Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
1 John 3:2

Clarke's Commentary

Verse 1 John 3:2. Now are we the sons of God — He speaks of those who are begotten of God, and who work righteousness. See the preceding chapter.

And it doth not yet appear what we shall be — ουπω εφανερωθη. It is not yet manifest; though we know that we are the children of God, we do not know that state of glorious excellence to which, as such, we shall be raised.

When he shall appear — εαν φανερωθη. When he shall be manifested; i.e., when he comes the second time, and shall be manifested in his glorified human nature to judge the world.

We shall be like him — For our vile bodies shall be made like unto his glorious body; we shall see him as he is, in all the glory and majesty both of the Divine and human nature. See Philippians 3:21; and John 17:24: Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory. John had seen his glory on the mount when he was transfigured; and this we find was ineffably grand; but even this must have been partially obscured, in order to enable the disciples to bear the sight, for they were not then like him. But when they shall be like him, they shall see him as he is-in all the splendour of his infinite majesty.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

3:1-5:5 THE LIFE OF LOVE

Right behaviour for God’s children (3:1-10)

John cannot find words to express his feelings when he considers the great love God has shown in making sinful people his children. They now think and act according to the nature of their heavenly Father, with the result that unbelievers, who think and act according to the world’s standards, cannot understand them (3:1). God’s children know little about the nature of life in the world to come, but they know at least that in some way they will be like Christ. This is good reason for them to become as much like Christ as possible in their present lives. They should be pure in thought and behaviour as he was (2-3).
According to the bold assertions of the false teachers, knowledge is all-important and behaviour does not matter. John contradicts this, pointing out that sin is the breaking of God’s law. Therefore, if people deliberately carry on sinning, they know neither God who gave the law nor Christ who takes away sin. John is not saying that Christians cannot sin (he has already shown the impossibility of this in 1:6-10), but that they do not sin as they like. They may have failures and make mistakes, but they do not sin habitually (4-6).
The behaviour of people shows whether they belong to Christ or the devil. They cannot belong to both, as the two are opposed to each other (7-8). If they are true Christians, they will have a divine power within them fighting the devil so that they might not sin. If they sin habitually, it shows that they are not Christians (9-10).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be. We know that if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is.

It is not yet made manifest what we shall be … Sinclair thought that John made this statement in response to questions which Christians had raised regarding their future state; and it may well be true. People have always been curious regarding such things; "But we cannot say. It is not good for us to know."W. N. Sinclair, Ellicott's Bible Commentary, Vol. VIII (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1959), p. 482. We shall be like Christ, and that must be enough for us.

If we shall be manifested … "Grammatically, him should mean the Father; but it is impossible to think this is not a reference to Christ."Leon Morris, New Bible Commentary, Revised (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970), p. 1264. "What John is clearly saying is that our likeness to the Godhead will be realized in the coming of Christ."J. W. Roberts, op. cit., p. 78.

We shall be like him … for we shall see him … "This does not mean that seeing God (Christ) is a proof of our being like him, but the cause of our being so."A. Plummer, The Pulpit Commentary, Vol. 22, 1 John (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1950), p. 71. Furthermore, "The Apostle is speaking of an abiding sight of Christ, because a transient view of him would not be a reason for our being like him."James Macknight, Macknight on the Epistles, 1 John (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, reprint, 1969), p. 66. All people shall see him in the final judgment, but the view of the wicked shall be transient.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

Beloved, now are we the sons of God - We now in fact sustain this rank and dignity, and on that we may reflect with pleasure and gratitude. It is in itself an exalted honor, and may be contemplated as such, whatever may be true in regard to what is to come. In the dignity and the privileges which we now enjoy, we may find a grateful subject of reflection, and a cause of thankfulness, even if we should look to nothing beyond, or when we contemplate the fact by itself.

And it doth not yet appear what we shall be - It is not fully revealed what we shall be hereafter; what will be the full result of being regarded as the children of God. There are, indeed, certain things which may be inferred as following from this. There is enough to animate us with hope, and to sustain us in the trials of life. There is one thing which is clear, that we shall be like the Son of God; but what is fully involved in this is not made known. Perhaps,

(1)It could not be so revealed that we could understand it, for that state may be so unlike the present that no words would fully convey the conception to our minds. Perhaps,

(2)It may be necessary to our condition here, as on probation, that no more light should be furnished in regard to the future than to stimulate us to make efforts to reach a world where all is light. For an illustration of the sentiment expressed here by the apostle, compare the notes at 2 Peter 1:4.

But we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him - It is revealed to us that we shall be made like Christ; that is, in the bodies with which we shall be raised up, in character, in happiness, in glory. Compare the Philippians 3:21 note; 2 Corinthians 3:18 note. This is enough to satisfy the Christian in his prospects for the future world. To be like Christ is the object of his supreme aim. For that he lives, and all his aspirations in regard to the coming world may be summed up in this - that he wishes to be like the glorified Son of God, and to share his honors and his joys. See the notes at Philippians 3:10.

For we shall see him as he is - It is clearly implied here that there will be an influence in beholding the Saviour as he is, which will tend to make us like him, or to transform us into his likeness. See the nature of this influence explained in the notes at 2 Corinthians 3:18.

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

2Now are we the sons of God He comes now to what every one knows and feels himself; for though the ungodly may not entice us to give up our hope, yet our present condition is very short of the glow of God’s children; for as to our body we are dust and a shadow, and death is always before our eyes; we are also subject to thousand miseries, and the soul is exposed to innumerable evils; so that we find always a hell within us. The more necessary it is that all our thoughts should be withdrawn from the present view of things, lest the miseries by which we are on every side surrounded and almost overwhelmed, should shake our faith in that felicity which as yet lies hid. For the Apostle’s meaning is this, that we act very foolishly when we estimate what God has bestowed on us according to the present state of things, but that we ought with undoubting faith to hold to that which does not yet appear.

But we know that when he shall appear The conditional particle ought to be rendered as an adverb of time, when But the verb appear means not the same thing as when he used it before. The Apostle has just said, it does not yet appear what we shall be, because the fruit of our adoption is as yet hid, for in heaven is our felicity, and we are now far away traveling on the earth; for this fading life, constantly exposed to hundred deaths, is far different from that eternal life which belongs to the children of God; for being enclosed as slaves in the prison of our flesh, we are far distant from the full sovereignty of heaven and earth. But the verb now refers to Christ, when, he shall appear; for he teaches the same thing with Paul, in Colossians, where he says,

“Your life is hid with Christ in God: when Christ, who is your life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.”
(Colossians 3:3)

For our faith cannot stand otherwise than by looking to the coming of Christ. The reason why God defers the manifestation of our glory is this, because Christ is not manifested in the power of his kingdom. This, then, is the only way of sustaining our faith, so that we may wait patiently for the life promised to us. As soon as any one turns away the least from Christ, he must necessarily fail. ⁽⁷⁶⁾

The word to know, shews the certainty of faith, in order to distinguish it from opinion. Neither simple nor universal knowledge is here intended, but that which every one ought to have for himself, so that he may feel assured that he will be sometime like Christ. Though, then, the manifestation of our glory is connected with the coming of Christ, yet our knowledge of this is well founded.

We shall be like him He does not understand that we shall be equal to him; for there must be some difference between the head and the members; but we shall be like him, because he will make our vile body conformable to his glorious body, as Paul also teaches us in Philippians 3:21. For the Apostle intended shortly to shew that the final end of our adoption is, that what has in order preceded in Christ, shall at length be completed in us.

The reason that is added may, however, seem inappropriate. For if to see Christ makes us like him, we shall have this in common with the wicked, for they shall also see his glory. To this I reply, that this is to see him as a friend, which will not be the case with the wicked, for they will dread his presence; nay, they will shun God’s presence, and be filled with terror; his glow will so dazzle their eyes, that they will be stupefied and confounded. For we see that Adam, conscious of having done wrong, dreaded the presence of God. And God declared this by Moses, as a general truth as to men,

“No man shall see me and live.” (Exodus 33:20.)

For how can it be otherwise but that God’s majesty, as a consuming fire, will consume us as though we were stubble, so great is the weakness of our flesh. But as far as the image of God is renewed in us, we have eyes prepared to see God. And now, indeed, God begins to renew in us his own image, but in what a small measure! Except then we be stripped of all the corruption of the flesh, we shall not be able to behold God face to face.

And this is also expressed here, as he is He does not, indeed, say, that there is no seeing of God now; but as Paul says,

“We see now through a glass, darkly.”
(1 Corinthians 13:12.)

But he elsewhere makes a difference between this way of living, and the seeing of the eye. In short, God now presents himself to be seen by us, not such as he is, but such as we can comprehend. Thus is fulfilled what is said by Moses, that we see only as it were his back, (Exodus 33:23;) for there is too much brightness in his face.

We must further observe, that the manner which the Apostle mentions is taken from the effect, not from the cause; for he does not teach us, that we shall be like him, because we shall see him; but he hence proves that we shall be partakers of the divine glory, for except our nature were spiritual, and endued with a heavenly and blessed immortality, it could never come so nigh to God yet the perfection of glory will not be so great in us, that our seeing will enable us to comprehend all that God is; for the distance between us and him will be even then very great.

But when the Apostle says, that we shall see him as he is, he intimates a new and an ineffable manner of seeing him, which we enjoy not now; for as long as we walk by faith, as Paul teaches us, we are absent from him. And when he appeared to the fathers, it was not in his own essence, but was ever seen under symbols. Hence the majesty of God, now hid, will then only be in itself seen, when the veil of this mortal and corruptible nature shall be removed.

Refined questions I pass by: for we see how Augustine tormented himself with these, and yet never succeeded, both in his Epistles to Paulus and Fortunatus, and in the City of God, (2:2,) and in other places. What he says, however, is worthy of being observed, that the way in which we live avails more in this inquiry than the way in which we speak, and that we must beware, lest by wrangling as to the manner in which God can be seen, we lose that peace and holiness without which no one shall see him.

(76) “When he shall appear,” refers to Christ, mentioned in the 28^th verse of the last chapter; what intervenes seems to have been parenthetically introduced. This is often the manner of writing found in this apostle. The end of the 8^th verse, in this chapter, is connected with the 16^th; for the antecedent to ἐκεῖνος, he, in the latter verse, is “the Son of God” in the former. [1 John 2:28.] — Ed

Smith's Bible Commentary

Chapter 3

Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us, that we should be called the sons of God ( 1 John 3:1 ):

I love that verse. Behold, what manner of love God has bestowed upon you, that you should be called the son of God. What glorious love, that God should adopt me as His son, that God should claim me as His son. That God should call me His son. What manner of love God has for me that He would call me His son.

therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know him. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doesn't yet appear what we're going to be: but we know that, when he appears, we're going to be like him; for we will see him as he is ( 1 John 3:1-2 ).

Now, we should not look for the rapture to make a tremendous transition and change in our lives. You know what I would hope? I would hope that I could be in heaven for an hour before I realized it. That I walked in such fellowship with the Lord, such communion with Him, lived so close to Him, that suddenly I'd say, "Man, the air is clear. Where am I? Hey, this heaven!" And you'd be there an hour before you ever knew it. That there would be no real radical change. You know, people are looking for real radical changes to take place, but you know, the Spirit working in our heart, day by day He is conforming us into the image of Christ. And we are being changed from glory to glory into the same image by the power of His Spirit working within us, so that there should not be some dramatic radical change when we then come right into the actual presence of our Lord in glory. You see, what will we be occupied with when we get there? Just loving Him, and fellowshipping and worshipping Him, sharing with Him. What should we then be occupied with here? Just loving Him, serving Him, worshipping Him. It shouldn't bring to pass a real radical change, you know, a hundred and eighty degrees. Running in my flesh, hard as I can this way, and then the rapture, and back now the other way. But just that transition right on in.

"Now we are the sons of God, it doesn't yet appear what we're going to be." You know, the Bible is interesting in that it doesn't give us that much insight into just what heaven is gonna be like. And the reason why is because there are no words that can describe it. That's what Paul said of his experience, "I was caught up into the third heaven and, hey, I heard things that it would be a crime to try to describe them in human language, and I'm not gonna even try" ( 2 Corinthians 12:1-4 ). It would be a crime to try to describe them in human terms. There is no human language that can express these things. So, because language is limited and is incapable of really expressing the fullness of the glory, the beauty, it just remains not described for us. "Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither hath it entered into the hearts of men those things that God has prepared for those that love Him. But God has begun to reveal them to us by His Spirit" ( 1 Corinthians 2:9-10 ).

