Lost Sermon on 1 John 3:1-2

We were snowed out last week and I didn't get to preach a sermon I really liked. So I decided today to write it down. Best I can. My sermons are developed and delivered orally and whenever I write them they never quite come out the same. Even when I try to type like I speak. But as I wrote it I got to add a bit I didn't have before, and I got to tweak it some. But nevertheless, here is a written version of what I was going to preach last week.

However different it appears, the fundamental point that [SPOILER ALERT] God makes us his children - both in a forensic and effectual sense - is still preserved.

1 John 3:1-2

¹ See what love the Father has given 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 Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. 

God’s grace makes us his children. God’s love makes us his children. God makes us his children! That’s the good news to hear today. If you miss everything else I say don’t miss this: you are God’s child. But don’t miss the rest, because the good news is not just that we are God’s children it is how we are God’s children. And in these two verses from first John we get a taste of how God makes us his children.

First, he declares we are his children. By the grace of his love, he declares it to be an indisputable fact. He says, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” THAT IS WHAT WE ARE! Not how he will treat us as, not what we could become, but what we are. Against all the evidence to the contrary, “But I’m human not a god” “But I’m a sinner, not righteous” “But my friend who I hurt called me a hypocrite not a saint” “But that neighbor lady says I’m not in the right church or did not have a true conversion experience” against all these things that say “But I’m not even good at this Christian thing much less God’s child thing” – against all that God’s word speaks. And if there is one thing we can trust over our own life it is God’s word. If there is one judgement that matters more than any other on the matter it is God’s. And God says in the word we are his children!

Sometimes – no, all times – we need to hear that. We need to hear a word that can speak over the struggles, doubts, sins, and even good in our life. We need a word that says over all those background sounds of this reality “You are mine” a word that completely takes us into the arms of God. It makes me think of the movie Man of Steel (a Superman movie for those unfamiliar). In a flashback scene young Superman aka young Clark Kent is wondering why he’s so different and his father Jonathan Kent leads him into the barn where beneath the floor he reveals to him the space ship that brought Clark to earth. As he reveals this to him, explains why he’s special and how he’s literally the answer to whether we are alone in the universe, Clark under the weight of it all looks up at Jonathan and desperately asks, “Can’t I just keep pretending to be your son?” and in one of his finest acting moments Kevin Costner – who plays Jonathan Kent – grabs ahold of the boy and pulls him close into his embrace and says passionately “You are my son.” Discipleship makes us different too. It calls for a different way of life in this world. And it is precisely when the overwhelming nature of that calling becomes apparent that we need the word to speak over everything else and just make us into God’s children.

The word does that when it says, “See what love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” This same Word took flesh in Jesus who spread out his arms in love on the cross and from there God embraces you as his child. The word says it, Christ did it, so it is. I said at the beginning if you get nothing else hear this: You are God’s child. And I stressed that in part because hearing what God makes us is precisely the way he makes us his children! We hear it, and by the Spirit’s grace we believe it. But I also stress it because not everyone has ever heard that truly applied to themselves.

This is one reason why when you come up for communion, sometimes I will address you as a child of God. “Child of God,” I’ll say, “the body of Christ given for you.” I love to do that especially when I see visitors because you wouldn’t believe the expression on people’s faces the first time they hear someone call them a child of God. They get this look on their face that says “Yous talkin to me? Well you ain’t handin that piece a bread to someone else so yous must be talkin to me.” The look is sometimes quite emotional or stunned. I don’t always say it there, since after all the key word when I’m giving you communion is “the body of Christ given for you” but sometimes it’s good to put them together. After all, it is the body and blood of Christ, it is the grace and love of God, it is the new covenant that declares us God’s child – even all the way back to our baptism.

But that’s not the only way God makes us his child. God’s love and grace also make it not only in what the cross declares but what the cross affects in us. See, if God’s word really makes you family, then being part of the family makes us into who we are. In this case, it makes us more and more like Christ our great brother. It is as Paul who says we are being transformed according to the image of his Son. When I was a boy at my home church there were these three brothers. The oldest was 16 or 17 – something like that – then the next was like 6, and then the last was like 2. I couldn’t tell at the time but now, years later, things like Facebook have allowed me to see these two younger brothers as they grew up and you know what? They look just like their oldest brother! I would not have guessed all those years ago just how much alike they would be.

The author of first John writes “Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” We can’t simply look at ourselves and always see Christ within us, but as God’s children we are made into Christ’s body. His righteousness fills and pours out of us. Thus, the word says, “We don’t know exactly what we will look like, but it will look like him.” That promise is as much for the renewal of our minds and hearts and life as it is for the renewal of our bodies in the resurrection. The author knows this when he speaks later of how we know love because Christ died for us (3:16) and we love because God first loved us (4:19). When Paul said we would be transformed it would come by the renewal of our minds (Romans 12:2). That is, we also become God’s children when by the grace that makes us children it makes our lives like his Son Jesus. “So” Paul says in Galatians (2:20), “it is no longer I but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

And the truth is, though this example is not perfect, we can see how people resemble their family in habits and life style just as much as we can see when siblings physically resemble one another. Families impact the way we live. It’s why stable homes make such a difference in a child’s life. It’s why many premarital counseling programs ask about your family history – because we become what we are! When I first met my in-laws I did not see much of a resemblance in my wife. But as time went on – especially after a two-week period where I stayed alone with my in-laws – I began to see all these little things about her in them: from her voice in a crowded room, to the way she says certain words, to the way she watches movies. Little things, one after another, began to become apparent that they came from her family.

When the word makes us God’s children, it makes us live as God’s children – because we become what we are. And yes, today you might not notice it. Perhaps nobody will today. Matthew 25 says that at the end you won’t even know all the ways this righteousness flowed through you. But “Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” As faith draws us closer to Christ, it will do this. For by faith we hold fast to what God does, and what he does is make us his children.

So believe it. Because God says it, Christ did it, and the promise is when it is all said and done it will be apparent in who we are revealed to be, because whatever that is, for people of faith it will ultimately be like Christ. How good it is to hear from the word not only that we are God’s children, but we will resemble our good brother Jesus. Amen.