Delivered April 22, 2012 Video
When you have grandkids you notice the family resemblance that
they bear to people in your family. We just celebrated our grandson Noah’s
third birthday yesterday; he looks exactly like our son Isaac did when he was
that age, and he also looks a lot like his mom! Our grandson Jonah looks a lot
like his mom and also like our son Ernie, and I modestly think he looks most of
all like his grandfather. Our newest grandson Elijah has the hair and facial
features of our daughter, but he has large feet and hands like his father. My daughter looks a lot like my wife, and my
wife looks a lot like her mom. My brother is the spitting image of our great-grandfather
who died before we were born. I have an old photo of my great-grandfather taken
a hundred years ago in Tamworth and except for the goatee, I would swear that
that is my brother standing there in front of that barn. I am sure you have the
same type of observations about your family. Family members bear a family
resemblance to each other. The Bible says that this is also true of the family
of God. We resemble, or at least should resemble, our Heavenly Father. Jesus
is called our older brother in the NT, and so it is reasonable to think we
would resemble him. That is what the apostle John is talking about in our
epistle reading today. There are three points in this regard.
I. First, we are children of God. The first verse in our
passage says, “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us,
that we should be called children of God!” Many manuscripts add here the words “and we are!” What does it mean that we are children of God? Is
everyone a child of God? In one sense,
you could say that we are all children of God.
We all are born with a family resemblance. To say that we are
created in the image of God literally means we look like God. Of course this
does not mean physically. God is not a corporeal being. To call God Heavenly
Father does not mean God is a bearded male in the sky. In my opinion it doesn’t
help matters to make God into a Goddess by using female pronouns or to try to
be neutral by avoiding all gender specific pronouns for God. That just confuses
matters. We are made in the image of God spiritually speaking.
That family resemblance may be difficult to see sometimes. Some
people these days get plastic surgery to alter parts of their bodies that they
don’t like. Sometimes it is just a face lift to take off the effects of the
aging process. But others don’t like
certain traits they have inherited from their ancestors. They change their nose
or their chin or other parts of the body. Sometimes this makes it harder to see
the family resemblance. Spiritually speaking, the image of God in us can be
just as difficult to see. We alter ourselves. We are born spiritually beautiful
in the image of God, but we have changed.
Sin mars the image of God. Like the novel, the Picture of Dorian
Gray by Oscar Wilde, through the indulging of our sin we can spiritually become
grotesque caricatures of ourselves. It can get so bad that we bear almost no
resemblance to the way God created us. There is a scene in the Gospel of John
where Jesus is arguing with some Pharisees. They say they are children of
Abraham, and also that God is their father. Listen to what Jesus says in
response. “If God were your Father, you would love
Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He
sent Me. Why do you not understand My speech?
Because you are not able to listen to My word. You are of your father the devil, and the
desires of your father you want to do.” (John
8:42-44) Jesus calls them not children of God, but children of
the devil. That is strong language. By
this he means that they had become spiritually disfigured by their sin and
rebellion against God; now they resemble Satan more than they resemble their
heavenly Father.
For them to be restored to their original condition something
dramatic had to happen. They had to be transformed if they were once again bear
the family name and be called children of God. The apostle Paul speaks about the
need to be adopted into God’s family. Jesus speaks of the need to be
spiritually born anew into God’s family. These are the same concept using
slightly different metaphors. The apostle John talks about having the right to
become children of God. He says at the beginning of his gospel, “12 But as many as received Him [Christ], to
them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His
name: 13 who were born, not of blood, nor of the
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”
We all are the offspring of God, but we rebel against our Father
and Creator. We sell our birthright like Esau did. We run way from home like
the prodigal son. We deny our family heritage.
We divorce our Heavenly Father. We can become so estranged that we no longer
recognize family. John says, “Behold what manner of love the Father has
bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.” You can get so far away from God that you
do not even know those of your own family.
You don’t even know God or the children of God.
But God calls us to return home. He extends to us the right to
become children of God again. Our place at the table and in the family is
waiting for us, just like the Father waited for the prodigal son. All we have
to do is claim it by accepting our family connection by faith in God and in his
son Jesus Christ. Then we become once again what we were born to be – children
of God. That is John’s first point in our passage.
II. His second point is that we shall become more than children of
God. Verse 2 of our passage says, “Beloved, now we are children of God; and
it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is
revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” John is talking about sometime in the future. He
is speaking about the return of Christ or perhaps the moment of our death. Once
we start talking about areas like this we are in unknown territory. I don’t
even know what language to use to explain to talk about the afterlife. But one
thing is sure, John says we will be different.
