3 See what great 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.
We’ve spoken about what it means to be children of God. And the fact that we are means that God has lavished us with love. Not just a bit of love, or a brief period of intense infatuation. God pours love onto us in excess.. The type of love and way it’s given is important here. And different translations use different terms. In English, one translation is “great love given to us”, or the manner of love bestowed on us. This NIV english translation uses the word “lavishing”. I like because Lavishing it means giving a large amount, or an excessive abundance. It is also associated with something rich or expensive. You can’t lavish with a little bit of something, and you also can’t lavish with a lot of something that’s worthless. So first, the amount. God gives us so much of His love. He pours out His love on us, and the amount of Love he gives is so large that we really can’t understand the magnitude of it. God loves so much that He let his nature dwell with us as one of us. And when Jesus lived among us, He demonstrated that vast love by doing everything he possibly could for us. There was nothing that Jesus did not do for his sheep. In his life he lived perfectly and gave the reward of that perfect life to us. And after living in a way that gave his entire self up for his flock. For his bride, then he died for us. Like a good Shepherd he died for his sheep.
So there is a lot of love, but it’s not just a lot of something, it’s a lot of something valuable. There are many ways we can tell God’s love is precious. First look at the source of the love. God Himself. God is Omnipotent, Omniscient, Omnipresent. He is the Creator of the Universe. He is The intelligence that is behind the creation and maintenance of all the mysteries that science has been observing and recording for thousands of years. He is the source of not just the physical laws of nature that scientists and mathematicians study, but he’s the source of Moral laws and wisdom and logic that philosophers have pondered throughout the ages. As a creator, God is the source of art and beauty and inspiration. So God is the source of all truth, no matter how it’s classified. We can see God’s worthiness in his character. Not just in that one role of a creator, but in all his attributes. Studying God’s character gets us a better understanding of all the things about him that are worthy of our praises. And one of those attributes the Bible tells us is that God IS Love. So if God is love, when the Bible says that the Father lavishes His love on us, it is a very personal act from God. When he pours his love onto us, he is showering us with his very nature. When God lavishes Love on us, The father is, in a sense, giving us something of Himself. We can also see how valuable God’s love is by observing the physical demonstrations of that love; Jesus’ life and death on Calvary. And if we jump ahead 10-15 verses in 1 John, John uses Calvary to define what love is. 1 John3:16
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.
We know what love is by this demonstration of God’s love. And the result of that love is valuable too. The offering that Jesus made was a one time offering. In the book of hebrews it speaks about how this was far superior than all the previous offerings, which had to be made over and over again. Jesus’s sacrifice was valuable enough to put an end to all future sacrifices or offerings. And the result of the sacrifice was so all who believed could be redeemed forever to spend an eternity with God. About 300 years ago, a man named Isaac Watts wrote a hymn about God’s love and how the work of Jesus Christ on the cross demonstrated that love. His final verse of the hymn said
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were a present far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.
God’s love is so valuable and so amazing that the entire realm of nature.. basically the entire world and everything in it, is too small a gift in response to the love that God has poured upon his beloved people. Such love is so valuable and vast that it demands our souls, our lives, and everything we are; our entire being.. It’s humbling to say those words and weigh that against how little we actually give to God. Do I give him my whole heart, my whole soul, my whole mind, my whole strength?? How much less excited am I when it comes to serving God versus entertaining myself? We get excited about so many things, and not many of them have anything to do with the Kingdom of God. The intended purpose of this sermon isn’t about making you feel guilty, or telling you how uninspired I sometimes feel. but it’s about getting the proper perspective and understanding what we are saying or thinking about. 1 John 3:1
3 See what great 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.
So let’s think about what the Bible is telling us here. Verse 1 says that God loves us so much that he calls us his Children. But it’s not just something that He says. He has not only called us his own, but he has made us his own through adoption. An expensive adoption that involved forsaking his own Son. Becoming a Christian means being called a child of God and Being adopted as a child of God. But if the world then stops knowing us, it means we are changing. We are being transformed as Christians.
Other verses like Romans 12:2 explain how this happens, by the renewing of our mind by means of the Holy Spirit. In order to renew our mind, it means being more familiar with God’s word.
Other verses like Galatians 5:22 explain the fruits of this change, and that is a way to tangibly see whether or not we are being transformed. These are fruits of the Spirit, which had been talked about in Bible study. When we are God’s children, we should start to resemble God. We see it through fruits and we stop conforming to the patterns of the world, but it progresses to such an extent that eventually we become unrecognizable to the world. 1 John 3:1
“The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”
Becoming Christian means becoming less known to the world. Obviously, being “less known” doesn’t mean we become more detached from our friends or neighbors or family. It doesn’t necessarily mean we are obscure, or less famous. Fame and being well known aren’t an indicator that somebody isn’t a real Christian. Sometimes a few relationships will need to change as a result of your faith. But when the Bible says the world doesn’t know us, it is more an issue of being understood. Our intentions or motivators or drivers are different. People might know us, but they are less likely to “get” us. Some of our actions will be confusing to non-christians. The world stops knowing us as we die to it, as we conform less and less to it.. We have spoken about what the term “the world” means Biblically. The Bible says we are remaining in the world but we are not of the world. When we stop being of the world, it doesn’t mean avoiding a beach or locking yourself in a basement somewhere. The Bible says we are to live here as strangers in reverent fear. We don’t need to fear the beach, or the movie theater, or a club. We fear God. We fear his righteousness, versus our wickedness. We give him reverence and respect. We submit to his desires, and when we do that, we trust that his will is better than our wills. We trust that His laws are better than our desires.
