What we will become hasn’t been revealed to us- 1 John 3

Acts 3: 12-19; Psalm 4; 1 John 3: 1-7; Luke 24: 36-48

In our reading from John’s letter today we are told that, out of God the Father’s great love for us, that we are now children of God. But God isn’t stopping here. What we will become hasn’t been revealed to us, yet. John says that when he is revealed, we will be like him.

We hear a similar message elsewhere in the New Testament. Paul says in 2 Corinthians, 

“And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18).

Think about what is being said here. We behold the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image.

Peter’s letter tells us that through God’s promises 

“you may become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet 1:4).

 And the letter to the Colossians says, 

“… your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Col 3:3).

 We are becoming partakers of the divine nature- wrapped in Christ, and because we are wrapped in Christ, we are also in God. … In Romans, Paul says, 

“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son …” (Rom 8:29).

 And in the letter to the Ephesians we read, 

“…put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph 4:24).

The broken image of God in us, is becoming healed, whole, and powerful, through the work of Christ. God is transforming us. We are God’s children. We will be like Christ. We are being transformed into the same image. We are partakers of the divine nature. Our life is hidden with Christ in God. He has predestined us to be conformed to the image of his Son.

On Easter Sunday we talked about this as one of the ways we understand that Jesus saves us. This was salvation as Exchange. In 2 Corinthians 8:9 Paul says, 

“For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”

 Jesus received the poverty of our broken humanity, our weakness, our suffering, and in exchange he offered us divine grace and the possibility of participation in the divine nature.

St. Irenaeus said, 

“in his unbounded love he became what we are so as to make us what he is.”

 St. Athanasius said, 

“He was humanized that we might be deified.”

 This understanding of salvation shows us that it is about the transformation of our whole person. It is about our transformation into who God has always meant us to be.

In Easter season, we celebrate that Jesus conquered death, and we watch with wonder as the resurrected Jesus encounters his disciples. We watch them try to process what they are seeing- is this a ghost? What is happening? … And once they see that Jesus is really back from the dead, and they are able to once again sit at his feet and be taught what this means, they start to see that they are being welcomed into a new reality. That same power that raised Jesus, is alive in them. What Jesus has become is what God wants them to become. They aren’t to become Jesus, but they are to become people full of God, and indestructible when facing death and evil. They are to become like Jesus in his love, grace, and mercy. Jesus has opened doors into a new reality, and he has invited us in.

A part of this transformation is our moral transformation. The second half of our reading from 1st John is about sin. Our moral behaviour flows out of who we are. Jesus says that a good tree cannot produce bad fruit (Matt 7:18). So, we want to aim at becoming good trees. We don’t want to be constantly picking off bad fruit. …

In our reading from John’s letter, we see that we have not fully escaped the grasp of sin. Earlier in the letter he says, 

“If we say that we have not sinned, we make [God] a liar, and his word is not in us” (1 Jn 1:10).

 And yet, we don’t make a practice of sinning. We don’t aim at it. We don’t plan to do things we know to be sinful. … But sin will still catch us when we let our guard down. And that is a distinction that doesn’t always come out in English translations.

For example, one translation of verse 6 from out reading from 1st John 3 says, 

“No one who abides in him sins; no one who sins has either seen him or known him.”

 So how does that make you feel? … If you know Jesus, then you don’t sin. If you abide in him, then you don’t sin. … That can leave us feeling pretty confused after John just told us that if we say we have not sinned then we are a liar. … Other translations pick up on the nuance in the Greek- 

“No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.”

 The Greek implies a continuous action. It is like a practice. We could say, “no one who abides in him makes a practice of sinning”.

I hope you see the difference there. Sin will still trip us up, but to abide in Christ means that we don’t aim at sin, we don’t practice sin. The slave trader will not be able to remain a slave trader if they abide in Christ. The thief will no longer be a thief. The adulterer will not be able to remain in that practice. … We cannot abide in Christ and abide in sin because they are directly opposed to one another- they will crowd out one another. If we abide in Christ, then the sin within us will feel very uncomfortable- it will burn under our skin. It will be something we repent of, and try to eliminate from our lives.

The problem with sin is that it gets in the way of who God has called us to be. Sin is a disease that God wants to see cured. In the letter to the Hebrews we read, 

“let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (12:1-2).

 Throw that sin stuff away. It’s just slowing you down. It’s tangling you up. It’s weighing you down. But don’t focus too much on that stuff. Focus instead on Jesus. Run after him. Keep your eyes focused on him. Learn from him. Imitate him. Don’t focus on the sin.

If you want a beautiful garden, you can’t just pull weeds. If you do that, all you will have is a patch of bare dirt. You have to plant flowers, and vegetables, and herbs. To have a beautiful garden, you want flourishing plants. Likewise, a beautiful Christian life isn’t a life where we are just obsessively trying to eliminate sin. The lack of sin isn’t what holiness is. The presence of God is holiness. A holy life is a life where our gaze is fixed on Jesus, and as we follow him, his life pours into us. The virtues grow within us as we follow him. Our character more and more reflects his character.

The disciples were amazed when they met Jesus alive once again. But alive in a new way. It was a new kind of life. He was flesh and blood, but he was no longer vulnerable. He was immune to death. Locked doors didn’t hinder him. There was something mystically different about the new kind of life he had. And this left the disciples amazed.

But what they learned was that they were invited into that kind of life. A life where they too have become children of God and are becoming something that they cannot yet imagine, but seems to reflect the life Jesus was now showing them. … And this is a life we are invited into as well. As we fix our gaze on Jesus, his life will grow within us, and God will do something amazing within us. AMEN