1 John 3:1-3
1 How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.2 Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.3 Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure.
I am blessed to be the son of a man I am proud to call my father. People who know us both often say we are just alike, and because I respect and love him, I count that a high compliment. I am painfully aware, however, that not everyone feels this way. A recent survey of Samford students indicates that 30% of undergraduates struggle with family dysfunction. As University Minister, I regularly meet with students who are struggling with serious family problems of various sorts. How different it must be for them to read John’s words celebrating God as Father and our status as God’s children!
To be called children of God, John claims, is evidence of God’s lavish love. The promise that we will be like him someday is a genuine source of hope. John sees this hope as our motivation for moral purity. We live rightly, John says, not in order to establish a right relationship with our Father, but in gratitude for the right relationship the Father has already established through Christ. Childhood brings hope, and hope encourages purity.
Some live lives haunted by failed attempts to please demanding parents. The tendency is to treat spiritual life the same way, seeing God as similarly impossible to please. For such people, John’s message is indeed good news. As God’s children, we are pleasing to him, not because our lives are rightly lived, but because Christ’s life was sacrificially given. His death and resurrection, accepted by faith, confers upon us status as his children, dearly loved and fully accepted. We are now free to act from motivations of gratitude rather than demand, knowing that neither success nor failure can alter God’s unconditional love for us. God is always the proud Father, and one day people will say we’re just alike.
Matt Kerlin
Prayer:
God, we thank You that You are our Father, and You acted extravagantly to make us Your children. Convince us of this truth that we may serve You out of gratitude and joy.
