Children of God

Scripture: 1 John 2:28–3:10

Read 1 John 2:28–3:10 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.

1 John 3:1

What We Are Now

John has set his readers in the middle of a world where false teachers have come, where counterfeits continue to rise, where the last hour has brought the struggle for the truth of Christ directly into their congregations. And he has given them the markers by which they can know they are truly in the faith: the anointing of the Spirit, the abiding in what they heard from the beginning, the confession of Jesus as the Christ. Now John turns to who they are: the identity that belongs to those who are in Christ, the relationship with the Father that has been established, the family they have been made part of.

And the identity John names is staggering. We are children of God. Not servants, though service is our calling. Not citizens, though the kingdom is ours. Not guests, though we are welcomed to the table. Children. The Father’s own children, with all that word implies: belonging, inheritance, resemblance, future. The Spirit that has anointed the baptized is the same Spirit by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The God who sent His Son has made the sent-Son’s Father our Father also. This is the deepest thing John can say about his readers, and he says it with the voice of a man who has known this truth for decades and still finds it astonishing. See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God.

The passage we walk through today also brings us to the hardest interpretive problem in the letter: the apparent contradiction between what John has taught about sin in chapter one and what he will now teach in chapter three. In chapter one, the one who claims to have no sin is a self-deceiver. In chapter three, no one born of God makes a practice of sinning. The same apostle in the same letter making statements that seem to flatly contradict each other. The faithful teacher cannot smooth this over by ignoring either passage. Both stand in Scripture. Both are John’s teaching. And holding them together is one of the important theological tasks of the Christian life, the same task Lutherans have long articulated as simul iustus et peccator.

In this session we will walk carefully through John’s passage. We will examine his call to abide in Christ so that we may have confidence at His coming. We will look at the breathtaking language of the Father’s love that makes us His children. We will see what John says about the hope of seeing Christ as He is, and being like Him. We will work through the difficult teaching on sin and righteousness, trying to hear what John actually says in its context. And we will see how John’s categories, the children of God and the children of the devil, ultimately rest on the visible pattern of a life, not on secret inward states.

Abide and Have Confidence

The passage opens with an exhortation that continues directly from what we studied last week. And now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears we may have confidence and not shrink from Him in shame at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of Him.

The exhortation is familiar: abide in Him. This is the same call John has been making. But now he connects it to a future moment: the coming of Christ. The Christian abides now so that when He appears, the Christian may have confidence rather than shame. Two different outcomes are possible at the return of Christ, depending on whether the Christian has continued abiding or has drifted away. The one who abides will have confidence: will stand ready, unashamed, at home in the presence of the Lord she has been with all along. The one who has not abided, who has perhaps chased after the teachings of the antichrists, will shrink in shame, caught having wandered from the one who is now appearing in glory.

Confidence

The word John uses for confidence, parrhesia in Greek, is a rich word that means openness, boldness, freedom of speech, the confidence to speak one’s mind in the presence of a superior. In the ancient world, slaves could not speak parrhesia before their masters; only free citizens could speak this way before their rulers. The word describes the posture of one who has a right to be where she is, who has nothing to hide, who can speak and stand without fear.

This is what the abiding Christian will have at the coming of Christ. Not the confidence of one who has earned her place by her own achievement. That confidence would be false. The confidence of one who has been given her place by grace, who has abided in the Christ who welcomes her, who has nothing to hide because her sins have been washed, who belongs in the presence of the Lord because she has been with Him all along. This is the gift John is pointing his readers toward. And it is grounded not in their perfection but in their continued abiding in the one who has perfected them.

Born of Him

John then gives an inference. If you know that He is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of Him. The logic connects Christ’s righteousness to the righteousness of the Christian. Because Christ is righteous, those who share His life share in His righteous character. Their practice of righteousness (the trajectory of a life shaped by His commandments, lived out in ordinary obedience) is evidence that they have been born of Him. The new birth produces the new life. The child shares the parent’s character.

This is the first appearance in the letter of a phrase that will recur: born of Him, born of God. The language of birth will now carry the passage forward. To be a child of God is not a metaphor for general religious sentiment. It is the assertion that a real birth has happened, by the power of the Spirit, which has placed the Christian into a new relationship with the Father and given her a new kind of life. The Christian is a begotten child of a real Father, with real family resemblance and real inheritance. And this birth, John is saying, shows itself in the life that results.

