1 John 3:1-3 Commentary

Note: Since this passage is the suggested one for All Saints Day rather than Proper 26, preachers who wish to preach on 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13 may feel free to consult previous commentaries on it found on this site at  (https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2023-10-30/1-thessalonians-29-13-3/) and (https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2020-10-26/1-thessalonians-29-13-2/).

In a culture that was once enamored with the concept of love, this Sunday’s Scripture lesson reminds us that when the Bible talks about love, it generally refers to an action. While Paul invites us to celebrate our adoption as God’s children, he insists that adoption is a concrete expression of God’s love for us.

“See what great love [agapen*] the Father has lavished [dedoken] on us,” the apostle writes in verse 1, “that we should be called [klethomen] children [tekna] of God.” While the Scriptures at least suggest God feels tenderly toward God’s people, John at least suggests God’s love for us is not primarily an emotion, but an action. God’s love for God’s people is not primarily a feeling God has. It’s an action God takes.  

One way God shows us God’s love is by calling us God’s sons and daughters. Yet many Bible translations and paraphrases reflect the fact that this is no ordinary love. While the Greek Scriptures simply refer to the agapen that we generally translate as “love,” the NIV and biblical paraphrases add descriptive adjectives. The NIV speaks of God’s “great love.” While The Message paraphrases it as “marvelous love,” the New Living Translation (NLT) marvels at “how very much our Father loves us.”

Parts of 1 John 3:1-3 allude to the nature of God’s great and marvelous love for those whom God adopts as God’s children. They remind Jesus’ friends that neither our world nor even God’s image-bearers naturally recognize God’s love or God’s dearly beloved people. In verse 1b the apostle insists the world doesn’t know us because it doesn’t know God or God’s love. 

After all, as he writes there, “The reason the world does not know [gnoskei] us is that it did not know him.” Quite simply, our culture doesn’t recognize us as God’s children because it doesn’t recognize God himself. It doesn’t recognize God’s adopted children’s resemblance to our adoptive Father because it doesn’t recognize God himself. The Message paraphrases Paul’s assertion as the world “doesn’t recognize us or take us seriously because it has no idea who [God] is or what he’s up to.”

Yet, we might go on to confess, the world isn’t helped in its recognition of either God or God’s adopted children by our stubborn resistance to the cultivation of any family likeness. Our culture doesn’t recognize us as God’s children in part because we don’t always act, talk or even think like God. While God graciously calls us God’s children, we naturally act as if we’re indifferent if not downright hostile to God.

In other words, it’s not as if the world is solely to blame for its failure to recognize either God or our similarity to God. We have shown it little grace by naturally physically and verbally refusing to reflect God’s amazing grace.

What’s more, as verse 2a implies, the world has a hard time recognizing us as God’s children because what God will someday make us has not yet been revealed by us and to the world. “Dear friends [agapetoi],” Paul writes there, “now we are children [tekna] of God, and what we will be has not yet been known [ephanerothe].”

What the apostle doesn’t make perfectly clear in this hopeful profession is just who will ephanerothe (“make known”) God’s children’s identity. His use of another variation on phaneroo (phanerothe or “appear”) to describe Christ’s return suggests God will be the primary actor in the revelation of our true identity. At our Lord and Savior’s Second Coming, Christ will make completely obvious our adoption as God’s children. No one will any longer mistake us for who we really are, by God’s amazing grace.

But preachers might, under the Spirit’s guidance, also at least suggest that God’s adopted children haven’t yet ephanerothe (“made known”) to our neighbors and world our true status. When we fail to love God above all and our neighbors as ourselves, we sinfully mask our true identity. It’s no wonder the people around us sometimes confuse us with God’s enemies. Even Jesus’ closest friends naturally act like those who hate rather than love God and our neighbors.

Is that why the Spirit inspired Paul to insist in verse 1b, “[God’s adopted children] is who we are [esmen]”? It’s not just that God’s dearly beloved people don’t always act, talk or even think like our adoptive Father. It’s also that our own consciences sometimes accuse us of failing to be God’s adopted children. Here Paul may be emphasizing our family status because not only our neighbors but also we sometimes wonder if God has really made us part of God’s family. It’s almost as if “that is who we are” underlines and highlights our status as God’s adopted children.

In verse 2 the apostle reminds Thessalonica’s Christians that our status as God’s adopted children is a current reality. There, after all, he insists to his “dear friends” [agapetoi]” we are “now” [nyn] children of God.” In other words, by God’s amazing grace we won’t become God’s dearly beloved children at some future date. We are, through the saving life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, already God’s adopted children.

However, as we’ve already lamented, the family resemblance is still somewhat blurred. When our friends and neighbors see and hear us, they don’t always recognize the family likeness. So the Spirit implants hope in God’s adopted children by inspiring Paul to write in verse 2b, “We know that when Christ appears, we shall be like [homoioi] him, for we shall see him as he is [kathos estin].”

At this time we’re naturally unlike rather than like our adopted elder brother Jesus Christ. We blur the family resemblance. However, someday soon, when Jesus comes again, that likeness will be obvious to both the world and us. We will be, by God’s amazing grace, homoioi auto (“like him).” When Christ returns confusion about our true identity will be obliterated. His adopted siblings will be like him.

Candidly, however, the relationship between Paul’s assertion we will be “like” Christ and our seeing him [opsometha auto] “as he is” [kathos estin] is rather unclear. The apostle seems to be drawing a parallel between our true identity and Christ’s. When he returns, he implies, the world will recognize the true identity of both Jesus Christ and his adopted siblings.

But The Message draws a close link between seeing the returning Christ and becoming like him: “What we know is that when Christ is openly revealed, we will see him – and in seeing him, become like him” (2b). This suggests through the very act of our seeing Christ come back, the Spirit will completely remake us in Christ’s image.

No matter how we see this mysterious link, Paul closes this Epistolary Lesson by summoning us let the Spirit help us become what we will be. After all, as he writes in verse 3, “All who have this hope in him purify [hagnizei] themselves, just as he is pure [hagno].” With the indispensable help and power of the Holy Spirit, God’s adopted children seek to conform our words, actions and even thoughts more and more closely to those of Jesus Christ. Jesus’ adopted siblings seek to open ourselves to the remodeling work of the Holy Spirit so that we may increasingly resemble our Elder Brother.

I have here and elsewhere added in brackets the Greek words for the English words the NIV translation uses.

Illustration

In his books Wishful Thinking and Beyond Words, Frederick Buechner speaks to the goal of purifying ourselves (2b). He writes: “In ‘Beauty and the Beast, it is only when the Beast discovers that Beauty really loves him in all his ugliness that he himself becomes beautiful. In the experience of Saint Paul, it is only when we discover that God really loves us in all our unloveliness that we ourselves start to become godlike.

“Paul’s word for this gradual transformation of a sow’s ear into a silk purse is sanctification, and he sees it as the second stage in the process of salvation. Being sanctified is a long and painful stage because with part of themselves sinners prefer their sin, just as with part of himself the Beast prefers his glistening snout and curved tusks. Many drop out with the job hardly more than begun, and among those who stay with it there are few if any who don’t drag their feet most of the way.

“But little by little — less by taking pains than by taking it easy— the forgiven person starts to become a forgiving person, the healed person to become a healing person, the loved person to become a loving person. God does most of it. The end of the process, Paul says, is eternal life.”