1-3 John - 1st John 2:29 - 3:1-3 Marks of the Child of God - part 2
1 John 2:29 - 3:1-3 · Randy Peterman · May 15, 2011
1, 2 & 3 John, No. 20
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926234387783

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Well, I have been just super excited about this passage this morning. I cannot tell you... Well, I'll just put it this way. I told you last week I was excited, right? Everybody hopefully remembers that. If you remember nothing else from the lesson, you remember I was excited about this one.

That would be a terrible thing to only remember. But then on Tuesday I was driving Abigail to school. And she had her Bible there, and we're working on Bible memory verses, and we happen to be in 1 John chapter 2. But I had her flip over to 1 John 3 and read 1 John 3, 2, and 3, and I was driving, and I just, again, found myself just overwhelmed, almost to tears, driving with excitement about this passage. You too will be excited by it. I think it's some of the coolest theology looking forward. Let's go ahead and read it because my excitement is not hardly as good without context. 1 John 3 verses 1 through 3.

He says, See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called the children of God, and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. 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. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

So we're going to take a look at verses 2 and 3 this morning. He starts off by saying, We are children, and of course last week we were children too. So I won't belabor this as long this week. But I wanted to ask, what are the logical consequences or results or what would be logical as a consequence of being made a child of God?

Eternal life. Okay? Eternal life. Heirs. Joint heirs. We're joint heirs. We're part of the family. Part of the family. Intimacy. Intimacy. So really what we end up getting into is that this is part of the identification truths. This is part of the, you know, we've done Sunday school classes, the 34 things that are true of the believer. This is one of those 34 things. And so Right there, I mean, it's really cool. You know, hey, this is part of the complex results. By complex, I mean less that they're difficult to comprehend and more that they're interwoven and exciting.

When you start to think about sonship and you start thinking about being made a new creation and being adopted and all of the elements that are part of the identification truths, this is one of them, and it ties in there. So when John tells his readers that they're children, this is really cool.

I wanted to cross-reference Galatians 4.6, so if you have your Bibles, turn there, and if whoever gets there first wants to read it out loud, that would be tremendous. Because you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his son into our hearts crying, Abba, Abba. Thank you, Winnie. When we talk about being children, that relationship was brought up. We have this relationship, but the spirit of His Son is sent into our hearts that we would call Abba Father.

Now, we're not here this morning to exposit Galatians 4.6. We did that in a Galatians class. But one of the things that I think is so rich about this is that one of the logical consequences beyond what was logical. It's not logical for us to be made the children of God.

It exceeds reason. It's like, hey, we had the Redeemer come and die for us and we could be called redeemed. That would seem like, okay, that's good. But it's beyond that. We're children. And then, even beyond that, we have the Spirit of the Son sent into our hearts so that when we address the Father. We can do that with a personal vocabulary, with a relationship that shows intimacy.

In the Old Testament, how many places do we see the children of Israel crying out to God the Father like He's Abba Father? I haven't looked this up, I'm asking, because in my recollection of reading, it's not a long list of places where Israel feels really comfortable talking to God and saying, Abba Father.

I don't think that concept, actually I was trying to think, that's one of the distinctions between the church age and Israel, is that this personal relationship with God is, God was a fearful and awesome God, Who was the last man, prior to Christ, who could walk with God and talk to Him on that level of intimacy? Paul. Who? Paul. Paul? No, before Christ. Oh, before Christ and after. The last one to do it was Adam, and then he blew it.

Because the Lord would walk with him in the clover. Now, we have intimacy with David. David gets intimacy, and so there's a level of intimacy there. But it was rare in an Old Testament context, because there was such fear. Roy? We have Enoch. Yep, Enoch walked with God. So there are some awesome exceptions, but they're exceptions to the general attitude of people in the Old Testament. But what's interesting about the recorded saints, even if there are failures, often they do have a deeper sense of relationship with the Lord than the fear that we see later on by the time that Christ comes. There's just a general attitude of fear or pompousness. But we're children, so we have that relationship that we can draw close to the Father. So then we get to the part that just blows my mind, so hopefully you will also be as excited about this.

He says, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. That right there when I first got to it was like, oh no, this is telling us that we're not going to know. That we don't know, I'm sorry. But that we will know. John was not Paul, so he didn't get to go on that free trip. But even still, what John is talking about, Paul still also did not know. It has not been revealed yet because it's not to be revealed until a future time. But he's talking about heavenly things.

And so I wanted to ask some general questions simply so that we could Compare and contrast what the scriptures say with what we're surrounded by. I find that there's a lot of believers who, when it comes to heavenly things, have a lot of uncertainty or, and I'll say this gently and kindly, but there's an ignorance of what the scriptures say. I've used the word ignorance and been misunderstood before. Not in this context, but I just want to, I don't mean that in an insulting fashion.