See What Kind of Love

John now pauses in wonder. See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.

The exclamation is the voice of a man who has never gotten used to the truth he is proclaiming. After decades of walking with Christ, after all he has seen and suffered and taught, the Father’s love still astonishes him. See what kind of love: what sort of love, what quality of love, what extraordinary and unprecedented love. The Greek word for what kind of (potapen) is a word of wonder, used when something is strange or remarkable enough to call for attention. John is saying, look at this love, consider what it is, do not let it become ordinary in your hearing.

The Father’s Love

What the Father has given, John says, is a love that makes us His children. Not a love that merely regards us kindly. Not a love that treats us as guests. A love that adopts us into the family, that makes us children in the deepest sense, that calls us by the Father’s own name. The word called matters. To be called children of God is not a polite honorific; in biblical usage, to be called something is to be that thing, named by the one whose naming establishes reality. And John reinforces this. We are called children of God. And so we are. The name and the reality match. We are what we are called.

John speaks primarily in terms of new birth and childhood in the Father’s family; Paul develops the related language of adoption in Romans 8 and Galatians 4. John highlights the life God gives; Paul highlights our legal and familial reception as sons and heirs. Together they confess that the Christian’s status and life are gifts of God’s grace, and John states his side of it here with simple force. We are children of God. Not by our own birth: we were born of flesh, and no flesh produces children of God. We are children of God by the new birth, by the Father’s own act, by the love He has given us. This is the deepest thing about the Christian, and it is deeper than our failures, deeper than our doubts, deeper than our ongoing struggles with sin. We are children of God. The Father has made us so. His love has established the relationship. And the relationship endures.

The World Does Not Know

John adds a note that explains something about the ordinary experience of the Christian in the world. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know Him. The world (the fallen human order that has set itself against God) does not recognize the children of God. Their identity is invisible to those who operate by the world’s categories. The world did not recognize Christ when He came; Christ says this Himself in John’s Gospel. The world that did not recognize Christ naturally does not recognize those who belong to Him.

This is pastorally important. Christians sometimes feel the sting of being unrecognized by the culture around them: treated as strange, dismissed, misunderstood, perhaps even hated. John’s word is that this is to be expected. Not because there is something wrong with us, and not because we have handled ourselves poorly in the world. Because we belong to Someone the world did not recognize, and our belonging to Him makes us invisible to the world’s categories. Our identity is hidden from those who do not see Christ. When Christ is revealed, our identity will be revealed as well. Until then, we walk in the world as children of God whom the world cannot see, and we do not let its inability to see us shake our certainty of who we are.

What We Shall Be

John now looks forward. 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. And everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure.

The movement of the sentence is important. We are God’s children now: that is already true, settled, complete. But what we will be has not yet appeared. The fullness of our identity, the full realization of what being God’s children means, is still ahead of us. We stand between the already and the not yet. The Father has already made us His, but what that will look like in its consummation is still waiting to be revealed.

We Shall Be Like Him

John then gives a glimpse of what is coming. When He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. The language is astonishing. When Christ appears in glory, we shall be like Him, conformed to His image in a way we cannot now grasp. And the cause of this transformation is the seeing. We shall see Him as He is, and the seeing will transform us into His likeness.

Paul says something similar in 2 Corinthians 3: we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. What Paul describes as a gradual process through the Christian life, John describes as a final consummation at Christ’s appearing. Both are true. The Christian is being progressively shaped into Christ’s likeness now, imperfectly and by degrees. The Christian will be finally and fully shaped into Christ’s likeness at His coming, when the seeing will be complete. The pattern is one: the seeing of Christ transforms those who see. And the final seeing will complete the work that has been underway in us since our Baptism.

What Will This Be Like?

