To See for the First Time

Now something of this is happening in our passage this morning that we'll be reading in John's letter, his first letter this morning. If we have love for Jesus right now, if we are Christians that adore and worship Christ right now, John will say our deepest longing will be that one day we will come face to face with Him, our deepest longing of our heart. To see His smile, to be in His presence, to experience His love in an intimate way. And meeting Him in this way, John will say is truly transformational, not for how we will be then, but how we are right now. Let's have a look at what He has to say about this in one John and we're going to read from verse 28 and the chapter delineation here is a bit awkward.

So the NIV and a few other bibles have said that this passage really starts in verse 28 of chapter two and it goes right through to chapter three verse 10. So that's where we start. One John 2:28. The apostle John writes, "And now dear children, continue in Him so that when He appears, who is Christ, we may be confident and unashamed before Him at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of Him."

"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. 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. Everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself just as He is pure."

"Everyone who sins breaks the law. In fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that He appears so that He might take away our sins and in Him is no sin. No one who lives in Him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen Him or known Him."

"Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous just as He is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin because God's seed remains in Him."

"He cannot go on sinning because He has been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God nor is anyone who does not love his brother." So far our reading. Now there's a lot happening in this and there's a lot of repetition and a lot of to-ing and fro-ing.

But it is helpful in understanding this passage that we remember what happened last week, what we discussed last week. Last time we met, we looked at verses 15 to the end of 27 and we talked about, if you remember, that the love of the world, that system of beliefs and values and attitudes that are anti-God, that world, a love for that world is opposed, diametrically, completely opposed with love of the Father. You cannot love the world, John says, and love the Father. You cannot love the Father and love the world. They are incompatible with one another.

John moves on from that warning against the love for the world and he says the antichrists who have set themselves up against God by loving the world and he says that now there is a new love, a new creation in the Christian. And so for the Christian, a love for the old world, once they become believers, is replaced by a love for the world that is to come. A love for the old world is replaced by a love for the new world that is to come. And he begins this morning by saying this new world is introduced by the coming of Jesus, the appearance of the King. Verse 28, "And now dear children, continue in Him."

Resist this world. Continue in Him so that when He appears, we might be confident. We might be unashamed before Him at His coming. For many people, the thought of the coming judgement is one of dread and fear. It is one of anxiety.

What will happen to me? What will I say? Who will I see up there on that throne? But for the Christian, this is a moment of deep fulfilment and satisfaction, of great vindication. We will look at Jesus up high on His throne and sigh with relief.

Finally, finally. We will have nothing to fear and everything to be grateful for and we will echo that realisation in chapter three verse 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." That moment of Christ's return will be the moment when God comes to fetch His family. Now imagine how amazing this is knowing that God loves the world so much.

He loves the people of this world already. There is, according to the Bible, already so much worth, so much of His glory, so much of His beauty and majesty in the world in its present condition. There's so much love that He has for this world and we know that because He wouldn't have sent His Son to it otherwise. It's enough to tell us how much God loves us. He's loved us so much before the judgement.

How much more will He love the world after the judgement and the establishment of His kingdom? And if His love for us in Christ is experienced now and gives hope and joy now for us, friends, that is just the start of it. If we have hope and joy now, that Christian liberation that we feel, that our life, no matter what happens to it, is rooted and established and firm. It is not going anywhere. If we have that hope now, what will it be like when it is finally, ultimately confirmed in the second coming.

If we have hope like that for what is ahead of us, John says we will be motivated to make everything in this life a preparation for that coming. Hope is now, for the Christian, our constant motivator for life. It is our constant motive as Christians. John says that this hope, in verse 3, purifies us. This hope purifies us just as Jesus is pure.

I mentioned before, tomorrow I fly to San Francisco. Now while I'm there, I'm going to be interviewing a man by the name of Kevin Harney for this discipleship programme that I'm working on for the Bible College. Now before I meet him, and he's a bit of a big shot, I have to make sure that I am prepared. I have to make sure that my questions are right, that my follow-up and the direction I'll be steering the conversation is right. I have to make sure that if I meet a big shot, I am ready.

And if I really believe that I'm going to meet Jesus Himself one day, the natural thing to think is, am I getting myself ready for that? How will that conversation go? How will that meeting be? And that is why John then moves to some very challenging words to us in his letter in verses 4 to 10 and it's sort of summed up in a few verses. Verse 6, for example, no one lives, no one who lives in Him, who is Jesus, keeps on sinning.

