1John 3:7 - Ultimate Heavenly Originals

"Little children, let no one be deceiving you.  The [one] doing the righteousness is righteous, just as that One is righteous."

-The sad truth is that little children are easily deceived.  They are naturally trusting.  And John continues to be concerned for his readers, these believers.  He cares about them, with the care of a father.  He is concerned that somehow they may be persuaded to compromise in this area of righteousness, of doing what is right.

-Deception is fundamentally about perverting or otherwise hiding the truth, or some aspect of it.  This is why John has throughout this letter been emphasizing the truth, reminding his readers what they know.  And WHO they know.  They know Him Who IS righteous (3x).  And faithful.  He is pure.  There is no sin in Him.  He is the Holy One.  He is the True Light in Whom there is no darkness whatsoever.  

-And He is the God of love.  Make no mistake, the person who has been accepted by God and made right in His eyes is in fact the one who does what is right.  They are like Him, increasingly so.  They act like their heavenly Father, the One Who so loved them and begat them.  And so, they will love, like their Father, the God of love.  They will love those who are sons and daughters of their Father, their brothers and sister in Christ.  And beyond that, the followers of Jesus the Righteous One (Who lives in them!) will be practicing all other forms of righteousness.  They will pursue this lifestyle of doing (trying to do) what is right.  The doing is not the means to the end - it IS the end.  It is the result, the byproduct, it is the outflow of who they are.  Their deeds reveal their true identity.  So, make no mistake, do not deceive yourselves or let anyone else deceive you into thinking any differently.  The one who is really in right standing in God’s eyes will do what is right, just like Him.  All the time?  Maybe not entirely.  But consistently, and trending upward, for sure.  But "like Him" was the whole idea to begin with.  Image bearers - that was the original intent.  Which means we, God's children, are (becoming) brand new contemporary replicas of the original, ultimate heavenly originals... Truly remarkable!

1John 3:6 - Inconceivable!

"Every the [one] in Him remaining is not sinning.  Every the [one] sinning has not seen Him nor has he known Him."

-There is no sin in Him, our beautiful breathtakingly good Savior, Jesus Christ - thus a "sinning Christ-follower" then becomes the ultimate oxymoron.  There can be no such thing.  Sin and our Savior are incompatible.  They do not, cannot, MUST not co-exist.  Mutually exclusive, diametrically opposed, worlds apart, polar opposites.  It’s like the age-old challenge of trying to get those two little oppositely-charged magnets to try and stick together.  It just ain’t gonna happen.  Inconceivable.  And it is inconceivable that sin and righteousness, darkness and light, would co-exist.  They cannot, by their very definition.  Darkness is the absence of light.  Sin is the absence of Christ, it is casting Him out of mind.  Thus we have our next litmus test.  Every one who is remaining in Christ is not sinning, not continuing to cast Him out of mind.  Present tense - meaning sin is not an ongoing action in their lives.  They do not keep on sinning, not after receiving a knowledge of the truth, not after receiving God’s sinless Son as their Savior, because they are now God’s child (cf John 1.12), begotten from above, a brand new creation, and sin does not continue unabated in them.  They do not continue to practice it, because God does not produce sinners.  He makes people like Him.  Which, when you think about it properly (with humility), is also quite inconceivable.  Mind-boggling, that the end game here is that we will be (more and more) like Him.  That was always the plan, of course, but each one of us is a hot mess and quite a long ways away from fitting in to "like Him"... Nevertheless, having said that, things should definitely be trending upwards, heaven-wards, for the professing Christ-follower.  More like Him.  More of Him and less of me, less sin.  Sure there will be cycles of up and down, there will be the occasional slip-ups and transgressions.  But they will (should)(must!) become less and less frequent.  He must increase, I must decrease.  And so must sin.

-But so it is safe to say - John is not afraid to say it - that every one who is sinning, present tense - continuing action in the present - has neither seen nor come to know Christ.  The person who persists in doing the things which God hates, who continues in a lifestyle which is ungodly, casting Him out of mind (and life), not like Him at all - this one does not know the Lord.  Sin is the absence of Christ.  John is not talking about occasional, intermittent sin.  He’s not talking about those who actually struggle against their sin.  Remember, we’re not talking about being in a place where we have no sin, or where we claim to have no sin.  We will all still fall short this side of heaven.  Nobody is perfect.  But things should be trending down in this regard.  We confess our sins and give them to Jesus.  Again, more of Him and less of me-and-my-sin.  We’re talking about a lifestyle, a pattern, a heart-and-mindset.  And the heart-and-mind which is clearly set on sin most likely has not set their hope in Christ.  Not yet.  But it’s never too late...!