Now there are occasions when I have a taste of heaven. A special work of God's Spirit within my heart and I'm carried away into an ecstasy. I experience a joy that's indescribable, full of glory. I feel a deep glorious peace that I can't describe. The Spirit of God beginning to reveal to me some of those things of the heavenly scene, but yet, so far beyond anything that words could describe.

What if you had a child that was blind and you tried to describe the sunset that we had last night? With a child who has never seen the oranges, and the reds, and the clouds and the beauties, fading out into the light blues and the pinks and all. How could you with words, adequately describe the beauty of a sunset? It defies description. So the heavenly scene defies description. The Bible doesn't attempt to. It just tells you, "Hey, it's glory beyond anything you could ever believe or imagine."

It doesn't yet appear what we are gonna be. Paul said, "Some of you will ask, 'How are the dead raised? With what body will they come?'" ( 1 Corinthians 15:35 ) And he doesn't really seek to tell us too much about the body, only in the fact that it's going to be vastly superior to the body that we have. We're planted in corruption; we're going to be raised in incorruption. We're planted in weakness; we're going to be raised in power. We are sown in dishonor; we're going to be raised in glory. We're planted as a natural body; we're going to be raised in a spiritual body. There is a natural body; there is a spiritual body. As we are born in the image of the earth, so shall we bear the image of the heavens. When you put a seed into the ground it dies before it comes forth into new life, and the body that comes out of the ground isn't the body that you planted. All you planted was a bare grain and God gives it a body that pleases Him, so is the resurrection of the dead.

New body--it's not gonna be the body that I planted in the ground. I'm not gonna have gimpy knees and I'm not gonna have bad eyes, and I'm not gonna have a bald head. I'm not gonna have wrinkles. A glorious new form, and I don't know what it is, it does not appear what I'm gonna be. It doesn't bother me. I know this, I'm gonna be like Him. Hey, that's all that matters. I'm gonna be like Him, for I'm gonna see Him as He is. And that's my hope tonight. I'm gonna be like Him as I see Him as He is.

And every man who has this hope in him purifies himself, even as he is pure ( 1 John 3:3 ).

This to me is one of the most purifying hopes within the church: Jesus is coming at any moment, and I'm gonna be changed to be just like Him. I'm gonna see Him as He is. And so that keeps me from doing a lot of things that I might otherwise do, from getting involved in a lot of wasted time that I might otherwise get involved in, because the Lord is coming soon and I want to use my time for His glory. Keep myself pure.

Whosoever commits sin ( 1 John 3:4 )

Now this word commits should be translated "practices sin" or "living in sin".

Whosoever [is living or practicing] sin is transgressing the law: for sin is lawlessness. And you know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin ( 1 John 3:4-5 ).

Now, I pointed out in chapter 1 that the sins (plural) refer to the fruit, and sin (singular) refers to the nature of sin in us, here in I John. So the sin (singular) here, as far as Christ is concerned, "in Him is no sin," that is, there was no nature of sin. We have a sinful nature. If I try to deny that, I'm only deceiving myself, and the truth isn't in me. If I say I have no sin, that I don't have a sinful nature, then I'm only deceiving myself. If I say that my sinful nature has never borne any fruit, that I've never sinned, then I do even worse; I make God a liar now. But Jesus did not have a sinful nature. He was born of God, conceived of the Holy Spirit. He died, as Peter said, as a lamb without spot or blemish. Spot, an inherent defect, He didn't have an inherent defect. Nor were there any acquired, the blemishes. I have both; I have spots and blemishes. I have the inherent sin, the nature of sin, and it has produced too much fruit. So, thank God for the blood of Jesus Christ. Having confessed my sins, He is faithful and just to forgive me and to cleanse me from all unrighteousness. So, whosoever is practicing sin is transgressing the law, for sin is the transgression of the law, and you know that He was manifested to take away our sins. He came in order that He might die for my sins, that He might take away my sins and my guilt, and in Him is no sin nature.

Whosoever abides in him does not practice sin: and whosoever practices sin has not seen him, neither known him ( 1 John 3:6 ).

Pretty powerful words. It should cause us to examine our own lives. If I am living a life of practicing sin, I really don't know Him. I really haven't seen Him. If I really know Him, then I'm gonna be free from the practice of sin.

Little children, let no man deceive you ( 1 John 3:7 ):

And don't deceive yourself.

he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous ( 1 John 3:7 ).

Now, Christ our example in purity, every man that has this hope in Him purifies himself, even as He is pure. He is our example in righteousness, as he that doeth righteousness is righteous even as He is righteous.

He that is practicing sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. And for this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil ( 1 John 3:8 ).

So again, don't deceive yourself. If you are practicing sin, living in sin, you are not of God; you are a part of that rebellion against God, led by Satan.

Whosoever is born of God does not practice sin; for his seed remaineth in him ( 1 John 3:9 ):

And the word His there in your Bible, if you'd capitalize, because it refers to Jesus Christ.

his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God ( 1 John 3:9 ).

You see, I have been born now of God, I have been born again, this is what Jesus was talking to Nicodemus about, He said, "Hey, fellow, you got to be born again if you are gonna enter into the kingdom of heaven." He says, "How can I be born again? I am an old man. I can't go back to my mother's womb anymore." And He said, "No. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, but that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. Don't marvel when I say that you've got to be born again." Born of the Spirit, the new birth.

Now, born of the flesh, I was born a sinner, with the nature of sin. And because of the nature of sin, there was the fruit, a sinful life. Now I have been born again, through the work of Jesus Christ, being born again, I have now a new nature. And when I do something that is untowards, mean, ugly, nasty, I can't say, "Well, you know, that's just my old nature." Because I have now a new nature. I've been born again. So that doing the righteous things become natural; sin becomes unnatural to the child of God. It doesn't mean that I don't sin, but it does mean it becomes an unnatural thing to me. Doing righteousness becomes the natural thing of my life. Doing the right thing comes natural. The nature of Christ, His seed abides in me and I can't practice sin. It's opposite to my new nature. It's opposing my new nature. I may fall into sin, but it's so opposing to my new nature that I'm miserable, I'm uncomfortable, and I come right out of it and I say, "Lord, forgive me. I was a fool. I was blind and foolish. Oh Lord, forgive me." I can't be comfortable living in sin. It's miserable because of my new nature. I'm out of character now with the new nature that I have in Christ. And so we are what we are by nature. That's why you need the new nature. That's why Jesus said, "You've got to be born again."

Now a pig is a pig by nature, and there are certain natural inclinations of a pig. He would be very uncomfortable in a different environment than what his nature calls for. Now, by nature he loves to get in a mud hole and just oink and scoot around in a mud hole, a stinky, smelly thing by nature, and he enjoys it. Now, you can take him out of the mud hole and wash him off with deodorant soap, cologne him and bring him into your parlor. Now, this isn't natural for a pig. He would be very uncomfortable in your living room. He would go rooting around looking for a way to get out. He would want to get back to the mud, the smelly mud pit. "I like it, it's my nature," if I'm a pig.

That's why reformation doesn't work for people. It takes more than reformation; it takes a change of nature. That's what the gospel offers to us. It doesn't say, "Come on, clean up your act." No. "Reform." No, it says, "Be ye transformed," have a change of nature. To where doing righteousness becomes the natural thing. Because His Spirit, His Seed is now abiding in me. A new nature through Jesus Christ, His nature planted in me.

And that is why the unconverted has such a difficulty, many times in making the decision to turn his life over to Jesus Christ. Because he sees the Christian and he says, "I could never live that way." Why? Because he's a pig, and he's happy in the mud, and he cannot imagine living a life of cleanliness, a life a purity. That's so totally opposed to his nature. He feels that he would be extremely uncomfortable in that environment. And Satan oftentimes uses that as weapon against the person making the decision. They say, "I could never live like those Christians. I would like to live that way, but, hey, that's not for me, man. I just couldn't do it." Of course you can't, we couldn't if there weren't a change of nature. But we've been born of God. His seed now abides in us. I have the new nature and I cannot practice sin in this new nature. Now, if you're comfortable practicing sin, then you don't have the new nature. "Oh, but I raised my hand and went forward in a Billy Graham crusade." I don't care. You know, you're not really born again unless there's a change of nature.

Now in this the children of God are manifest ( 1 John 3:10 ),

This is how you know if you're a child of God.

and the children of the devil are manifest: whosoever does not righteousness is not of God ( 1 John 3:10 ),

If you're not living a righteous life, you're not of God. I don't care what you might profess.

neither he that doesn't love his brother ( 1 John 3:10 ).

For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that you should love one another. That's the heart of the gospel message. Remember the lawyer came to Jesus and said, "What is the greatest commandment?" And Jesus said, "Thou shalt love the Lord your God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, with all thy mind, and with all thy strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. And in these two are all the law and the prophets" ( Matthew 22:37-40 ). What did He teach us? Love one another, even as I have loved you. If we don't have love for each other, then we are not of God; we don't have the new nature. For he that loves God, loves him that is begotten of God. That's part of the nature.

The message that we've heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And why did he kill him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's were righteous. So marvel not, my brethren, if the world hates you ( 1 John 3:11-13 ).

Because your deeds are righteous, and theirs are evil, and they will hate you for that. You make them feel guilty. They don't like to feel guilty. They hate you, "You're always doing the right thing. You're goodie, goodie, you think you are better than everybody else, don't you?" They hate you. I'm amazed at when a person, say, finds a bag, a Brinks bag on the highway with twenty thousand dollars in it and they take it down to the police department and turn it in. You know that they get all kinds of hate mail and threats on their lives and everything else? People call them up and harass them and tell them what fools they are and how stupid they were. And people that do those kind of things get all kinds of harassment. The world hates a righteous person. Marvel not that the world hates you.

We know that [oetis that] we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. And he that loveth not his brother abides in death ( 1 John 3:14 ).

Now how do I know that I've passed from death to life? Because I love the family of God, I love the brethren. Jesus said to His disciples, "By this sign shall the world know that you are my disciples, that you love one another" ( John 13:35 ). That's the greatest witness to the world is the love within the Christian body. They know that you are really Christians because you love one another as you do. Hey, not only is it the proof to the world, but it's also the proof to yourself. How do you know that you have passed from death unto life? Because God has given you such a love for the body of Christ, those within the body of Christ.

Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: [as Cain,] and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him ( 1 John 3:15 ).

So hereby we perceive the love of God. How do you know that God loves you? How do you know what you know? Now I know that God loves me. How do I know that God loves me? Because He laid down His life for us, that's how I know He loves me. Again, as we mentioned before, whenever God wants to prove that He loves you, He always points to the cross. He never seeks to make proof of His love in any other way. He doesn't try to prove that He loves you by the circumstances of your life always being good and prosperous and happy and rosy. Whenever you begin to doubt the love of Christ or the love of God, turn and look at the cross. There's the proof that God loves you. For God so loved that He gave His only begotten Son.

Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren ( 1 John 3:16 ).

"Love one another even as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man will lay down his life for friends. You are my friends," Jesus said, "if you do what I command you" ( John 15:12-14 ). And He laid down His life for us. We ought to have such love each other, for the body of Christ, that we would lay down our lives for each other. Jesus said to husbands, "Love your wives even as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for it." God help us, may God work His love in our hearts.

But whoso hath this world's goods, and sees his brother have need, and shuts up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? ( 1 John 3:17 )

Now coming to practical examples. You've been blessed, you've been prospered, you have a lot of world's goods. And now you see a brother in Christ who is in great need and you don't reach out to help him in his need. How can you really say that the love of Christ abides in you? "Oh, yes, I love him. Poor brother, I feel sorry for him. I love him so much. I feel so sorry for him. Not having any turkey this Christmas, it's a shame you know. Has to eat a Big Mac for Christmas, terrible. Oh, but I love him. Oh, how I love that man." No, No, no you don't. You can't really love them and shut your heart up on their need and be cold and calloused concerning their need. How does the love of God really dwell in you? How can you say that God's love dwells in you?

Little children, let us not love in word ( 1 John 3:18 ),

That's easy isn't it, "Oh, I love the world, it's just people I can't stand." You know, it's easy to profess love, "Oh, I love you so much . . . " What was it Shakespeare that said, "Thou protesteth too much." I always get a little suspicious when people, every time they see you say, "Oh, I love you so much, brother." I had a fellow that was saying that to me around here for a long time. And then he did his best to put a knife in my back. Oh, he loves me so much. Yes, yes, yes. Loving in words, that isn't where it's at. Let's love in deed; let's show our love by what we do, not by our words only. It's good to express it, but it's better to show it in our deeds. In reaching out, in helping, in giving a call, in giving a word of encouragement, in giving support financially if necessary, to reach out in love to touch each other and to help each other. Let's love in deed, for that's love in truth.

