1 John 3:2

CERTAINTY AND UNCERTAINTY

‘Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.’

1 John 3:2

We have in our text two leading ideas suggested: first, the idea of our present state and position as Christians—‘now are we the sons of God’; and secondly, the idea of our future—‘it doth not yet appear what we shall be.’ Therefore we have both certainty and uncertainty as to ourselves as Christians.

I. The known and the unknown.—There is in every life the known and the unknown, what is and what will be by and by. This should check any tendency to pessimistic scepticism in regard to our fellows. Men and women are better than they appear to be. Christ had hope for every man, and never despaired of any except perhaps the Pharisees, and there was certainly a reason for that. Our Lord was a great optimist, and so should we be too. Let us face the future of our country, Church, and the whole world with courage and hope. Wordsworth says: ‘The child is father of the man,’ meaning that as our childhood was we shall remain in many ways for all time. There is unbroken continuity in moral character. The future may be different from the present, but the present is a prophecy of the future, and we may discover in part at least the unknown from the known, or find out what our future is going to be by what our present is. The future will be conditioned by the present. What we are now is the ever active cause, and what we shall be by and by will be its necessary effect. The uniformity between cause and effect is as grand and pervading in the spiritual world as in the lower world of matter and force. The animal can go only so far along the line of evolution. You know what it can become by what it is, but man can go further and higher along the plan of development. Why? Because he is more than an animal; he is also rational and moral, and therefore there are great heights possible of attainment to which animals will never reach. As Darwin has said, there might be little difference between the present physical and mental condition of the clever and affectionate ape and that of the lowest and most brutal savage, yet there is an infinite difference between the ape and man. The ape can go no further—he is still an ape, do what you like with him; but the savage, low, cruel, and loathsome as he is, may, as he has done under missionaries, develop into real Christian manhood. The crucial question to ask concerning a Christian is, ‘What is he now?’ for in the right answer we can read his future destiny.

II. The certainty of sonship.—‘Now are we the sons of God.’ The Christian is a son of God, therefore we may prophesy unspeakably grand things as to his future being and experience. In what way can we become sons of God? In God’s love our Divine sonship stands rooted. ‘Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us.’ The nature and extent of the love in one person for another is shown in the manner of manifestation of that love. What is there remarkable about the manner in which God shows His love to you and me? It is the love seen in Christ crucified. Man has passed through three stages in regard to his Divine sonship. He was the son of God by inherent nature, because he knew no sin. Then the fall came, and the Divine likeness in man was effaced, because that likeness is not physical but moral. But there was a reversal of the consequences of the fall, and man is a son again because of the love of God for him. We become sons a second time by Divine adoption, and where there is adoption there must be conditions. An adopted son can forfeit his sonship by disobedience, but a son by nature cannot. It is the sonship of adoption and not that of nature which gives us a true idea of our Divine sonship, and therefore we may forfeit this Divine sonship by disobedience.

III. The uncertainty of what we shall be.—Since God has made us sons through His love—sons not by birth, but by adoption—it is of such sons and such adoption we may say, ‘It doth not yet appear what we shall be.’ We cannot measure our future. You show me a stone. I know what its future will be, because I know the limitations of its nature, and that those limitations will always keep it back. Then you show me a little boy in the Sunday-school. I cannot tell what his future will be, because I do not know what hidden qualities are in his heart and soul, which will open out in the years to come. We know the future of the natural man, because he is finite and limited, but we do not know the future of the spiritual man, because he is in living touch with the infinite and limitless world. God comes in and he is carried onwards and upwards to the great unknown. To be sons of God means that we have the Divine dynamic at the bottom of our spiritual life.

IV. Conditions attached to sonship.—There are conditions attached to sonship which we must fulfil. What are those conditions? ‘We know that when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.’ Thus life is to be here and now. When He appears He is to find us already in His likeness. Death is not a mere incantation to change us. Already ought we to be sons of God, and we cannot be more than that after death. Our future will not be different in essentials from the present, but only a development and fruition thereof. The conditions of the Divine sonship are that we are to go on in the spiritual life (a) in faithful fellowship with the Christian Church, and (b) in faith and prayer. Then our future here and hereafter will be too rich and glorious for our present limited and immature apprehension.

Rev. J. R. Parkyn.

Illustration

‘Here the Apostle follows up a line of thought started in the last verse of the previous chapter. There he is looking for the foundation of the life of righteousness, and he finds it in the birth from above. In that birth we are made partakers of the Divine nature, and this nature, following its affinities, spontaneously issues in a godly life (1 John 2:29). It has been remarked concerning St. Paul that his thoughts are “barbed,” as it were, all round, and each, as it issues in words, catches and brings into sight a number of related thoughts. In our text we have a case of this propagation of thought by association in the mind of St. John. The new birth is the real beginning, just as adoption is the formal beginning of sonship. Hence allusion to the birth brings up the related sonship, and the Apostle breaks off into an assertion of it, and into a glowing eulogy on the Divine love in which it had its origin, and the Divine likeness and vision in which it is to have its end.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

KNOWLEDGE AND IGNORANCE

I. Our ignorance. ‘It doth not yet appear what we shall be.’

(a) We are ignorant of our immediate future. (Cf. Hazael. What! thy servant the dog to do this great thing?)

