1 John 3:1-3.
1871 251 This passage is a kind of parenthesis which comes in between the close of chapter 2 and 3:4, etc., where the subject of righteousness is treated more fully. He had been exhorting the family of God to abide in Christ that, when He shall appear, those who laboured might have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. "If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him." Then he pursues the subject of righteousness in the following verses, beginning at verse 4. It is plain in reading from that point that he is occupied with practical righteousness. "Little children, let no man deceive you; he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous." But then the Spirit of God lets us know that we have no power to be consistent in our relationships, which is the meaning of righteousness, unless we are strengthened by the grace of our God.
I consider therefore that this is at least one of the motives why the apostle was inspired, on entering into the subject of righteousness, thus to turn aside. It is worthy of divine love, and assuredly not without the deepest purpose and consideration of us. It is to give us the true spring and power of righteousness. Hence John brings in here the Father. Whenever it is a question of grace, we hear of the Father; where it is a question of righteousness, God is rather the name of whom mention is made. God has moral claims, and He does not abate these claims in the case of a Christian. On the contrary, responsibility on our part must rise in proportion as He makes known His grace and truth. But then let us not forget that His grace gives power: claim never does. You may have the fullest right to a thing but that will not enable you to get what you ought to receive, unless there be a spring of power enabling the person to meet your demands. So our God does with us. His full intention is to have us according to Christ here; perfectly according to Him in heaven. But in order to accomplish either the one or the other, it must be by the dealings of His grace; and it is in this way that He works. The Father sends His Son that we may see and believe on Him unto life everlasting; and John has such a sense of the efficacy of Christ that, for him, to see him is to be like Him. If you see Him, says he as it were, you are sure to follow in His steps. John will not allow that any one who is unlike Jesus has ever seen Him. Now there is nothing that gives a better idea of the transforming power of Christ than this. John does not admit of a person having seen Jesus without being like Him. This may be hindered by the flesh here; but the day is coming when all hindrances will be gone. We shall see Him perfectly then, and we shall be perfectly like Him when we do.
This is exactly the way in which the matter is put. He says, "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God." Rather understand children of God, for so it should be. It is not sons. John never makes use of the word huios (son) in describing the Christian, but invariably teknon, or child. Paul calls us both sons and children; but John always children.
The difference is this: a man might be conceived to become the son of God without being His child in a real sense; that is, he might be conceived and have the name of son without the possession of a new and divine nature. Certainly any one might be adopted as the son of a man without being the man's child. It is common when a rich man is childless to take another's child and make it son and heir. In the dealings of God we might conceive such a course on His part; but He does nothing of the sort. In point of fact God not only adopts those who were children of wrath even as others, but He makes them to be His children; He brings them into all the reality of the relationship, He gives them a life that is of Himself. They are not only adopted, but born of God: and if born of Him, we are not only sons (which refers to public position and inheritance), but besides we are His children. The consequence is that the title of inheritance is made far closer. A person might be adopted as a son in order to make him an heir; but if I am the child of the family, there is no doubt about it at all — "if children, then heirs." Paul, when he speaks of our public place in glory by and by, styles us also sons of God, but in the relationship of children. John always speaks about the latter. He was not led by the Holy Ghost to bring out the public place of sons; but he makes a great deal of our being born and consequently "children of God." "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called children of God." We are not put in the distant place of Israel under the law; nor are we merely brought by title into our actual place of nearness. This he shows still more clearly in what follows: "Therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not." We are so closely bound up with Christ that we have the place of Christ not only with God but from the world. The world did not know Him. This is enough for us, thinks John: the world does not know us either. We are so bound up with Christ that, if the world did not know Him, the world does not know the Christian.
But this is not all. "Beloved, now are we children of God." Before this it was said that we are "called" the children of God. Now there is a further statement, lest it should be thought that we were merely called so. "Beloved, now are we children of God." It is not that we are going to be or that it is a high-flown figure used of us, but now we are so.