And hereby we know that we are of the truth ( 1 John 3:19 ),

How do I know that I am of the truth? Because I love in truth, I love in my deeds, and that's how I know that I'm of the truth.

and it gives assurance in our hearts towards him. For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and knows all things ( 1 John 3:19-20 ).

Now, sometimes our hearts do condemn us, and Satan oftentimes condemns us. There are people that are suffering under the condemnation of Satan under their own heart. I feel sort of sorry for them. They always go away castigating themselves saying, "Why did I say that? Oh, why did I say that?" And they can't sleep at night because of what they said that night when they were together with their friends. And they're afraid, "Oh, I've said the wrong thing. Nobody will love me anymore." And there are people that have that kind of a nature that they are just troubled by things like that. And their hearts often condemn them. But if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts. You know, I am convinced that I condemn myself for a lot of things that God doesn't me for, because God has justified me. Paul said, "Who is he that condemns us? It is Christ who died, rather is risen again, and is at the right hand of the Father making intercession for us" ( Romans 8:34 ). "There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus" ( Romans 8:1 ). If our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart.

If our heart condemn us not, we have confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight ( 1 John 3:21-22 ).

Now, there are a lot of people that take that first part as a promise, "whatsoever we ask we receive of Him," but they don't finish the verse, "because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight." You see, there are some fascinating, sort of broad promises given to us on prayer. Jesus said, "And whatsoever things you desire when you pray believe that you receive them, and ye shall have them" ( Matthew 21:22 ). Now people just take that, and they start then preaching these sermons on faith, and, "Hey, you can have anything you want. You can have a Mercedes. You can live on Lido Island, or you can . . . Faith. All you need is faith. Whatsoever things you desire, do you desire it? Believe and you'll have it." Who was Jesus talking to? The multitudes? Nope. He was talking to His disciples. What constitutes being a disciple? "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me" ( Matthew 16:24 ). That needs to be stamped over the top of that. "Whatsoever things you desire, when you pray, believe that you receive them and you shall have them . . . Deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me." What does that mean? It means that your prayers will only be on those things that are for His glory and for His kingdom and not to satisfy your own desires of making a big splash in a Mercedes or whatever.

We have this confidence when we keep His commandments and we do those things that are pleasing in His sight. Then we have power in prayer, because our prayers are not directed towards our self-interest and our own self-aggrandizement, but our prayers are on the things of His kingdom and things for His glory and things whereby others may prosper and be blessed.

And this is his commandment ( 1 John 3:23 ),

Now he's talked about a lot of commandments, and he's going to be talking more about commandments and keeping the commandments. What is the commandment?

That we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment ( 1 John 3:23 ).

That's all. He doesn't give you ten commandments, long list of do's and do nots. All He said is to just believe on Jesus and love one another. I'm glad that He reduced it down to just simplicity. I'll never forget it. It's easy to remember to just believe on Him and to love one another. He doesn't lay a long burden and list on me that I have a hard time fulfilling. Just do this, "Believe on Jesus and love each other."

And he that keeps his commandments dwells in him, and he in him. And hereby we know that he abides in us ( 1 John 3:24 ),

How do I know that He abides in us or in me?

by his Spirit which he has given me ( 1 John 3:24 ).

God has filled my life with His Holy Spirit. I know He abides in me. Hereby I know, by the Spirit that He has given.

So next week we'll finish I John as we go into chapters 4 and 5. Then we'll take II and III John, and perhaps Jude in one evening. Enter into the book of Revelation for about, what, ten weeks maybe. So that means about March or so, and then we'll be starting over in Genesis again. Through the Bible, it's exciting. We learn about God, as He has revealed the truth of Himself to us.

And now may the Spirit of God teach you all things and bring to your remembrance those things that He has commanded us. We remember to just love God and believe on Jesus Christ. And may the love of Christ be perfected in your life, may it increase and may it grow and may God help you to maintain the proper perspective, in the world but not of the world. Your every touch just as light as possible, because the world is gonna pass away and the lust thereof, but he who does the will of God will abide forever. God help us to be interested and occupied with the things that are eternal. In Jesus' name. "

Contending for the Faith

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.

Beloved, now are we the sons of God: "Beloved" is agapetoi, beloved ones, and speaks of the same agape love as bestowed by the Father. The apostle loves them in the same way God does. "Now" John fixes the minds of his readers on the present time. He insists that, at this present time, "we the sons of God." This declaration gives our status in this world and in this age. John is about to compare the present condition of the Christian with his future situation.

and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: This statement shows the lack of understanding of the heavenly situation on the part of even an apostle of the Lord. Vincent says, "The force of the aorist tense is, was never manifested on any occasion" (344). John does not know, and nobody on earth knows, what we are going to be like at the resurrection when Jesus comes again. This statement is the tenor of John’s words. Paul tells us that we will receive an immortal, incorruptible body (1 Corinthians 15:51-54); but he does not say what it will be like.

but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is: One thing we do know is that when Jesus appears on the scene again, we shall be like him. Our body shall be like His body. "For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself" (Philippians 3:20-21). Paul and John are in agreement: we shall be like the Lord. Our bodies shall be like his glorified body, a body wonderful, glorious, and eternal, perfectly adapted unto righteousness and fit for the heavenly world. We have not had the liberty to see Jesus in His glorified state; but when He comes in the clouds at that last day, we shall see Him as He is. The beauty of it all is that "we shall be like Him."

Three magnificent truths present themselves in this passage: Jesus is coming again, we shall be like Him when we see Him, and we shall see Him as He is. These gospel truths should be all the incentive anyone needs to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. This is the import of the next passage.

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

Even though we are presently God’s children we do not yet fully reflect His image as we shall. However when (not "if," another third class condition) Jesus Christ appears and we see Him, we shall experience full transformation (i.e., glorification). Evidently seeing Jesus Christ will fully transform us physically and spiritually (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:12).

"A child of God is here and now, indeed, like a diamond that is crystal white within but is still uncut and shows no brilliant flashes from reflected facets." [Note: Richard C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of the Epistles of St. Peter, St. John and St. Jude, p. 452.]

"He will not be anything essentially different hereafter, but he will be what he is now essentially more completely, though in ways wholly beyond our powers of imagination." [Note: Westcott, p. 97.]

John’s references to the appearing in 1 John 2:28 and 1 John 3:2 frame his references to the new birth in 1 John 2:29 and 1 John 3:1. Every true Christian will participate in this appearing.

Barclay's Daily Study Bible

Chapter 3

REMEMBER THE PRIVILEGES OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE ( 1 John 3:1-2 )

3:1-2 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God--and such we indeed are. The reason why the world does not recognize us is that it did not recognize him. Beloved, even as things are we are children of God, and it has not yet been made clear what we shall be. We know that, if it shall be made clear, we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.

It may well be that the best illumination of this passage is the Scottish Paraphrase of it:

Behold the amazing gift of love

the Father hath bestow'd

On us, the sinful sons of men,

to call us sons of God!

Concealed as yet this honour lies,

by this dark world unknown,

A world that knew not when he came,

even God's eternal Son.

High is the rank we now possess,

but higher we shall rise;

Though what we shall hereafter be

is hid from mortal eyes.

Our souls, we know, when he appears,

shall bear his image bright;

For all his glory, full disclosed,

shall open to our sight.

A hope so great, and so divine,

may trials well endure;

And purge the soul from sense and sin,

as Christ himself is pure.

John begins by demanding that his people should remember their privileges. It is their privilege that they are called the children of God. There is something even in a name. Chrysostom, in a sermon on how to bring up children, advises parents to give their boy some great scriptural name, to teach him repeatedly the story of the original bearer of the name, and so to give him a standard to live up to when he grows to manhood. So the Christian has the privilege of being called the child of God. Just as to belong to a great school, a great regiment, a great church, a great household is an inspiration to fine living, so, even more, to bear the name of the family of God is something to keep a man's feet on the right way and to set him climbing.

But, as John points out, we are not merely called the children of God; we are the children of God.

There is something here which we may well note. It is by the gift of God that a man becomes a child of God. By nature a man is the creature of God, but it is by grace that he becomes the child of God. There are two English words which are closely connected but whose meanings are widely different, paternity and fatherhood. Paternity describes a relationship in which a man is responsible for the physical existence of a child; fatherhood describes an intimate, loving, relationship. In the sense of paternity all men are children of God; but in the sense of fatherhood men are children of God only when he makes his gracious approach to them and they respond.

There are two pictures, one from the Old Testament and one from the New, which aptly and vividly set out this relationship. In the Old Testament there is the covenant idea. Israel is the covenant people of God. That is to say, God on his own initiative had made a special approach to Israel; he was to be uniquely their God, and they were to be uniquely his people. As an integral part of the covenant God gave to Israel his law, and it was on the keeping of that law that the covenant relationship depended.

In the New Testament there is the idea of adoption ( Romans 8:14-17; 1 Corinthians 1:9; Galatians 3:26-27; Galatians 4:6-7). Here is the idea that by a deliberate act of adoption on the part of God the Christian enters into his family.

While all men are children of God in the sense that they owe their lives to him, they become his children in the intimate and loving sense of the term only by an act of God's initiating grace and the response of their own hearts.

Immediately the question arises: if men have that great honour when they become Christians, why are they so despised by the world? The answer is that they are experiencing only what Jesus Christ has already experienced. When he came into the world, he was not recognized as the Son of God; the world preferred its own ideas and rejected his. The same is bound to happen to any man who chooses to embark on the way of Jesus Christ.

REMEMBER THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE ( 1 John 3:1-2 continued)

John, then, begins by reminding his people of the privileges of the Christian life. He goes on to set before them what is in many ways a still more tremendous truth, the great fact that this life is only a beginning. Here John observes the only true agnosticism. So great is the future and its glory that he will not even guess at it or try to put it into inevitably inadequate words. But there are certain things he does say about it.

(i) When Christ appears in his glory, we shall be like him. Surely in John's mind there was the saying of the old creation story that man was made in the image and in the likeness of God ( Genesis 1:26). That was God's intention; and that was man's destiny. We have only to look into any mirror to see how far man has fallen short of that destiny. But John believes that in Christ a man will finally attain it, and at last bear the image and the likeness of God. It is John's belief that only through the work of Christ in his soul can a man reach the true manhood God meant him to reach.

(ii) When Christ appears, we shall see him and be like him. The goal of all the great souls has been the vision of God. The end of all devotion is to see God. But that vision of God is not for the sake of intellectual satisfaction; it is in order that we may become like him. There is a paradox here. We cannot become like God unless we see him; and we cannot see him unless we are pure in heart, for only the pure in heart shall see God ( Matthew 5:8). In order to see God, we need the purity which only he can give. We are not to think of this vision of God as something which only the great mystics can enjoy. There is somewhere the story of a poor and simple man who would often go into a cathedral to pray; and he would always pray kneeling before the crucifix. Someone noticed that, though he knelt in the attitude of prayer, his lips never moved and he never seemed to say anything. He asked what he was doing kneeling like that and the man answered: "I look at him; and he looks at me." That is the vision of God in Christ that the simplest soul can have; and he who looks long enough at Jesus Christ must become like him.

One other thing we must note. John is here thinking in terms of the Second Coming of Christ. It may be that we can think in the same terms; or it may be that we cannot think so literally of a coming of Christ in glory. Be that as it may, there will come for every one of us the day when we shall see Christ and behold his glory. Here there is always the veil of sense and time, but the day will come when that veil, too, will be torn in two.

When death these mortal eyes shall seal,

And still this throbbing heart,

The rending veil shall thee reveal

All glorious as thou art.

Therein is the Christian hope and the vast possibility of the Christian life.

THE OBLIGATION OF PURITY ( 1 John 3:3-8 )

3:3-8 Anyone who rests this hope on him purifies himself as he is pure. Anyone who commits sin commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. And you know that he appeared that he might take away our sins and there is no sin in him. Anyone who abides in him does not sin. Anyone who sins has not seen him, and does not know him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who does righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He who does sin is of the devil, because the devil is a sinner from the beginning. The purpose for which the Son of God appeared was that he might destroy the works of the devil.

