The Father’s Adoptive Love for Us | 1 John 3:1-3

ThornCrown Covenant Baptist Church

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So it really is pretty amazing how, like Pastor David said, we didn't even plan this at all.

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And the very verses that I plan to preach on were listed as scripture references in today's catechism question, down to the very exact verses.

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That's just really neat to see that. It's one of God's, I think, little assurances that He's still with us and that He's going to continue to bless us, our church, and that He will provide the means and the ways for us to continue to fulfill, to do

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His will, and to advance His kingdom. And the other thing regarding the church fast as well,

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I hope that was a blessing to you all. And like I mentioned, we can all fast from something, even if we can't fully fast from food.

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We can all fast from something. It was definitely a help to me. I'm probably going to want to keep going and try again, because it took me a little bit of a while to get adjusted to figuring out my limits.

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So I'm going to probably try to keep going. So go ahead and use your discretion to, if there's something that's been taking up an inordinate amount of time in your life that's been tugging away at you, that's been sort of sucking you in a little too much, that's a good opportunity to consider a fast for things like that as well.

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And so I want to recap for us a little bit what we covered last week and from the previous chapter, chapter 2, how

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John the apostle begins and ends with our very own sin -bearing advocate, our paraclete,

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Jesus Christ the righteous, one of two paracletes that we have. The Holy Spirit is our paraclete, and so is

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Jesus Christ the righteous, our defense attorney and advocate. And so it's an awesome way to bookend this last chapter.

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And we want to always remember and bear in mind that Christ anoints us continually and permanently, permanently, without fail, with his logos, his truth, which is the truth, and his saving power, saving and sanctifying power of sound doctrine.

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Those are the means that God uses. He uses means, as we understand. And we abide in and remain in him as a result of God's power and means by his steadfast means and ways.

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And our abiding union with Christ by his

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Holy Spirit and these means of grace will progressively, continually, and permanently sanctify us unto holiness and unto our final state, which is perfection and glorification.

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So that is something awesome to take refuge in and to look forward to, that God will complete the good work that he began in us.

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He will bring it to completion, to perfection. That word is going to be important later on as well, that word perfection and purification, sanctification.

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And God has been instructing us on the importance of having proper discernment.

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We need proper discernment. This is something that's severely lacking in many

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Christians and individuals and in churches that are not teaching and promoting the lifestyle of discernment.

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This is necessary and critical for our spiritual growth and maturity.

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In fact, I'll even raise it to say that we cannot grow apart from discernment.

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Because if you don't know that what you're getting is the truth, how do you know?

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If you can't discern what the truth is, you're not going to grow. And so this is a vitally critical element of our

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Christian life and priorities that God has laid out for us. Because everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness.

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Hebrews 5 .14, he is doctrinally immature and inexperienced, like the

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Amplified Bible puts it. For he is an infant. He is a babe. But solid food, sound doctrine, is for the mature, who because of practice, regular and repeated practice, daily practice, have their senses trained to discern both good and evil.

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And I talked about last time how we know this includes discerning righteous and unrighteous behavior, in addition to truth and error, sound doctrine and lies, and so on, false teaching.

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And verse 29 of chapter 2 says, if you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone also who does righteousness has been born of him.

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Right? We know that righteousness includes believing, confessing, speaking, and living the truth out in love, and because love rejoices with the truth.

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And so they all go hand in hand. It's all part of a larger process and whole of salvation that God has laid out for us, his purpose, his telos.

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And so I mentioned also that John continues to flesh out a lot of these same topics, and subjects, and doctrines that he keeps dealing with in this next chapter as well, chapter 3.

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The evidences of grace that are apparent and working in true believers and the lack thereof in unbelievers, the signs, the fruit of those who believe

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Christ and the light and the triune God and follow him and those who do not. Right?

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That's very important. That's all part of discernment, like we've been seeing, pun intended there.

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And so our fruits include our words and our doctrine as well as our actions and our behavior and our words, like I said.

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So remember then that the Lord's anointing and means of grace, which continue to assure and sanctify us, perfect us with natural, spiritual, doctrinal balance and discernment.

