Who’s Your Father?
Walking in the Light • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 4 viewsCentral Idea: Our lives bear evidence of which father we serve—and the children of God are marked not by perfection but by the practice of righteousness and sacrificial love for one another.
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Identity, Righteousness, and the Evidence of Love
Text: 1 John 3:1–24 (NASB 2020)
Central Idea: Our lives bear evidence of which father we serve and the children of God are marked not by perfection but by the practice of righteousness and sacrificial love for one another.
Introduction
Introduction
In any family, you can usually spot resemblances. A daughter has her mother’s eyes. A son walks like his father. Family likeness is not something you manufacture—it is something that emerges from shared DNA, shared environment, shared life.
Show the picture of Josie/Josh
Chapter 3 of 1 John is about family likeness in the spiritual realm. John draws a bold line: there are two families in this world—the children of God and the children of the devil. And the way you tell the difference is not by what people claim but by how they live. This chapter takes the themes of light, obedience, and love from chapters 1–2 and pushes them to their logical conclusion: if you belong to God, your life will show it.
1. Behold What Manner of Love (vv. 1–3)
1. Behold What Manner of Love (vv. 1–3)
John opens with an exclamation that should stop us in our tracks:
See how great a love the Father has given us, that we would be called children of God; and in fact we are.
The Greek word for “how great” (potapen) suggests something foreign, exotic, almost otherworldly. This is not ordinary love. This is a love so far beyond human experience that it strains our vocabulary. And the result of this love is not merely that we are called God’s children as a nice title—we actually are His children. The identity is real.
But John adds a sobering note:
For this reason the world does not know us: because it did not know Him.
The world’s inability to recognize God’s children is rooted in its inability to recognize God himself. If you are following Jesus faithfully and the culture misunderstands you, do not be alarmed. The world did not understand Jesus either.
Verse 2 carries both present certainty and future mystery:
Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be.
We know who we are, but we don’t yet know the full extent of what we will become.
What we do know is this:
We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.
Our ultimate destiny is Christlikeness. And this hope, verse 3 says, has a purifying effect on us right now. Those who hold this hope do not wait passively—they pursue purity.
And everyone who has this hope set on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.
2. Two Families, Two Patterns (vv. 4–10)
2. Two Families, Two Patterns (vv. 4–10)
Now John draws the contrast. He uses the language of practice—a habitual, ongoing pattern of life.
Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins; and in Him there is no sin. No one who remains in Him sins continually; no one who sins continually has seen Him or knows Him.
Little children, make sure no one deceives you; the one who practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous; the one who practices sin is of the devil; for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.
This is not teaching sinless perfection—John already addressed that in 1:8–2:2. The distinction is between the habitual direction of someone’s life and an occasional stumble along the way. A person born of God may fall into sin, but they will not settle into it as a lifestyle.
The seed of God abides in them (v. 9),
No one who has been born of God practices sin, because His seed remains in him; and he cannot sin continually, because he has been born of God.
and that divine DNA resists a settled pattern of rebellion.
The reason the Son of God appeared, John says in verse 8, was “to destroy the works of the devil.” The incarnation was not just about forgiveness—it was about liberation. Jesus came to demolish the power structures of darkness. And those who are born of God participate in that demolition project by practicing righteousness rather than sin.
Verse 10 is the diagnostic summary:
By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious: anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother and sister.
Two markers: righteousness and love. If your life lacks both, John says, your family identity is in question.
3. Love Like Cain—or Like Christ? (vv. 11–18)
3. Love Like Cain—or Like Christ? (vv. 11–18)
John drives his point home with two vivid contrasts. On one side stands Cain,
For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we are to love one another; not as Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And for what reason did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil, but his brother’s were righteous.
Why did Cain murder Abel? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s were righteous. Cain represents the world’s hatred of holiness—the refusal to tolerate those whose lives expose your own darkness.
On the other side stands Christ:
Do not be surprised, brothers and sisters, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers and sisters. The one who does not love remains in death.
Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him. We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters.