John has just said that the Christian is on the way to seeing God and being like him. There is nothing like a great aim for helping a man to resist temptation. A novelist draws the picture of a young man who always refused to share in the lower pleasures to which his comrades often invited and even urged him. His explanation was that some day something fine was going to come to him, and he must keep himself ready for it. The man who knows that God is at the end of the road will make all life a preparation to meet him.

This passage is directed against the Gnostic false teachers. As we have seen they produced more than one reason to justify sin. They said that the body was evil and that, therefore, there was no harm in sating its lusts, because what happened to it was of no importance. They said that the truly spiritual man was so armoured with the Spirit that he could sin to his heart's content and take no harm from it. They even said that the true Gnostic was under obligation both to scale the heights and to plumb the depths so that he might be truly said to know all things. Behind John's answer there is a kind of analysis of sin.

He begins by insisting that no one is superior to the moral law. No one can say that it is quite safe for him to allow himself certain things, although they may be dangerous for others. As A. E. Brooke puts it: "The test of progress is obedience." Progress does not confer the privilege to sin; the further on a man is the more disciplined a character he will be. John goes on to imply certain basic truths about sin.

(i) He tells us what sin is. It is the deliberate breaking of a law which a man well knows. Sin is to obey oneself rather than to obey God.

(ii) He tells us what sin does. It undoes the work of Christ. Christ is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world ( John 1:29). To sin is to bring back what he came into the world to abolish.

(iii) He tells us why sin is. It comes from the failure to abide in Christ. We need not think that this is a truth only for advanced mystics. It simply means this--so long as we remember the continual presence of Jesus, we will not sin; it is when we forget that presence that we sin.

(iv) He tells us whence sin comes. It comes from the devil; and the devil is he who sins, as it were, on principle. That probably is the meaning of the phrase from the beginning ( 1 John 3:8). We sin for the pleasure that we think it will bring to us; the devil sins as a matter of principle. The New Testament does not try to explain the devil and his origin; but it is quite convinced--and it is a fact of universal experience that in the world there is a power hostile to God; and to sin is to obey that power instead of God.

(v) He tells us how sin is conquered. It is conquered because Jesus Christ destroyed the works of the devil. The New Testament often dwells on the Christ who faced and conquered the powers of evil ( Matthew 12:25-29; Luke 10:18; Colossians 2:15; 1 Peter 3:22; John 12:31). He has broken the power of evil, and by his help that same victory can be ours.

THE MAN WHO IS BORN OF GOD ( 1 John 3:9 )

3:9 Anyone who has been born of God does not commit sin, because his seed abides in him; and he cannot be a consistent and deliberate sinner, because he has been born of God.

This verse bristles with difficulties, and yet it is obviously of the first importance to find out what it means.

First, what does John mean by the phrase: "Because his seed abides in him"? There are three possibilities.

(i) Frequently the Bible uses the word seed to mean a man's family and descendants. Abraham and his seed are to keep the covenant of God ( Genesis 17:9). God made his promise to Abraham and to his seed for ever ( Luke 1:55). The Jews claim to be Abraham's seed ( John 8:33; John 8:37). In Galatians 3:1-29, Paul speaks about Abraham's seed ( Galatians 3:16; Galatians 3:29). If we take seed in that sense here, we need to take him as referring to God and then we get very good sense. "Anyone who has been born of God does not sin, because God's family constantly abide in God." God's family live so near to God that they may be said to abide in him. The man who lives like that has a strong defence against sin.

(ii) It is human seed which produces human life, and the child may be said to have his father's seed in him. Now the Christian is reborn through God and, therefore, has God's seed in him. This was an idea with which the people of John's age were very familiar. The Gnostics said that God had sowed seeds into this world and through the action of these seeds the world was being perfected; and they claimed that it was the true Gnostics who had received these seeds. Some Gnostics said that man's body was a material and evil thing; but into some bodies Wisdom secretly sowed seeds and the truly spiritual men have these seeds of God for souls. This was closely connected with the Stoic belief that God was fiery spirit and a man's soul, that which gave him life and reason, was a spark (scintilla) of that divine fire which had come from God to reside in a man's body.

If we take John's words this way, it means that every reborn man has the seed of God in him, and that, therefore, he cannot sin. There is no doubt that John's readers would know this idea.

(iii) There is a much simpler idea. Twice at least in the New Testament the word of God is that which is said to bring rebirth to men. James has it: "Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures" ( James 1:18). The word of God is like the seed of God which produces new life. Peter has this idea even more clearly, "You have been born anew, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God" ( 1 Peter 1:23). There the word of God is definitely identified with the imperishable seed of God. If we take it this way, John means that the man who is born of God cannot sin because he has the strength and guidance of the word of God within him. This third way is simplest and, on the whole best. The Christian is preserved from sin by the indwelling power of the word of God.

THE MAN WHO CANNOT SIN ( 1 John 3:9 continued)

Second, this verse presents us with the problem of relating it with certain other things which John has already said about sin. Let us set the verse down, as it is in the Revised Standard Version:

No one born of God commits sin; for God's nature abides in

him, and he cannot sin because he is born of God.

Taken at its face value this means that it is impossible for the man who is born of God to sin. Now John has already said, "if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us"; and "if we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar"; and he urges us to confess our sins ( 1 John 1:8-10). He goes on to say, "if we do sin, we have an advocate with the Father in the person of Jesus Christ." On the face of it there is contradiction here. In the one place John is saying that man cannot be anything other than a sinner and that, there is an atonement for his sin. In the other place he is saying equally definitely that the man who is born of God cannot sin. What is the explanation?

(i) John thinks in Jewish categories because he could do no other. We have already seen that he knew and accepted the Jewish picture of the two ages, this present age and the age to come. We have also seen that it was John's belief that, whatever the world was like, Christians by virtue of the work of Christ had already entered into the new age. It was exactly one of the characteristics of the new age that those who lived in it would be free from sin. In Enoch we read: "Then too will wisdom be bestowed on the elect, and they will all live and never again sin, either through heedlessness or through pride" (Enoch 5: 8). If that is true of the new age, it ought to be true of Christians who are living in it. But, in fact, it is still not true because Christians have not even yet escaped from the power of sin. We might then say that in this passage John is setting down the ideal of what should be and in the other two passages he is facing the actuality of what is. We might put it that he knows the ideal and confronts men with it; but also faces the facts and sees the cure in Christ for them.

(ii) That may well be so but there is more to it. In the Greek there is a subtle difference in tenses which makes a very wide difference in meaning. In 1 John 2:1 it is John's injunction that you may not sin. In that verse sin is in the aorist tense which indicates a particular and definite act. So what John is saying is quite clearly that Christians must not commit individual acts of sin; but if they do lapse into sin, they have in Christ an advocate to plead their cause and a sacrifice to atone. On the other hand, in our present passage in both cases sin is in the present tense and indicates habitual action.

What John is saying may be put down in four stages. (a) The ideal is that in the new age sin is gone for ever. (b) Christians must try to make that true and with the help of Christ struggle to avoid individual acts of sin. (c) In fact all men have these lapses and when they do, they must humbly confess them to God, who will always forgive the penitent heart. (d) In spite of that, no Christian can possibly be a deliberate and consistent sinner; no Christian can live a life in which sin is dominant in all his actions.

John is not setting before us a terrifying perfectionism; but he is demanding a life which is ever on the watch against sin, a life in which sin is not the normal accepted way but the abnormal moment of defeat. John is not saying that the man who abides in God cannot sin; but he is saying that the man who abides in God cannot continue to be a deliberate sinner.

THE MARKS OF THE CHILDREN OF GOD ( 1 John 3:10-18 )

3:10-18 In this the children of God and the children of the devil are made plain; anyone who does not do righteousness is not of God, and neither is he who does not love his brother, because the message that we have heard from the beginning is the message that we should love one another, that we should not be like Cain, who was of the Evil One and slew his brother. And why did he slay him? Because his works were evil and his brother's works were just. Do not be surprised, brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brothers. He who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer. He does not possess eternal life abiding within him. In this we recognize his love, that he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our life for the brothers. Whoever possesses enough for his livelihood in this world and sees his brother in need and shuts his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him? My dear children, do not make love a matter of talking and of the tongue, but love in deed and in truth.

This is a passage with a closely-knit argument and a kind of parenthesis in the middle.

As Westcott has it: "Life reveals the children of God." There is no way of telling what a tree is other than by its fruits, and there is no way of telling what a man is other than by his conduct. John lays it down that any one who does not do righteousness is thereby demonstrated to be not of God. At present we shall omit the parenthesis and go straight on with the argument.

Although John is a mystic, he has a very practical mind; and, therefore, he will not leave righteousness vague and undefined. Someone might say, "Very well, I accept the fact that the only thing which proves that a man belongs to God is the righteousness of his life. But what is righteousness?" John's answer is clear and unequivocal. To be righteous is to love our brother men. That, says John, is a duty about which we should never be in any doubt. And he goes on to adduce various reasons why that commandment is so central and so binding.

(i) It is a duty which has been inculcated into the Christian from the first moment that he entered the Church. The Christian ethic can be summed up in the one word love and from the moment that a man pledges himself to Christ, he pledges himself to make love the mainspring of his life.

(ii) For that very reason the fact that a man loves his brother men is the final proof that he has passed from death to life. As A. E. Brooke puts it: "Life is a chance of learning how to love." Life without love is death. To love is to be in the light; to hate is to remain in the dark. We need no further proof of that than to look at the face of a man who is in love and the face of a man who is full of hate; it will show the glory or the blackness in his heart.

(iii) Further, not to love is to become a murderer. There can be no doubt that John is thinking of the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount ( Matthew 5:21-22). Jesus said that the old law forbade murder but the new law declared that anger and bitterness and contempt were just as serious sins. Whenever there is hatred in the heart a man becomes a potential murderer. To allow hatred to settle in the heart is to break a definite commandment of Jesus. Therefore, the man who loves is a follower of Christ and the man who hates is no follower of his.

(iv) There follows still another step in this closely-knit argument. A man may say, "I admit this obligation of love and I will try to fulfil it; but I do not know what it involves." John's answer ( 1 John 3:16) is: "If you want to see what this love is, look at Jesus Christ. In his death for men on the Cross it is fully displayed." In other words, the Christian life is the imitation of Christ. "Have this mind among yourselves, which you have in Christ Jesus" ( Php_2:5 ). "He left us an example that we should follow in his steps" ( 1 Peter 2:21). No man can look at Christ and then say that he does not know what the Christian life is.

(v) John meets one more possible objection. A man may say, "How can I follow in the steps of Christ? He laid down his life upon the Cross. You say I ought to lay down my life for the brothers. But opportunities so dramatic as that do not come into my life. What then?" John's answer is: "True. But when you see your brother in need and you have enough, to give to him of what you have is to follow Christ. To shut your heart and to refuse to give is to show that that love of God which was in Jesus Christ has no place in you." John insists that we can find plenty of opportunities to show forth the love of Christ in the life of the every day. C. H. Dodd writes finely on this passage: "There were occasions in the life of the early church, as there are certainly tragic occasions at the present day, for a quite literal obedience to this precept (i.e., to lay down our life for the brothers). But not all life is tragic; and yet the same principle of conduct must apply all through. Thus it may call for the simple expenditure of money we might have spent upon ourselves, to relieve the need of someone poorer. It is, after all, the same principle of action, though at a lower level of intensity: it is the willingness to surrender that which has value for our own life, to enrich the life of another. If such a minimum response to the law of charity, called for by such an everyday situation, is absent, then it is idle to pretend we are within the family of God, the realm in which love is operative as the principle and the token of eternal life."

Fine words will never take the place of fine deeds; and no amount of talk of Christian love will take the place of a kindly action to a man in need, involving some self-sacrifice, for in that action the principle of the Cross is operative again.

THE WORLD'S RESENTMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN WAY ( 1 John 3:10-18 continued)

In this passage there is a parenthesis; we return to it now.

The parenthesis is 1 John 3:11 and the conclusion drawn from it is in 1 John 3:12. The Christian must not be like Cain who murdered his brother.

John goes on to ask why Cain murdered his brother; and his answer is that it was because his works were evil and his brother's were good. Then he drops the remark: "Do not be surprised, brothers, if the world hates you."

An evil man will instinctively hate a good man. Righteousness always provokes hostility in the minds of those whose actions are evil. The reason is that the good man is a walking rebuke to the evil man, even if he never speaks a word to him, his life passes a silent judgment. Socrates was the good man par excellence; Alcibiades was brilliant but erratic and often debauched. He used to say to Socrates: "Socrates, I hate you, because every time I meet you you show me what I am."

