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Our Christian Hope (1 John 3:1-3)
Rev. Scott J.
Simmons
Introduction
When I was a freshman in college, I turned on my radio to hear the
following words from what became one of my favorite songs:
I have
climbed the highest mountains,
I have run through the fields,
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
I have
spoke with the tongue of angels,
I have held the hand of a devil,
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
I
believe in the Kingdom Come,
Then all the colours will bleed into one,
But yes I’m still running
You
broke the bonds, You loosed the chains,
You carried the cross, And my shame, You know I believe it,
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
These are the abbreviated words to a song by the group U2, and it
expresses very well, the message of our text this morning. As this song suggests, Christ has already
done so much for us. He broke our bonds, loosed our chains, carried the
cross of our shame, but he has not yet made all things new. He has not yet wiped every from our
eyes. And so Bono joins with the
apostle John in exclaiming that he has not yet found what he’s
looking for. For all that we have
received from Him, we still have hope for something more.
This is a passage about hope. It
speaks to us about the hope we now have as a result what Christ has already
done—a hope from the past. It
also speaks to us about the hipe we have as a result of what Christ will do
in the future—a hope in the future.
Main Body
Because the Father’s love has made
the world now foreign to us, we should not place our hope in what this
world can give.
Exposition: Let’s consider the hope that Christ has provided for us in
the past in verse one.
How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be
called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does
not know us is that it did not know him.
The NIV begins this verse with “How great a love,” but some
of your translations may read, “Behold what manner of love” or
“See what kind of love.”
In other words, some of your translations speak of God’s love
as being quantitatively greater than the love we ourselves experience. Other translations speak of God’s
love as being qualitatively different from
the love we ourselves experience.
I would like to suggest to you that both translations are equally
valid. This passage is suggesting
that what is so great about this love is the fact that it is a different
kind of love than what we have experienced in the world. His love is so incomparably great because
it is so vastly different from the kind of love that we can produce
ourselves. It is a love that is
completely foreign to us, since it has made us His children. That we have been made children of God
demonstrates a love that is completely foreign to our experience in the
world.
What is this love that is so great and so different that there is no
worldly counterpart—a love that human nature cannot generate? John gives us the answer in verse 16.
This
is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.
Now notice in verse 16 how the love of Christ which we are to exhibit
ourselves is shown in that he laid down his own life for us. That is the kind of love that He
demonstrated for us, and it’s the kind of love that cannot be found
in the world. It is an entirely
self-sacrificial love that is so different from what human nature can
generate. As a result of our human
nature, we make enemies out of our children. God’s love makes children out of
his enemies. This is not a passive
or permissive love, a love that simply lets be as we are. It is a love that accepts us as we are
and then transforms us.
It is no wonder that John follows up this declaration by saying that
the world does not know us, because it did not know him. The foreignness of God’s love in
making us His children has made us foreigners in the world. We are transformed by that love as well
so that we now exhibit in some fashion the love of Christ. Just like a son bears resemblence to his
earthly father, we as His children begin to look like our heavenly
Father. Because of this, the world
does not recognize us, even as it did not recognize Him. Therefore, the love we exhibit as
children of God is foreign to the ways of the world and it does not
recognize us. This transforming love
causes us to live differently in the world, because we begin to live by the
example of Christ in the way that He loved us, in sacrificing ourselves for
the good of others.
Illustration: Several years ago, while I
was still in seminary, I was given the opportunity to work as an intern
under the mission pastor of my church.
It was a tremendous opportunity for me, since I was planning on
being either a mission pastor or a missionary. I was told my responsibilities would
include training short-term teams for going overseas, writing a manual for
all short-term participants, as well as some administrative duties. After I worked there for a few weeks,
however, the demands of the job had me doing mostly administrative duties,
and that was not my strong suit, to say the least. Eventually, I was fired from that job,
and as you might imagine that was pretty devistating to me. I was fired from the job I was preparing
for in seminary.
I’m not sure I realized the extent to which
that affected my confidence until I arrived here at Chapelgate and worked
as an intern under Dan Faber. I
found myself always wondering how long it was going to take for him to get
fed up with my administrative weaknesses, but it never happened. In fact, quite the opposite
happened. He saw strengths in me
that I didn’t see, and he saw as strengths things that I saw as
weeknesses. He exuded confidence in
me, and I often thought of myself as living under an imputed confidence,
clothed in the confidence of Dan Faber.