How have you heard heaven described by the world? How does the world describe heaven? And what we're going to be like? White puffy clouds with angels sitting around there and things like that. Yeah. And are angels angels or are humans angels? People actually are humans.

It really depends on who you talk to, but there's a wide variety and we don't want to explore carnal ideas in too much depth. And we actually answered the second question. How does the world describe what we'll look like in due and eternity? we tend to see the world think that we're going to be angelic in form somehow, or we're going to have wings at least, because why wouldn't we?

But what is their source of authority on these concepts? That's one of my all-time favorite things that I run into with people, is that when they've got an idea, I always ask them, where can I read about your ideas? You know, cartoons, or any number of places.

But where is your book? Because, see, if you ask me, Randy, what's heaven going to be like, I can show you my book. It's not my book, but I can show you the book that is my authority. This is what we have. This is the Scriptures. If you ask me, Randy, what do you think about such and such a topic in its spiritual form, I can take you here.

And I will, or I better. If you ask someone who thinks these things, where do they go? It's going to be any number of places. Roy? Just to reinforce what you're saying, look at what Paul said in Corinthians about the gospel over and over, according to the scriptures. Absolutely. According to the scriptures.

And the richness of what is in scriptures is always exciting to study. I mean, every time I get to study to teach, I always love it because I just find there's new cool things that I get to share with my brothers and sisters in Christ. And in my own reading time, it's great to do that. And then I often find when I do that, it ends up coming out in my conversation with Jessica or my daughters. It's like, cool, here's something from God's Word. But I can show them where it is. Here it is. We're there. So the world has warped concepts.

I wanted to take a look at a couple cross-references, just simply because there's a lot of importance there. Let's turn to 2 Corinthians 4, 17-18. Paul writes, "...for a momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison." while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal." And so he's talking in this passage about this thing that's coming. But that's the focus. It's the eternal things.

And again, he doesn't tell us specifically what they are, but he's telling us where our mind should be. And I think John is talking about who we will be as beings, not as human beings anymore, and that's cool, but as beings. And Paul is talking about that as human beings we need to be looking towards that future time.

Philippians 3.21, and so we're just going to flip around in our Bibles. If you get there, go ahead and please read out loud. That's 121. Philippians 3, 21. Who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like glorious body. Like his glorious body. How cool is that? So, Paul is talking about this eternal place, this eternal state, where we'll get to receive these new bodies.

And then Romans 8, 28 and 30, and of course, hopefully that's relatively familiar with folks. And again, since I took it out of context earlier, we better make sure that we don't take it out of context now, huh? For those of you listening to the recording, I made a joke about Romans 8, 28, all things, before the class started.

Romans 8.28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren. And these whom He predestined, He also called. And these whom He called, He also justified. And these whom He justified, He also glorified. So we are conditionally in the process of being transformed to our position, which is in Christ, which is going to be entirely heavenly and no longer earthly. Tom? No worries. I'm not being hard on myself.

So we have here this concept of things are going to change. What we have in our worldly, earthly form is going to change and it's coming. There's an impending change that is coming but we don't know what it will be like yet. But this is the exciting part. I am so excited to talk about just this next section here. John says, we know that when He appears we will be like Him because we will see Him just as He is. Now I want to stop for a second and ask an important theological question before we fully dive into this. Why do we need to be changed? We have earthly bodies and we're going to be There isn't anything on this earth that can compare with what heaven has in store for us.

Okay, absolutely. Tom? Human flesh is not equipped to handle it. Okay, that's true. Those are all correct. One of the things that this reminded me of, and this is really where my brain went with this, is Genesis. So if you'll turn back to Genesis chapter 2, In Genesis chapter 2 verse 19, if you're there, the Lord forms out of the ground every beast and He makes all of the creation.

And what does He ask Adam to do with that? Name them. Now this was an exercise in creativity, this was an exercise in analytics, which for me is awesome, but we're not here to study that. But what would Adam discover from naming all the animals? What does he find out? He has no helpmate. He's like, oh no, there's no one of my type.

You knew there were male and female of all the others, or of those that could produce that way. But this union or this creation of a type of being that God does in His image with Adam, they're missing Eve. So God puts Adam into deep sleep, which is convenient. The first anesthesiologist was God. He didn't overdose or put it in the wrong place. It was awesome. Adam fell asleep. The Lord took peace from his side and formed him.