The Wisdom of Solomon has a grim passage ( Wis_2:10-20 ). In it the evil man is made to express his attitude to the good man: "Let us lie in wait for the righteous; because he is not for our turn, and he is clean contrary to our doings.... He was made to reprove our thoughts. He is grievous unto us even to behold: for his life is not like other men's, his ways are of another fashion. We are esteemed of him as counterfeits: he abstaineth from our ways as from filthiness." The very sight of the good man made the evil man hate him.

Wherever the Christian is, even though he speak no word, he acts as the conscience of society; and for that very reason the world will often hate him.

In ancient Athens the noble Aristides was unjustly condemned to death; and, when one of the jurymen was asked how he could have cast his vote against such a man, his answer was that he was tired of hearing Aristides called "The Just." The hatred of the world for the Christian is an ever-present phenomenon, and it is due to the fact that the worldly man sees in the Christian the condemnation of himself; he sees in the Christian what he is not and what in his heart of hearts he knows he ought to be; and, because he will not change, he seeks to eliminate the man who reminds him of the lost goodness.

THE ONLY TEST ( 1 John 3:19-24 a)

3:19-24a By this we know that we are of the truth, and by this we will reassure our heart before him, when our heart condemns us in anything, for God is greater than our hearts and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we can come confidently to God and receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do the things which are well pleasing to him. And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and that we should love one another, even as he gave us his commandment. And he who keeps his commandment abides in him and he in him.

Into the human heart there are bound to come doubts. Any man with a sensitive mind and heart must sometimes wonder if he really is a Christian at all. John's test is quite simple and far-reaching. It is love. If we feel love for our fellow-men welling up within our hearts, we can be sure that the heart of Christ is in us. John would have said that a so-called heretic whose heart was overflowing with love and whose life was beautiful with service, was far nearer Christ than someone who was impeccably orthodox, yet cold and remote from the needs of others.

John goes on to say something which, as far as the Greek goes, can mean two things. That feeling of love can reassure us in the presence of God. Our hearts may condemn us but God is greater than our hearts. The question is: what is the meaning of this last phrase?

(i) It could mean: since our hearts condemn us and God is infinitely greater than our hearts, God must condemn us even more. If we take it that way, it leaves us only with the fear of God and with nothing to say but: "God be merciful to me, a sinner." That is a possible translation and no doubt it is true; but it is not what John is saying in this context, for here he is thinking of our confidence in God and not our dread of him.

(ii) The passage must therefore mean this. Our hearts condemn us--that is inevitable. But God is greater than our hearts; he knows all things. Not only does he know our sins; he also knows our love, our longings, the nobility that never fully works itself out, our penitence; and the greatness of his knowledge gives him the sympathy which can understand and forgive.

It is this very knowledge of God which gives us our hope. "Man," as Thomas a Kempis said, "sees the deed, but God knows the intention." Men can judge us only by our actions, but God can judge us by the longings which never became deeds and the dreams which never came true. When Solomon was dedicating the Temple, he spoke of how David had wished to build a house for God and how that privilege had been denied to him. "It was in the heart of David, my father, to build a house for the name of the Lord God of Israel. And the Lord said unto David, my father, 'Whereas it was in your heart to build a house for my name, you did well that it was in your heart'" ( 1 Kings 8:17-18). The French proverb says, "To know all is to forgive all." God judges us by the deep emotions of the heart; and, if in our heart there is love, then, however feeble and imperfect that love may be, we can with confidence enter into his presence. The perfect knowledge which belongs to God, and to God alone, is not our terror but our hope.

THE INSEPARABLE COMMANDS ( 1 John 3:19-24 a continued)

John goes on to speak of the two things which are well-pleasing in God's sight, the two commandments on obedience to which our relationship to God depends.

(i) We must believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ. Here we have that use of the word name which is peculiar to the biblical writers. It does not mean simply the name by which a person is called; it means the whole nature and character of that person as far as it is known to us. The Psalmist writes: "Our help is in the name of the Lord" ( Psalms 124:8). Clearly that does not mean that our help lies in the fact that God is called Jehovah; it means that our help is in the love and mercy and power which have been revealed to us as the nature and character of God. So, then, to believe in the name of Jesus Christ, means to believe in the nature and character of Jesus Christ. It means to believe that he is the Son of God, that he does stand in relation to God in a way in which no other person in the universe ever stood or ever can stand, that he can perfectly reveal God to men and that he is the Saviour of our souls. To believe in the name of Jesus Christ is to accept him for what he really is.

(ii) We must love one another, even as he gave us his commandment. This commandment is in John 13:34. We must love each other with that same selfless, sacrificial, forgiving love with which Jesus Christ loved us.

When we put these two commandments together, we find the great truth that the Christian life depends on right belief and right conduct combined. We cannot have the one without the other. There can be no such thing as a Christian theology without a Christian ethic; and equally there can be no such thing as a Christian ethic without a Christian theology. Our belief is not real belief unless it issues in action; and our action has neither sanction nor dynamic unless it is based on belief.

We cannot begin the Christian life until we accept Jesus Christ for what he is; and we have not accepted him in any real sense of the term until our attitude to men is the same as his own attitude of love.

-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)

Gann's Commentary on the Bible

1 John 3:2

1 John 3:2 Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is

God’s children -- by adoption.

Has not appeared -- CP-NT: "God has not revealed to us the manner of transformation we will experience when we meet our Savior. But we are assured that we will experience a transformation."

That when he appears -- "he" or "it" ? PPT: "The context is strongly in favour of "it," i.e., "if it shall be manifested what we shall be;" <620228> 1 John 2:28 1 John 2:28 seems to favour "he," i.e., "if Christ shall be manifested." The context must prevail." RWP: "The subject may be Christ as in 1 John 3:9, or the future manifestation just mentioned. Either makes sense, probably “it” here better than “he."

Be like him -- WG: Is this speaking of our "purity" or metaphysical appearance? It is not saying that everyone will look alike physically in heaven. But that BBC: "we will be free from the possibility of defilement, sin, sickness, sorrow, and death." BKC: "Such a transformation will result from seeing Him as He is." Barnes: "It is revealed to us that we shall be made like Christ; that is, in the bodies with which we shall be raised up, in character, in happiness, in glory." Barnes: "It is clearly implied here that there will be an influence in beholding the Saviour as he is, which will tend to make us like him, or to transform us into his likeness."

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

Beloved, now are we the sons of God,.... By adoption, secretly in God's predestination, and in the covenant of grace; and openly in regeneration, through faith in Christ, and by the testimony of the Spirit:

and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; though they are sons, they do not appear now as such, as they will do, when they shall be introduced into their Father's house, and into the many mansions there prepared for them; when Christ shall publicly own them as the children given unto him, and when they shall be put into the possession of the inheritance they are heirs of; besides, they will appear then not only to be kings' sons, but kings themselves, as they now are; they will then inherit the kingdom prepared for them, and will sit down on a throne of glory, and have a crown of righteousness, life, and glory, put upon them; and will appear not only perfectly justified, their sins being not to be found; and the sentence of justification afresh pronounced, and they placed out of the reach of all condemnation; but they will be perfectly holy and free from all sin, and perfectly knowing and glorious; they have a right to glory now, and glory is preparing for them, and they for that: and they are now representatively glorified in Christ, but then they will be personally glorified: now, though all this shall certainly be, yet it does not now manifestly appear; it appears to God, who calls things that are not as though they were and to Christ, whose delights were with the sons men, these children of God, before the world was, and saw them in all the glory they were to be brought to; but not even to angels, until they are owned and confessed before them; much less to the world, who do not know what they are now, and still less what they will be, seeing them now in poverty, meanness, under many reproaches, afflictions, and persecutions; and even this does not appear to the saints themselves, whose life is a hidden life; and that by reason of darkness, desertion, and diffidence, for want of more knowledge, and from the nature of the happiness itself, which is at present unseen:

but we know that when he shall appear; that is, Jesus Christ, who is now in heaven, and out of sight, but will appear a second time: the time when is not known, but the thing itself is certain:

we shall be like him; in body, fashioned like to his glorious body, in immortality and incorruption, in power, in glory, and spirituality, in a freedom from all imperfections, sorrows, afflictions, and death; and in soul, which likeness will lie in perfect knowledge of divine things, and in complete holiness;

for we shall see him as he is; in his human nature, with the eyes of the body, and in his glorious person, with the eyes of the understanding; not by faith, as now, but by sight; not through ordinances, as in the present state, but through those beams of light and glory darting from him, with which the saints will be irradiated; and this sight, as it is now exceeding desirable, will be unspeakably glorious, delightful, and ravishing, soul satisfying, free from all darkness and error, and interruption; will assimilate and transform into his image and likeness, and be for ever. Philo the Jew observes k, that Israel may be interpreted one that sees God; but adds, ουχ οιος εστιν ο θεος, "not what God is", for this is impossible: it is indeed impossible to see him essentially as he is, or so as to comprehend his nature, being, and perfections; but then the saints in heaven will see God and Christ as they are, and as much as they are to be seen by creatures; God will be seen as he is in Christ; and Christ will be seen as he is in himself, both in his divine and human natures, as much as can be, or can be desired to be seen and known of him.

k De Praemiis. & Paenis, p. 917.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      1 Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.   2 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.   3 And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

      The apostle, having shown the dignity of Christ's faithful followers, that they are born of him and thereby nearly allied to God, now here,

      I. Breaks forth into the admiration of that grace that is the spring of such a wonderful vouchsafement: Behold (see you, observe) what manner of love, or how great love, the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called, effectually called (he who calls things that are not makes them to be what they were not) the sons of God! The Father adopts all the children of the Son. The Son indeed calls them, and makes them his brethren; and thereby he confers upon them the power and dignity of the sons of God. It is wonderful condescending love of the eternal Father, that such as we should be made and called his sons--we who by nature are heirs of sin, and guilt, and the curse of God--we who by practice are children of corruption, disobedience, and ingratitude! Strange, that the holy God is not ashamed to be called our Father, and to call us his sons! Thence the apostle,

      II. Infers the honour of believers above the cognizance of the world. Unbelievers know little of them. Therefore (or wherefore, upon this score) the world knoweth us not,1 John 3:1; 1 John 3:1. Little does the world perceive the advancement and happiness of the genuine followers of Christ. They are here exposed to the common calamities of earth and time; all things fall alike to them as to others, or rather they are subject to the greater sorrow, for they have often reason to say, If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable,1 Corinthians 15:19. The unchristian world, therefore, that walks by sight, knows not their dignity, their privileges, the enjoyments they have in hand, nor what they are entitled to. Little does the world think that these poor, humble, contemned ones are the favourites of heaven, and will be inhabitants there ere long. And they may bear their case the better since their Lord was here unknown as well as they: Because it knew him not,1 John 3:1; 1 John 3:1. Little did the world think how great a person was once sojourning here, that the Maker of it was once an inhabitant of it. Little did the Jewish world think that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was one of their blood, and dwelt in their land; he came to his own, and his own received him not. He came to his own, and his own crucified him; but surely, had they known him, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory,1 Corinthians 2:8. Let the followers of Christ be content with hard fare here, since they are in a land of strangers, among those who little know them, and their Lord was so treated before them. Then the apostle,