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It's a growing process, right? We don't know everything up front. It's a growing process. And we don't live perfectly up front either.

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With sound doctrine that agrees with sound words, those of our Lord Jesus Christ, and with the doctrine that conforms to godliness, holiness, again, which is tied to perfection, glorification, purity, 1

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Timothy 6 .3. Because as the apostle

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John later assures us once again in this next chapter, starting in verse 1, if you go back and read with me here, verse 1 of chapter 3,

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God's word says, see how great a love the

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Father has given to us that we would be called children of God. That is this great gift that we have of God's adoptive love.

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Adoptive love. And we are. We are already. We already are sons and daughters of God.

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These are precious gospel indicatives. Indicatives. They are realities in our life, those of us who believe and have been called and saved by God, chosen by God, by faith alone.

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Mark them well, because these are very prominent themes in John's letter.

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And for this reason, the world does not know us, because it did not know him.

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Beloved, now we are children of God. Notice again the double emphasis on this reality.

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He doesn't want us to lose sight of this. We are children of God now, already.

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And it has not been manifested as yet what we will be. There's still something to look forward to in terms of our final state.

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It is guaranteed. It is guaranteed by virtue of his adoptive love.

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We know that when he is manifested, now there's an issue here with the translation.

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It's rather more better rendered as when it does become evident, when it does become evident what we will be, we will be like him.

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We will be like him. Amen. Amen. Because we will see him just as he is.

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And his son will then glorify us and take us home. And everyone who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself.

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Purifies himself just as he is pure. Just as he is pure.

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So this is an amazing passage in John's letter.

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Amazing stuff. None of this is really new in terms of what John has been relaying to us all throughout the letter.

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But here he is placing a special focus on us being the children of God. We are the children of God now, already, by virtue of God's adoptive love for us.

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Not by anything that he saw in us or that he wrought in us. It's like the hymn, right?

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It's like this. I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene and wonder how he could love me.

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Because we had nothing to offer God, right? A sinner condemned unclean. That's all we had to offer, our sin.

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But God loved us first. Amen. And so what is this passage showing us?

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Law or gospel? These are gospel promises.

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Amen? Yeah, these are gospel promises galore. What great expectations we have to look forward to.

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Thanks be to God for that. For his grace and his mercy and his means. Now, we have to deal with some technical things here, some technical setup up front.

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Because many commentators disagree. And I've pointed this out before on how to outline this chapter as well as most of this letter for that fact, for that matter.

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And it's a difficult letter to outline. But I think, like I've been saying, a better way to look at John's letter and follow what he's doing is by noticing the patterns that he's laying out.

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He continues to lay out before us. Because we've seen how he's very frequently jumping back and forth.

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He jumps back and forth between major subjects, doctrines, these matters that are important to emphasize.

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He's emphasizing them and their importance and to remind us to continue to abide in what he's teaching us, the anointing, the anointing that comes from him, our

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Lord, and his spirit. But also, we saw how

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I had to kind of retranslate one of the verses there. Because there's some disagreement about how to translate verse 2.

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Verse 2 here, when it says that it is not yet. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not been manifested as yet what we will be.

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We know that when he is manifested, we will be like him. Now, because of the verb and because of the structure here, it's probably better rendered not when he has manifested, but when it does become evident.

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What becomes evident? What we will be. What we will be. When it does become evident what we will be, we will be like him.

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So that may be another way, maybe a better way to make sense of this verse.

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And so it's not necessarily talking about the second coming, the final coming and return of Christ.

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Notice that the subject of this passage is God. It's specifically talking about God.

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And the father, right? Verse 1 says, see how great a love the father has given to us, that we will be called children of God, children of the father.

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So it's typically when the word God is used, unless Jesus is explicitly mentioned, it's typically referring to God the father.

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That's the general pattern of what scripture shows us.

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And so what he's talking about, when it becomes evident what we will be, is looking forward to when our heavenly expectation is realized, when our heavenly expectation is finally realized, when the resurrection takes place and God, our

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Savior Christ, gives us a glorified body and we will be just as he is, we will be like him.

