come. So this event, this change (we shall be like him when he appears) is no further away than your own death — and may be much closer than that.

Certainty #2: “We know that we shall be like him. I urge you to read that very carefully now, and note the context out of which it comes. It is linked with our present limited knowledge. Note that it does not say, “when he appears we shall become like him.” There is a misconception that has arisen in many Christian minds which seemingly regards this verse as teaching that when Jesus Christ appears, when we see him at death or when he comes into time, we shall all suddenly become like him, in a moment, in a twinkling of an eye. Certainly as regards the body, this is so. Our bodies become like his. Paul speaks of it to the Philippians, “this vile body of our humiliation shall be made like unto his glorious body, his body of glory. All the groanings and weakness which we experience each day will be forgotten when our body is changed into a body like his. That happens, as Paul tells us in First Corinthians 15, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, when this mortal puts on immortality, and “Death is swallowed up in victory,” {1 Cor 15:54}.

But the body is but the shell of the inner life. We do not suddenly change our total character and personality when we see Jesus Christ, and there is no Scripture that says so. Rather, as John is saying here, and is brought out in other places as well, what we have been becoming, through the years of our life, will suddenly be revealed when he appears. And what we have been becoming is, little by little, stage by stage, like him. The full extent to which we have become like him will be revealed when we see him, and not before. That is what he means.

(2 Corinthians 3:18 )  And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Certainty #3 is mentioned in this verse, “we shall see him as he is.” “But,” you say, “according to what this verse says, this is the reason we become like him; when we see him as he is then we all become like him.” That is exactly what has given rise to what I have previously called a misconception in the Christian life, this idea that everyone is suddenly to become fully like Jesus when we see him as he is. No, no. We are already becoming like him, even when we see him as in a mirror, faintly, darkly, as Paul puts it. It does not take a full-orbed view of Christ to make us like him, that is happening even now.

But this little word for in this verse, is a Greek participle that can also be translated that. The best commentators admit that it is ambiguous whether this should be translated, “we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is” or whether, as I think, it should be translated, “we shall be like him that we might see him as he is,” i.e., in order to see him as he is. That is why we are being changed into his likeness now, in order that when we see him we shall see him as he is.

Turning Away from Sin and Its Enslavement

1 John 3:4-9: “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. {5} But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. {6} No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. {7} Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. {8} He 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. {9} No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.”

John has just said that the Christian is on the way to seeing God and being like him. There is nothing like a great aim for helping a man to resist temptation.

John goes on to imply certain basic truths about sin.

(i) He tells us what sin is. It is the deliberate breaking of a law which a man well knows. Sin is to obey oneself rather than to obey God.

(ii) He tells us what sin does. It undoes the work of Christ. Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (John 1:29). To sin is to bring back what he came into the world to abolish.

(iii) He tells us why sin is. It comes from the failure to abide in Christ. So long as we remember the continual presence of Jesus, we will not sin; it is when we forget that presence that we sin.

(iv) He tells us whence sin comes. It comes from the devil; and the devil is he who sins, as it were, on principle. We sin for the pleasure that we think it will bring to us; the devil sins as a matter of principle. The New Testament does not try to explain the devil and his origin; but it is quite convinced-and it is a fact of uersal experience-that in the world there is a power hostile to God; and to sin is to obey that power instead of God.

(v) He tells us how sin is conquered. It is conquered because Jesus Christ destroyed the works of the devil. He has broken the power of evil, and by his help that same victory can be ours.

Being Marked by Love

1 John 3:10-17: “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 a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother. {11} This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. {12} Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous. {13} Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. {14} We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. {15} Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him. {16} 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. {17} If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?”

1. Love does not persecute the righteous.
2. Second, if we love Christ, then the world will persecute us.
3. Love has compassion and gives to meet the needs of people.

The answer is clear: the love of God does not exist within a person who does not help those whom he sees in need. No matter what we profess, think, or argue, if we are not actively helping and giving—sacrificially giving—to meet the needs of the desperate and needy of our communities and of the world, we do not love God.

God loved us: He gave all that He was and had to save us. Therefore, we must love others: we must give all that we are and have to save them. If we do not, how can we say that the love of God dwells in us? For this is exactly what Christ did.