John does not tell us what being like Christ will specifically look like, and we should resist the temptation to speculate beyond what Scripture gives. What we can say, from Scripture as a whole, is that the resurrection body is modeled on Christ’s own resurrection body: real, physical, glorified, free from sin and suffering, united to the glorified soul. The saints in glory will not be disembodied spirits; they will be whole persons, body and soul together, in a creation that has itself been renewed. They will be without the corruption that sin has introduced into human life. They will see God face to face. They will share in the life of the Triune God in a fullness that is only partially present in this age.

What John is giving us is not a full description but a promise. We shall be like Him. Whatever the details of the new creation, the defining reality will be that those who belong to Christ will share His likeness in a way we cannot now see. This is the Christian hope in its deepest form: not merely escape from suffering, not merely continuation of individual existence, but transformation into the likeness of the one we have loved and served through all the years of our pilgrimage.

The Purifying Effect of Hope

And John draws a practical consequence. Everyone who thus hopes in Him purifies himself as He is pure. The hope of being like Christ has a present effect on the one who holds it. The Christian who is looking forward to the final transformation does not wait passively; he participates now in the shaping that will be completed then. He purifies himself: seeking to be now, in whatever imperfect way, what he will be fully then. This is not a call to self-perfection; the purifying is in the framework of grace, not apart from it. It is the ordinary pattern of Christian sanctification: the hope of what is coming shapes the life of the one who hopes.

For Lutheran Christians, this is sanctification in its proper frame. The Christian is not waiting for heaven as a reward for sanctification achieved. The Christian is being sanctified now because the inheritance is already secure. The hope does not motivate reluctant obedience; the hope shapes a life that is already being transformed. The one who has set his hope on Christ finds that Christ Himself is at work in him, progressively purifying, gradually shaping, slowly producing the likeness that will be complete at His appearing. The purifying is God’s work, in which the Christian participates willingly, and which hope sustains.

The Difficult Passage on Sin

John now turns to the passage that has generated more theological discussion than any other in the letter. Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness. You know that He appeared in order to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin. No one who abides in Him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen Him or known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as He is righteous. Whoever makes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him; and he cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God.

Read carefully, these verses say extraordinary things. No one who abides in Christ keeps on sinning. No one born of God makes a practice of sinning. He cannot keep on sinning, because he has been born of God. Taken in isolation, these statements seem to teach that genuine Christians do not sin. And this reading has been taken by various perfectionist movements across Christian history, who have concluded from this passage that the truly born-again Christian has been delivered from sin in some complete sense.

The Apparent Contradiction

But John has already said, in this very letter, something that seems to directly contradict this reading. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. The one who denies having sin is self-deceived. The one who denies having sinned is calling God a liar. This is John in chapter one. Now in chapter three, John says the one born of God cannot keep on sinning. How are these to be held together?

Several misreadings must be rejected before we can find the right reading. First, the reading that tries to resolve the tension by claiming that chapter one is about pre-conversion sin and chapter three is about post-conversion life. This does not work, because chapter one is clearly written to Christians and addresses their current experience. Second, the reading that claims John is teaching two different levels of Christian life: the ordinary Christian who still sins, and the advanced Christian who has been delivered from sin. This reading contradicts John’s clear teaching elsewhere that all Christians share the same anointing, the same knowledge, the same standing. Third, the reading that treats the two passages as flatly contradictory and concludes that John was inconsistent. This gives up on the task of hearing Scripture as Scripture.

The Lexical Clue

The key to reading these passages together lies partly in the Greek verb tenses John uses in chapter three. The verb for sinning in verses 6 and 9 is a present-tense form that indicates ongoing, habitual, characteristic action. Not single acts of sin, but a pattern of life marked by sin. This is why many modern translations render the phrase as makes a practice of sinning or keeps on sinning rather than simply sins. The Greek grammar supports the distinction.

With this distinction in view, John’s teaching holds together. In chapter one, he is addressing the specific act or state of sin. All Christians still have sin; all Christians still commit sin; any Christian who claims to be without sin is self-deceived. In chapter three, he is addressing the pattern or direction of a life. The one born of God does not live as a slave to sin. He is not characterized by ongoing, unchecked, habitual sinning. He is not marked by the trajectory of a life that goes on in sin without repentance or struggle. The settled pattern of the born-again person is different from the settled pattern of the one still in darkness. This is what John is saying, and it does not contradict chapter one. It supplements it.