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We will be like him. And so there's a sense in which, yes, it is dealing with the final return of Christ, but not in an immediate sense.

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And so indirectly, in other words.

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Now, notice the phrase, we will see him. We will see him just as he is.

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In verse 2, we will see him just as he is.

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Now, this is talking about God the father, right? God the father.

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We will see him just as he is. And can anyone see

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God? That's one of the big questions, right? Because the Bible says no man has seen

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God at any time, right? Even though Moses spoke God face to face, that's really more of an idiom that Moses had an intimate relationship with God that nobody else had at that time.

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So seeing God doesn't mean that we see him with our eyesight. It means knowing him, right?

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Knowing God is to see him just as he truly is.

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And I've dealt with this before in a previous sermon on 1 John. I should have brought out the name of it.

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But this is often used as metaphors. The metaphors of senses are used to reveal to us or to explain to us that point to knowledge, knowledge.

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And we see him with full knowledge and clarity, not eyesight, right?

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With a more perfect understanding, a perfect understanding. Because now we see through a glass darkly, right?

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We see through a glass darkly. We don't see everything perfectly. We still make mistakes in our judgment, in our wisdom, in our understanding.

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We don't know everything perfectly. But then I will know fully.

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I shall know fully. So there you see really clearly. We see darkly, but then

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I will know, we will know fully. We will know fully. 1

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Corinthians 13 .12, that famous love chapter. Speaking of love, because this is about God's adoptive love for us, this passage as well.

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Now, here's another somewhat of a challenging situation in verse 3.

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Who is he referring to in verse 3? Because when you're using pronouns like he, you have to know the antecedent.

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That what is the he referring to? What is that referring back to? And sometimes, and we have to be careful not to assume that we know what is being referred to.

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We have to carefully trace it out in the grammar of what the scripture says.

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This is sometimes known as a pronoun confusion as well. And this is sadly the case in our perverted society where we can't tell the difference between men and women anymore.

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So you're using he to refer to a she, or vice versa, or they to refer to a singular person.

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So that's out of order. That's perversion. And we can't accept those things.

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We don't accept those things because they are not reality. Right? And God is a

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God of truth. And so sadly, people who embrace those things don't see clearly.

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They don't see the truth for what it is, no matter how much it stares at us in the face.

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And part of this is because the Lord has been showing me how in order to see clearly, you have to know rightly.

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We have to know the truth. You can't filter out your experience or your reality unless you know the truth.

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That's what John has been telling us. That's why we need his anointing. That's why we need his means of grace. That's why we need to be preached to.

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That's why we need to read the word. That's why we need sound doctrine to be able to discern truth from error, good from evil.

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We need all of these things to not deceive ourselves or be deceived by others, by Antichrist, and so on, by the world, the flesh, and the devil.

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So this he in verse 3, and everyone who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself just as he is pure, just as he is pure, right?

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And but I think there's some disagreement as to whether this is pointing to Christ or whether this is pointing to the father.

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And some of this may also have to do with how you translate verse 2. Because when he is manifested, that's clearly pointing more clearly to Christ in his final return.

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But if it's talking about when it becomes evident that what we will be, that we will be like him, that can also point to, yes, it can point to Christ, but it can also point to the father.

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Remember, because in Matthew 5 .48, our

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Lord Jesus Christ tells us, be what? Be perfect, right?

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Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect, right?

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As your heavenly father is perfect. Now, the word for perfect there is that same word for telos, for teleology.

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The word teleology and telos, the word is teleos. And that means completion, perfection.

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And it's obviously related to the concept of purity, because purity has no flaws.

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It has no imperfections that need to be perfected. Something pure is already clean.

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It's pure. It's perfect. They go hand in hand. And that word for pure in verse 3 is hagnos, hagnos, which is from the same root of hagios, hagiography, which means holy, right?

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Holy. So hagnos, pure, and hagios, holy.

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They're all related. Perfect, pure, righteous, just, holy, and good.

