A Word in Season: Like Him (1 John 3:2)

Our Present Identity as Children of God

What are you, Christian? You are a child of God. That's what the Apostle John says in 1 John chapter 3 in verse 2. Beloved, now we are children of God. That is our true state. God has set his love upon us.

God has brought us into his family. He has given us a new nature and a new name. And we are now entirely of him. We are in his household and we will ultimately be brought to be with him in our heavenly home.

But though we are now children of God, 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. Now the true bliss of that heavenly state is presently hidden from us.

Our present life as the children of God is a life that we live by faith, waiting in hope. We haven't entered in yet to the full experience of that glory which is to come. But that doesn't mean we're entirely ignorant of it.

Christ Revealed in Glory

The fact that we haven't entered into it doesn't mean that we know nothing whatsoever about it. We do know this, that when he is revealed, when the Father makes himself known in the Son, when our Lord Jesus Christ comes apart from sin for salvation, that second time, when he comes no longer in the state of humiliation, but now returns in his mediatorial glory as the conqueror over sin and death and hell, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, the conqueror who rides forth conquering and to conquer.

When we see him, we shall be like him. That's the moment of our final and perfected conformity to the image of his Son. When we read in our Bibles of that resurrection body, when we see the glory of Christ as it now is, when we understand that having borne the image of the earthly man, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly man.

When we see him, no longer with the eyes of faith only, but now with the eyes of the flesh, when we stand before him, when we are in his presence, we shall be like him. And then our status as children of God will not merely be, can we say merely, perhaps, will not merely be that we are God's own children and that he has owned us as his children, but it will be undeniable that we are his children.

And the time of our humiliation will be past. And the time in which we are despised and neglected and cast aside will be over. And we shall be not just with him, but like him. We shall have perfected and glorified bodies.

The Hope of the New Heavens and New Earth

We shall be with him in the new heavens and the new earth in which righteousness dwells. We shall not be God, but we shall have the image of the heavenly man upon us. Now that is something for us to look forward to.

That's something for faith to feed upon and hope to hang upon. That though we do not yet know all the detail, and though the experience is not something to which we have yet attained, yet even now because we are children of God, we know that when the Lord Jesus Christ comes and when the glory of God is revealed in him, when the judge of all the earth sits upon his throne, when he brings into his kingdom those who are righteous through faith in him and who have walked in his ways in their life, that we shall be like him because we shall see him as he is.

Pressing On Toward the Eternal State

Now that ought to make us long for the day. That ought to increase our faith and encourage our hearts. These are the expectations and the desires that keep us pressing on along the way with our eyes fixed upon the goal, that upward call in Christ Jesus our Lord, the entering into the eternal state, the blossoming of grace into glory, the fruitfulness of that which lies ahead of us, the glories of eternity in the presence of our God and our King.

So let us remember that though now we may not always feel like it and we don't often look like it to the eye of flesh, we are children of God and though it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, we know that when we see him we shall be like him.