      III. Exalts these persevering disciples in the prospect of the certain revelation of their state and dignity. Here, 1. Their present honourable relation is asserted: Beloved (you may well be our beloved, for you are beloved of God), now are we the sons of God,1 John 3:2; 1 John 3:2. We have the nature of sons by regeneration: we have the title, and spirit, and right to the inheritance of sons by adoption. This honour have all the saints. 2. The discovery of the bliss belonging and suitable to this relation is denied: And it doth not yet appear what we shall be,1 John 3:2; 1 John 3:2. The glory pertaining to the sonship and adoption is adjourned and reserved for another world. The discovery of it here would put a stop to the current of affairs that must now proceed. The sons of God must walk by faith, and live by hope. 3. The time of the revelation of the sons of God in their proper state and glory is determined; and that is when their elder brother comes to call and collect them all together: But we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him. The particle, ean, usually translated if, is here well rendered when; for the Hebrew particle am (to which this is thought to correspond) is observed so to signify, as Dr. Whitby has here noted; and not only is ean sometimes used for hotan, but some copies even here read hotan, when. And accordingly it seems proper so to render it in John 14:3, where we read it, And if I go, and prepare a place; but more naturally and properly, When I shall have gone, and shall have prepared the place, I will come again, and receive you unto myself, or paralepsomai--I will take you along with myself, that where I am there you may be also. When the head of the church, the only-begotten of the Father, shall appear, his members, the adopted of God, shall appear and be manifested together with him. They may then well wait in faith, hope, and earnest desire, for the revelation of the Lord Jesus; as even the creation itself waiteth for their perfection, and the public manifestation of the sons of God,Romans 8:19. The sons of God will be known and be made manifest by their likeness to their head: They shall be like him--like him in honour, and power, and glory. Their vile bodies shall be made like his glorious body; they shall be filled with life, light, and bliss from him. When he, who is their life, shall appear, they also shall appear with him in glory,Colossians 3:4. Then, 4. Their likeness to him is argued from the sight they shall have of him: We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Their likeness will be the cause of that sight which they shall have of him. Indeed, all shall see him, but not as they do; not as he is, namely, to those in heaven. The wicked shall see him in his frowns, in the terror of his majesty, and the splendour of his avenging perfections; but these shall see him in the smiles and beauty of his face, in the correspondence and amiableness of his glory, in the harmony and agreeableness of his beatific perfections. Their likeness shall enable them to see him as the blessed do in heaven. Or the sight of him shall be the cause of their likeness; it shall be a transformative sight: they shall be transformed into the same image by the beatific view that they shall have of him. Then the apostle,

      IV. Urges the engagement of these sons of God to the prosecution of holiness: And every man that hath this hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure,1 John 3:3; 1 John 3:3. The sons of God know that their Lord is holy and pure; he is of purer heart and eyes than to admit any pollution or impurity to dwell with him. Those then who hope to live with him must study the utmost purity from the world, and flesh, and sin; they must grow in grace and holiness. Not only does their Lord command them to do so, but their new nature inclines them so to do; yea, their hope of heaven will dictate and constrain them so to do. They know that their high priest is holy, harmless, and undefiled. They know that their Go and Father is the high and holy one, that all the society is pure and holy, that their inheritance is an inheritance of saints in light. It is a contradiction to such hope to indulge sin and impurity. And therefore, as we are sanctified by faith, we must be sanctified by hope. That we may be saved by hope we must be purified by hope. It is the hope of hypocrites, and not of the sons of God, that makes an allowance for the gratification of impure desires and lusts.

Spurgeon's Verse Expositions of the Bible

Exposition: 1 John 3:1-10

"Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not.

"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."

As dear Dr. Hawker said concerning this, there is a chapter in every word and a sermon in every letter. How it opens with a "Behold!" because it is such a striking portion of sacred Scripture, that the Holy Ghost would have us pay particular attention to it. "Behold!" says he, "read other Scriptures if you like, with a glance, but stop here. I have put up a way-mark to tell you there is something eminently worthy of attention buried beneath these words." "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us." Consider who we were, and who we are now; ay, and what we feel ourselves to be even when divine grace is powerful in us. And yet, beloved, we are called "the sons of God." It is said that when one of the learned heathens was translating this, he stopped and said, "No; it cannot be; let it be written 'Subjects,' not 'Sons,' for it is impossible we should be called 'the sons of God.' " What a high relationship is that of a son to his father! What privileges a son has from his father! What liberties a son may take with his father! and oh! what obedience the son owes to his father, and what love the father feels towards the son! But all that, and more than that, we now have through Christ. "Behold!" ye angels! stop, ye seraphs! here is a thing more wonderful than heaven with its walls of jasper. Behold, universe! open thine eyes, O world. "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God; therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not." Well, we are content to go with him in his humiliation, for we are to be exalted with him.

"Beloved, now are we the sons of God." That is easy to read; but it is not so easy to feel. "Now are we the sons of God." How is it with your heart this morning? Are you in the lowest depths of sorrow and suffering? "Now are you a son of God." Does corruption rise within your spirit, and grace seem like a poor spark trampled under foot? "Beloved, now are you a son of God." Does your faith almost fail you? and are your graces like a candle well nigh blown out by the wind! Fear not, beloved; it is not your graces, it is not your frames, it is not your feelings, on which you are to live: you must live simply by naked faith on Christ. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." With all these things against us, with the foot of the devil on our neck, and the sword in his hand ready to slay us beloved now in the very depths of our sorrow, wherever we may be now, as much in the valley as on the mountain, as much in the dungeon as in the palace, as much when broken on the wheel of suffering as when exalted on the wings of triumph "beloved, now are we the sons of God." "Ah!" but you say, "see how I am arrayed! my graces are not bright; my righteousness does not shine with apparent glory." But read the next: "It doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him." We are not so much like him now, but we have some more refining process to undergo, and death itself, that best of all friends, is yet to wash us clean. "We know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is."

"And every man that hath this hope in him, purifieth himself, even as he is pure.

"Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law for sin is the transgression of the law.

"And ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins; and in him is no sin."

Believer, read these words in two senses. He was manifested to take away thy sins that thou hast committed; and that he accomplished, when "the just for the unjust," he sustained the penalties of them. And he was manifested to take away the power of thy sins; that is to say, to conquer thy reigning lusts, to take away thine evil imaginations, to purify thee, and make thee like himself. Well, beloved, what a mercy it is that some one was manifested to take away our sins from us! for some of us have been striving a long, long while, to conquer our sins, and we cannot do it. We thought we had driven them out, but they had "chariots of iron," and we could not overcome them; they lived "in the hill country," and we could not get near them. As often as we worsted them in one battle, they came upon us thick and strong, like an army of locusts; when heaps and heaps had been destroyed they seemed as thick as ever. Ah! but there is a thought they shall all be taken away. "Ye know that he was manifested to take away our sins;" and so he will. The time will come when you and I shall stand without spot or blemish before the throne of God: for they are "without fault before the throne of God" at this moment, and so shall we be ere long.

"Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither known him."

This plain, simple verse, has been twisted by some who believe in the doctrine of perfection, and they have made it declare that it is possible for some to abide in Christ, and therefore not to sin. But you will remark that it does not say, that some that abide in Christ do not sin; but it says that none who abide in Christ sin. "Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not." Therefore this passage is not to be applied to a few who attain to what is called by our Arminian friends the fourth degree perfection; but it appertains to all believers; and of every soul in Christ it may be said, that he sinneth not. In reading the Bible, we read it simply as we would read another book. We ought not to read it as a preacher his text, with the intention of making something out of every word; but we should read it as we find it written: "Whosoever abideth in Christ sinneth not." Now we are sure that cannot mean that he does not sin at all, but it means that sins not habitually, he sins not designedly, he sins not finally, so as to perish. The Bible often calls a man righteous; but that does not mean that he is perfectly righteous. It calls a man a sinner, but it does not imply that he may not have done some good deeds in his life; it means that that is the man's general character. So with the man who abides in Christ: his general character is not that he is a sinner, but that he is a saint he sinneth not openly wilfully before men. In his own heart, he has much to confess, but his life before his fellow creatures is such a one that it can be said of him: "Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not; but whosoever sinneth [the sins of this world. in which the multitude indulge] hath not seen him, neither known him."

"Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous."

That is the sign of it. Works are the fruits of grace. "He is righteous," not in himself; for mark how graces come in here "He is righteous, even as HE is righteous." It will not allow our righteousness to be our own, but it brings us to Christ again. "He that doeth righteousness is righteous," not according to his own works, but "even as HE is righteous." Good works prove that I have perfect righteousness in Christ; they do not help the righteousness of Christ, nor yet in any way make me righteous. Good works are of no use whatever in the matter of justification: they only use they are, is, that they are for our comfort, for the benefit of others, and for the glory of God. "He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil."

"He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.

"Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.

"In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil; whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother."

It were well if we always remembered that practical godliness is the soul of godliness; that it is not talking religion, but walking religion which proves a man to be sincere; it is not having a religious tongue, but a religious heart; it is not a religious mouth, but a religious foot. The best evidence is the salvation of the soul. Avaunt! talkative; go thy way, thou mere professing formalist! Your ways lead down to hell, and your end shall be destruction; for "He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he mighty destroy the works of the devil."

Spurgeon's Verse Expositions of the Bible

A Present Religion and The Beatific Vision

A Present Religion A Sermon

Delivered on Sabbath Morning, May 30, 1858, by the REV. C. H. Spurgeon at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens

"Beloved, now are we the sons of God." 1 John 3:2 .

I SHALL not pretend to preach from the whole of my text this morning, short though it be. The word "now" is to me the most prominent word in the text, and I shall make it so this morning. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." The religion, then, of the present, is not the worldling's religion. He tolerates that which speaks of eternity; that which deals with dying beds; that which leads him to look back with a specious repentance upon a life spent in sin, but not that which will enable him to look forward to a life spent in holiness. Very differently, however, do we act with affairs of the present life, for things that are sweet to us, become the more sweet by their nearness. Was there ever a child who longed for his father's house who did not feel that the holidays grew more sweet in his estimation the shorter the time was that he had to tarry? This morning, in God's name, I shall endeavor to plead with men, and show them the importance of having a present religion. I am quite certain that this is a habit which is too much kept in the back-ground. I am sure from mixing with mankind, that the current belief is, that religion is a future thing, perhaps the wish is father to the thought. I am certain the ground of it is, men love not religion, and therefore they desire to thrust it far from them. But again, this life is always said in Scripture to be a preparation for the life to come, "Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel." "They that were ready went in with him to the supper, and the door was shut." There is in this world a getting ready for another world; to use a Biblical figure, we must here put on the wedding dress, which we are to wear for ever. This life is as the vestibule of the king's court, we must put our shoes from off our feet; we must wash our garments and make ourselves ready to enter into the marriage supper of the Lamb. Somehow, in Scripture, the thought comes out as plain as if written with a sunbeam, this world is the beginning of the end, it is the preparing-place for the future. Supposing you have no religion now, how will you stand when now is turned into eternity? When days and years are gone, how will it fare with you, if all your days have been spent without God and without Christ? Do you hope to hurry on the white garment after death? Alas! you shall be girt with your shroud, but not be able to put on the wedding raiment. Do you trust that you shall wash you and make you clean in the river Jordan? Alas! ye shall breed corruption in your tomb, but ye shall not find holiness there. Do ye trust to be pardoned after you have departed?

"There are no acts of pardon pass'd In the cold grave to which we haste; But darkness, death, and fell despair, Reign in eternal silence there."

Or, do ye think that when ye near the borders of the grave, then will be the time to prepare? Be not deceived. We read in Scripture one instance of a man saved at the eleventh hour. Remember, there is but one; and we have no reason to believe that there ever was, or ever will be another. There may have been persons saved on their dying beds, but we are not sure there ever were. Such things may have happened, but none of us can tell. Alas! facts are sadly against it; for we have been assured by those who have had the best means of judging those who have long walked the hospital of humanity that such as thought they were dying and made vows of repentance, have almost invariably turned back, like "the dog to his own vomit and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire." Oh no; "To-day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts;" for to-day is the preparing time for the dread to-morrow to-day is the making ready for the eternal future. In the second place, as I have briefly shown the connection between the present and the future, let me use another illustration to show the importance of a present salvation. Salvation is a thing which brings present blessings. When you read Scripture, and alas there are few who care to read it as they ought in these times, they read anything rather than their Bibles when you read Scripture, you will be struck with the fact that every blessing is spoken of in the present tense. You remember how the apostle in one of his epistles says, "Unto them which are saved, Christ power of God and the wisdom of God." He does not say to them who shall be saved, but to them which are saved. We know too that justification is a present blessing "there is therefore now no condemnation." Adoption is a present blessing, for it says, "Now are we the sons of God," and we know also that sanctification is a present blessing, for the apostle addresses himself to "the saints who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, and called." All the blessings of the new covenant are spoken of in the present tense, because with the exception of eternal glory in heaven, they are all to be enjoyed here. I know this, that I shall be one day, if I am a believer in Christ, more sanctified than I am to-day if not in the sense of consecration, yet still in the sense of purification but at the same time I know this of a surety, that when I stand at God's right hand, midst the lamps of eternal brightness, and when these fingers move with vigor across the golden strings, and when this voice is filled with the immortal songs, I shall not be one whit more a child of God than I am now. And when the white robe is upon me, and the crown upon my head, I shall not be more justified than I am at the present moment, for it is the doctrine of Holy Scripture, that

"The moment a sinner believes, And trusts in his crucified God, His pardon at once he receives Salvation in full through his blood."