Simul Iustus et Peccator Revisited

This is exactly the simul iustus et peccator pattern we introduced in Session One. The Christian is at the same time righteous and a sinner. Righteous, because Christ’s righteousness has been credited to her and His Spirit is at work in her, producing the new life that John describes. A sinner, because the old Adam is not instantly eliminated; actual sins continue; the need for confession and cleansing remains. Both are true, and they are true together. The Christian is not partly righteous and partly sinful, in the sense of being half-saved. She is fully righteous in Christ and fully in need of ongoing grace.

What John says in chapter three addresses the fully-righteous-in-Christ side of the reality. The one born of God has been given a new life. That new life is oriented toward righteousness. It is not marked by the pattern of continual, unrepentant sin that characterizes the children of the devil. When the Christian falls into sin, and she does, she grieves, confesses, returns to her Lord, receives cleansing, and continues. This is entirely different from the pattern of a life that goes on in sin without grief, without confession, without any inclination toward righteousness. The born-again Christian’s falls are not the shape of her life; they are interruptions in a life that is oriented toward Christ.

The Pastoral Care

All of this has direct pastoral implications. Christians who read chapter three without the interpretive frame sometimes fall into two opposite errors. Some conclude that they must not really be born of God, because they still sin, and they fall into despair. Others conclude that their lack of grief over sin, their continued indulgence in patterns they have never tried to leave, is somehow compatible with being born of God, and they fall into presumption. Both are misreadings.

The right reading serves neither despair nor presumption. The Christian who sins and grieves, who falls and confesses, who struggles and returns, who cares about the commandments of Christ even when she fails to keep them, this Christian is showing the pattern of the born-again, not the absence of it. Her failures are real, but her orientation is real too. The Christian who sins without grief, who makes no effort to change, who treats the commandments of Christ as irrelevant to her life, has no evidence of the new birth in her. Her claim to be born of God needs to be examined in the light of the life she is actually living. The Smalcald Articles say the same: the Holy Spirit does not allow sin to rule in the baptized, and where sin is given free rein, faith and the Spirit are not present (SA III.iii.43–45). The word to such a person is not despair but repentance, and a return to the Christ who still receives sinners. Both pastoral cases are addressed by John’s teaching, and both require different kinds of care from a faithful pastor or teacher.

Children of God and Children of the Devil

John concludes the passage with a stark distinction. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

The categories are binary. Children of God or children of the devil. No middle ground. No third option. Every human being is in one category or the other, and the visible pattern of a life reveals which. This may sound harsh to modern ears, accustomed as we are to spectrum thinking and to the avoidance of sharp categories. But John is writing with the clarity of one who has seen what is actually at stake. There are two ways of being human: one that belongs to God, one that belongs to the accuser. There is no neutral territory.

The Visible Marks

What John gives as the markers is not some secret inward state but the visible pattern of a life. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God. Whoever does not love his brother is not of God. The positive inference, which John will develop more fully in the chapters ahead, is that the child of God is visible through the practice of righteousness and through love of the brother. These are not achievements that earn the status of child of God; they are the marks that show the status is real. The Father’s children resemble their Father. The Father’s new life in them produces a visible new pattern of living.

What This Means for Us

For the Christian who reads this passage seriously, the question is not whether we have achieved sinless perfection, we have not, as chapter one has made clear. The question is whether the trajectory of our lives shows the marks of the family resemblance. Do we care about the commandments of Christ? Do we grieve when we fail to keep them? Do we love the brothers and sisters we have been given? Are we, however imperfectly, being shaped into the likeness of our Father? If the answers are yes, even when the yes is halting and accompanied by real ongoing failure, the pattern John describes is present. We are children of God. And our occasional falls into sin do not undo what the Father has made us. These evidences encourage, but they do not carry the weight of justification. Where they are weak and contested, the Christian flees again to Christ’s Word, to the absolution, to Baptism, and to the Supper. The tests serve the Gospel; they do not replace it.