No one who continues to sin has either seen Him or has known Him. And if you read some commentaries and some scholars and listen to pastors, it can be very confusing because it can be watered down. But really, if you look at the words here, there's no getting around it. John is saying, following Jesus or living in Him, anyone who does this will have a radically transformed life. You will not look the same as you did before Jesus.

You will not look the same as the friends that you have around you that do not know Him or the family members that do not know Him. You will not. It's not possibly, maybe, you will not be the same as them. John, of course, knows that Christians will sin from time to time. In chapter 2 verse 1, he makes it very clear.

He is the, sorry, verse 1, "If anybody does sin, if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defence, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins." He knows, John knows that Christians will sin from time to time. What John is talking about here, however, is the whole habit, the whole trajectory of our life.

In the Greek, the verb to sin is written in the present tense. And John has a habit of putting things in this tense very specifically, very intentionally to illustrate an ongoing continuous existence or nature. In other words, John is saying no Christian will continue, will go on sinning. They won't sin as part of a regular mode in which they live and we should be motivated, he says, to do our best to avoid all kinds of sin all the time even though we may fail. Those failures will not set the tone for our lives.

Those failures will not set the tone for our life and this is really important for us to understand. Because, friend, if you are a Christian wrestling with sin, and I guess most of us are, when you came to put your trust in Christ, you started playing a song. You started playing a piece of music and this music is different to what you've been playing before, what this world is giving you to play. And as you play this song, even if your fingers slip and you play the wrong notes in sin or even if those notes you are playing belong to the old song that you used to play, your current state, your current existence means that you will go, you won't go back to that old song, you will stay on this new song. Your hands and your eyes and your heart are locked onto this new music.

The new sound you will play, the new pattern, the new rhythm. We have to talk to Leanne about that. You will play this new pattern is something we yearn for now as Christians. We desire it. If we play the wrong note, our hearts are broken and crushed by it.

We are remorseful and sorry for it. We no longer yearn for the old music but the new. And that's why our hearts now long for that future day when John says in verse 2, we shall be like Him. We will be like Jesus. And he says this hope purifies us right now.

This longing, this direction, this thing that we look to purifies and transforms our life right now. That is how verse 9 can say, "No one who is born of God will continue to sin because God's seed, that hope, remains in Him. He cannot go on sinning because He has been born of God." And friends, we know this and we've talked about it before. This born again nature is radical and transforming.

You cannot remain the same if this has happened to you. You will not. You will not fit into normal society anymore. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. You will not fit into normal society anymore.

You will not feel comfortable with your non-Christian mates in the way that you did before. You will always feel on the outer no matter how you try to fit in with them, talking like they talk, pursuing what they pursue, thinking like they think. You will not. I'm sorry, but you will not. And the thing that John is saying that if you were to try and pursue this and to play the old song, your heart has been changed and you have been born of God. If that truly has happened, you will be endlessly frustrated.

You will be constantly disappointed. You will find rest only if you align yourself with the character and the nature of the Saviour you are going to become like. A Christian won't continue to sin because it feels alien and deeply unsettling for him or her. And all of this comes back to hope. All of this comes back to what we will become.

The resurrection is a meeting with Christ. In his book, Surprised by Hope, author and scholar and pastor N. T. Wright, states this: the point of the resurrection, the great hope of Christianity, is that the present bodily life is not valueless just because it will die, but what you do with your body in the present matters. Because God has a great future in store for it.

What you do in the present, and that can be in everything, by painting, he says, by preaching, by singing, by sowing, by praying, by teaching, by building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbour as yourself. All of these things will last into the future. All of these things will not disappear. In other words, the resurrection then changes my present now. The kingdom of God is here and yet it is still unfolding.

We are building the house as we're living in it. God has revealed what lies in our futures and think about it, why would God tell us about the resurrection? He doesn't have to. It is a glorious reality. It will happen to us.

It hasn't happened to us yet. Why does God tell us about that? Because it matters to us now. It is significant to our lives now. That's why John can end this passage again by one of those stark sharp lines that he draws in the sand and he's been doing it all the way through this letter.

Verse 10, "This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are. Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God nor is anyone who does not love his brother." You will, in other words, tell who someone is by the fruit of their lives, by how the hope of their salvation, the resurrection moment, the scene of Jesus face to face, how that has impacted their lives right now. If you are not a believer, if you are firmly in the grips of Satan and this world, you won't care about this resurrection hope. It won't matter to you.

It won't affect the way that you live at all. It doesn't hold any sway in your life. In fact, the thing that it may do is cause you dread. But if you are a Christian, your life is constantly oriented towards this reality. And that future impacts our present.

