1 John 3:1,2

WHAT WE ARE AND WHAT WE SHALL BE

‘Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us … for we shall see Him as He is.’

1 John 3:1

Three important questions—Whence? Where? Whither? Whence came I? Where am I? Whither is the current of life speeding me? And yet there is another more important, that which St. John answers: What? The reason for this estimate is plain. Character compels circumstances; it is what we are, far more than where we are, which has to do at any time with the happiness of life. Consider what St. John says as to what we are and what we may become.

I. What we are now.—‘Children of God.’ St. John, as a disciple of Christ, is speaking to his fellow-disciples. They ‘are called,’ ‘and are’ God’s children (cf. Revised Version). All men may, rightfully, be ‘called’ God’s children, seeing that He is the Author of their existence (cf. Acts 17:28), but there is a deeper relation than the merely natural. God, as ‘the Father of spirits,’ is Father of those only, in the fullest sense, who have had a spiritual birth. True fatherhood is more than authorship; it is such authorship as imparts the nature of the author. ‘God is a Spirit’; then His children must be spiritual. ‘Regeneration,’ ‘the new birth,’ ‘the birth from above’; it is the birth within us of that spiritual being for which mere flesh and blood do but provide the cradle and the swaddling-clothes. Consider—

(a) The new birth, how known. What evidence is wanted if a man would claim to be God’s child? Is it the evidence of memory? No one asks for that in the analogous case of natural birth. Is it then the evidence of feeling and conviction? This may give a strong assurance that the life once born is in a healthy state; but even if there is no feeling, will that prove that there has been no birth? No; the new birth, like the old, is not a thing for which the new-born is responsible. ‘The Spirit breathes where He wills … so is every one that is born of the Spirit.’ We are responsible to some extent for growth; we can only be responsible for birth in so far as we are responsible for acting upon the instructions through which it may be brought about. Our Lord’s teaching and that of His apostles associates baptism with the new birth (cf. Titus 3:5: ‘The laver of regeneration’). Baptized people have a right to claim that, germinally at any rate, they are regenerate. In so far as they are appropriating the grace of baptism they may say with confidence, ‘We are God’s children.’

(b) The growth after birth. The new birth, the infantile spiritual existence, may be dwarfed, stifled, even killed, before it can attain maturity. God’s children are not all healthy children; over some He is compelled to sorrow: ‘This my son is dead.’ Still even disease and death cannot cancel the fact of sonship. The younger son did not cease to be a son though he left his father for a far country. We take our stand upon the fundamental fact—disobedient, ungrateful, we are yet God’s children; we yet have confidence in the unalterable affection which ensures, upon repentance, a welcome from our Father.

(c) Importance of this view of regeneration. It founds our faith not upon the shifting sands of feeling, but upon the firm rock of fact. Now are we the sons of God; there is that in us which, under God’s training, may develop into a character which will reflect His own.

II. What we shall be hereafter.—This, St. John says, has never yet been made manifest, but when He is manifested we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. But did not our Lord by His life and conduct show what was the nature of the perfect child? Yes, but not in the fulness of its perfection; only in so far as men could receive it. He manifested forth His glory, but He manifested it forth by gleams and flashes through the veil which shrouded it, His flesh. No doubt Christ as He is is the perfect manifestation of the unseen Father, but no man can see Christ as He is until he is prepared to look on Him by having been made like Him. Christ is seen through the medium of the character which contemplates Him. We must be like Him before we can see Him as He is. This is just the marvel of it. What about our present conduct?