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That is all, those are all attributes that describe our precious God, our triune God. And it is what

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God will make us as well when he glorifies us. And he is actively conforming us to the image of his son by virtue of sanctifying us through his spirit and means of grace.

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Amen? So I think this is something that we have to wrestle with carefully.

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You know, no translation is perfect. This is a pretty good example of how even the

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LSB, which is one of the best translations, can still mistranslate things.

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So it's something that we have to just bear in mind. It doesn't affect anything that significantly, but it does obviously affect how we understand the passage and its context.

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So another thing to point out here that I appreciated from Gordon Clark, our good friend

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Gordon Clark, in his commentary is that this verse also very fundamentally contradicts certain types of theologies generally known as sinless perfectionism.

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Because you'll see here, and I've preached on this before in the series on Knowing Your Enemy, but sinless perfectionism basically says that we can be perfect in this life now.

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We can be perfect now. As long as we do the right things and we live out whatever

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God tells us to do, we can be sinlessly perfect. And there's something fundamentally wrong with that doctrine, because it doesn't recognize that we haven't been fully redeemed yet.

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Our bodies are still corrupted. Our bodies are still fallen. We're still going to receive new glorified resurrected bodies.

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That ain't happened yet. Therefore, we still have to wrestle with our biggest mortal enemy, which is the flesh.

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Right? That's still an ever -present problem that we must deal with.

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That's why we fast. That's why we must deny our flesh. And so to say that is a fundamentally false reality.

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It is a denial of our present reality. That while, yes, while we are growing, we're not perfect yet.

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We haven't been to telestide yet. Right? If you remember that word, the telestai is what

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Jesus said at the cross when it was finished, right? Completed.

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We're not complete yet. We're not complete. We're still a work in progress. And the reason why it's so contradictory to this verse is because everyone who has this hope fixed on him purifies himself just as he is.

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Because this hasn't happened yet. This is still in the future.

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When it does become evident what we will be in the future, we will see him just as he is.

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We will be like him. Are we like him now? In some ways, yes.

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But are we perfectly like him? No, we're not. We still have the flesh to deal with.

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We still have sin to deal with, right? And so that's why this hope fixed on him purifies us because we look forward to it.

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And we eagerly anticipate his return and that moment where we will know him truly and fully.

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But then who needs purification when you're already perfect? See, so this verse would exclude people who think or they supposedly are already sinlessly perfect.

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If you are already sinlessly perfect, then why do you need hope? Why do you need to purify yourself?

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Makes no sense, right? Our purification, our sanctification, is a lifelong daily process and necessity.

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It's not an instantaneous act like justification is. It's a lifelong process, right?

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All of these things go hand in hand. And that's why I love our historic

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Reformation heritage in the catechisms, how they explain the confessions. They explain that sanctification is twofold.

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We grow by virtue of God's spirit and means of grace. We actively grow in holiness.

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We grow in the fruit of the spirit and on the other end, we sin less.

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We mortify sin, we put it to death, and we deny our flesh. It's both and.

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We need both. And that takes a lifetime. That takes a lifetime. And we will never be perfectly complete until Christ finishes the work that he started.

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He who began it will finish it, not us. So in a lot of ways, we have to be careful.

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This is a dangerous theology, because it's to say, well, oh, I don't need Jesus to finish it for me.

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I can finish it myself. No, you can't. That's a lie.

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You're lying to yourself. That's not true. So those are balances that we need to hold in proper regard with respect to the whole counsel of God.

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Now, I want to first deal with here,

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I want to deal first, you know what? And at this point, I'm thinking, let me introduce this.

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Let me introduce this here, because I wanted to deal with verse 1, the second part of verse 1 first, because it's sandwiched by this glorious gospel promises and assurances of our adoption as sons of God, right, as sons of God.

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Now, 1 John 3, verse 1, the second part says, for this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know him, right?

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So it did not know him. Now, we talked about seeing him, what it means to see him.

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What does it mean to know him, right? What does it mean to know him or to see him as he truly is, right?