And then what does verse 223, Genesis 2.23, what does Adam say of Eve? Wound of my bones, flesh of my flesh. Yeah, and then he says she shall be called wound because she was taken out of man.

Now, let's bring this forward to our heavenly relationship with Christ. If God were to have left us in human form, we would have been of the wrong type. It would have been like if God had made the most awesome, walking, talking, capable ape or chimpanzee type thing and brought him to Adam and said, look, he's almost like you. You know, you have some similar chromosomes. And Adam said, what's a chromosome? But the difficulty of that is that it was not a suitable helpmate.

But when Christ redeemed us, He redeemed us beyond simply making us free from the penalty of sin. He brought us so that we would be conformed to His image, to His type. Adam needed a helpmate that was in his image. Now, God doesn't need anything. So I don't want to have you draw false theology or bad theology out of that. But we have a type problem that the Lord is going to address.

So when we look at this passage, we need to keep that in mind. And for me, this is exciting. that we get to change into the type that is suitable to be the bride of Christ. When will Christ appear? Because when He appears, this is going to happen. When will He appear? At the rapture. Whenever that is. Chronologically or in time, we don't know.

What is the implication of this passage in regards to the limitation of earthly perceptions of an infinite God? That's a very long, weird, college-level question, right? But what does this passage tell us about humans being able to fully comprehend the fullness of God? Not enough brain power, not enough anything. It's got to be a new being. Yeah, our finite nature comes up short.

So the Lord is going to wait to reveal the fullness of who His Son is. In the future, when we can take on an eternal learning of who that is, because that's the other part of what Ephesians tells us, that the Lord is going to constantly be revealing His grace to us, that our capacity will be infinite to continually and perpetually be learning about the infinite God whom we will be with. So, apologies for the college level or awkwardly worded questions, but that's what I think is really interesting about this. John is saying, hey, he's going to come and then we'll get to see his fullness. Of course, the other half of that is if the fullness of the Lord showed up on earth now, it would, at least based on certain parts of scripture, wipe us out. So, there's that. Yeah. Will it be harder than anything you can think of now? Absolutely. Roy?

The thought comes to mind about the Lord being transfigured and showing his glory to two of the apostles. They just fell down. Yeah, well we got Moses in the Old Testament who, you know, the Lord shows him with the back of his hand and he passes in the cleft and it was overwhelming. The Lord shows up even in a burning bush and that's just like, you know, take your sandals off, you're in holy ground and it's just a bush that's a very minor representation of an infinite God. So it's pretty substantial. We've already answered this next question, why do we need to shed this mortal coil and take on a new heavenly type? And that's because we have a matching issue.

But what are the qualities of the Bride of Christ? What does scripture tell us about the qualities of the Bride of Christ? They're clothed in white garments, which has an implication of purity, and there's no sin. So there's purity, but we will be of the type of Christ, we will be pure, and we will be appropriately matched to the type that He is, so that we will be a worthy bride. And the thing is that the worthiness, is it our worthiness? Again, it's His worthiness that's there. Our position in Christ is true now.

What I'm excited about is that my condition and my position will be united at that twinkling of an eye. That won't matter. My position, my condition will be united. And all of the things that we wrestle with now, the things that we pray about, how often are those the things that are conditional? That's not a problem with prayer. We come before the Lord with the things that are conditional because our condition doesn't match our position. And at that point in time, our relationship with Him will change.

I wanted to take a look at Colossians 3, 1-4. 2 Corinthians 3.18 and Hebrews 7.26 and 9.28, so we'll take a look at those as cross-references.

I'm sorry for bringing up Colossians 3.1-4 again, but frankly, if I ever teach a Bible lesson and it doesn't somehow tie in with that passage, I've failed to see it in the proper context.

Therefore, if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ and God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory. And I used to think in glory was like GPS. What's your location in the universe or the heavenlies? And that might be somewhat true. But in glory is in the glory of who Christ is. That to me is like, oh my gosh.

Us being blessed with the grace of God, positionally and conditionally united, to have His glory, how can you not be in awe? You know, this is where I start to tear up and I apologize, but I love the idea of the fullness of who God is being shown, and I get to participate in that without the hindrance of this world. When we go in the main service, hopefully you'll be able to worship the Lord with the songs, and you'll be setting your mind on things above. But how many things will we be thinking about?

Is Randy's guitar in tune? Is the overhead on the right slide? Roger's in charge of that, but I think it'll be just fine. Is the volume right? Is Randy singing the right note? Is it too cold? Is it too warm? Those things are going to not exist You are going to be worshiping face to face the God of the universe. And for me, that is so cool. I just can't wait.

Following along in that same context, but speaking to our condition, is 2 Corinthians 3.18.

