1 John 2:28-3:3 Ashamed Before God
I went to see a movie recently with a friend and it seemed that he was looking around the theater a lot all throughout the movie – I didn’t ask him at the time but it struck me – I wonder if he’s concerned for our safety? Recent events have shown us that you’re always vulnerable, that an attack could come at any time – in the movie theater, in the mall, at the office Christmas party. And those are just the spectacular examples – what about heart attacks and vehicle accidents and other, can we use the word, ‘normal’ events?
We don’t like to dwell on it, but death is never far from any of us. And what then? What comes next? According to the Bible – which you might consider an authoritative source on such subjects – we will stand before God for judgment.
The Bible also teaches that there will be a Second Coming of Christ – and there will be people who suddenly face God without having passed through death.
Regardless of how it happens, the point is: one day we will all stand before God, perhaps with little or no time to prepare. So what will that be like for you? If you suddenly found yourself in the real presence of God, what would your reaction be? After you got over the shock, what would you feel, what would you think? Would you be ashamed? Would you be afraid? Would you have any confidence at all? And if you think you would be able to stand before God unashamed, unafraid, why is that? Where does that confidence come from?
Well, we find the answers in Scripture this morning:
1 John 2:28 And now, little children, abide in Him, that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. 29 If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him.
John isn’t just wasting ink here, there’s a reason he’s writing this, and that’s because it’s possible – it’s possible that you could be embarrassed by your condition when you meet your maker. And John wants to prevent that; he wants us to think about these things here and now when we can take action on them.
And I’ve got to point out something really important here so that we all know what we’re talking about: this is a letter addressed to the church, to people like you and me. John isn’t talking about the radical atheist or the flagrant sinner being ashamed before Christ – this is addressed to the person who goes to church each week – he’s telling them, telling us: ‘abide in [Christ], that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.
So let me ask again – what do you think it will be like when YOU stand before God? You’ll be standing before someone who knows every thought of your mind, every motive of your heart, every action of your hands, every look of your eyes - there will be no escape and there will be no concealing or masking or hiding, no explanations or excuses – just the bare brutal facts of who you really are and what you’ve done. How’s that going to go?
Honestly, we don’t like to think much about it, do we? Why? Because inside each of us there is a deep sense that there are things we need to change but some of them are just hard – we’ve been this way for so long it doesn’t seem like we could change or that we ever will – it’s just me being me again.
But that’s why John is encouraging us – he says, “abide in Him” abide in Christ – that’s the answer – if you want to avoid being ashamed or embarrassed at His appearing, be
connected to Him now and He will begin to transform you. Slowly over time, there will be more of Him and less of me. But we’ve got to stay connected to Him and we’ve got to let Him purify us.
Too many Christians fall into the trap of a two-tier faith. Good men and women, orthodox in the faith, who know what salvation is, they know what repentance is, they trust in Christ and look forward to Heaven, but they think – that’s later.
Some of you have a financial advisor – you meet with them, maybe once a year to go over stuff, but in between you make your payments, fund your accounts and you let them take care of everything else – you just trust and assume that’s all OK – retirement income or insurance is going to be there when you need it, but now back to the ‘real world’ and let’s just get on with day to day life.
Some Christians treat spiritual matters the same way – you’ve made your plans for eternity, you come to church, that’s all good. But now, you know, I’ve got to get ready for this big meeting on Friday, or this report I’ve been working on, or this trip I have coming up.
Friends, John is trying to sound the alarm – to wake us up – to help us see that what Jesus has done in the past and what He has planned for the future should make a difference in the lives we live today. We don’t want to find ourselves face to face with Him and feeling a bit rusty spiritually because it’s been a while since we were really focused on spiritual things.
John says we need to be abiding in Christ – interconnected to Christ, like a branch drawing all of it’s nutrients and life from the trunk it’s connected to – that’s what we should be like.
His righteousness should appear in us because He’s flowing through us. We’re in
relationship. That’s what gives confidence at His appearing: it’s familiarity. And the more you put into your relationship with Him, the greater the impact it has on you. You find yourself practicing righteousness because He’s righteous and you’re spending time with Him.
Here’s the point John is making – if we really know Christ, if we’re really saved by Him and in relationship to Him, then it should make a noticeable difference in our lives. But is that happening? Are we increasing in holiness, purity, righteousness?
Are those words that would define your life? If someone was asked to describe you in 100 words - would three of them, only three of them, be holy, pure, and righteous?
Do you see? This is why we need to abide in Christ. We’re pretty ugly on our own, but if we abide in Him, He purifies us, we reflect more and more of His image and less and less of our own, and we find a confidence in the face of God that comes not from ourselves, but from what He has done in us.
Look at what John writes next:
3:1 Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. 2 Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. 3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
John’s whole point is our passage this morning is that God has initiated something mind- boggling in our lives, and if we really understand who He is and what He has done, it should have a real affect on our lives. So John points us back to it – he says, “Look! Look at what God has done, it’s worth marveling over.”