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That is what Christ and the word says is eternal life. This is eternal life.

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Like Jesus said in John 17 3, that they, us,

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God's people, may know you, the only true

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God, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

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It is to believe, in other words, the words of spirit and life of our precious

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and of our trium God, his word. It is to believe the gospel.

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It is to believe the whole counsel of God and to rightly understand it by faith alone, amen?

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Knowing God is to believe God, to understand his word and to agree with it, to accept it as true and to rest in it, resting in God's truth and promises, which he is assuring us of repeatedly in this passage.

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Beloved, now we are God's children, not later, not later. We don't have to earn it.

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Thank God for that because then we could lose it, right? And many false religions believe that you can lose it, that you can lose your eternal life.

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How do you lose eternal life? That's an oxymoron. It's like thinking, how do you lose

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God's adoption? You can't because the father gives them to the son and no one will snatch them out of the father's hand, no one.

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And God will, everyone, every person in the Trinity will make sure of that and guarantees that for us by his precious truth, promises, grace, spirit means everything.

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He gives us everything that we need, everything for life and godliness through the full knowledge of him, of him, faith alone.

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Now, our Lord Jesus further reveals what this means, what he's talking about in this passage as well regarding the world.

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We took a deep dive on the world, the flesh and the devil before.

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Now, John is bringing this to our attention again. And it's important to understand why.

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Turn with me to John chapter 15. John chapter 15, starting in verse 18, very important what the

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Lord Jesus has to tell us here as well regarding the world. We're exercising the analogy of scripture here.

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We're comparing scripture with scripture. We understand scripture with scripture. We, in light of its immediate context and of its whole counsel of God context, the rest of scripture, because God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, love, and a sound mind.

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And so John chapter 15, verse 18, our

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Lord says, if the world hates you and does not know us, it does not know us, like 1

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John says. If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before.

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It hated you. If you were of this world, of the world, the world would love its own.

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The world would love you. But because you are not of the world anymore, but I chose you out of the world, because of this, the world hates you now.

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And that's how it should be, beloved. That's how it should, that's how it's supposed to be.

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The lines have been drawn. The lines have been drawn because the world is now our mortal enemy.

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Before we were saved, we were friends of the world, right? We were friends of the world, the flesh and the devil, no matter how much we may have denied it.

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If we don't know God, then we know the world.

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It's one or the other. These are mutually exclusive. It's either or.

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And remember what the world means here. The world has several different meanings in scripture, but it has a very particular meaning when it's negatively described, when it has a negative meaning or connotation.

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And the word, the Greek word is cosmos, right? Cosmos is specifically referring to here as unregenerate civilization, right?

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Unregenerate, ungodly, unbelieving society and culture as a whole.

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And the sinful lusts and lifestyles that accompany it and that still entice us, that tempt the flesh, right?

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That's what the world is. And these are fundamentally contrary and opposed to each other.

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Like Galatians 5 says, like Romans 7, like all so many passages that clearly contrast, even 1

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John, very clearly contrast the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life.

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All of that is against God. And to love the world is to make yourself an enemy of God.

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There's no ifs and or buts about it, no exceptions whatsoever.

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Know ye not that friendship with the world is enmity, animosity towards God.

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Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world sets himself as an enemy of God.

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That's plain, as clear and as plain as it can be.

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So there's something to this that, like Galatians 1 .10

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also says, if you turn with me there, Galatians 1, chapter 1, verse 10.

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Galatians 1, verse 10, God's word speaks to us and says, for am

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I, the apostle Paul, and by extension, are we now seeking the favor of men or of God?

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Of worldly men or of God? Men of the world or of God?

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Or am I striving to please men? Men of the world, of vanity fair, men like worldly wise men.

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Remember him from Pilgrim's Progress, who dissuaded Christian from the evangelist's counsel to go to the wicked gate to have his burden removed before the cross and instead misled him into going to yonder village, the village named

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Morality. Uh -oh. So instead, where there dwells a gentleman whose name is

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Legality, a very judicious man.

