Sit up
straight and pay attention! This is how
John opens the third chapter of his letter to the church. In the first ten verses of this chapter the
apostle is going to present to us a three part symphony of sight. But this is not a vision born of retinas,
irises, light, or color. It is a
spiritual sight. It is seeing with the
eyes of our regenerated hearts, made alive in Christ Jesus. It is a sight beyond sight. John will begin by opening our eyes to the
enormity of what it means to be showered by the love of the Father through our
adoption as His sons and daughters. We
who are in Christ are born of God, John says.
Then he will take us through what it means that we have been cleansed by
Christ. Finally, our sight will be
directed at the very necessary opposition to Satan and the contrast between the
children of God and the children of the devil.
But first, to start things off with a bang, John grabs our attention
like a schoolmaster presented with a room full of rebellious students. Allow me to explain how he does this.
The Greek
language employed by the authors of the New Testament is incredibly flexible
and nuanced. When it comes to verbs
these ancient writers had multiple grammatical tools available to them to dial
in precisely what they wanted to convey to the reader about a given word. These tools included the number and person of
the verb as well as the tense, voice and mood.
Of particular interest in 1st John 3 is the mood of the very
first word in the chapter. The vast
majority of New Testament verbs are in the indicative mood. When used this way they convey a sense of
assertion or a presentation of certainty.
But as John begins this chapter he uses the imperative mood
instead. This is the mood of command and
authority.
John, after
expressing his deep and abiding love for us his “little children” now suddenly
and abruptly switches into a voice of command as he delivers his opening lines:
See how great a love the Father has
bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. The word translated see is the Greek
“eido”. It means to perceive with the
eyes or by any of the senses. But it
most especially means to inspect or pay attention and ascertain what must be
done about something. John is telling us
to snap to attention. We are to give our
full and undivided focus to his words.
And we are not only to listen to the apostle but we are to obey
immediately and without question.
So what is
it that he is commanding us to do? John
wants us to gaze fully upon the magnitude and nature of the love with which the
Father loves us. More than that, we are
to carefully consider that He has showered rained this love down upon us in an
overwhelming flood. Interestingly, John
does not provide an adjective for the Father’s love in the original text. He literally says “inspect what sort of
quality of love is given to you by the Father”.
The same word is used in Matthew 8:27 and will demonstrate what I’m
talking about: The men were amazed, and
said, “What kind of a man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey
Him?” The disciples didn’t need to
clarify that Jesus was amazing or majestic or triumphant. The implications of what He did was all the
clarification that was necessary. This
is the sense that John is giving here about the Father’s love.
So John does
not specify that His love is great or poor or shallow or deep or anything
else. He lets the magnitude of the love
be implied through a careful consideration of the extent of it. In other words, John wants us to think so
deeply and carefully and meditatively upon the Father’s love that we come to
the inescapable conclusion on our own that it is of great worth. John wants us to use our minds to process
this information and arrive at the correct conclusion. Unfortunately, several prominent English
Bible translations including the NASB above, in an effort to provide clarity to
their readers, rob us of this opportunity by supplying adjectives such as
great. I do understand the desire for
clarity in translation work, but I wish the translators had left this
particular assessment to the reader as John originally did.
He goes on
to say: For this reason the world does not
know us, because it did not know Him. The
world, used here to refer to the entire unbelieving mass of humanity in
rebellion against God, is hostile to Him.
They are His enemies. They
actively suppress the truth of His glory in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18). They killed the lord of glory Jesus Christ (1st
Cor. 2:8). And Jesus taught that they
will hate His disciples because they hated Him first (Jn. 15:18). Surely we would not be so naïve as to think
that in spite of this clear truth from the Bible about the hostility of the
world that somehow we can escape this fate and be best of chums with it. But apparently we are in fact just exactly
that naïve, judging by the fact that John felt the need to point it out to us
even though he had already written his gospel where Jesus taught this exact
thing, and furthermore as we looked at in a previous week John expected his
audience to have already read that book.
Now, having
already called us to accurately perceive truth, John begins in verse 2 to
unpack this idea of clear and undiluted sight.
This is a spiritual sight, not given to comprehension by physical eyes
alone but by the eyes of our heart.
Observe: Beloved, now we are
children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like
Him, because we will see Him just as He is.
John is of course talking about promised future glorification where we
will be raised from death, if necessary, and given the new and imperishable
bodies that Paul talks about in 1st Corinthians 15:52-57. And John is very clear that even he, an
apostle of Jesus Christ, is not privy to the full extent or exact nature of
this change.
But John
does know at least one thing with certainty.