God the Father has permanently bestowed on us a completely exotic, foreign to the human heart, astonishing kind of love. This isn’t like a love we see or experience anywhere else.
It’s a “peculiar, out-of-this-world kind of love”1 and God has placed it on us!
The Scripture uses the word “bestowed.” So, what does that mean – we don’t use the word bestow very often. It means that God has given this love to us as a permanent gift. He hasn’t just shown it to us, or revealed it to us, He’s actually bestowed it on us, put it upon us – it’s a one-way, permanent, gift from God, and there’s no shaking it loose. You could say that God has lavished this love upon us.
So let’s think about – He has bestowed it on US! That’s you and me, with all our hurts, habits, and hangups; whether you get promoted or not, whether you get called back or not, whether your proposal gets accepted or not – “Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto US!”
“…That we should be called children of God!” He’s bestowed a transforming love on us that makes us His children. Now, we need to stop here for a moment and clarify things because this means much, much more than what you might think.
1 Wiersbe
There is a sense in which we can say that we are all God’s children – and you hear some people say that, people want to make the argument that one of the problems of religion is that it makes exclusive claims about truth when really, they would say, we’re all God’s children.
Well yes, there is a sense in which we all bear the image of God, we are all created in His image, all human life is valuable – no matter your race or sex or ethnicity or even your religion, human life is valuable – that’s one reason why we support groups like Assist who are helping to champion the cause of human life.
When we think of the horrors of the Nazis in WWII we tend to think of the massacres of the Jews, but did you know they also went through and emptied the homes for the mentally ill and retarded and the physically handicapped? These were full-blooded German citizens, but they didn’t meet the physical and mental standards of the super Aryan race the Nazis wanted to develop, so they were murdered by the state instead of supported by the state.
And because, all life is valuable simply because it is life and we are created in the image of God, regardless of ‘capacity’ or ‘ability,’ we can stand up and say, “That was wrong!”
But just as there is a difference between being a loving dad and simply being biologically responsible for the creation of human life – there is a difference between God being our Creator and God being our Father and Savior.
John makes this very clear in his Gospel; he says something special happened to those who received Jesus -
John 1:12 But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name.
John says God gave them the right to become children of God because up until that moment, they were not children of God. They didn’t have an active relationship with their Father.
They were like children growing up without a dad – some man may have played a role – he gave his DNA but there’s no other imprint of him on the child’s life. And again, that can be true physically and spiritually. Where is the imprint of your dad on your life?
I can’t answer that question for you physically, but I can tell you this – God the Father in Heaven wants to receive you as His child and He wants to be everything that a dad should be to you.
It’s such an important thing for us to know that each member of the Trinity affirms it.
God the Father says in 2 Corinthians 6:18 “I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the LORD Almighty.”
Hebrews 2:11 says, Jesus “is not ashamed to call [us] brethren.”
And in Romans 8:16 we read, “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
So, when we become a Christian we go from bearing the image of God, to actually being a child of God.
Let’s talk about that for a minute. Often the New Testament uses the idea of adoption to describe this change in our status. And that’s good – that’s part of what happens – we go from not being part of God’s family to having a seat at His table and a room in His house.
But you need to know there’s more than just a legal transaction occurring. It’s more than just a name change on some Heavenly court document. Something else very real occurs to us when God bestows this love on us: there’s also a complete transformation of the
substance of our inner most being, a transformation because it’s no longer just us in us, now He’s here too. At the moment of salvation you literally become something you’ve never been before.
John is encouraging us to abide in Christ this morning, but you remember that last week we saw that God also abides in the Christian. If you are in this relationship with God – if you have responded to and received His love – you have something that other people alive on this planet do not have. You’re no longer simply a base model biological human being – now you’ve got a theological aspect to your existence as well.
Christians are not just people who are tying to live a certain way, or vote a certain way, or believe a certain set of truths or spend their Sunday mornings at church instead of
shopping or recovering from Saturday night. No, Christians are not just known by what they do and don’t do or even by what they believe and do not believe – those things have their place – they are a part, but it is essential to understand that Christians are actually something materially different than the rest of the world.
These are very difficult things to understand, and they’re easy to misunderstand as well at the cost of heresy, but the Bible clearly teaches them over and over again.
Paul tells the Ephesians in chapter 2 (12, 19) “At one point you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel” but now you have been made “fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.”
2 Peter 1:4 says we have become “partakers of the divine nature.”
Romans 5:5 says “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
Once again: something about the Christian actually changes at salvation – something was not, and now is. A transformation of our nature has occurred along with the adoption. We bear a name, but we also bear a mark of the Father’s touch.
And notice, this change happens immediately – it’s “bestowed upon us,” remember? So John enthusiastically reminds us, Beloved, now we are children of God – it’s happened, if you’re sitting in here this morning and you have been saved by Christ, you ARE a child of God, right now – the change HAS already happened.