And I can't help but to reference 2 Corinthians 3.18 and think of Bob Eccle. For some reason I always think of him when I think of this passage. And then secondarily my mind goes to Mike Doyle who exposited this for me for the first time and really began to get me excited about this concept of beholding.

But he says there, 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, justice from the Lord, the Spirit. So our condition is right now being transformed into that image. But John is calling us to focus on the eternal state where this will be completed. And that to me, well, completed, that's not even right either. It will have been started where our position and our condition unite. And then, see, that's the cool thing.

Sanctification on the earth conditionally is something where the sin nature is being dealt with and we're learning who we are in Christ in its fullness. When we get to heaven, we're still going to be growing. We will be growing in our knowledge of who he is infinitely. And that to me is really cool, because as a nerd, and you'll have to forgive me for this, the hard drive capacity that we have continues to grow. It grows by leaps and bounds, but it's still finite.

Google could theoretically search all of the data in all of the world and get all of that, and then they would have all the data, but it would be finite. When we go into the heavenlies, We'd come to the end of the internet. Yeah, we'd finish the internet.

Oh, what do we do next? But when we get to the heavenlies, the Lord is going to reveal Himself to us eternally, infinitely. And we will not have any problem with that. There will not be capacity issues. There will not be, you know, oh man, I'm done, my brain is full. we will be able to continue to learn ever more deeply and have more intimacy with our groom, Christ. And that's pretty awesome. But right now, we still get to behold Him, even if it is as through a mirror.

When I was learning about this 2 Corinthians 3.18 passage, what it reminded me of was my wedding day with Jessica. And we were there at the front of the church with my grandpa doing the ceremony.

And I was looking at my bride through her veil. And she was the most magnificent woman I'd ever seen on the planet, which is appropriate. And I just wanted to look at her. I just wanted to look at my bride because you know what? This is a very special person that I could spend the rest of my life with. But when we're called in 2 Corinthians to behold the Lord, it's that same thing. If you are staring at your groom, how can you not help but to want to be even more in love with our groom Christ? And that's really cool. I've joked before, I've never been a bride before, but I can't wait. But I am a bride. I am a bride of Christ now, and I can be, even though it is through a mirror dimly, beholding my Savior, my Lord.

So the last two references, if someone would turn to Hebrews 9.28, I will turn to 7.26, and then once we're done with 7.26, I'll ask someone to read Hebrews 9.28.

So the author of Hebrews says, For it was fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens, who does not need daily, like those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people. Because this he did once for all, when he offered up himself. And of course this is talking about the Lord as our High Priest. But the thing that I love about this is that these are the attributes of our groom. And that's not the fullness of our groom. The fullness of our groom exceeds these descriptions so exceeds these descriptions infinitely. And that's who we're going to be conformed to the image of.

If you've got Hebrews 9.28 somebody please read that out loud. So the author of Hebrews is reminding them The Lord is going to come. He's going to come a second time, and He's not going to have to deal with sin. That's all been dealt with. And He's going to come for His return for His bride.

And that's us. So, is anybody excited about the heavenlies yet? I mean, I'm just so excited about this, and nobody's hooted and hollered yet. The thing is, this is the foundational context, this excitement for our eternally being joined to our Redeemer, that verse 3 comes in. And when you see verse 3 on the surface, initially it looks like, uh-oh, we've got some works happening here. But when I look at verse 3 in the light of verse 2, I'm just as excited as I was. when I was looking at verse 2. So let's take a look at this. John writes... Let me flip back to 1 John. He writes something, but let me read it out of the text.

And everyone who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself, just as he is pure. So who is purifying themselves in this passage, or in this verse? Just linguistically. The one who has the hope is the one that's purifying themselves. And the translators added the word fixed in there, but it's appropriately in context. How pure can you become of your own accord? Obviously, in this class, that was an easy answer. I'm glad that everybody is confident and familiar with that.

And then why would, if that's the case, why would John tell us to purify ourselves? Okay, so by being exposed to his purity, it should be logical that we would desire that same purity in our own life. But John is telling us that we should purify ourselves because of where we're going. Christ this surety of this future condition of matching position, he's believing God. He's agreeing with God about that. And so in that process God purifies him.

I don't think that we do the purifying That's exactly where we have to go with this. We cannot purify ourselves of our own accord. But that's not the context, and Roy emphasized that, that's not the context of this passage, that you're purifying yourself of your own accord. So that's what we have to take that in the context, even though he's calling the individual to be active in this context, the activity is what?