The cross is not just the means of our salvation—it is the pattern for our lives. Love, in John’s vocabulary, is not a warm feeling. It is self-sacrifice. It is the willingness to spend yourself for the good of another person, especially when it costs you something.
Verse 17 brings this down from the heroic to the mundane:
But whoever has worldly goods and sees his brother or sister in need, and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God remain in him?
Most of us will not be called to die for someone. But all of us are called to open our wallets, our schedules, and our homes. Love that remains in the realm of words and warm feelings is not love at all.
Little children, let’s not love with word or with tongue, but in deed and truth.
4. Confidence Before God (vv. 19–24)
4. Confidence Before God (vv. 19–24)
The final section addresses the inner life of the believer—specifically, the question of condemnation. John acknowledges that our hearts often condemn us. We look at our failures, our inconsistencies, our hypocrisy, and we wonder if we truly belong to God. But verse 19-20 offers a staggering reassurance:
We will know by this that we are of the truth, and will set our heart at ease before Him, that if our heart condemns us, that God is greater than our heart, and He knows all things.
God’s knowledge of us is more comprehensive than our self-knowledge, and His verdict overrules our self-condemnation.
When our hearts do not condemn us—not because we have achieved sinlessness, but because we are walking in the light and loving in deed—we have confidence before God (v. 21).
And this confidence affects our prayer life:
Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask, we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.
This is not a blank check for wish fulfillment. It is the promise that a life aligned with God’s will produces prayers aligned with God’s purposes.
Verse 23 names the central commandment:
This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.
Faith and love. These two are the twin engines of the Christian life. And verse 24 closes the chapter with the relational language that runs through the entire epistle: “Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him.” Mutual abiding. Reciprocal indwelling. This is what the Christian life is meant to be.
Application: Showing the Family Resemblance
Application: Showing the Family Resemblance
First, let your identity drive your behavior.
First, let your identity drive your behavior.
You are a child of God—not by achievement but by grace. When you know who your Father is, you start to resemble Him. Don’t try to earn your identity; live from it.
Second, practice love in the concrete.
Second, practice love in the concrete.
Sacrificial love is not a theory. It shows up in how you spend your money, your time, and your emotional energy. Look for the brother or sister in need right in front of you—and open your heart.
Third, trust God’s verdict over your condemnation.
Third, trust God’s verdict over your condemnation.
Your heart may condemn you, but God is greater than your heart. When you have confessed your sin and are walking in the light, rest in His faithfulness. Your standing before Him is secured by Christ, not by your flawless performance.
A Word to Take With You
Church, I want to leave you with two things today — one to steady you and one to stretch you.
Here's what should steady you: You did not talk your way into this family. You were loved into it. The Father looked at you — knowing everything, every failure you'd rack up, every Sunday you'd sit in this room feeling like a fraud — and He said, "That one's mine." And if God is greater than your heart, then His "yes" over your life outweighs every "but" your shame has ever whispered. Some of you need to hear that today more than anything else I've said. Stop trying to earn what's already been given. You are not on probation. You are in the family.
Now here's what should stretch you: Family resemblance is not optional. It's not a nice add-on for the especially spiritual. John doesn't give us the luxury of a faith that lives entirely between our ears. He drags it into our wallets, our calendars, our kitchen tables. He says, "You see your brother or sister in need and you close your heart? Don't tell me the love of God lives in you." That's blunt. That's supposed to be blunt.
So here's my challenge: This week — not eventually, not in theory — this week, ask the Holy Spirit to show you one person in this body who needs something you can give.
Not something heroic.
Maybe it's a meal.
Maybe it's a phone call.
Maybe it's showing up. And then do it — not with word or tongue, but in deed and truth.
Because that's how the world finds out whose kids we are. Not by our bumper stickers or our worship playlists, but by the costly, Christ-shaped love we practice toward one another when nobody's keeping score.
You are loved with a love so foreign to this world that John could barely find a word for it. Now go and make that love familiar — in your home, in your neighborhood, in this church. That's what it means to bear the family resemblance.
Transition: Having established the identity of God’s children and the evidence of love, John turns in chapter 4 to the urgent matter of discernment—testing the spirits—and the deepest theological statement in the entire letter: God is love.
