As we pick up again where we left off in our study of 1 John this week, it’s important that we are reminded who John is writing to. And he tells us in 1John 5:13; “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” So he is writing to Christians, that they might have the encouragement and assurance of their salvation and sure hope of eternal life.
And in that context, we should look back at vs.29 of the last chapter, and read that the evidence of our salvation is that we are born again. 2:29, “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.”
How are you made righteous? We are not saved by our righteousness; Titus 3:4 “But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” So we are born again by the regeneration of the Holy Spirit, as we receive Christ by faith. 1John 5:1 Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. We are made righteous by faith. Whoever believes in Him is born again by the Holy Spirit. By faith, our sins are transferred to Christ, and His righteousness is transferred to us. Then being made righteous by faith, our righteous acts are evidence of being righteous within. We practice what we have become.
Born again is one of those phrases that has fallen out of fashion in religious circles. It’s more fashionable to talk about accepting Jesus, or loving Jesus, or believing in Jesus and that’s ok, but the phrase born again is a Biblical phrase. Jesus told Nicodemus that you must be born again. That is, you must receive a new nature. Your old nature is inherently sinful. In your natural state you cannot be righteous. You cannot please God. Your attempts at righteousness cannot outweigh your sin.
The problem with religion today is that it attempts to make light of your sin. But I am here to tell you that the only way to be born again, is to realize how desperately sinful you are. Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” That means, we all have fallen short of the righteous standard of God. It’s as if the breadth of the ocean represents the distance between sinful man and God. And we all were to line up on the beach and take a running start, then jump as far as we could, to see who could get to the other side. Some may jump further than others, but I can assure you, no one will jump across to the other side. We all fall short in the same way of achieving the righteousness that God requires. The only one who is able to bridge that gap is the Lord Jesus Christ. He did for us, what we can never do. And only by faith in what He has done for us, are we able to be saved. The key to a transformed life is to realize how desperately lost you are, and appeal to God for forgiveness and a new life through Him. We must not merely settle for adding some religion to our lives, but we need a complete overhaul, a transformation, to be born anew.
Now when we are born again by the Holy Spirit, we receive a new nature. We receive the Spirit of God, we take on the nature of God, as we are taught by His word. So that we have new desires, what is called a new heart. This process is described in Ezekiel 36:25 “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances.”
That new desire is what John is speaking of as the characteristic of being born again in 1John 2:29, “If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.” So when we are made righteous, when we are born again, then we practice righteousness, because we know Him, and we love Him, and we want to please Him. We want to keep His word. John 14:15, “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.” 1John 2:3 “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.”
Only by being born again by the Spirit of God can we truly come to know Him, and come to love Him. Rom 8:14, “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”
This being born again as God’s children, this inheritance, this fellowship we have with God our Father, is what causes John to burst out in wonder and joy; “See,” he says, or “behold, how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are.” Literally, the verse says, “what kind of love the Father has bestowed, or lavished upon us, that we would be called the children of God.” John says, “Behold! what manner of love is this? What do we make of this kind of love that God has towards us? What an amazing love. It was undeserved love. We were unlovely. We were sinners. We were enemies of God. Paul says in Ephesians 2:1, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.”
The love of the Father was not a reciprocated love. In other words, we didn’t love God first, and then when He saw how wonderful and deserving we were, He then loved us back. No, God loved us while we were yet sinners, and sent Christ to die for us.
The answer to what kind of love it is then, is that it is a supernatural love. It is divine love. It is sacrificial love. It is all those things and more. It is amazing love, because by it He did not just forgive us of our sins, and give us eternal life. That in of itself is amazing that God would so love His enemies. But that He went even further, to the uttermost degree; He made us His children. And if children, then heirs of God. Romans 8:16, “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”
Let me try to illustrate this love. Last week a man took our dog. He kept it for several days before we figured out who it was. When he finally brought her back Maggie’s eye was swollen and infected very badly. The man said we should take her to the vet and he would pay for it. The short end of it was he did not pay for it, and it cost us $150. So now he has stolen what wasn’t his, injured it, and defrauded us and lied to us. Now I had to force myself to try to forgive this man, even though he didn’t ask for forgiveness. I’m not sure that I was really able to do that. But imagine if I not only forgave him, but I invited him over to dinner at my house. Then imagine that I made him a part of my family. And imagine that I even gave this man an inheritance along with my children. You might think that I was insane to give so much to someone who had done so much to injure me. But that is exactly the kind of love that God has for us. We had stolen from Him, we wounded His Son, we defrauded Him and lied to Him again and again. And yet God forgave us, invited us to fellowship with Him, adopted us into His family, and gave us an inheritance with Christ.
That means that we have access to the Creator of the Universe, the Almighty God, as our Heavenly Father. The kind of intimacy and access that only a child can have with his father is what is bestowed upon us. And note that word bestowed. It means gifted, given, lavished upon us, without any merit of our own, or without our earning it in any way. It is a gift of grace, when we did not deserve it. We have become the children of God.
Then John adds, “and such we are.” MartinLuther was once asked, "Do you feel you are a child of God this morning?" He said, "I cannot say that I do, but I know I am." Well, that's a good Christian attitude. That is our feelings are subordinated to the word of God. Our experience does not alter theology. Our theology alters experience. So, "we are," John says, and we are. But John says, though they see that we are different, the world does not recognize us, because they did not recognize Him. Vs.1, “For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.”
The world cannot recognize spiritual things. Thus they cannot recognize us, even as they did not recognize the visitation of the Holy One of God. 1Cor. 2:14, “But a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.” If you would understand the spiritual, then you must first be born of the Spirit. Jesus said in John 6:44, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.” So God is the initiator of our salvation. He first loved us. He sought us when we were yet sinners, when we were lost, He found us and called us to Him and gave us life. But those who are not born again are spiritually blind and dead in their trespasses.