It's toward God. It's the fixing our hope on the heavenly things. And the outward result of that is, we go back to Galatians chapter 5, and we see the fruit of the Spirit. When we are abiding, that fruit is being born, and that fruit is that purity, in part, as well as other things. But that's definitely an important thing. The thing that I see when I look at this passage is less about that purifies himself and more about the context of relationship that makes that purity just a naturally occurring thing. And that purity is entirely conditional that he's referring to, because we've been positionally purified anyways.

So our condition is being conformed as we behold the Lord, we're being transformed, as we saw in 2 Corinthians 3.18. But it's happening because our hope is fixed on our Redeemer, whom we will eventually be conformed to the image of.

We don't know what that's going to look like yet, but we're going to get there. That's all I have prepared for this morning. I don't think we even hit the second bell or the first bell yet. I don't know. I don't have any more I would add to it other than this is no less exciting than when I started the study. I haven't gotten numb to the excitement of it. Gail?

Yeah, I'm thinking about going back to Hebrews 9, 28, where he says that he'll appear a second time apart from sin for salvation. It made me think of how down through the years, I'm thinking in particular of a tract that was called Born to Reproduce.

And a song that starts out, Shall I Empty-Handed Be? And the idea is that when we see Him, we want to be able to give Him these things, these souls that have been saved, these good works that we have done. Shall I Empty-Handed Be when I see Him? And I always have a sense of shame that You know, I'm really going to come up short.

And yet, it says so plainly, and how do we miss it so easy that it's apart from sin when he appears. And you were talking about the joy and the excitement of seeing him. There's not going to be disappointment and shame that somehow we fell short. That's when the focus is on us instead of him.

Yeah, at that point in time, how much energy are you going to want to be spending looking at yourself? You're like, no! I certainly, at least in my own thinking back to that wedding ceremony, at no point in time was I thinking, jeez, I wonder if my buttons are aligned. It was just like, boom! There's my wife to be. And at the right moment, she's going to be my wife. Wife, not wife to be anymore.

But yeah, we'll be holding Lord. Now, John did tell us a little earlier in Chapter 2 that we shouldn't at some point in time want to shrink away at His coming, we should have confidence, but that again is... we're going to be beholding and our righteousness is still in Him and not of our own. And the burning of the wood, hay and stubble is yet to come, but that initial seeing Him, I don't think that the shine is going to go off of that because I'm such a failure. Roy, did you have something to add?

I guess I'm sort of stuck back on that Hebrews passage where he says he's apart from sin. And my thoughts go to things that he did on the cross. He suffered for our sins alone. We did not die on the cross for our sins. He did. But parallel to that, he took us with him to condemn the sin nature in our flesh, to bury that condemnation and leave it there. So we have identified with him, not for our sins, but for our deliverance.

So that just like Adam was put to sleep and part of him was made the woman, our Lord has identified himself with the new who we are in him, the new bride. to the reality of today. I had referenced it in my notes. Let me see if I can locate it. You think about the spirit inside even. It's sort of a picture of Adam.

Colossians 1.18.

It's talking about Christ, it says, He is also head of the body, the church, and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. And I think we should talk about Christ being the firstborn from the dead more often, quite frankly, because that is the context in which our new, being a new creation is. And this morning Roger, I'm not going to say too much about it because Roger gets to teach, but Roger is going to go over Galatians 2, 19-21, and that ties in again with this concept of We're alive in Christ. While we're on this earth in our condition, we have this life in Christ that is coming out.

And that's exciting for now. It enables us now to be conformed to his image. It enables us now to be in the process of being conformed to his image. It enables us now to walk free from the bondage of sin as we look forward with hope to this time that's coming. Next week you've got free. We're going to be getting into some very terse statements from John. They're in the context of a beholding attitude. They're in the context of an abiding heart. So hopefully they won't be too hard to churn through and you won't find us trying to...

One of the things I hated most when I was in seminary was there'd be certain times when you'd see somebody and you could tell they were tap dancing around something. It's like, oh shoot. This doesn't fit into my systematic theology, so I'm going to have to sidestep this verse, or do something. But what's so great about going through these passages, verse by verse, as we go through it, is that it's not easy to sidestep something, and you have to face it head on. And often, as you start to look at it in the biblical context, you don't have to tap dance. It's amazing how the Lord will show you what's going on.

Well, let's close in prayer. We'll go and prepare for the second hour of the main service. Family, Father, we come before you. Thank you so much that we get to look forward to, with great hope, your being revealed, or your revealing your Son, I'm sorry, in the fullness of who He is. And we know that when we see Him, we'll be seeing you. because you are intimately intertwined. We thank you for the time that we've had this morning and we do want to lift up the prayer request to you as well once more. In Jesus' name, Amen.