If the answers are no (if we have no regard for Christ’s commandments, no grief over sin, no love for the brothers and sisters of the Church, no evidence of the Father’s life at work in us), then we need to examine whether we are really in the faith. This is not a reason for perpetual anxiety in Christians who are struggling with real obedience. It is a summons to honest self-examination for Christians whose claim to know Christ is entirely verbal, unaccompanied by any of the marks of His family. John’s teaching serves both those who need reassurance and those who need warning, depending on what they actually bring to the text.

Gathering the Threads

John has moved us, in this passage, from identity to hope to ethics to the stark binary of the two families. We are children of God now: this is the deepest thing about us. What we will be has not yet appeared, but we know that at Christ’s coming we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. The hope of this transformation is purifying us now, as we are being shaped into the likeness we will eventually see. The one born of God does not live as a slave to sin, because God’s seed abides in him and the new life produces a new pattern. And the visible marks of this new life, practice of righteousness and love of brother, distinguish the children of God from the children of the devil across the simplest of binary divides.

The difficult sin-teaching has been the hinge of this session, and it requires ongoing careful handling. John is not teaching perfectionism. He is not saying that real Christians do not sin. He is saying that the settled pattern of a born-again life is oriented toward righteousness, not toward the continuation of sin. The Christian who falls and returns is showing the pattern of the faithful. The one who lives in unrepentant sin without regard for Christ’s commandments shows a different pattern. The simul iustus et peccator teaching, held together with John’s language, gives us a way of reading both chapter one and chapter three without setting them against each other.

For the Lutheran Christian, the new-birth theology of this passage is deeply important. Our identity as children of God does not rest on our performance; it rests on what the Father has done in giving us His love. And that love has made us His children: fully, really, unconditionally. We are the Father’s now. What we will be in the end is still ahead. But the now is already settled. We can walk through whatever the rest of our lives bring, knowing that our deepest identity has already been established by the Father’s love. We are His children. And when He appears, we shall be like Him. The rest follows from this.

For Discussion

The following questions are for group discussion or personal reflection.

1. John says we are God’s children now: not someday, not provisionally, but now. How would your daily life change if this identity was the deepest thing you believed about yourself? Where are you tempted to believe other things are more foundational?

2. The world does not recognize us because it did not recognize Christ. Where have you felt the sting of being misunderstood or dismissed for your faith? How does John’s framing here affect how you bear that experience?

3. When Christ appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. What does it mean for you to live with this hope? How is the hope purifying you now, even in small ways?

4. The apparent tension between John’s teaching on sin in chapter one and chapter three has been worked out through the simul iustus et peccator framing. Does this interpretive move satisfy you? Where does it still leave questions?

5. The pattern John describes, the child of God does not live as a slave to sin, is about trajectory, not perfection. Where in your life do you see the trajectory of a born-again life? Where do you see patterns that concern you?

6. The visible marks of being a child of God are the practice of righteousness and love of the brother. How are these present in your life right now? Where are they most active, and where are they most underdeveloped?

Looking Ahead

Next week we continue into the second half of chapter three, where John develops the love theme in depth. He will draw the stark contrast between Cain, who slew his brother, and Christ, who laid down His life for His brothers. He will teach that the Christian is called to lay down his life in the same way: not necessarily in literal martyrdom, though that is included, but in the thousand ordinary surrenders of self that love for the brothers requires. And he will reach the beautiful teaching on boldness before God, where confidence is not proven by the absence of a troubled heart but by the trust that God is greater than our hearts and knows everything.

Before next session, read 1 John 3:11–24 at least twice. Pay attention to how John handles the cost of love. He is realistic about what love demands, and he does not treat love as a pleasant sentiment. For John, love is the laying down of life for the brother, in all the ordinary forms that laying down takes. It is a high standard, and John gives it to his readers in the same breath in which he reassures them of their standing as children of God. The high calling rests on the secure identity, and the secure identity calls forth the high standard.

Closing Prayer

Father of love, who have given us such love that we should be called Your children, and who have made us truly so, help us to abide in Your Son until He appears. Form in us now the family likeness that will be complete in the day we see Him as He is. Keep our lives oriented toward the righteousness that becomes Your children, and give us the honest confession that meets each failure with the mercy that cleanses. In every struggle against the old self, remind us that Your seed abides in us, that You Yourself are at work in us, that we are Yours now and forever. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.