Being less known to the world means being closer and closer to God. If the world doesn’t know God, it won’t know us or “get” us. The Bible talks about Living as a Stranger here when it describes someone who is not known to the world. It doesn’t mean avoiding the world. It means engaging the world on God’s terms, not on the world’s terms. It means going forth and making disciples, and being ready in and out of season to give an explanation of where our joy comes from. But when we do these things, and when we are motivated by God’s kingdom, as opposed to the kingdoms of this earth, then we become less recognizable. That’s one way to see if we are truly living as children of God, or if we are just acting. We can ask ourselves, Do we live for the audience of One, or do we live for the audience of each other? Is there something we believe in here that’s truly foolish to the world out there, and does that affect our lives every now and then? If we are friendly to the world at all times, that’s a good indicator that we are sometimes unfriendly towards God. In Luke 6:26 Jesus said,
26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets.
In John 5:30 Jesus said:
“for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me.”
Again, I don’t want the sermon to sound judgmental or accusatory. I don’t want to make you feel guilty. But if you may feel a little convicted by this, for example, let’s say that we are living in such a way as to fit in here. A little too well. We are not living as ambassadors from Christ’s kingdom in heaven, but we are living as citizens of Earth. The bad news is this is a symptom that you may have a problem with living your identity. The good news is if you believe in Him, Christ died for your sin; the Bible says there is now no more condemnation for those who are in Christ. We feel convicted that we are sinning, but we don’t need to feel condemned. The condemnation was laid on Jesus; he died in order that you can have a new identity, and actually live it. Let’s continue to read 1 John 3:2
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 Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
Even though we are still known to the world. Even though too often we aren’t living for God alone, remember that we are now children of God. That is a fact. If we are called, we are his. Maybe we don’t know exactly what that should look like, maybe our progress in our Christian walk is slow or frustrating. Maybe we don’t know what we will become, but that’s ok. The Bible assures us that “what we will be has not yet been made known”. We don’t know yet. But look at the language. It’s not unknown or unknowable. There is an answer to what we will become, it’s not unclear or “to be determined”. It has been determined. The knowledge just isn’t ours yet. It’s God’s. And God hasn’t made it known. Even though we are now children of God, We don’t know what we will be. Here’s what we do know: when Christ appears, we shall be like Him. We don’t know what we will be exactly, but we do know how we will be. We know that we will be better. Why? because we will be like Christ. And the reason we know that we will be like Christ is because we shall see him as He is!
What’s the main cause for us not becoming who we should be? Why do we have this identity crisis? Why aren’t we walking in such a way as to honor God like we should? Why are we still so friendly with the world? The reason is we aren’t like Christ. If we were like Christ, we would honor God in everything we do. If we were like Christ, we would understand God’s character so well that we would hate sins the way God hates them. If we were like Christ, sin wouldn’t be nearly so tempting, and even if we were tempted, we would understand how much better the riches that come from righteousness are, just like Christ did. We would consider sin and wickedness as an offense to our loving Father, instead of a tempting way to indulge our flesh. We would consider our lives meaningless, compared to honoring the kingdom of God. Why aren’t we like Christ? Christ hasn’t appeared yet. When He does appear, we’ll see him. The reason we aren’t like Christ is because we don’t SEE clearly. We don’t see the world the way Christ does, because we don’t see Christ Himself as He is. Our problems have to do with our vision. With our seeing.
When Christ appears we shall be like him, for we shall see Him as He is!
Proverbs 29:18 in King James:
Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keeps the law, happy is he.
Some translations use the term revelation instead of vision.. But the meaning is the same. If we don’t have a vision for God’s kingdom, we perish. If an understanding of the Gospel and the revelation of Jesus Christ as messiah and King is not present, the people will perish. When we see God, and have a vision that is Biblical, our worldviews are in sync with the word of God. When we are in sync with God’s word, then we will “keep the law”. We will strive for righteousness. Like proverbs says, when we keep the law we will be happy. But more important than happiness, when we see our savior, we will run toward Jesus, who is the completion of the law. We will love Jesus because he is our righteousness. So if the problem is our vision, what’s the solution? When Christ appears we will see him as he is. What do we do until then? We work on crafting our vision.