1John 3:5 - The Ultimate Busboy and Carpenter Gone Wild

"And we are having come to know that that One was revealed, in order that the sin He should take up, and sin in Him it is not."

-That’s right, Jesus is the Ultimate Busboy, if you will.  He came to clean the dirty tables of our broken lives, to take up and take away our gross dirty plates, the filthy rags of our unrighteousness.  This is why He came, why His Father sent Him in the first place.  The Father did send the Son to be the Savior of the world - and that not only to save us from our sins, but also to remove them from the scene entirely!  Gone with the wind, if you will, completely and forever, as far as the east is from the west...!

-The plan is for my table - and yours - to be spotless.  The plan is for us to be like Him - 'cuz sin IN HIM IS NOT.  Sin is not in Him.  This One, He is Him Who knew no sin (2Corinthians 5.21).  Not one dirty spot or blemish or the teeniest tiniest hint of it whatsoever.  His table is impeccably incomparably clean.  That tablecloth is spotless, white as snow, not a fold or a crease or a wrinkle to be found anywhere.  In Him, there is no sin.  And that is precisely why He was revealed, and what He wants to do for us - to make us more like Him.  It’s not just for salvation, a little dash of fire insurance, a spiritual get-out-of-jail-free card.  Jesus came to clean and set your table, but oh so much more than that.  It's a complete big amazing home makeover, in fact!  The ultimate fixer upper.  He came for transformation.  Metamorphosis.  Caterpillar to butterfly.  Old things gone, all things made brand spankin’ new.  A new creation, spotless, unblemished, beautiful, breathtaking.  Not just slapping on a new coat of paint or a few updates here and there.  It’s not about a house flip - we’re talking about total renovation, down to the studs restored and remade to even better than before!  He is a carpenter, after all...!  :)  HGTV might call it Carpenter Gone Wild (or something to that effect...)  And clean?  We're talking a new floor so clean you could totally eat off it!  Obviously the process will not be completed this side of heaven, but make no mistake, all who have trusted in Christ in this life are (or should be) experiencing various stages of this wondrous massive reconstruction project.  Debris and old busted accoutrements dumped out and hauled away like the trash that it is.  Talk about an extreme makeover - this old house, the tent which is our life, is gonna be unbelievably glorious.  Just like Him...

1John 3:4 - Guilty as charged...

"Every the [one] doing the sin also the lawlessness is doing, and the sin is the lawlessness."

-Pure Jesus, for sure.  Meanwhile, we (so much of the world which God so loves) have lives which are not so pure.  Not becoming any purer at all.  These are the ones who are engaging in sin in an ongoing way.  Habitually.  Me-first to the max.  It’s like they are practicing precisely how to do something which God hates.  John here says that this is not only sin, it is lawlessness.  One might ask, what’s the difference?  The two are relatively synonymous, but would there be any significance to a nuanced difference between sin and lawlessness, and why is John going there at this point?

-The word for ‘sin’ in the Greek literally means to miss the mark.  To err, be mistaken, to miss or wander from the path of uprightness and honor, to go wrong.  To wander from the law.  It sort of implies that one has a mark to begin with.  Alternately, the word for ‘lawlessness’ literally means just that.  The person or people do not have the law.  It was often applied by Jews to Gentiles.  It’s probably slightly more of a deragatory term, at least for Jewish/religious ears.  Godless pagans, strangers to the law, and not much more than creatures of instinct, carrying out their ignorant fleshy instincts and more or less strangers to God, to His covenants and character.

-But these are essentially the same thing.  That’s exactly what John says here.  Sin IS lawlessness.  We’re not talking about the occasional transgression, about those who struggle with and still struggle AGAINST their old habits.  We’re talking about those who keep on doing sin, who practice it, even after supposedly receiving a knowledge of God and His law and possibly even professing hope in Jesus.  John says, uh uh.  No way, José.  That cannot be.  The one who continues to break God’s laws is no different, certainly no better than the one who never had a knowledge of the law in the first place.  They look no different than an unbeliever.  Life apart from God, a practical atheist, living like there is no God, like He doesn’t even exist, ‘cuz He certainly doesn’t appear to exist in my life when I am practicing sin and living and looking exactly like the seasonally-happy and hopeless pagan next to me.  And this is where we get labeled hypocrites, those of us who profess belief in God, when we say one thing with our lips and yet say something entirely opposite with our lives.  GUILTY AS CHARGED (too many of us).  Things should not be this way.  Not like this.  This is not at all what God intended.  Next verse..

1John 3:3 - Pure Jesus

"And every the [one] having this hope upon Him is purifying himself, just as that One is pure."