But again, if you're anything like me, this is sometimes disturbingly elusive in our thought life, isn't it? How very little we consider this. How very little our hearts yearn for this. We often, so often forget this glorious future. We so often get bogged down in the situations around us down here.

We hear God's encouragement. We hear His directives to live life worthy of this calling that we will be receiving and somehow we push against it. Somehow we push back against it and again, N. T. Wright powerfully sums it up this way.

He says, "Of course, in our incomplete world, God's gentle offer and demand, His forgiveness, the offer of His forgiveness, the demand to live His way, press upon us as fearful things, almost threatening to us. But God's offer and demand are neither fearful nor threatening. God in His gentle love longs to set us free from the prison that we have stumbled into. The loveless prison where we both refuse the offer and the demand for forgiveness. We are like frightened birds before Him, shrinking away, lest His demand crush us completely.

But when we eventually yield, when He corners us in this cage and He takes us in His hand, we find to our astonishment that He is infinitely gentle and that His only aim is to release us from our prison, to set us free to be the people that He made us to be." He says that this is the truth of the resurrection turned into prayer, turned into forgiveness and the remission of debts, turned into love. It is constantly surprising. It is constantly full of hope, this idea of our future, constantly coming to us from God's future to shape us into the people through whom God can carry His work into this world. "Dear children, John writes, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous just as Jesus is righteous.

He who does what is sinful is of the devil because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. But the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work." And so part of this hope for us, part of this hope that will motivate and change us if we truly grasp it and truly embrace the freedom of it is that the devil's work will ultimately and finally be crushed at this resurrection. And so the question is, why be participants in the devil's world when that world is coming to nothing? It's not going anywhere.

The heaven and the earth that Jesus is in the process of recreating will be His perfect domain and the question is, isn't that worth investing in? Isn't that worth pursuing and getting ready for? What you do in the Lord as Christians, how you live your life as Christians is not in vain. It will never be in vain. The investment in holiness is not in vain.

The refusing to sin is not in vain. The desire to change the world one soul at a time is not in vain. You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's going to run off the edge of a cliff. You are not painting an oil painting that you are going to throw onto the fire. You're not planting a bed of roses and the next day will be destroyed by a building being placed over it.

You are, strange though it may seem, accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God's new world. Every act of love, every bit of gratitude, every act of kindness, every work of art done for the glory of God exemplifying and glorifying God's beautiful world, every minute spent teaching a child to read or helping a severely disabled person to walk, every act of care and nature, every act of support and comfort for one's fellow human beings and for that matter, God's non-human creatures, every prayer, every spirit-led teaching, every deed that spreads the gospel builds up the church, embraces and embodies holiness rather than corruption and makes Jesus's name honoured in the world. All of this, friends, will find its way into God's new world. And so, friend, we don't have to play in the devil's playground when the entire world is becoming God's kingdom. We don't simply say no to a society or a system or the world.

We say yes to a new existence, to a new more glorious and wonderful society, so much more peaceful, so much more wholesome, so much more enjoyable and lovely and we can pursue that because it is so much better than anything else this world has to offer. And so we have to stay knowing this reality that awaits us, locked in Christ forever, an inheritance Peter says will never spoil nor fade. We say with John, "How lavish, how great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God and friends. That is what we are." Let's pray. Father, we are so prone to see our immediate needs and our immediate contexts, forgetting, Lord, what is ahead.

And so, Lord, we implore You by the power of Your Spirit to arrest our hearts and mind with that future vision, that glorious hope, that peaceful reality that though we have been blind, we shall see. That though we long for something we don't completely and fully understand yet, we have a taste and a sense of reality of that even now. The warmth in our hearts and souls even this morning as we hear these words, the stirring in our souls is a deposit, is a deposit of truth that this future is going to happen. And, Lord, this changes how we live in the present.

This changes how we deal with situations. When Your refining happens, Lord, we are patient knowing that it is for that future good. When You discipline us, allow hard things to happen to us, we see a Father's hand behind it realising that we will never become orphans again, that we are Your children, adopted and established forever. Father, help us in our daily lives, in our daily situations to reflect on this, to cast our minds on that hope more and more, to evaluate, to weigh up everything that happens in our life with this reality. Father, and then finally, let us be the Christians and the people we need to be in this life as we establish and develop and invest in Your kingdom.

That nothing we do, whether accountants or lawyers or pastors or musicians or poetry writers or teachers, nothing we do will fade away. That something of it will remain. And so, Lord, it is eternally worthwhile, what we do and how we do it. Establish these truths in our heart, Lord. By Your Spirit, motivate us more and more.

We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.