As an application, I want to challenge you to join me in thinking about what our vision looks like. I can tend to be very negative when I see things the way they shouldn’t be. I might just get sad or frustrated and shrug and say, “well, we live in a fallen world”. That diagnosis is kind of Biblical, but a more constructive approach to this would be to think about it further. This thing is bad, it doesn’t glorify GOD or respect His Kingdom. So what would respecting God’s kingdom look like? In the Lords Prayer we pray that “God’s Kingdom come, God’s will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” But sometimes we don’t allow ourselves the chance to daydream about what that would maybe look like? We miss out on an opportunity to really enhance our vision and our understanding about God.
Let’s take an example: We might get frustrated by violence in culture. We understand that it’s wrong. It bothers us. We could leave it at that, just getting negative or sad about it. We could go a step further and diagnose a problem we can’t solve alone, by saying what a sinful world we live in. If it really bothers us, sometimes Christians take an issue that they care deeply about and speak out about a cause. They start an organization to try and end violence. A lot of good things can get done when people have their cause or their hot button issue they care about. But while it could be a good thing, it might be a little pre-emptive. It might be dragging the cart before the horse. Because we still haven’t worked on bettering our vision.
When you start thinking about vision, you picture a world where kids don’t need to walk through metal detectors to go to school. You think about a place where domestic abuse doesn’t happen. You think about a place where people are free do make their own choices and decisions without the threat of violence or physical harm. When you picture what it would look like if things were the way they are in heaven, you see a world where our brothers and sisters abroad can worship freely without fear of persecution. But to craft your vision correctly means making your vision as Biblical as possible. And that takes a little work. It means studying what the Bible says.
When we see something sad or angering, like a story about domestic violence, we ask ourselves, why does this make me sad? It’s an outrage. I am sad and angry because domestic violence is wrong. Well, the author and source of all moral truth is God. If I think something’s wrong, it should be because God says it’s wrong. Does domestic violence grieve God? Of course it does. But how do I know that? It’s better to not just assume we know, but to actually study. What does the word of God say? The word of God says we were created in God’s image, man and woman. Genesis 1:27
So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
The word of God says that we were wonderfully and fearfully created. Psalm 139:14
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
All humans, whether they are man or woman, were created in the image of God, and they were done so in a wonderful way, by a powerful and just God. Just because of this fact, we should be very hesitant to condone violence or aggression of any kind. We should be very hesitant to look down on any human being, why? Because they are in some way, like God. But the Bible isn’t done there.
Proverbs warns against violence and acting out of anger. Lamentations describes how terribly sad it is to live in a world where things are destroyed and life is worthless. On the topic of domestic violence, in particular, Paul tells us that husbands should love their wives as Christ loves the church. Husbands and Wives should submit to each other as we submit to Christ. And submitting to Christ means listening to what Jesus says.
Jesus tells us that we are to be peacemakers. And that’s just Jesus’s sermon. Those are just his Words. But when we look at Jesus’s life, at his Actions, we don’t see a warrior or a predator, we see a humble lamb.
We should speak out for those who can’t speak for themselves, and remember those who are oppressed.
That’s Biblical instruction. How about Biblical inspiration?
We just read from 1 John 3:2? Some day we will be like Christ because we will see him.
In Revelation there is a promise that to God belongs the victory. Micah 4:3, Isaiah 2:4, and Joel 3:10 ALL predict that some day our swords will be beaten into plowshares.
Micah 4:3
He will judge between many peoples and will settle disputes for strong nations far and wide. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore.
We can become disheartened when we read about violence, and while the culture of war and violence is pervasive today, that culture is passing away. The Bible says that all that is seen is passing away. All things will be made new.
Isaiah 11:6-9
The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. 7 The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. 8 The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest. 9 They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.
Building a vision means seeing God for who He is. It means understanding the character of our Lord. It means studying our Bibles and learning to see the world we live in the way God sees it. It means opening our eyes not just to the imperfect things we do see, but also for the better things that could be. When we do that, we aren’t just people who have a bunch of frustrations. We aren’t politicized men or women working for a cause. We become more intimate with God and His Word. We become students of scripture. We form opinions based on understanding, instead of just emotion. Our emotions are more in sync with God’s because our being is more like His. And when we do choose to act, our actions are more thoughtful and driven by an understanding of God’s plan and his timing. This is better than trying to fix things on our terms with our mindset. We are not sovereign, and when we act out of a desire to make things look the way we want them to, that can lead to further disappointment and frustration. And to make this shift, or this change, we need to work on seeing God. We need Biblical vision; And there is Biblical promise that it will happen.
Isaiah 17:7
In that day people will look to their Maker and turn their eyes to the Holy One of Israel.
Isaiah 51:6
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, look at the earth beneath; the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment and its inhabitants die like flies. But my salvation will last forever, my righteousness will never fail.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. 17 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 18 So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
When we learn to see, we come to know & understand. 1 John 3:1-6
3 See what great 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 Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. 3 All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. 4 Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. 5 But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. 6 No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.