People have all
sorts of ideas about what comes after this earthly life for us. Some say there
is nothing – we simply cease to exist – that the only immortality we have is our
legacy here on earth. Science is trying to achieve physical immortality –
treating aging as a disease to be cured and perhaps one day extending our earthly
physical lives indefinitely. Christianity has historically talked about the
immortality of the soul. The Bible talks about resurrection and spiritual
bodies. Do we continue to exist after death, and if so in what form? The
apostle John says, “Beloved,
now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall
be….” He says he doesn’t
know. Only God knows, and he has not revealed it. Yet he goes go on to say that
we know a something about it through God’s revelation in scripture. He goes on
to say in this verse, “but we know that
when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
I have had people
share with me their near death experiences. In fact people in this congregation
have shared their experiences with me of what they have seen beyond death’s
door. These are stories of light and people waiting for them and a figure of
light. People from different cultures identify this figure of light differently,
but Christians tend to identify him as Christ. Jesus Christ died, but is not
dead, and one day we shall see him as he is. We say that Jesus rose from the
dead and ascended into heaven. He continues to exist spiritually but not
physically. If we will be like him, that means we will continue to exist
spiritually. I can’t prove that to you. I don’t believe in any sort of
communication between those who have died and those who are still alive. I
think that séances and channeling and automatic writing and all that stuff are
hoaxes. If life after death could be proven, then it would be proven
scientifically by now and it has not.
I cannot prove to you that after you die you will
still exist in some conscious form. But Jesus believed it and taught it. And
his apostles believed it and taught it. And I believe it and teach it based on
Christ’s and the apostle’s testimony. I trust Christ’s knowledge is greater
than mine in this area. What it will be like I do not know. “Beloved, now we
are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we
know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He
is.” We shall see him as he is. I freely
admit that everything I believe and say rests on Christ himself. If Christ did
not rise and does not now live, then our hope is futile. The apostle Paul says
that in 1 Corinthians 15. “For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not
risen. 17 And
if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in
your sins! 18 Then
also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in this life only we
have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.20 But now Christ is risen
from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who
have fallen asleep. 21 For
since by man came death, by Man also came the
resurrection of the dead. 22 For
as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.” We shall be more than we are now.
We shall be like him.
III. The third point is that we
should live as children of God. John says in verse 3, “And everyone
who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” In other words, if we believe this, then we will do something
about it. If we are going to be like him in the end, we should strive to be
like him now. We will purify ourselves just as he is pure. This is not a call
to works righteousness or self-salvation. It is simply saying that if we are
serious about our status as children of God, then we will act like children of
God. We will act like Christ, the Son of God. Our behavior should bear a family
resemblance to our Savior’s behavior. We should practice what we preach. If we
don’t act like children of God, are we really children of God?
You have
heard about Sergeant Robert Bales, the American soldier who last month went on
a nighttime shooting rampage, killing 16 Afghan civilians, nine of them
children. When his wife heard of what he had done she said that it is
unbelievable. She said that those actions bore no resemblance to the man she
knows. She said “he loves children and would not do that.” But it seems pretty
clear that he did do it. What he did is going to affect the victim’s families,
him and his family for the rest of their lives. It affects the reputation of
the US military in Afghanistan and make our mission their much harder - maybe impossible now - to accomplish. This
is an extreme example and does not take into account PTSD that is associated
with repeated tours of duty in combat. But the fact remains: People don’t
believe words; they believe actions. It is
true of nations, armies, religions and individuals. When it comes to Christians,
it doesn’t matter what we say; it is what we do that counts.
John says a
little later in this chapter, 9 Whoever has been born of God does not sin, for His seed remains in
him; and he cannot sin, because he has been born of God.10 In this the children of
God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice
righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother.”
He says in the next chapter, “7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God;
and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 He who does not love does not know God, for God
is love.” The children of God are recognizable by their
behavior. If it doesn’t look like a duck, swim like a duck and quack like a
duck, it is not a duck. If a person does not resemble Christ in his behavior,
the person is not a Christian, regardless of what he says. It takes more than
just quacking to be a duck, and more than yacking to be a Christian. John says
in our passage: “Whoever abides in Him does not sin. Whoever sins
has neither seen Him nor known Him. Little children, let no one deceive you. He who
practices righteousness is righteous, just as He is righteous.”
John is not saying that we need to be perfectly sinless
in our every thought and action. He makes it clear elsewhere in this letter
that anyone who says he has no sin is a liar and the truth is not in him. None
of us are perfect. Christians are certainly not perfect. But we should bear a resemblance
to our Savior. We have been talking this
morning about family resemblance. The question now is: Whom do we resemble? Not
whether we resemble your mom or dad physically. But do we resemble our Heavenly
Father? Do we resemble Christ? Whom would people say we resemble in our words
and actions? Would they say that we remind them of Jesus? And if not, what are we
going to do about it?
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