Third Sunday of Easter

1 John 3:1–7 (NIV84)

1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. 2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure. 4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him. 7 Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.

I mentioned in previous sermons that at a certain point in my faith it dawned on me that I didn’t really have a satisfactory answer for WHY a believer should pursue holiness

I heard phrases like set apart and in the world but not of the world

I heard lots of talk about sin and how to avoid it

But not a real clear sense of why

I was told I already had salvation locked up and I wasn’t supposed to try to pay God back or earn it

And I was constantly reminded that I was a hopeless sinner

But that God had begun a good work in me

And I wasn’t sure if sanctification was supposed to be this passive thing or something I pursued

As I said, I had a pretty thorough theology UP TO the cross and acceptance of the what happened on the cross

But when it came to the resurrection and the Christian life that came after it was a little fuzzier

AND “just be a good Christian because you love God” isn’t a robust enough theology to build one’s life upon

It only takes you so far

I’m sure you’ve been in situations at work or on a team where you don’t have great direction and you’re like “Someone give me a sense of what’s supposed to happen here and how I fit into it.”

If you watch real little kids play sports they’re on the field but have no idea what it’s supposed to look like

They’re just running around like “what am I supposed to do and why?”

We need some direction, some vision to live purposefully

And I think passages like the one we have hear a meant to help us with that

Let’s sort of walk through the text

It starts with a flourish of praise and thanksgiving.

God’s love for us is too great for words and he has called us to be his children.

NOW, that in itself gives us some direction

We might hear this idea that we’re children of God as just a nice warm sentiment. But it carries more weight than that.

All humankind is loved by God and made in his image

But child of God is meant to convey the special relationship of those who are saved

To be adopted into the family of God is to be given a new name and a new future

It comes with privileges and an inheritance

And to live into this new identity we become new people, we start to take on the family resemblance

We learn to look like our Father, by following the lead of our older brother, Jesus

And our family is a little bit odd because it goes against the grain of the world around us that’s living according to a different script

The world is going to think we’re weird because they think our Father is weird

Then we get this phrase “what we will be has not yet been made known”

Pretty straightforward, but pretty loaded

We are being changed, we are being transformed, but the full measure of that is yet beyond our comprehension

There is something unfolding

And at first that may seem like it puts us in the same predicament of not having a clear direction

But there actually IS direction there

Because the New Testament is written to help us see what’s unfolding

Jesus tells us the kingdom has opened up

then teaches us what the ethics of the kingdom look like

and models sacrificial love, breaking the power of sin and death

Then Spirit is poured out and we see people and whole communities being changed

turning from idols and turning toward one another in love

book of Acts

And then the New Testament writers pen these letters to help people live out this new reality even more

on the ground in their context

dealing with real world situations

which is the challenge of the church in every generation

to learn how to live as children of God who reflect the kingdom in their unique context

but the letters of Ephesians and 1 Cor, etc. start to flesh this out in tangible ways

And the consistent message in all of it is “enter this new life that God has opened up for you.”

We’re not doing violent competition anymore.

We’re not doing sexual promiscuity anymore.

We’re not chasing power and privilege anymore.

We’re not lying to each other anymore or exploiting each other anymore.

We’re not letting ethnicity and tribalism divide us anymore.

We’re trading arrogance for humility.

There’s a better way.

The way it was meant to be all along.

God is setting the world right and it’s already started so start aligning yourself with what he’s doing.

And we may not be able to fully comprehend what a world set right looks like and what humanity set right looks like but we have the direction and we have some tangible things to pursue and we have an example in Jesus and we have a helper in the Spirit

This is why John goes on to say, “no one who lives in him keeps sinning”

John’s not saying that if you’re a real Christian you’ve eliminated sin altogether

We’re still going to be in process until Christ returns and banishes sin forever

John’s saying, “if we’re living into this new reality we can’t keep living according to our old way of life”

They are incompatible.

You can’t serve two masters

You can’t walk opposite directions at the same time

1 John is all about this.

Walk in the light, bring things out of the darkness

Learn to live in line with the spirit

Follow Jesus’s example fo sacrificial love

And it ends with this awesome, succinct plea

“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.”

So, here’s my point

To my mind, “Jesus has opened a new reality and invites you to live into it” is more compelling than “stop sinning because it makes Jesus sad”

The bible DOES give us a picture for WHY we’re called to turn from sin

And it’s not dry and miserable

And beautiful and dare I say exciting

Something’s happening

The best thing possible is happening

God is setting the world right

Enthusiasm for the life that God has opened up

And hopeful expectation for where it’s all headed

Is what ought to motivate our pursuit of holiness and sanctification

I want to leave you with a quote from Dallas Willard

“The problem of spiritual transformation (the normal lack thereof) among those who identify themselves as Christians today is not that it is impossible or that effectual means to it are not available. The problem is that it is not intended. People do not see it and its value and decide to carry through with it. They do not decide to do the things Jesus did and said. And this in turn is, today, largely due to the fact that they have not been given a vision of life in God’s kingdom within which such a decision and intention would make sense.”

Much of our life together as a church, addressing real world issues like racism, addressing idols in our culture and in the church, working toward reconciliation and justice, and so on .... these are efforts for us to develop a collective imagination for life in God’s kingdom

And then, as a community, we encourage one another to take real steps toward living into that new reality.