The major barrier to our understanding the vast scope of the love of God for sinners is the presumption that God loves us all and that we are all His children, that these divine favors are our birthright, ours from the womb, and abiding realities that cannot be forfeited. The elderly Apostle John, despite his years of exposure to Jesus and His gospel, was still astonished at the end of his life at the love of the Father which makes children of God out of children of wrath, which saves, adopts, and sanctifies sinners. “Behold,” he says. Open your eyes, he instructs us. His urgency “reproves men’s squint-looking,” as John Cotton put so quaintly.1 Be amazed and astonished at the love of God. Be aware, as well, of the rampant universalism with which we are surrounded today. Know this term. Universalism is more an outlook than a philosophy, but assumes or argues that essentially all religions are the same and that everyone, in the end, winds up in heaven. This outlook, when embraced, not only dilutes the particular love of God for sinners in Christ, but it undermines Christian mission, and the gospel itself. If all are children of God and loved by God already, then why evangelize, indeed, why did Christ come and why did He die?

There are other barriers to the appreciation, even the recognition of our sonship in Christ. The first barrier we examined was presumption, and the cure was a grasp of our unworthiness of God’s love. This is a modern problem. The next two are assumptions that have plagued the people of God from the beginning, undermining their confidence in their sonship. The first of these is a worldly concept of what sonship looks like (the assumption that it looks like worldly success). The second is our own incompleteness (the assumption that sonship would result in perfection). In both cases the believer, perhaps battered by the taunts of the unbelieving, wonders, “How could I be a child of God? Look at me. I am a nobody, poor and powerless.” Or, “Look at my corruption. I continue to sin. How could I be a child of God?” The Apostle John answers these questions, that neither the world’s scorn nor our own doubts might undermine our confidence in sonship.

Undistinguished

See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. (1 Jn 3:1)

“And such we are,” the Apostle John says, as a matter of emphasis. We are God’s children by way of relationship, status, and nature, but the world doesn’t realize it. The world does not know us. Our sonship has an element of hiddenness. Of course worldlings scoff at our claims. “Christians are like fine buildings still covered in scaffolding,” Hamilton explains.2 Yet divine offspring is what we are. We have been “called children of God” by God Himself (3:1). “When God calls, His call is effectual,” Bruce explains, “people and things are what He calls them.”3 Yet we don’t appear to be such (3:2).

Restored likeness is the culmination of the purposes of God in creation, to create people in His own image and likeness (Gen 1:26). That image, reduced to ruins by the fall, is restored in Christ (1 Cor 15:49; Col 3:10; Rom 8:19). Yet, the world looks at the people of God and sees no signs of sonship. The Apostle John explains:

For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. (1 Jn 3:1b)

The world “does not know us.” Why? “Because it did not know Him.” In both cases, the world is expecting divine connections will be characterized by temporal strengths such as health, prosperity, and power. If we were intimate with the Almighty, the world might say bluntly, He would be passing on a few favors. There would be signs, evidences of divine connections. A child of a billionaire ought to have at least a few million. If we are God’s children, why do we suffer as we do? Why are we poor? Why are we unhealthy? Why are we social outcasts? Doubts may arise, says Cotton, from “those many afflictions and temptations which (we) meet in the world.”4 A child of God ought to have a few muscles to flex and benefits to boast, but what does the world, and what do we, see? Nothing special at all. How can we be God’s children when nothing obvious identifies us as such, not health, not wealth, not power, not prestige, not position?

The same reasoning was applied by the world to Jesus. The world saw nothing special in Jesus. He wasn’t born in a palace or in the temple. He was born on the other side of the tracks, in a stable, to an ordinary family. He didn’t go to the right schools. He was a “man of sorrows acquainted with grief.” He had no “appearance that we should be attracted to Him” (Is 53:1-3). He had nowhere to lay his head (Mt 8:20; Lk 9:58). Where are His armies? Where is His throne? Where are His riches? The world couldn’t see His royalty or divinity, and it can’t see His image in us. In one sense the world’s rejection ought to be reassuring to us. Jesus said, “If they hated Me, they will hate you, and if they persecuted Me, they’ll persecute you” (Jn 15:18-21). They didn’t know Him and so “the world does not know us.” “This ignorance of theirs arises from their ignorance of Christ,” explains Cotton.5 Still today it is true. The church is made up mainly of very ordinary people and more than a few “odd-bods,” as the late William Still of Aberdeen called them. The children of God cannot be distinguished by worldly categories. This always has been the case. The early church recognized this:

For consider your calling, brethren, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble; but God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised, God has chosen, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are, (1 Cor 1:26-28)

By the world’s standards, God’s children are “weak,” “foolish,” “base,” “despised.” There are exceptions, but this is the norm. The world concludes that we can’t be of God. “It can hardly be inferred from our present state that God is our Father,” said Calvin.6 The same was said of ancient Israel. How could that weak, tiny country be God’s people? Wouldn’t Almighty God’s nation be the greatest on earth? God’s people would have a little more prominence. They would be powerful. They would be wealthy. They would be invincible, wouldn’t they?

We must never take the derision of the world to heart. Expect it. Don’t be confused by their assumptions. Don’t expect worldly prosperity as a mark of sonship. Quite the opposite. Expect rejection and persecution. Expect to be subject to all the ordinary trials and tribulations of life. We are not exempt from them. We are God’s children, even if it may not seem so.