-Pure.  No blemish or stain or contamination whatsoever.  We who are following Christ are in this magnificent purification process, all the impurities of sin and brokenness gradually, slowly yet surely being smelted out of our lives for good.  For good.  Our world is filled with this stuff called ‘ore’.  Iron ore, gold ore, various kinds of rock like bauxite, hematite, magnatite - which essentially are precious metals which are completely intermingled with what amounts to waste rock.  Basically, the metals are contaminated.  And it is entirely possible to obtain pure precious metal from these ores, but the process usually involves heat.  A lot of heat, enough to melt rock, a melting and breaking down of the ore so as to be able to separate out the waste from the precious metal and produce something which is pure gold.  Completely uncontaminated.  That is what is happening to us, John says.  When the Pure One is finished, we will more closely resemble Him.  Understandably this is a very stressful process for the ore, which is why the ore needs to reminded (often?) of its true potential, needs to keep in mind a bit of how the process works.  Purification, refining is not a quick or an easy process.  But the results are absolutely worth it.  In the words of Kenny Bania, that's gold, Jerry!  Gold!

-Now, that which cranks up this whole purification process in my life is hope.  Hope.  We all hope for something, hope IN something.  Could be a relationship, in my spouse or kids.  Could be in my IRA, or my job.  Or my house.  My health.  Where is my hope?  The purifying begins when I first place my faith, my hope and trust in Jesus, this One Who is purity incarnate.  He comes into my life and wants to bless me and make me more like Him - which means refining.  Gonna get rid of those nasty contaminants.  So gotta turn up the heat.  Here comes the stress.  Hardship.  Breaking.  Loss.  All kinds of circumstances which actually challenge my hope but which ultimately secure even greater hope and trust in this One Who is my Great Golden Hope and Perfect Purifier.  As long as I keep my eyes fixed on this One Who authored and perfected this whole faith thing (Hebrwes 12.1-2), I will find that while the process isn’t easy per se (it could in fact be compared to running a marathon), it is tremendously effective at producing more of Him and less of me in my life.  Paul declared, it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me (Galatians 2.20).  He must increase, I must decrease (John 3.30).  More of Christ-in-me, and less of me-in-me - pure Jesus.  That’s both Who He is and what He’s up to, and that’s what the world needs.

1John 3:2 - From Unrecognizable to Unmistakable!

"Beloved, now little children of God we are, and not yet has it been revealed what we will be.  But we are having come to know that if He should be revealed, like Him we will be, since we will see Him as He is."

-Beloved.  Yes, we are loved - by God, Who has brought us into His family.  That right there oughta be enough to put us on shouting ground!  And we are loved also by John, our brother, this one who journeyed with our Savior in the flesh and who suffered so much for His sake and who loves us enough to take the time to write us this note of encouragement and exhortation.

-And yes, we are God’s children.  He has brought us - the ones believing in Jesus - into His family, and we are so deeply loved!  He is our Daddy!  While this reality is perhaps not so physical, not real visceral in this life, there is some tremendous and practical positional truth to this at this point, there is a spiritual reality to all this, which gives rise (or should) to overflowing comfort and unspeakable joy in the here and now.  But wait, there’s more!

-There is more to the story.  There is still more yet to be revealed.  John says it has not yet been revealed what we will be.  He says there will be some yet-to-be-seen tangible physical reality which will become readily apparent when we finally are in the presence of our heavenly Father, face-to-face.  John says we will be like Him.  There will be some kind of obvious family resemblance - which makes sense, doesn’t it?  Kids generally grow up to resemble their parents.  I think he’s basically saying here, you know, it would make sense that as God’s children there would be some kind of family resemblance, right?  And while there should some emerging hints of it at least in this life, we can’t fully see what that is this side of eternity.  But take my word, when that day of revelation, that glorious day of rejoicing comes and we finally see God our Father in person, we will see the resemblance.  It will be unmistakeable.  "Yes, I see the resemblance" - that’s what people say, isn’t it?  And that’s what we’ll say.

-And grab hold of this: We will be. Like. Him.  Just the way God intended it from the very beginning - made in His image, right?  Like Him.  Not in all His manifold infinite perfections, but there will be these ways in that day in which we finally fulfill our destiny and fully reflect as we were originally intended the glories of our breathtakingly good Father, our heavenly Maker, this One Who made us and has remade us to be like Him.  And isn’t it just like Him, to bring this whole creation story full circle, that that which He set out to create in the beginning and which was subsequently marred and broken and renderered almost unrecognizable by sin, should be set right, finally finished and fully restored?  Paradise and the glories of God on full display for the enjoyment and celebration of all God’s creation, first and foremost of which are the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve - the crown jewel of all creation, who are the children, the offspring, if you will, of God Himself.  Life - the universe itself - as it was always intended to be.  What a day of glory THAT will be...!

1John 3:1 - Amazing love, and family matters...