So our present state is we are the children of God. But there is an intermittent state in the life of a Christian as well, which John has already alluded to in chapter 2. It is what we are becoming. My mother used to says something like that: “you are what you have been becoming.” Let’s skip vs.2 for the moment and look at vs. 3, “And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” The intermittent state is the process of purification. It’s the process of sanctification. Where we become conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.
This is the middle phase of our salvation. We are justified by faith in the first phase, sanctified in the truth in the second, and glorified in the future with Christ. Justification, sanctification, and glorification; the 3 phases of salvation. We have already talked about justification by faith. Now John tells us we are to be purified, or sanctified as a result of being born of God. We are told in the word of God, that there is a constant sanctifying influence going on upon us. As we look in the mirror of the word of God, we are constantly being changed and conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. 2Cor. 3:18 “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”
The purpose of sanctification then is to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ. As He is righteous, we practice righteousness. As He is pure, we purify ourselves. As He was conformed to the Father’s will, so we are to be conformed to His will. As He was a light to the world, so we are to be lights on a hill, reflecting Jesus Christ to the world through our actions.
Let me tell you something; sanctification is simply spiritual maturity. As we grow in the Lord, we grow more like our Father. We are characterized by the nature of our Father. There is a stage of infancy, when we are born again. Then there is a process of maturing, as we grow up into the fullness of Christ. Paul spoke of this in Eph 4:11-15, “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. As a result, we are no longer to be children, tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ.”
So how do we purify yourselves? Well, James says it is to keep yourself unstained by the world. James 1:21 “Therefore, putting aside all filthiness and all that remains of wickedness, in humility receive the word implanted, which is able to save your souls. But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.” The word of God will keep you pure, if you are a doer of the word. Lot’s of people know some of the word of God. They love to cherry pick the Bible and use it as a means of exercising their freedom to sin. But those who are pure in heart are those who keep the word.
The last stage of our salvation is glorification. When we will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Vs.2 “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.”
There are a couple of things John is possibly referring to in this verse. First of all, notice he says we are now the children of God. That is already. We already have the spiritual new birth, the new life, the eternal life of God. We will never die. We will be with God forever. We are His children, and nothing can snatch us out of the Father’s hand. That is a present reality, and it is a future certainty.
But we are also going to be changed. Paul says in 1Cor. 15:51, “Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality.” Paul says it’s mystery. He doesn’t know how to describe this new glorified body which we will be given. John says here in our text that “we do not yet know what we shall be.” What we do know is this new body will be a heavenly body. It will be a spiritual body. It has no sin. It will not have any of the effects of sin which produce death or sickness. It will live forever.
But then John tells us something even better. This new body will be like the body of Jesus. “We will be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” We will be like Him. In Genesis, we were made man and woman, in the likeness of God. But in the new creation, we are made children of God, co inheritors with Christ, made like Christ, to rule and reign on thrones with Christ. In the first creation God said it was good. In the new creation, God said “eye has not seen, AND EAR HAS NOT HEARD, AND which HAVE NOT ENTERED THE HEART OF MAN, ALL THAT GOD HAS PREPARED FOR THOSE WHO LOVE HIM.” We can’t imagine the glory that will be ours.
In the old creation, the Bible says that man cannot look at God. In the new creation, John says we shall see Him as He is. Let me tell you something. The transfiguration was just a glimpse of the glory of Christ, when the light shone through His countenance and His clothing. In the new creation all of heaven will be illuminated by His countenance. Rev. 22:3-5 “There will no longer be any curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His bond-servants will serve Him; they will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And there will no longer be any night; and they will not have need of the light of a lamp nor the light of the sun, because the Lord God will illumine them; and they will reign forever and ever.”
There is a theological term we have talked about before that speaks of this illumination. It is called the beatific vision. It speaks of the aspect of our eternal glorification, when we see Jesus face to face, not in His humanness, but in the fullness of HIs Divinity. The Bible teaches that God "dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has even seen or can see" (1 Timothy 6:16), but when God reveals Himself to us in heaven we will then see Him face to face (1 Corinthians 13:12).[7] This concept has been termed "the beatific vision of God" by theologians.
The treasure of heaven is not so much a place of gold and palaces and crowns and so forth, but it is the presence of God. It is when we are immersed in the physical, spiritual, all encompassing source of light and life. When we are in the presence of Holiness, Righteousness. When we are one with God, and He with us. When we are joined with Him in a way that can only be described by our limited minds as a consummation of our relationship with Christ as His bride. This is what theologians call the beatific vision. It is the all consuming, all encompassing light of God that gives us a life abundant, a life eternal, that cannot be quantified. And we shall be like HIM, for we shall see Him as He is. That is the glory of heaven. And that is what we have as our inheritance. To dwell in unapproachable, life giving light, the source of life, the source of all knowledge and wisdom, and to be able to do so because we are like Him and to share with Him all that He has.
Well, this is our inheritance. This is our hope. This is what Christ died on the cross to procure for us. Our fellowship with God now, and our glorification with God in eternity. I hope that this glimpse into the hope of heaven is a means of encouraging you as you are conformed into the image of Christ. Sometimes this process of sanctification is not entirely painless. Sometimes God has to chip away the dross to reveal the gold. But it will be worth it all, when we see Jesus.
Some of you here today though may be saying, I’m not sure that I qualify for this inheritance. I can’t say that I have been born again. I don’t see the evidence of the new life in the Spirit you were talking about. I would invite you today to receive the atonement of Jesus Christ for your sins today. It is a free gift of God, to all who call upon Him in repentance of their sins, and faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior. God loves you, and He has made it possible for you to be reconciled to Him. Call on Him today. Today is the acceptable day of salvation.
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