But there’s more to come too, right?
1 John 3:2 Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.
For all the great stuff we know about God – about who He is, what He has done, and where we’re headed, there’s still so much we don’t know. In fact, Scripture tells us:
1 Cor 2:9 “Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man
The things which God has prepared for those who love Him.”
All we know is that God is good, and He has promised us good things with Him and He has promised to make us more like Him, which brings us back around to the big application point that John wants to make this morning.
3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
What affect should our identity as a Child of God have on us?
Well notice, it should not puff us up with pride like the Pharisees. That’s a danger, isn’t it?
The media loves trashing the religious right who are portrayed as coming across so self- righteous and only concerned about their selves. Jesus didn’t have very kind words for these people who thought their identity as sons of Abraham gave them a privileged status in the world. He told them, it’s not your lineage that’s important, it’s the condition of your soul and your perception of your self. Religious pride is just as ugly as the other forms. Our relationship with God doesn’t give us something to brag about, it equips us to serve the needy and call others to repentance with gentleness and humility.
It’s also not a license to sin and act however we want – like a spoiled brat who knows he doesn’t have to do anything for himself because he has an inheritance coming. This is a particular temptation for those who worship in more formal churches – they think they’ve made it through confirmation, maybe had their first communion, and now they’re good. Or maybe even here, you think you’ve been baptized and you’re a member of the church, you’re good – that box is checked – it’s just like your life insurance policy you took care of with your Financial Advisor – now that’s taken care of, you can move on with life. Not so!
John says people who are truly children of God, people who truly have this hope of seeing God, purify themselves because He is pure.
He says they take action based on an understanding of their status. So we need to ask ourselves this morning – is this true of us? Do you grasp the dignity of being a child of God?
Do you understand the nobility of your position? If so, you should feel a pull to act accordingly.
Some of you may have grown up with your parents telling you as you went out the door - remember who you are, remember who you represent. Well, they may have meant that in terms of your family name and identity – but it’s true with your spiritual identity as well.
You need to know who you are and act accordingly.
And that means that we need to seek purity. We need purity from “big sins” and “secret sins” – sins of the heart, the mind, the desires, the sin of murmuring, and sin of the things we are neglecting. We need purity from what we call “besetting sins” those sins that have become our habit, our character – the traps we regularly fall into. And we need purity from sinful company – people and places that regularly pull us down into sinful thoughts and actions.
How do we do that? How do we purify ourselves? Well, we begin by understanding what purity really is. Look to the Scriptures, look to Christ and then ask the hard question: do you really want that?
Because, look, here’s the ugly truth - too often, as Christians, we’re OK with a little impurity.
We make excuses for things. But can I ask a hard question? How much is OK? How much impurity is OK for you? For your wife? For your family? For your 12 year old? What’s OK and what’s not OK? How are you making that call? And how does what you permit, or excuse, or allow or justify line up with this Scripture: 3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
Can I encourage you to take a hard assessment of your life today? Can I encourage you to review the inventory of your mind and your home and ask God – is there anything in here that you’re not comfortable with? Is there anything in here that polluting instead of
purifying? And would you then take action and begin to purge things that you’re not eager to show and share with Christ?
You can think of that like a big “spring cleaning” of your life. But then we all need to do a little regular maintenance as well. This is where the idea of daily devotions comes in- a daily time of reflecting and cleansing your soul gives confidence that we can stand before the God whom we seek daily. I know we all have busy lives – but point blank my friends – what’s most important in your life? Is it important to spend time with your eternal Father or not? And what changes need to be made to your daily routine to reflect that belief?
Can I give you one thought? You brush your teeth morning and evening, right? Personally, I try to incorporate some scripture reading while I brush each night. Often that’s when I read and re-read the Scripture I’ll be teaching on Sunday, or something else that will stoke the fires of my soul so that a few minutes later, as I prepare to sleep, that’s what is filling my mind.
But in order for this work, you’ve got to stage a book or Bible by your bed or in your bathroom where it’s easy to access and it’s physical presence will serve as a reminder for you.
Figure out what works for you and arrange your life so that’s easy for you and the others in your home to abide in Christ.
Because here’s the deal: you are a beloved child of God and it has not yet been revealed what God has in store for you! But are you ready to face Him?
Are you abiding “in Him, that when He appears, [you] may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. 29 If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness is born of Him.”
3 And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
If you are in Christ, you’re already saved, but when we meet Him face to face, we’re hoping for as small of an adjustment period as possible. You don’t want to be standing around in Heaven gawking like the new guy. You want to be cool like, “C’mon I know the owner.”
And when you stand before Him you want to have an instant freedom of speech and not be the girl who is shrinking back away in shame from His personal presence.
So what needs to change in your life today to make that happen? That’s the question you need to ask, and then, when you have the answer, you need to take action – by God’s grace and with His help.
Let’s pray