"See what sort of love He gave to us, the Father, in order that little children of God we should be called - and we are.  Because of this the world does not know us, because it did not know Him."

-Family.  We are actually members of God’s family.  Thru Jesus.  Thru Jesus, God has adopted us as His children and brought us into His forever family.  John says, see this.  It is a command.  Stop and look.  Take notice, and take it in, that the God of the universe, God almighty, thrice-holy and sublime in His manifold perfections, has done all that He has done in order to bring us into His family.

-Before we go deep on family we need to talk about love.  One sixth of all the mentions of love in the NT occur in this letter, and to this point John has only mentioned it 5 times.  There are 40 more mentions of love to come in these last three chapters (so get ready!).  So far John has mentioned the love of God and the love of the Father, and here he tells us to stop, and look, behold, and take notice, take note of this love, what kind of love, what great great love God has given us.  There is no end to His love, no instrument in the universe with which to measure how high and deep and long and wide is the Father’s unending overflowing love.  For us.  Boundless.  Limitless.  Inexhaustible.  Amazing.  Look at it - take it all in, if you can...!  It'll take you forever - which, I believe, is precisely the point...

-But I think we as moderns have quite a diluted and distorted view of how significant this is, not only that God loved us, but that He brought us into His family.  Back in the day, family was the foundation, the building block of society in the ancient world.  Family was everything.  It was all about your family, your clan.  Family provided safety and security and stability, education, health care, elderly care, child care - so many things we moderns farm out to others.  We are far more prodigal, freely ranging far from home, often living apart and even estranged from those whose blood flows through our own veins.  Part of the reason we live apart is because the wealth of our society affords us that "luxury" (if it can truly be referred to as such).  We can often survive just fine on our own apart from parents or grandparents, or kids to care for us when we’re old, or even a spouse.  Gone in many ways are the days when being an orphan or a widow or an alien was truly a life-threating proposition.  But gone in many ways are many of the values which used to be attached to this idea of family.  We readily and eagerly head away from home to make our fortune in the world, we jump in and out of relationships almost at a whim, we let others raise our kids, we (begrudgingly?) kick aged parents to the curb (i.e. to the nearest nursing home) - not all of us, of course, but the economics allow (force?) us to do so and society tells us it’s the new normal.  Everybody’s doing it.  The world, sadly, doesn't know Him or this kind of love.

-It has been called the death of the nuclear family, trumpeted by so-called progressives, lamented by conservatives.  And to be fair, it isn’t all bad, right?  Our day does allow tremendous opportunity for so many, for learning and for making a difference in the world.  We tend to have copious amounts of discretionary time - for good or bad.  Certainly there are increasing ways in which brokenness puts pressure on marriages and families and on caring for kids and parents alike.  Let’s in no way minimize the challenges associated with trying to make ends meet or care for children and aging parents.  But in so many ways, in this place of a "new normal", family seems to be increasingly fragmented and fleeting.  And let's not even get started on how the iPhone is affecting both current and future families...! :)  I do think - let's be honest - that at least a portion of this so-called new normal is driven by more selfish motives.  Maintaining or attaining a certain lifestyle.  Preferring comfort and convenience and feeling good over what is arguably much harder work.  Family - keeping it together, making it work - can be hard work, to be sure.  Kids - nuff said.  But one thing which is vanishing with these ancient values is the ability to really appreciate what it means to say that God has brought us into.  His.  family.  And in heaven, family is forever.  It MEANS something, some of which has been lost.  So we just can’t be thinking of family in these modern terms - if we do, we fail to grasp the significance of this transaction.  Oh yeah, family.  That’s nice, I’m sure.  But who needs it really.

-We think we don’t need family anymore.  But we’re dead wrong.  We need this place of kinship, of perfect love and acceptance.  We need this place and this heart to which we can run when we are hurt or scared or alone or don’t know what to do or where to turn.  We need this source of divine wisdom and timely encouragement and tender compassion.  We need this place of safety and shelter from life’s battering storms.  And we need a Father.  A perfect Daddy.  Not (EVER) absent.  Not silent.  Not closed up, all distant and aloof.  What GREAT love He has lavished on us!  He wants to be our Daddy!  He longs for us to turn to Him in our hearts as trusting children not just when we’re in a pinch but every day, naturally, as instinctively as breathing.  Stop and see, behold, take notice of how great a love our Father has given to us, to call us His children and bring us into His family.  Forever and ever, with no end, no limits...  So, who’s your Daddy?  And not only who's your Daddy, but who's your family?  How are we doing as a spiritual family?  Being reminded that our Daddy loves us and we are his children reminds us that we are brothers and sisters - we belong to each other, together, and we need each other, in the truest and ancient and most enduring sense...!