Right now, in our present forms, we neither clearly see nor do we
clearly understand God. Again we see
Paul echo his fellow apostle in 1st Corinthians 13:12: For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then
face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also
have been fully known. Let’s think
about this for a minute. What does it
mean? It means that at least one aspect
of glorification is to behold God with clear vision and undiluted
understanding. Remember that in verse 1
John commands us to drink deeply from the pool of truth bound up in God’s love
for us. And likewise here he is
informing us that when we are glorified and residing with God physically our
ability to draw on the wellspring of wonder and delight that is wrapped up in
who God is will be completely transformed into a perfect experiential
comprehension.
Think about
that. Typically when we process the idea
of someone becoming great or wise or powerful our concept of that change is tied
to those aspects that are most magnificent within that person. A wise man has a vast body of practically
applicable knowledge. A powerful woman
commands influence over legions of followers.
And a great person is proclaimed as such because of the magnificence of
what they have accomplished in their life.
But that is not at all the sense of what John is going after here in
verse 2. He says that our state of
glory, our condition of greatness, our possession of wisdom, and our claim to
power will be explicitly tied to, informed by, and enabled from our ability to
perceive God as He truly is. This is a
thoroughly God exalting and man humbling manner of considering our inheritance
in heaven.
As if that
wasn’t enough to chew on already, consider this. What is the inverse implication of this
truth? If, in our state of perfection,
we will see God clearly just as He is, then now, in our state of defilement, we
are incapable of the same. Let’s draw it
out further. If all of the created order
is a testament to God’s character, and Romans 1:20 clearly and emphatically
states that it is, then if we are incapable now of perceiving God clearly then
it must logically follow that we are likewise incapable in our present state of
perceiving anything else clearly either.
If this were
not so then why would Jeremiah, at God’s direction, cry out: “The heart is more deceitful than all else
and is desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9). And why else would Solomon state: Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the
Lord and turn away from evil (Pro. 3:7).
Jeremiah recognized that the heart of man is a cesspool of filth. Solomon understood that to consider wisdom as
something produced by our own heart is pure evil and diametrically opposed to
God. Do we recognize this as truth? Even if we acknowledge it do we really live
like it? Or do we instinctively insist
that our opinion is the correct one when confronted with two divergent courses
of action? Unless you know of specific
Scripture that is clearly and unmistakably informing your opinion on a topic
you should default to the assumption that you are wrong. That should be your baseline. That is what John is implying here in this
text.
And that is
precisely why he pens the next verse: And
everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. The process for a Christian to be pure and
undefiled is not difficult to understand.
It simply requires that we fix our eyes upon God to the exclusion of
everything else. Psalm 119:14-16 tells
the tale of what our mindset should be when it comes to God: I have rejoiced in the way of Your
testimonies, as much as in all riches. I
will meditate on Your precepts and regard Your ways. I shall delight in Your statutes; I shall not
forget Your word. The only
difficulty in becoming pure as God is pure, or holy as God is holy as Peter
puts it in 1st Peter 1:16, is that we fail to fix our hope on Him as
Scripture commands us to.
It is God
alone who should be the object of our affections. It is God alone who should receive our
undiluted worship. It is God alone who
gives us a hope for the future. How does
He do this? John already told us. He bestowed an unfathomable love upon us by
making us His children. We are born of
God and are co-heirs with Christ to an eternal inheritance.
Do you
realize what that tells us about God’s love for us? Imagine you are a loving parent. One of the great treasures of your life is
your only son. He is a delight to your
eyes and his behavior fills you with the most profound pride imaginable. There is a neighbor kid down the street who
is a terror to everyone around him. He
lies, cheats, and steals at every opportunity.
On more than one occasion this hooligan has damaged your property and
vandalized your car. Your attempts to
confront him and his parents have been rebuffed at every turn. But you know that your son has a special way
with people. He can talk to just about
anybody and make them feel at ease.
Plus, he is of similar age to the problem kid down the road. So you figure they might have more in common
and be able to relate to each other better.
So you ask your son to go down and talk to the other boy.
The boy
listens to what your son has to say.
Then he ridicules him for his ignorance, curses him to his face, and
violently beats your only son to death.
The young murderer is arrested, tried, and convicted for his crime and
is sent to prison for a number of years.
When he is released, to the utter dismay and absolute shock of your
family, friends, and neighbors you meet the young man who killed your son at
the gates of the prison and offer him a ride home. Knowing that he has no place to stay, you
offer him a room in your home. On the
drive back to your house you present him with adoption papers to legally induct
him into your family as well as a living will which guarantees him a portion of
your estate.
Does that
story sound ridiculous? If you are a
Christian it shouldn’t. Because it
describes very nearly exactly what God has done for us in adopting us into His
family, making us His sons and daughters, and promising us an eternal
inheritance in heaven to live with Him. And
He did all this while we were still in the depravity of our sins and
vehemently opposed to Him. Do you
realize the enormity of the implication of what God has done for you? Do you understand the significance of the
truth that you are a child of God? Do
you see with sight beyond the physical how much gratitude you owe to Him?
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