That confidence that he placed in me changed me. He caused me to look at myself, my
calling and my God in a different way.
I realized that I didn’t have to live up to the expectations
my previous boss had laid on my to be a good pastor. I began to realize relationally the
implications of Paul’s claim that there is no condemnation for those
who are in Christ Jesus. You
can’t get fired from the Christian life. The confidence Dan placed in me gave me
the freedom to try new things without fear of failure. That kind of love that transforms our
view of ourselves and our God cannot be found in the world. Human nature does not generate it.
Application: Once just like the
world, antagonistic to Christ, but He loved us as we were and made us His
children. This transforming love and
grace that changes us also ought to transform the way we love others. Like Christ who sacrificed himself on our
behalf, we would turn to live sacrificially with others. Just as Dan’s care transformed me
and Christ’s love transforms us, we also live transformationally in
the lives of others. And this gives us hope, for He as not left us as
orphans. He is with us by His
Spirit, and all who are born of God are likewise brothers and sistes with
each other. We live differently
because we are now included in a new and different family. A family which loves based on the love
Christ demonstrated for us.
We dare not not give up on this hope by adopting a worldly ethic. The world’s ethic can never rise
above law and legalism. The world
may have a different set of laws than us, a set of laws that are perhaps
more permissive. However, when we
seek to motivate people to be good on the basis of law, we adopt the same
tactics the world uses to accomplish its goals. I remember my third year of teaching
Bible at Chapelgate Christian Academy, I wrote a test as a silly
illustration of God’s grace.
The test was so difficult that no one could pass the test. Every question came from our lesson
materials and study guides, but every question was extremely difficult and
I graded each exam with exacting precision.
As you might imagine, when I handed out the graded tests the next
day, people were quite upset with me.
Not a single person rose above a failing grade. To their surprise, I then told my class
that I would give them each a 100 percent, so that each student could start
the quarter with a perfect score. It
was a silly example, but the discussion that followed was priceless. I had one student who literally was angry
with me. She was one of my top
students, and she said to me something to the effect of “That’s
not fair, Mr. Simmons. I studied for
this test, and I got one of the highest grades. You’re telling me that these kids
that didn’t study get the same grade as me?” I said, “Yes” and she replied,
“Well that’s ont fair.”
I (perhaps incompassionately) said, “Well I guess your good
works didn’t do you a bit of good did they?”
As we went over the test questions in class, another student began
arguing with me over every question he got wrong, trying to gain more
points on his test. He was
determined at every question to gain more points on his test. At one point I asked him, “Why are
you trying to gain more points on the test when I’ve already given
you a perfect score?” He
thought about that a second and then replied, “Well, I guess I just
want to feel like I’ve earned it.” His answer blew me away. And it occurred to me that that what
these two students had done to me was exactly the worldly legalism that we
often fall into as Christians. At
the core, legalism seeks to find a way to justify believing that we have
earned what we have received. That
we have done something to deserve what we have. We then can look at others and think that
we deserve more than them (or that they deserve more than us). Legalism is incompatible with the gospel
because law can never transform hearts.
Only God does that by His Spirit through brothers and sisters loving
each other the way Christ loved us.
When we abandon God’s transforming grace and seek to be good
because of law, we become like the world.
Ihad a third student in my class.
He was one of my more difficult students, and he rarely
studied. His grade on my test prior
to my imputed score was a 9 out of 100.
He had the lowest grade in the class. He came to me after class and showed me
his test with a 9 marked out and replaced with a 100. He said, “I don’t deserve
this. I didn’t study. I deserve the 9.” I thought to myself, “He got it. He
understood.” That’s the
way we ought to see ourselves in relation to our God. We don’t deserve it, but we are
His children. We are now free to
love each other with that same self-sacrificial love.
Transition: John gives us hope on the basis of the transforming
love of God in us, even if the world hates us for it. Yet John also looked forward to what God
was going to do in us as a basis for our Christian hope.
Because our future will be so much
better than our present, we must purify ourselves in anticipation of that
hope.
