Creatures of Grace, living as Creatures of grace.

In light of our current adoption and future glorification, we are called to begin behaving like those children here and now.

Imagine with me for a moment that you are a teenager and have j

Verse 1.

Our text begins with the awesome consideration of the greatness of God’s love. God’s love is incomparably great. John wants us to see that God’s love is not common to our every day experience. It is foreign is what John is saying. God has taken those who are at enmity with Him, and He has adopted them as His own children. This kind of love is indeed alien to us. We don’t naturally love like that and the people around us don’t love like that. We love because things delight us, they improve us, they bring us pleasure. God loves the unlovely. God’s love makes the unlovely lovely and into true lovers. Look at 1 John 4:10–11 : “In this is love, not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.”

And when God adopts a child into his household out of the world, the world no longer recognizes that one. It’s like being dropped into a foreign country and trying to communicate with the local people. You are trying to speak to them but they don’t recognize what your saying. You are speaking the language of Zion now, but the world can’t understand us. It won’t.

And perhaps that can be unsettling or even cause doubt. I’m now a child of the King and yet I feel so alone, so alienated, etc. John sees this and reassures us in v.2 that we are in fact God’s children now, even if it doesn’t seem like it at times.

Verse 2

John wants to make sure we understand the new reality into which grace has brought. It’s already here, it’s not a far off thing. You are God’s children right now. You are sons and daughters of God.

And we have a hard time with that don’t we. Those whom John was writing to certainly did. One of the things that was happening in this group of folks John is writing to was that the thought that sin was an indifferent matter. There belief that Jesus was the Christ was being challenged form inside this very community in which they had been born into the Christian faith. Perhaps we have difficulty grasping that at times ourselves. Inward or outward trouble may have us doubting that we are currently God’s adopted sons and daughters.

They were troubled about their adoption, and John, with affectionate language assures them that they in fact are Gods children. “Beloved, even now we are God’s children,”

But there is yet a glorious anticipation of what is to come. What is yet to be fulfilled in us. This is the hope of every true child of God in this life. That hope is the vision of Christ at His second coming where we will be fully conformed to His perfect image. Paul tells us that as believers, we are already being renewed to that image. Colossians 3:10 “and have put on the new man who is being renewed to a full knowledge according to the image of the One who created him.”

Ephesians 4:24 “and to put on the new man, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.”

But that full conformity still awaits us.

It’s a hope right now, but a certainty-which is the Biblical idea of hope. Not wishful thinking. Not “I hope that the big man upstairs will let me in the pearly gates”. No, if God has adopted you into His family by grace now, He will bring you all the way home. That’s the language of our hope today.

And if we have this hope we can just sit back and relax.....we just coast our way through life....that’s what he says, right?

No! May it never be. “Everyone who has his hope fixed on Christ, on that delightful vision of Him -and being perfectly conformed to Him- purifies Himself, just as He is pure.”

If this is what you are now by grace, and what you will be is that. Then get on with it, even now. Get on with being God’s children.

He didn’t come to forgive us that we would remain in sin. He came to take away sins, He came to destroy the works of the devil. This lawlessness that is the norm and standard of the world is to be seen as a thing of the past for the new creature in Christ.

Now they and we live in a world where there are many inside the church who are indifferent about sin. There are various reasons. We are under grace. It’s legalistic to be so concerned about sin and the law, etc. And some are certainly genuinely trying to be faithful to the New Testament reality of grace. And so we need to be charitable as we discuss these things with others we may disagree with. But any position that is indifferent to sin is an erroneous position. Children of God obey God, they desire to obey God form a pure heart. They do so from a new heart. And his commands are not burdensome to them, it’s not this weight that hangs on them everyday thinking oh man, I have to do this or that.....no, the only burden for the Christian is that He doesn’t do the will of His Father like he wants to. He is burdened and anticipates the day when that inability to live well pleasing to God will be gone in the new heavens and new earth. This is the state of mind of the adopted child of God. I want to be pure like my Lord.

Now there have been challenges proposed to how we interpret the next several verses. And it is do to two things; 1) the unique way that John writes. 2) a narrow understanding of the present tense in GK.

First, They way John writes is unique in that he often will give us hypothetical considerations as a way to teach us or drive home a point. He’ll say, “consider with me for a moment this life, or attitude, or belief, or conversation.” And then he will give you his evaluation or conclusion of the state of that person.

And if you understand this, the end is that the section should almost function as an exhortation or imperative.

Second,

How do we interpret the present tense verbs here in this section. Now bear with me, this won’t be difficult. Now though there are several options, we will narrow it down to two.

Look at V.6

Does it carry the idea of a one time action? This possibility is immediately ruled out because John would be contradicting what he said in chapter 1. According to John, if you take this view you are deceived, the truth is not in us, and make God out to be a liar.

Second, Does it carry the idea of a habitual state? I believe this interpretation best fits the context, the book as a whole, and John’s writing style. We’ve already looked at Chapter 1, but even in verse 2,3 we are anticipating something in us that we have not yet arrived at.

The ESV I think captures it well:

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

Phillips

“The man who lives “in Christ” does not habitually sin. The regular sinner has never seen or known him.”

Now as I mentioned, we don’t just read it like this and think, well it doesn’t teach perfectionism, so I’ve got nothing to worry about. No, we need to let the text have it’s force upon us. We need to take deep reflection into our own lives to see what our habits look like. Is the fabric of my being such that I would be marked by practicing righteousness and love for the brethren? Are there ways in my life that are not? Am I hard toward the brethren in any way? The true child of God will always come to this text and ask that question. And as such the text has it’s effect.

In one sense, we might think of it as Pauls imperatives in his letters. Consider the two texts above.

Conclude.

By grace and in Christ, we are adopted Children of God. We are so because of the out of this world love of the Father has bestowed on us. Even though we are children right now, we are strangers in this world, and we await the full inheritance of our adoption. While we anticipate this glorious and certain hope, we get on with this reality of being new creatures in Christ. We pursuit purity, righteousness, and love, just as we saw in Him.

May the Lord bless the preaching of His Word today. May we go into this week with our eyes set on the glory to come. Grant us a new measure of your Spirit that week might keep in step with Him and not fulfill the desires of the flesh.

Lets pray.