(b) Much more are we ignorant of the great future of Christ’s advent. We know not (i) its time, and we have little, and that obscure, knowledge of (ii) its manner.

II. Our knowledge.

(a) We know that we are the sons of God. (i) By creation in God’s image. (ii) By regeneration and adoption in baptism. This is God’s outward assurance that sin shall not be imputed to us. (iii) By living the life of sons, the Spirit itself bearing witness with our spirit that we are the sons of God.

(b) We know that Christ will appear to complete our sonship. (i) By transforming us into His own likeness. (ii) By showing us Himself as He is. The transformation is by assimilation.

Illustration

‘It is said that John Wesley once, in the visions of the night, found himself, as he thought, at the gates of Hell. He knocked, and asked who were within. “Are there any Roman Catholics here?” he asked. “Yes,” was the answer; “a great many.” “Any Church of England men?” “Yes; a great many.” “Any Presbyterians?” “Yes; a great many.” “Any Wesleyans?” “Yes; a great many.” Disappointed and dismayed, especially at the last reply, he turned his steps upwards, and found himself at the gates of Paradise, and here he repeated the same questions. “Any Wesleyans here?” “No.” “Any Presbyterians?” “No.” “Any Church of England men?” “No.” “Any Roman Catholics?” “No.” “Whom have you then, here?” he asked in astonishment. “We know nothing here,” was the reply, “of any of those names you have mentioned. The only name of which we know anything here is Christian. We are all Christians here, and of these we have a great multitude, which no man can number, of all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues.” ’

(THIRD OUTLINE)

SONSHIP

I. The believer has a present sonship to God.—‘Now are we,’ etc. There is a general sense in which God, our Maker and Keeper, is ‘the Father of us all.’ And there must, in the nature of things, be a universal sonship corresponding to this universal fatherhood, but it is the mere nominal sonship of a prodigal disinherited and disowned. In true sonship, as with Adam before the Fall, there must be a recognised relation (1 John 3:1), which it is the function of faith, uniting us to the Elder Brother (Galatians 3:26; John 1:12), to establish. There is furthermore an inward character in sonship, a oneness of nature with the Father, in which the outward relation has its basis and reality (John 1:13). We enter the heavenly as we enter the earthly family—by a birth (John 3:5); are, as the Greek in our text implies, not sons adopted, but sons born into the family of God.

II. The believer expects a future likeness to Christ.—‘We shall be like Him.’ The perfect character of God is that in the image of which we were created, and are to be created anew. In Christ, ‘the image of the invisible God,’ that character takes form, and He is the model the Spirit works from in our spiritual transformation (Romans 8:29; John 17:22). In regeneration the image is sketched, and in sanctification it is gradually filled up. It can never be perfect on earth. When the ‘mark’ of perfection is reached (Php_3:14), the race is over. But it shall be reached. Every man shall be presented perfect (Colossians 1:28), unblameable (1 Thessalonians 3:13), before the Lord at His coming. In no grace shall we then be deficient, and in none redundant. The attributes of God shall up to our capacity be ours; the capacity itself shall enjoy continual increase. Even our ‘bodies shall be fashioned like unto Christ’s glorious body.’ And so the likeness of Christ shall extend to our whole person, and be faultless in every part.

III. Transformation into the Divine likeness will be by the Divine vision.—‘For we shall see Him as He is.’ Here and now we see Christ after a fashion. But it is very imperfectly. The eye is dull, the light is imperfect, and there are intervening veils. We reason up to a conception of His character by picturing an indefinite improvement of our own, imagining an indefinitely higher form of ourselves. His love is as the ocean, to which ours is but a drop; His holiness a sun, to which ours is but a spark. We only know such graces in their human form; so we multiply them by the highest figure we can think of, and the result is our conception of a perfect God. And this indirect and necessarily inadequate conception constitutes great means of our sanctification (2 Corinthians 3:18). We gain assimilation to His character by studying it. We see and grow like. We are familiar with the operation of this principle in the natural sphere. We adopt the accent and manners of our locality and time by simple familiarity with them. Allowing for differences in the ground plan of each, the character of an individual is very much a compound tincture of the characters of His chosen friends (Proverbs 13:20). So we dwell on God’s perfections, and they brighten under our gaze, becoming more attractive to us, and so bringing to bear a stronger influence, till in the end these in a degree transform us into their likeness. If that conformity is imperfect on earth, it is because our conception is imperfect. We see not Christ, but His reflection in a glass, and that blurred and dim (1 Corinthians 13:12). And ill seeing makes ill copying. As our vision improves, our resemblance increases (2 Corinthians 3:18). It follows that when we see God exactly, we shall be exactly like Him.

IV. This future glorious character has not yet been manifested.—‘It doth not yet appear,’ etc. It is impossible that it should appear. Language can do much, but it cannot convey an idea of colour to a blind man, or of melody to a deaf one. To know the word for a thing is not to know the thing. So emphatically with spiritual things. ‘Eye hath not seen,’ etc. The words of Scripture telling of these things cannot in the nature of the case reveal the things exactly as they are. Apart from experience of their like, words about them are words to us, and nothing more. True, ‘God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit,’ but that means either to Apostles in order to the writing of Scripture, or more probably to believers by a gracious indwelling. This revelation is first experience, and even this is imperfect, so far above us is the perfection of heavenly attainment or heavenly bliss.