Exposition: The text says in vv. 2-3 that it is the one who has
the hope of being made like Christ that purifies himself. If we hope for and truly long for the day
when we will be made like Him in glory, power, and purity, we will seek for
that purity of life now. I would
suggest that if we do not strive for purity now, that is an indication that
we have not really placed our hope in Christ’s second coming—we
do not really long for the purity of life that will come. In fact, I believe that every sin we
commit is testimony of our apathy about Christ’s return. Because it is the idolatry of our hearts
that we prefer life as it is now to the way it will be. We prefer life as it is now only with
fewer inconveniences, less pain and more comfort. The second coming of Christ confronts
that idolatry in our hearts, for Christ’s return will be a time when
we will be made like Him. If that is
true, how ought we to think of ourselves now.
Illustration: I remember seven years ago, when my wife and I found out that
we were going to have our first child.
How wonderful the expectation was that we just sat around and waited
for Nathan to be born, doing absolutely nothing in anticipation of that
day. You know that’s not what
happened. We went out and bought a
crib, a changing table, we decorated the walls in his room, we started
stocking up on diapers, formula, we got cute little stuffed animals for him
and clothes. We took la maz classes
to learn about the birthing experience.
We didn’t do all this because we had to, even though
there’s a sense in which we did.
We joyfully changed our lives because of the hope that we had,
because we wanted our lives rearanged in anticipation of Nathan’s
birth.
Application: And the same is true of us. If we really do place our hope in
Christ’s return when we will be made like him, we will not be
satisfied with life as usual. We
will not be satisfied with the way we currently raise our kids, love our
spouses and treat our neighbors. We
will not be satisfied with our sinful lives and we will want them to
change. There will come a day when
we will all be made like Him, and so the second coming gives us hope to
spur us on toward love and good deeds.
And if we really have this hope, we will exemplify the sacrificial
love that Jesus demonstrated on the cross.
We make ourselves pure by our obedience. Obviously, this only happens by the grace
of God. Yet obedience for us is not
simply a matter of law for us now.
It’s a matter of grace for those who have been born of
Him. Yet it is this “future grace”
that motivates us.
Our Reformed tradition has rightly capitalized on thanksgiving as a
motivator for obedience. As verse 1
in our text suggests, we are motivated to live differently out of gratitude
for what Christ has done for us in the past. Here in verses 2-3, John gives us an
additional motivator. A motivator
based on a hope in the future grace of Christ’s return—the
longing for the time when all things will be made new affecting the way we see
our present and live in it. We are
not motivated by the law hanging over our heads; we are motivated by the
expectation of His coming.
Transition: And yet the
cares of this world cause us to be so short-sighted. We focus so consistently on the present,
forgetting what God has promised to do with us in the future. Not thinking about this future grace, we
get caught up in day to day living and forget the bigger picture. We lose this greater hope, but John here
does not let us get away with that.
Because we are not yet made like him, we
should hope and long for the future when he will make us like Him.
Exposition: Look again at verse 2 for John’s
confession of his apostolic ignorance.
It has not yet been revealed what we will be like. Even John the apostle doesn’t know
because it has not been revealed. We know only that we will be made like him,
because we will see him, or as Paul says, that our bodies will transformed
to be like the resurrected body of Jesus (Phil 3:20-21). We see here that we will be made pure, or
as Paul says, free from any stain wrinkle or any blemish (Eph. 5). We also know from 1 Cor. 15:42-44 that
The
body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it
is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is
sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.
We have that hope for that future grace when all this will change. Yet the fact remains that we live in
perishable bodies now. We live in
dishonor and weakness, waiting for the day when our bodies will be raised
in power and glory, made spiritual like the body of Christ. Our lives are constantly bombarded with
weakness, with sin and with pain.
And it is so easy to forget that fact and create little pockets of
Eden in our lives now—life as usual with a little more comfort. We want to numb the pain we feal and
remove the struggles that we face without ever really dealing with the real
causes of our pains and sorrows that we feel. And what can result is that we end up
with a form of spiritual leprosy—we are wounded and yet numb to the
pain. The pain that we feel is
really a good thing for us, for they are indicators of what’s going
on in our hearts and souls, and the true nature of our present
condition. Paul says it this
way:
“Now
we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a
building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human
hands. Meanwhile we grown, longing
to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling.” (2 Cor. 5:1-2).