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That's why discernment is important. Now, the apostle continues, if I were still trying to please men like these, worldly men,

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I would not be a slave of Christ. Can't have it both ways.

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You cannot have it both ways. You cannot have your cake and eat it.

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And it reveals that we don't really belong. The one who loves the world does not belong to God.

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It's a clear sign. It's a clear evidence that you don't belong to him because you want what God hates. And therefore, it makes you an enemy of God.

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But we are not enemies of God. We are children of God. Amen?

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And that's why the world does not know us. And notice too that even the world has enough sense to understand this.

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Even the world gets this. And that's why they don't know us any longer because the world itself recognizes that we belong to him now.

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Even the world gets it. That's why it also hates us. That's why.

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Because salt and light exposes the darkness. That's what we're called to do.

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That's what we are in Christ. Not because of what we've done, but because of what

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God makes us and declares us to be. Amen? Because he calls us children of God and no longer enemies, but friends of God by faith alone.

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By grace alone through Christ alone. In Christ alone.

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Sorry, I mixed up my prepositions there. Through faith alone in Christ alone.

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Amen? So I want to close this out, beloved, with who do you belong to?

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This is not something that's confusing or ambiguous. This is not something that's unclear.

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God makes it very clear to us. We are God's children and take comfort and joy in that if you belong to him.

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Do you believe his promises, his precious truths and promises? Then rest in that.

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A glorious adoption that is now ours. Now is ours.

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Don't have to wait for it. We don't have to become perfect to get it. That's a beautiful thing. We don't have to be perfect to attain that adoption into God's household and be called children of God, beloved.

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We are his children now. Warts and all, sins and all, because Christ has already satisfied them all at Calvary's cross.

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Amen? I'll leave you with this, beloved, and I look forward to continuing to unpack these verses.

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I don't wanna take away from the glorious message and truth and promises and indicatives that the

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Lord has for us here. Let us bow our heads before God, our

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Father, in prayer. Our precious, gracious Lord and heavenly Father, we thank you so much that you,

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Lord, call us your children by virtue of what you have done for us by sending your

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Son forth to live a perfect life, to die a perfect, righteous death, the spotless, blameless, pure, clean, holy

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Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world, of your people. Father, thank you so much for this glorious blessing and privilege of adoption that you have given us by virtue of your grace and not our works, nothing that we could do,

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Father, but by your grace. And you keep us, you keep us in your family. You adopt us permanently into your household because you loved us first.

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You loved us first, even though we were yet still sinners and fallen in Adam, and evil, and friends of the world and the flesh and the devil.

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But your powerful, omnipotent, adoptive love, Father, has graciously restored us into a regenerating, sanctifying, glorious condition and a state whereby we now can take boldness and confidently conquer, are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

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And we can now overcome the dominion. We have overcome the dominion of sin.

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It no longer rules over us in the world and the devil. You rule over us,

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Father. You are our prophet, priest, and king, and Lord, your son.

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And we now strive by your spirit and your means to continue to grow in this grace and knowledge of our

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Lord and savior, your precious son. And holiness, and discipline, and self -control, both in sanctification and with respect to growing in the truth, in righteousness and in holiness, and in mortifying the flesh and our sin.

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Putting it to death, Lord, by all the full equipment and armor of light that you have given us.

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Precious Father, thank you so much for your manifold promises, your abundance, overabundance of blessings and promises that you have given us,

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Lord, by faith alone. Let us never forget that, that foundational doctrine and assurance that we all have by faith alone, and your son alone, and the work of this, this precious work that you all have done for us.

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We thank you, Father, and we ask these things in Jesus' almighty name, amen. Thank you for listening to the sermons of Thorn Crown Covenant Baptist Church, where the

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Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is applied to all of faith and life. We strive to be biblical, reformed, historic, confessional, loving, discerning

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Christians who evangelize, stand firm in, and earnestly contend for the Christian faith.

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If you're looking for a church in the El Paso, Texas area, or for more information about our church, sermons, and ministries, such as Semper Reformanda Radio and Thorn Crown Network Podcast, please contact us at thorncrownministries .com.