Yet I am inclined to think, that the worldly man most of all objects to present religion, because he does not like its duties. Most men would be very religious if religion did not entail obligations. Many a free liver would be a very pious man, if he were not curtailed of a few of his bottles of wine. Many a loose character would have no objection to go up to the temple and pray, and subscribe his name to the God of Jacob, if the gospel did not forbid all uncleanness, and everything that is lascivious. Many a tradesman would put on the Lord Jesus Christ, if there were no necessity to put off the old man, if he could keep his sins and have Christ too oh, how willing would he be. Indeed, there are a great many who are so fond of it, that they have tried it. We know people who are like the Roman Emperor, who believed that Jesus Christ was God, but thought that all the other strange gods were likewise to be worshipped; so these people think religion a very good thing, but think sin a very good thing too, so they set up the two together, and their whole life is like Janus, two-faced. They look most comely Christians in the synagogue, but they look most unmistakable hypocrites if you see them in the market. Men will not direct a single eye to religion because it curtails license and entails duties. And this, I think, proves that religion is a present thing, because the duties of religion cannot be practiced in another world, they must be practiced here. But besides these, there are other duties devolving upon the Christian. Though it is every man's duty to be honest and sober, the Christian has another code of law. It is the Christian's duty to love his enemies, to be at peace with all men, to forgive as he hopes to be forgiven; and it is his duty not to resist evil, when smitten on the one cheek to turn the other also; it is his duty to give to him that asketh of him and from him that would borrow of him not to turn away he is to be a liberal soul devising liberal things. It is the Christian's duty to visit his Master's children when they are sick, so that it may be said to him at last, "I was sick, and naked, and in prison, and ye visited me, and ministered to my necessities." Now, if religion be not a thing for this world, I ask you how is it possible to perform its duties at all? There are no poor in heaven whom we can comfort and visit, there are no enemies in heaven whom we can graciously forgive; and there are no injuries inflicted, or wrongs endured, which we can bear with patience. Religion must have been intended in the very first place for this world, it must have been meant that now we should be the sons of God. For again I repeat it, that the major part of the duties of religion cannot be practiced in heaven, and therefore religion must be a present thing. Ah! beloved, there are present enjoyments in religion. Speak, ye that know them, for ye can tell; yet ye cannot recount them all. Oh! would ye give up your religion for all the joys that earth calls good or great? Say, if your immortal life could be extinguished, would you give it up, even for all the kingdoms of this world? Oh: ye sons of poverty, has not this been a candle to you in the darkness? Has not this lightened you through the dark shades of your tribulation? Oh! ye horny handed sons of toil, has not this been your rest, your sweet reposer; Have not the testimonies of God been your song in the house of your pilgrimage? Oh! ye daughters of sorrow, ye who spend the most of your time upon your beds and your couch to you is a rack of pain has not religion been to you a sweet quietus? When your bones were sore vexed, could ye not even then praise him on your beds? Speak from your couches to-day, ye consumptives, blanched though your cheeks; speak this day from your beds of agony, ye that are troubled with inumerable diseases, and are drawing near your last home? Is not religion worth having in the sick chamber, on the bed of pain and anguish? "Ah!" they heartily say," we can praise him on our beds; we can sing his high praises in the fires." And ye men of business, speak for yourselves! You have hard struggles to pass through life. Sometimes you have been driven to a great extremity, and whether you would succeed or not seemed to hang upon a thread. Has not your religion been a joy to you in your difficulties? Has it not calmed your minds? When you have been fretted and troubled about worldly things, have you not found it a pleasant thing to enter your closet, and shut-to the door, and tell your Father in secret all your cares? And O ye that are rich, cannot you bear the same testimony, if you have loved the Master? What had all your riches been to you without a Saviour? Can you not say, that your religion did gild your gold, and make your silver shine more brightly? for all things that you have are sweetened by this thought, that you have all these and Christ too! Was there ever a child of God who could deny this? We have heard of many infidels who grieved over their infidelity when they came to die. Did you ever hear of a Christian acting the counterpart? Did you ever hear of any one on his death-bed looking back on a life of holiness with sorrow? We have seen the rake, with a wasted constitution shrivel into a corpse through his iniquities, and we have heard him bemoan the day in which he went astray. We have seen the poor debauched child of sin rotting with disease, and listened to her shriek, and heard her miserably curse herself that she ever turned aside, to what was called the path of gaiety, but what was really the path to hell. We have seen the miser too, who has gripped his bags of gold, and on his dying bed we have found him curse himself, that when he came to die, his gold, though laid upon his heart, could not still its achings and give him joy. Never, never did we know a Christian who repented of his Christianity. We have seen Christians so sick, that we wondered that they lived so poor, that we pondered at their misery; we have seen them so full of doubts, that we pitied their unbelief; but we never heard them say, even then, "I regret that I gave myself to Christ." No; with the dying clasp, when heart and flesh were failing, we have seen them hug this treasure to their breast and press it to their heart, still feeling that this was their life, their joy, their all. Oh! if ye would be happy, if ye would be saved, if ye would strew your path with sunshine, and dig out the nettles and blunt the thorns, "seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." Seek not happiness first; seek Christ first, and happiness shall come after. Seek ye first the Lord, and then he will provide for you everything that is profitable for you in this life and he will crown it with everything that is glorious in the life to come. "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." I know where this morning's sermon will be found profitable. It will be in the case of those who are seeking Christ. Old Flockhart, who used to preach till within the last few months in the streets of Edinburgh, a much despised, but a very godly man, used to say, "When I begin my sermon, I begin by preaching the law, and then I bring the gospel afterwards; for," he said, "it is like a woman who is sewing she cannot sew with thread alone; she first sticks a sharp needle through, and then draws the thread afterwards. so," he says, "does the Lord with us; he sends the sharp needle of conviction, the needle of the law, into our hearts. and pricks us in the heart, and he draws through the long silken thread of consolation afterwards." Oh! I would that some of you were pricked in the heart to-day. Remember, there are thunders in this book; though they are sleeping now, they will wake by-and-bye. There are in this Bible curses too horrible for heart to know their full extent of meaning; they are slumbering now, but they shall waken and when they leap from between the folded leaves, and the seven seals are broken, where will you flee, and where shall you hide yourselves, in that last great day of anger? If, then, ye are pricked to the heart, I preach to you the gospel now. "Today, if ye will hear his voice. harden not your hearts, as in the provocation." This day look to him that hung upon the cross. This day believe and live. And now will not this incident fitly represent the manner of God with sinners, when according to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, he brings terms of peace and reconciliation to us who are in revolt against him? He says, "Ground arms, give up your sins, take off your self-righteousness." He disarms us, dishonors us, and strips on all our comely array, and then says, "Now I will forgive you." If there be any one here who has thrown down his weapons of rebellion, and whose fine ornaments of beauty are stained with shame, let him believe that God will now forgive him; he forgives those who cannot forgive themselves. The great Captain of our salvation will pardon those whom he has humbled. He will have you submit to his will, and though that will may at first seem imperious to drive you from your quarters, and visit you with punishment, you shall presently find that his sovereign will is gracious, and he delighteth in mercy. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved," for thus saith the Word, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned."

The Beatific Vision

A Sermon

(No. 61)

Delivered on Sabbath Morning, January 20, 1856, by the

REV. C. H. Spurgeon

At New Park Street Chapel, Southwark.

"We shall see him as he is." 1 John 3:2 .

IT IS one of the most natural desires in all the world, that when we hear of a great and a good man, we should wish to see his person. When we read the works of any eminent author, we are accustomed to turn to the frontispiece to look for his portrait. When we hear of any wondrous deed of daring, we will crowd our windows to see the warrior ride through the streets. When we know of any man who is holy, and who is eminently devoted to his work, we will not mind tarrying anywhere, if we may but have a glimpse of him whom God has so highly blessed. This feeling becomes doubly powerful when we have any connection with the man; when we feel, not only that he is good to us; not only that he is benevolent, but that he has been a benefactor to us as individuals. Then the wish to see him rises to a craving desire, and the desire is insatiable until it can satisfy itself in seeing that unknown, and hitherto unseen donor, who has done such wondrously good deeds for us. I am sure, my brethren, you will all confess that this strong desire has arisen in your minds concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. We owe to none so much; we talk of none so much, we hope, and we think of none so much: at any rate, no one so constantly thinks of us. We have I believe, all of us who love his name, a most insatiable wish to behold his person. The thing for which I would pray above all others, would be for ever to behold his face, for ever to lay my head upon his breast, for ever to know that I am his, for ever to dwell with him. Ay, one short glimpse, one transitory vision of his glory, one brief glance at his marred, but now exalted and beaming countenance, would repay almost a world of trouble. We have a strong desire to see him. Nor do I think that that desire is wrong. Moses himself asked that he might see God. Had it been a wrong wish arising out of vain curiosity, it would not have been granted, but God granted Moses his desire: he put him in the cleft of the rock, shaded him with his hands, bade him look at the skirts of his garments, because his face could not be seen. Yea, more; the earnest desire of the very best of men has been in the same direction. Job said, "I know that my Redeemer liveth, and though worms devour this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God:" that was his desire. The holy Psalmist said, "I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness;" "I shall behold thy face in righteousness." And most saints on their death-beds have expressed their fondest, dearest, and most blessed wish for heaven, in the expression of longing "to be with Christ, which is far better." And not ill did our sweet singer of Israel put the words together, when he humbly said, and sweetly too:

"Millions of years my wondering eyes Shall o'er thy beauties rove; And endless ages I'll adore The glories of thy love."

We are rejoiced to find such a verse as this, for it tells us that our curiosity shall be satisfied, our desire consummated, our bliss perfected. "WE SHALL SEE HIM AS HE IS." Heaven shall be ours, and all we ever dreamed of him shall be more than in our possession. I. First then, THE GLORIOUS POSITION. Our minds often revert to Christ as he was, and as such we have desired to see him. Ah! how often have we wished to see the babe that slept in Bethlehem! How earnestly have we desired to see the man who talked with the woman at the well! How frequently have we wished that we might see the blessed Physician walking amongst the sick and dying, giving life with his touch, and healing with his breath! How frequently too have our thoughts retired to Gethsemane, and we have wished our eyes were strong enough to pierce through eighteen hundred and fifty years which part us from that wondrous spectacle, that we might see him as he was! We shall never see him thus; Bethlehem's glories are gone for ever; Calvary's glooms are swept away; Gethsemane's scene is dissolved; and even Tabor's splendours are quenched in the past. They are as things that were; sponge, the nails these are not. The manger and the rocky tomb are gone. The places are there, unsanctified by Christian feet, unblessed, unhallowed by the presence of their Lord. We shall never see him as he was. In vain our fancy tries to paint it, or our imagination to fashion it. We cannot, must not, see him as he was; nor do we wish, for we have a larger promise, "We shall see him as he is ." Come, just look at that a few moments by way of contrast, and then I am sure you will prefer to see Christ as he is , rather than behold him as he was. We shall see the hand, and the nail-prints too, but not the nail; it has been once drawn out, and for ever. We shall see his side, and its pierced wound too, but the blood shall not issue from it. We shall see him not with a peasant's garb around him, but with the empire of the universe upon his shoulders. We shall see him, not with a reed in his hand, but grasping a golden sceptre. We shall see him, not as mocked and spit upon and insulted, not bone of our bone, in all our agonies, afflictions, and distresses; but we shall see him exalted; no longer Christ the man of sorrows, the acquaintance of grief, but Christ the Man-God, radiant with splendour, effulgent with light, clothed with rainbows, girded with clouds, wrapped in lightnings, crowned with stars, the sun beneath his feet. Oh! glorious vision! How can we guess what he is ? What words can tell us? or how can we speak thereof? Yet whate'er he is, with all his splendour unveiled, all his glories unclouded, and himself unclothed we shall see him as he is . Mark again. We shall not see the Christ wrestling with pain , but Christ as a conqueror . We shall never see him tread the winepress alone, but we shall see him when we shall cry, "Who is this that cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah? this that is glorious in his apparel, travelling in the greatness of his strength?" We shall never see him as when he stood foot to foot with his enemy: but we shall see him when his enemy is beneath his feet. We shall never see him as the bloody sweat streams from his whole body; but we shall see him as he hath put all things under him, and hath conquered hell itself. We shall never see him as the wrestler; but we shall see him grasp the prize. We shall never see him sealing the rampart; but we shall see him wave the sword of victory on the top thereof. We shall not see him fight; but we shall see him return from the fight victorious, and shall cry, "Crown him! Crown him! Crowns become the victor's brow." " We shall see him as he is ." Perhaps I have not shown clearly enough the difference between the two visions the sight of what he was and what he is. Allow me then, a moment more, and I will try and make it clearer still. When we see Christ as he was how astonished we are! One of the first feelings we should have, if we could have gone to the Mount of Olives and seen our Saviour sweating there, would have been, astonishment. When we were told that it was the Son of God in agonies, we should have lifted up our hands, and there would have been no speech in us at the thought. But then, beloved, here is the difference. The believer will be as much astonished when he sees Jesus' glories as he sits on his throne, as he would have been to have seen him in his earthly sufferings. The one would have been astonishment, and horror would have succeeded it; but when we see Jesus as he is, it will be astonishment without horror . We shall not for one moment feel terrified at the sight, but rather

"Our joys shall run eternal rounds, Beyond the limits of the skies. And earth's remotest bounds."