We know we have an eternal house in heaven, and yet we currengly live
in this earthly tent, so we grown for the future that awaits us. As Michael Card wrote so well, we belong
to eternity, but we are stranded in time, so we groan, we grieve and we
weep in the present. We are born of
the Spirit and yet weary of struggling with sin. We may believe with Bono in the kingdom
come, when all the colors will bleed into one, but we have not yet realized
it in its fullness. We see it only
through a glass darkly. We can try
with Bono to climb the highest mountains and run through every field
looking for what we will never have this side of heaven, trying to find an
Eden in this world—life as usual with a little more comfort and a
little less pain. We must admit with
him that we still haven’t found what we’re looking for either
and hope for the day when we will be made like Him, for we will see Him as
He is.
Our present woes are therefore reminders for us of that future hope whe
all things are made new, never letting us forget the true nature of our
present condition, and our idolatry before God. They cause us to live for His glory,
rather than our own.
Illustration: I remember
about a year ago, I was asked to vist Sharon Long’s mother, sick with
meningitis in the hospital. I was
asked to stay in the hospital with her until Sharon could get there. When I arrived in that hospital room, she
was crying out in agony to God, “Lord, take me. Take me home!” At times, she was screaming, only half
conscious, longing for an end to the suffering that had become her
life. I remember sitting by her bed
wondering why I was praying the same prayer for her, that God would end her
suffering and take her home. Pain
medications weren’t working, and eventually they asked me to leave
the room for a minute so that she could receive some medication that would
knock her out for a while. I
remember leaning up against a wall thinking, “they don’t train
you for this in seminary.” And
yet I was glad to go back and sit with her, for I thought, who am I to be
her pastor if I can’t at least sit with her in her pain. She eventually recovered, but I never
saw her physically well. Her body
was devistated and she passed away a few months later. I never saw her well, but I know that one
day I will. We haven’t seen
the last of Clara Stinchcomb. I will
see her one day with a new body, made like Christ’s, free from
frailty, weekness and disease, physical and yet spiritual as well, raised
in glory and power. The Christian
hope is not to die and be with God in heaven. Our hope is in the day when Christ
returns and all things are made new, and He raises our bodies from their
graves and makes them like His glorious body, so that we can live in a
redeemed earth, as John describes for us in Revelation chapter 21:
Then I
saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth
had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new
Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride
beautifully dressed for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
“Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.
They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their
God. He will wipe every tear from
their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for
the old order of things has passed away.
Application: That is the hope that we have.
A hope for the future when the old order of things has passed
away. The frailty of our human
nature done away with, and God will wipe every tear from our eyes. And our heavenly Father is not a
human father who would simply tell us, “Stop crying,” and wipe
away our tears with out addressing the cause of our sorrow. He will not wipe away our tears until
what causes our sorrow has been cast away—until we are made like Him
and we see Him as He is when all thigns are made new. And therefore, every tear that we have is
a tear of faith, a longing for the future and a dissatisfaction with the
way things are in the present. It’s
testimony that we believe that this is not right the way things are now,
but that there will come a day when all things will be made new.
So we ought not to stop groaning, for in the midst of our sorrow, we
get to see our God in a new way—a God who sent his son to take up our
infirmities and bear our sorrows.
The body of Jesus Christ was broken for us, as we remember when we
celebrate the sacrament. His body,
both broken and raised from the dead therefore comforts us as we consider
the brokenness of our own natures now.
One day, we will dine with Him again at the wedding supper of the
Lamb. Until then, the sorrow and
pain that we feel cause us to long for that future. They keep us from ever believing such a
hopeless lie that the world has bought into: “This is it, so make the
best of it.” For Jesus did not
die simply to pay for our sins. He
died to purchase for us New Heavens and New Earth. His death accomplished that—a new
life with out death or mourning or crying or pain. We have not yet seen it in its fullness
but we will, and let us never be satisfied with anything less.
Conclusion
So John here gives us two sources of hope—one in the past and one
in the future. One source of our
hope comes from what He has already done.
He gave His son’s life for ours and made us His children. Another source comes from what He
promises to do. That is, to make us
like Jesus. We are children of God
and aliens in the world, hoping for the return of our Savior, at which time
we will be like Him, for we will see him as he is. Let us never lose sight of that hope, for
that is the one thing in this life that we can know will never
change.
Scott J. Simmons
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