The object of the Spirit of God is to fill the children of God with the certain sense of their relationship. It is impossible to do anything properly christian, unless the soul be conscious of this moral bond and hold it fast. But may a person not slip into what is dishonouring to God? Undoubtedly he may, and particularly if he do not keep firm and bright before him Christ and his own nearness to God in Him. When a person bearing His name is tempted to sin and yield to it, he is filled with an object that is not Christ and for the time forgets that he is really a child of God. If there is an object that gets possession of your mind that is not Christ, you have already slipped aside and outward acts of sin will surely follow, and if unjudged a state even more deplorable. It may be not that which openly disgraces a man; but sin is the will working and carrying away to rebellion, and this is never Christ. The exercise of self-will is just the principle of sin. The apostle says, Sin is lawlessness, which is indeed the true and only meaning of the close of verse 4. When a person is thus led astray from God by the power of his own will, he never realizes at that time that he is a child of God. If he had Christ before him, he ought with Him to have the sense that he is a child of God, and if he has this simply in his heart, he must (as the ground and title to it) have Christ before his soul, because it is nothing but Christ has brought us into this blessed place. If you know the truth of the gospel, you cannot truly have the sense of Christ without having the sense also that you are a child of God. To sever the two is either unbelief or Antinomianism; that is, it cuts off the privilege of being a child of God, from christian responsibility with Christ as the standard and motive for the walk. And clearly the man who does so is either grievously misled for a season or not born of God at all, but is merely making use of the name or title of the child of God to do what he likes, which is the worst sin.
The fact is that "Now are we the children of God." It is a settled and existing relationship. The apostle does not address them as if they had any doubt about the matter. The awful departure from the truth which is now so common — that of people counting it a presumption and danger to believe that they are even now without doubt children of God — had not yet become prevalent, though (I suppose) beginning to be instituted by the false teachers against whom John warns in this very Epistle. Even in this last time when the apostle was going away, he could remind them thus: "Beloved, now are we the children of God." He foresaw this real danger, not from believing the gospel, but from these false teachers casting doubts on the actual relationship of the believer. This seems the reason why the apostle John so strongly insists on it. "Now are we the children of God."
But he adds something not yet manifested; and what is this? It is not yet manifested what we shall be. What does he mean? That we shall be like Christ even in our bodies. He does not say or mean that it is not revealed to us, for it is set forth in scripture fully and simply. We should err if we understood that there is the smallest doubt about the result. Who can doubt that it is all the same to God, whether a thing be done or only going to be done? It is far from being the same to man as such, but it is to Him. Hence it is equally certain to the believer if he rests on the word of God, because his faith depends not on the things that are seen, but on His assurance as to things as yet unseen. Hence even for our relationship as children of God we do not see but we believe His word. We believe in Jesus according to the gospel sent by God; and as the consequence we know that we are the children of God, the joy and assuring witness of which we have also by the Spirit. But it has not yet been manifested what we shall be. We know however that, when He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
Many seem to fancy "it doth not yet appear" means that it is ambiguous, or at least unrevealed. But this is not the sense. For it is fully revealed in the word. It is not yet manifest to every eye: such is the true force. The appearing means the manifestation before the world. Thus when the apostle says, "It is not yet manifest what we shall be, but we know that when he is manifested, we shall be like him," he speaks of our manifestation with Christ before the world. In point of fact we shall have been taken up before the day of manifestation. Hence when He is manifest, we shall be also at the very same time, for we shall appear with Him in glory. We are like Him according to the measure of the simplicity of our faith now; but we shall all be assuredly and perfectly like Him then. If there were a single child of God not perfectly like Christ then, it would be a failure in His victory, and so far would deprive Him of the travail of His soul. But God will not permit this. He will exert and display His own gracious power; so that when the Lord Jesus shall be manifested, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is, We see Him now in spirit and are like Him in spirit; we shall see Him then in body and shall be like Him in body.
"And every man that hath this hope in him" means founded on Him. The "him" does not speak of the man but of Christ. Where the hope is based on Christ, he purifies himself even as Christ is pure. If about to be so perfectly like Him then, I shall strive earnestly not to be inconsistent with Him now. And this he says for the purpose of guarding us against allowing sin, making excuses for self-will, or in any way trifling with the moral glory of the Lord Jesus, which is now committed to the believer's keeping and testimony in a practical way.