If we could see Jesus as he was, we should see him with great awe . If we had seen him walking on the water, what awe should we have felt! If we had seen him raising the dead, we should have thought him a most majestic Being. So we shall feel awe when we see Christ on his throne; but the first kind of awe is awe compounded with fear, for when they saw Jesus walking on the water they cried out and were afraid; but when we shall see Christ as he is, we shall say,

"Majestic sweetness sits enthroned Upon his awful brow."

There will be no fear with the awe but it will be awe without fear . We shall not bow before him with trembling, but it will be with joy; we shall not shake at his presence, but rejoice with joy unspeakable. Furthermore, if we had seen Christ as he was, we should have had great love for him; but that love would have been compounded with pity . We should stand over him, and say,

"Alas! and did my Saviour bleed, And did my Sovereign die? Would he devote that sacred head For such a worm as I?"

We shall love him quite as much when we see him in heaven, and more too, but it will be love without pity ; we shall not say "Alas!" but we shall shout

"All-hail, the power of Jesu's name; Let angels prostrate fall: Bring forth the royal diadem, And crown him Lord of all."

Yet more. If we had seen our Saviour as he was, it would have been a triumph to see how he conquered, but still there would have been suspense about it. We should have feared lest he might not overcome. But when we see him up there it will be triumph without suspense . Sheathe the sword; the battle's won. 'Tis over now. "Tis finished," has been said. The grave has been past; the gates have been opened; and now, henceforth, and for ever, he sitteth down at his Father's right hand, from whence also he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. II. Now secondly, we have PERSONAL IDENTITY. Perhaps while I have been speaking, some have said, "Ah! but I want to see the Saviour, the Saviour of Calvary, the Saviour of Judea, the very one that died for me. I do not so much pant to see the glorious Saviour you have spoken of; I want to see that very Saviour who did the works of love, the suffering Saviour; for him I love." Beloved, you shall see him. It is the same one. There is personal identity. "We shall see him." "Our eyes shall see him and not another." "We shall see HIM as he is." It is a charming thought that we shall see the very, very Christ; and the poet sung well, who said

"Oh! how the thought that I shall know The man that suffered here below, To manifest his favour, For me, and those whom most I love, Or here, or with himself above, Does my delighted passion move, At that sweet word "for ever." For ever to behold him shine, For evermore to call him mine, And see him still before me. For ever on his face to gaze, And meet his full assembled rays, While all the Father he displays, To all the saints for ever."

That is what we want to see the same Saviour. Ay, it will be the same Lord we shall see in heaven. Our eyes shall see him and not another. We shall be sure it is he; for when we enter heaven we shall know him by his manhood and Godhead . We shall find him a man, even as much as he was on earth. We shall find him man and God too, and we shall be quite sure there never was another Man-God; we never read or dreamed of another. Don't suppose that when you get to heaven you will have to ask "Where is the man Christ Jesus?" You will see him straight before you on his throne, a man like yourselves.

"Bright like a man the Saviour sits; The God, how bright he shines."

But then, beloved, Christ and we are not strangers; for we have often seen him in this glass of the Word. When by the Holy Spirit our poor eyes have been anointed with eye-salve, we have sometimes caught a sufficient glimpse of Christ to know him by it. We have never seen him except reflectedly. When we have looked on the Bible, he has been above us and looked down upon it; and we have looked there as into a looking glass, and have seen him "as in a glass darkly." But we have seen enough of him to know him. And oh, methinks when I see him, I shall say, "That is the bridegroom I read of in Solomon's Song; I am sure it is the same Lord that David used to sing of. I know that is Jesus, for he looks even now like that Jesus who said to the poor woman, 'Neither do I condemn thee,' like that blessed Jesus who said " Talitha Cumi ,' 'Maid, I say unto thee, arise.'" We shall know him, because he will be so much like the Bible Jesus, that we shall recognise him at once. III. This brings us to the third point THE POSITIVE NATURE OF THE VISION "We shall see him as he is." This is not the land of sight; it is too dark a country to see him , and our eyes are not good enough. We walk here by faith, and not by sight. It is pleasant to believe his grace, but we had rather see it. Well, "We shall see him." But perhaps you think, when it says, "We shall see him," that it means, we shall know more about him; we shall think more of him; we shall get better views of him by faith. Oh, no, it does not at all. It means what it says positive sight. Just as plainly as I can see my brother there, just as plainly as I can see any one of you, shall I see Christ with these very eyes too. With these very eyes that look on you shall I look on the Saviour. It is not a fancy that we shall see him. Do not begin cutting these words to pieces. Do you see that gas lamp? You will see the Saviour in the same fashion naturally, positively, really, actually? You will not see him dreamily, you will not see him in the poetical sense of the word see, you will not see him in the metaphorical meaning of the word; but positively, you shall "see him as he is." "See him:" mark that. Not think about him, and dream about him; but we shall positively "see him as he is." How different that sight of him will be from that which we have here. For here we see him by reflection . Now, I have told you before, we see Christ "through a glass darkly:" and he says that means, "Here we look through a telescope, and we see Christ only darkly through it." But the good man had forgotten that telescopes were not invented till hundreds of years after Paul wrote; so that Paul could not have intended telescopes. Others have tried to give other meanings to the word. The fact is, glass was never used to see through at that time. They used glass to see by , but not to see through . The only glass they had for seeing was a glass mirror. They had some glass which was no brighter than our black common bottle-glass. "Here we see through a glass darkly." That means, by means of a mirror. As I have told you, Jesus is represented in the Bible; there is his portrait; we look on the Bible, and we see it. We see him "through a glass darkly." Just as sometimes, when you are looking in your looking glass, you see somebody going along in the street. You do not see the person; you only see him reflected. Now, we see Christ reflected; but then we shall not see him in the looking-glass; we shall positively see his person. Not the reflected Christ, not Christ in the sanctuary, not the mere Christ shining out of the Bible, not Christ reflected from the sacred pulpit; but "we shall see him as he is." Here, too, how dimly we see Christ! It is through many shadows that we now behold our Master. Dim enough is the vision here; but there "we shall see him as he is." Have you never stood upon the hill-tops, when the mist has played on the valley? You have looked down to see the city and the streamlet below; you could just ken yonder steeple, and mark that pinnacle; you could see that dome in the distance; but they were all so swathed in the mist that you could scarcely discern them. Suddenly the wind has blown away from the mist from under you, and you have seen the fair, fair valley. Ah! it is so when the believer enters heaven. Here he stands and looks upon Christ veiled in a mist upon a Jesus who is shrouded; but when he gets up there, on Pisgah's brow, higher still, with his Jesus, then he shall not see him dimly, but he shall see him brightly. We shall see Jesus then "without a veil between" not dimly, but face to face. And oh! how transitory is our view of Jesus! It is only a little while we get a glimpse of Christ, and then he seems to depart from us. Our chariots have sometimes been like Amminadib's; but in a little while the wheels are all gone, and we have lost the blessed Lord. Have you not some hours in your life felt so to be in the presence of Christ, that you scarcely knew where you were? Talk of Elijah's chariots and horses of fire; you were on fire yourself; you could have made yourself into a horse and chariot of fire, and gone to heaven easily enough. But then, all of a sudden, did you never feel as if a lump of ice had fallen on your heart, and put the fire out, and you have cried, "Where is my beloved gone! Why hath he hidden his face? Oh! how dark how dim!" But, Christians, there will be no hidings of faces in heaven! Blessed Lord Jesus! there will be no coverings of thine eyes in glory; Is not thine heart a sea of love, where all my passions roll? And there is no ebb-tide of thy sea, sweet Jesus, there. Art thou not everything? There will be no losing thee there no putting thy hand before thine eyes up there; but without a single alteration, without change or diminution, our unwearied, unclouded eyes, shall throughout eternity perpetually behold thee. "We shall see him as he is!" Blest sight! Oh! that it were come! IV. Lastly, here are THE ACTUAL PERSONS: " We shall see him as he is." Come, now, beloved! I do not like diving you; it seems hard work that you and I should be split asunder, when I am sure we love each other with all our hearts. Ten thousand deeds of kindness received from you, ten thousand acts of heart-felt love and sympathy, knit my heart to my people. But oh! beloved, is it not obvious, that when we say, " we shall see him," the word "we" does not signify all of us does not include everybody here! " We shall see him as he is!" Come, let us divide that "we" into "I's." How many "I's" are there here, that will "see him as he is?" And thou, dear brother, and thou, dear sister, who hast come to middle age, struggling with the toils of life, mixed up with all its battles, enduring its ills, thou art asking, it may be, shalt thou see him! The text says, " We shall;" and can you and I put our hands on our hearts and know our union with Jesus? If so, " We shall see him as he is." Brother! fight on! Up at the devil! Strike hard at him! Fear not! that sight of Christ will pay thee. Soldier of the cross, whet thy sword again, and let it cut deep. Labourer! toil again; delve deeper; life the axe higher, with a brawnier and stouter arm; for the sight of thy Master at last will please thee well. Up, warrior! Up the rampart, for victory sits smiling on the top, and thou shalt meet thy Captain there! When thy sword is reeking with the blood of thy sins, it will be a glory indeed to meet thy master, when thou art clothed with triumph, and then to "see him as he is." What a pleasant thought it is, that we can assemble to-day, some of us, and can put our hands round those we love, and stand, an unbroken family father, mother, sister, brother, and all else who are dear, and can say by humble faith, " We shall see him as he is" all of us, not one left out! Oh! my friends, we feel like a family at Park Street. I do feel myself, when I am away from you, that there is nothing like this place, that there is nothing on earth which can recompense the pain of absence from this hallowed spot. Somehow or other, we feel knit together by such ties of love! Last Sabbath I went into a place where the minister gave us the vilest stuff that ever was brewed. I am sure I wished I was back here, that I might preach a little godliness, or else hear it. Poor Wesleyan thing! He preached works from beginning to end, from that very beautiful text "They that sow in tears shall reap in joy!" telling us that whatever we sowed, that we should reap, without ever mentioning salvation for sinners, and pardon required even by saints. It was something like this: "Be good men and women, and you shall have heaven for it. Whatsoever you sow you are sure to reap; and if you are very good people, and do the best you can, you will all go to heaven, but if you are very bad and wicked then you will have to go to hell; I am sorry to tell you so, but whatever you sow that shall you reap." Not a morsel about Jesus Christ, from beginning to end; not a scrap. "Well," I thought, "they say I'm rather hard upon these Arminian fellows; but if I do not drive my old sword into them worse than ever, now I have heard them myself again, then I am not a living man!" I thought they might have altered a little, and not preach works so much; but I am sure there never was a sermon more full of salvation by works preached by the Pope himself, than that was. They do believe in salvation by works, whatever they may say, and however they may deny it when you come to close quarters with them; for they are so everlastingly telling you to be good, and upright, and godly, and never directing you first to look to the bleeding wounds of a dying Saviour; never telling you about God's free grace, which has brought you out of enormous sins; but always talking about that goodness, goodness, goodness, which never will be found in the creature. My dear friends, it is a sweet thought to close with now; that with a very large part of you I can say, " We shall see him as he is." For you know when we sit down at the Lord's table, we occupy the whole ground floor of this chapel, and I believe that half of us are people of God here, for I know that many members cannot get to the Lord's table in the evening. Brethren, we have one heart, one soul "One Lord, one faith, one baptism." We may be sundered here below a little while; some may die before us, as our dear brother Mitchell has died; some may cross the stream before the time comes for us; but we shall meet again on the other side of the river. "We shall see him as he is."

(See also the accompanying Expositin of 1 John 3:1-10 .)