Incomplete

Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is. (1 Jn 3:2)

The Apostle John affirms our sonship again. He already emphasized the certainty of our sonship saying, “and such we are” (3:1). Here he says, “Beloved, now we are children of God.” We are God’s children, now. Yet the Apostle John grants the world’s point. We’re not much to look at . . . now. “It has not appeared as yet what we shall be.” This seems to be a reference to our moral imperfections. We are the children of God, and yet, we are deeply flawed. We continue to sin. We lose our tempers. We covet what belongs to our neighbors. We are selfish, prideful, greedy, self-righteous, judgmental, and hypocritical. How can we claim to be the children of a holy, just, and righteous God? How can a people so petty be the offspring of a God so pure? How can a people so gross be the offspring of a God so great? He explains,

We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is. (1 Jn 3:2b)

It is not that we are not His children now. No, “now we are children of God.” But we are not now all that we shall be. “It has not appeared as yet what we shall be.” It is only at Christ’s return to us or our return to Him that we shall be all that we are meant to be. This has implication for the future, as well as the present.

First, all Christian growth is significant but incomplete in this world. I must not allow myself to think, “I’m not a real Christian because I continue to fall and fail.” Our progress is significant. We have been born again (Jn 3:1ff). We are a new creation in Christ (2 Cor 5:17). We have put on the new self (Col 3:9,10). We are growing into the image of Christ. However, our growth, our sanctification, though real and considerable, will never be complete in our lifetimes. Our imperfection, then, does not disprove our claims of sonship. Glorification takes place in eternity, not in time. Yes, we ought to experience real growth. Yes, we ought to fail less frequently and fall less deeply over time. But the process will not be completed in this world.

Second, our completed transformation lies in the future.

We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is. (1 Jn 3:2b)

When Christ returns, history will be consummated, and “we shall see Him just as He is,” that is, in His heavenly glory.7 By seeing Him, we shall become “like Him.” Likeness, as Kruse explains, is meant “in respect to ethical purity.”8 Notice the implication that we do not now see Him. In this world, we only have a glimpse of Christ. We walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor 5:7; cf. 1 Pet 1:8). Then we shall speak “face to face,” but now we “see through a glass darkly” (1 Cor 13:12). Like Moses, we see only the “backsides” of God (Ex 33:23). John Owen, in one of the greatest works on spiritual life ever written, entitled “On the Mortification of Sin,” reminds us of our limitations.

We speak much of God, can talk of him, his ways, his works, his counsels, all the day long; the truth is, we know very little of him. Our thoughts, our meditations, our expressions of him are low, many of them unworthy of his glory, none of them reaching his perfections . . . Notwithstanding all our confidence of high attainments, all our notions of God are but childish in respect of his infinite perfections. We lisp and babble, and say we know not what, for the most part, in our most accurate, as we think, conceptions and notions of God . . . And our farther progress consists more in knowing what he is not, than what he is.9

But then, in eternity seeing Christ in His glory will be a transforming experience. We have begun the process of transformation even now, in our increasing apprehension of Christ’s glory, or so the Apostle Paul seems to be saying,

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. (2 Cor 3:18)

“We are being transformed” presently, now, in this world, because we do see. However dimly, we are “beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord.” The sight is transforming. The more we see of Christ the more we wish to be like Him. Through this process seeing and aspiring we are transformed. This is what we call sanctification. This is why sanctification is more Christ-based than law-based. As we see Him we will want to be “like Him,” in a moral sense. We want to have the “attitude” which was in Christ Jesus (Phil 2:5ff). We want to “follow in His steps” (1 Pet 2:21). Our final transformation includes even our bodies, which will be raised from their graves. We will not be deified. But we shall be conformed to His moral image. The image of God shall be restored in us, thereby completing the ordo salutis and the goal of redemption. We were foreknown and predestined “to become conformed to the image of His Son” (Rom 8:29). The earthly shall bear the image of heavenly (1 Cor 15:49). When he comes he will,

transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself. (Phil 3:21)

Progressing

Third, knowing our future motivates our present.

And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. (1 Jn 3:3)

We’re not intimidated by the scoffing of the world. We know our limits. We know our weakness. Yet, the one who understands the goal of redemption, will aim at that goal in the present as well. Our hope (now) is “fixed on Jesus.” What does this mean? “To have one’s hope set on Christ,” says Bruce, “implies that He is a constant object of meditation and contemplation.”10 Our “hope is the hope of sonship, of salvation, of glorification. It is “on Him,” on Christ alone. Our hope is not in an alternative god, or in our personal righteousness, or an imagined universal divine benevolence. It is “fixed” on Christ. We’re not banking on any alleged alternatives. It means our hope “has a secure base,”11 because it is anchored not in the temporal, but in Christ Himself.

And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure. (1 Jn 3:3)

Hope, fixed upon Jesus, “purifies.” This term (hagnizo) “definitely denotes moral purification,” says Kruse.12 Since Christ is pure, “a hope that rests ‘on Him’ cannot but have a purifying effect in the life of one who so hopes.”13 Do we have the hope of one day being conformed to the image of Christ? Then we will strive for that now, in the present. The Christian, says John Cotton, “though he sees much filthiness in his spirit for the present, yet he labors to purge himself . . . and is ashamed of his hardness of heart and unbelief.”14 Or to state the opposite, “He who stops purifying himself has dropped this hope from his heart.”15 If we know the God who is pure, and we are in His family, then we will strive for purity ourselves. Notice this is not a command. It is not a wish. It is a fact. This is what believers do. “If you would be a hopeful Christian,” says Cotton, “you must be a growing Christian.”

The sign of our adoption, then, is not so much where we are in our progress as Christians, as where we are going. In which direction are we heading? Every child, at least in the early years, wants to be like his or her parent. Parental likeness is to be the desire of our hearts. We will want to be like God, in all goodness, righteousness, and love. Are we moving in the right direction? Yes, we are difficult to distinguish from the world. Yes, we are weak and deeply flawed. But if we are growing, if we are purifying ourselves, if we are being sanctified, then we can be sure that we are the children of God.