“And now, little children, abide in Him; that, when He shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. If ye know that He is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of Him. Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is. And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure” (1 John 2:28, 29―3:1-3).
In verse 28 John comes back to the, word with which he began in verse 12, and uses once more the term, dear children, to address all the family of God irrespective of maturity, or immaturity, of youth or age, and says, “And now, dear children, abide in Him.” To abide in Him is to live in fellowship with Him. It is one thing to be in Him, as having life in Him, but it is another thing to abide in Him as enjoying communion with Him. Many there are who have life in Christ, but are not happy in His presence. They permit something to come into the life that hinders fellowship.
You know how it is in a family, when the children are in harmony with the father and mother they give their parents satisfaction and there is peace and joy and fellowship, but if one of the children is out of touch with the rest and has been willful and wayward, disobedient and ungrateful, some way or another there is a sense of a barrier between that child and the parents. Not that the parents do not love the child as much as ever, but he realizes that his own behavior has come in the way of fellowship. So it is with the children of God, and John says, “And now, dear children, abide in Him; that, when He shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.”
It is at the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ that our rewards are going to be given out. “Behold, I come quickly; and My reward is with Me, to give every man according as his work shall be” (Rev. 22:12). In view of that, the apostle says, “Abide in Him; that, when He shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.” In 2 Corinthians 5:10 we read, “We must all appear (or be manifest) before the judgment-seat of Christ).” The apostle is desirous that when the day of manifestation comes, “we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him.” Notice the pronoun. He is addressing the children, and you might expect him to say, “That, when He shall appear, you may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.” You see, he is speaking as a servant of Christ, addressing those whom he has led to Christ or whom he has sought to help in the ways of God. He speaks for all Christ’s servants as he addresses all God’s people, and says, as it were, “We are accountable, we have a tremendous sense of responsibility in regard to you.” You remember how another apostle spoke of Christ’s under-shepherds as those who had heavy responsibility, and says, “They watch for your souls, as they that must give account; that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you” (Heb. 13:17).
“Abide in Him; that, when He shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before Him at His coming.” I remember some years ago trying to speak on this text in connection with another subject. I was addressing a crowded house in Detroit, and after dismissing the audience at the close of the meeting, I saw a young woman on the left side of the church push her way across to the right side, and she threw herself weeping into the arms of a beautiful Christian woman, saying, “Oh, Mrs. M―, will you forgive me? Can you forgive me?” The woman tried to quiet and soothe her, and said, “It is not I who needs to forgive you; if you have sinned, you have done so against the Lord. Go to Him.” “Oh, but,” the young woman said, “you led me to Christ, and you were my Sunday School teacher, and you have tried to lead me on. I used to be so happy as a young Christian, and then I fell in love with an unconverted man, and you warned me that it was not the right thing for a Christian girl to do; you told me fully about the unequal yoke, but I said, ‘I will soon bring him around so that he will become a Christian,’ but it hasn’t worked that way. He has taken me his way, away from the Church of God, into the world. This is the first meeting I have attended for months. I have been going with him to the theater and to the dance and have lost out, and it never dawned on me how ashamed you would be of me at the judgment-seat of Christ. I want to be right with God.” I saw that dear woman take her into a side room for a time of prayer, and when they came out their faces were shining with the light that is never seen on sea or land.
It is one thing to have come to Christ, it is another thing to behave yourself in such a way that those who led you to Christ and have watched over your soul can give account with joy in that great day. Sometimes even here on earth I have been a little ashamed, for I have gone into certain places and met someone who did not seem to have the marks of Christian devotedness, and then somebody said, “Don’t you know so and so?” “I am not sure that I do,” I have replied. “Well, he is one of your converts.” I understand that they meant that he had professed to be converted in one of my meetings, but he had not been going on.
Nothing gives a true servant of Christ greater joy, after the conversion of sinners, than to see those he has won for the Saviour glorifying Him in their lives.
You remember when you first came to trust in Christ. What have you been doing since? What has He been getting out of your life? Have you been playing fast and loose with the world, trying to carry water on both shoulders? You cannot do this without going astray. If you have been redeemed to God by the precious blood of Christ and regenerated by the grace of His Holy Spirit, let Him have the best of your life, abide in Him, and then in that coming day when the servants of Christ come up before the judgment-seat to be rewarded according to their service, they won’t be ashamed of you. Think of D. L. Moody standing before the Lord, and saying, “Lord, behold, I and the children whom Thou hast given me,” and then think of some of them as they stand there saying to themselves, “Oh, I wish I had lived more in accord with what my dear father in Christ taught me.”
In verse 29 John reminds us of what should characterize those that have been born of God, “If ye know that He is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of Him.” Do not be content to say, “I have trusted Christ and have been made the righteousness of God in Him.” When God justifies a man by faith, He then proceeds to make that man just by the inworking of His Holy Spirit. He does not justify people by faith and leave them in an unjust condition, but every one that is born of God doeth righteousness, loves righteousness, seeks to walk in righteousness. Let us test ourselves by some of these things, and see whether or not we are professing to be Christians when we have never known righteousness.
To those that are saved what beautiful words are written in the opening verses of the next chapter. First comes the “manner of love that the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not.” You see this is something different from the general love of John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” That is infinite love to lost men everywhere. If you are out of Christ, be assured of this: the love of God goes out to you and He has commended His love toward you in that while you were yet a sinner Christ died for you. But you know there is something sweeter, there is something even more precious than that, but it is not for you until you trust in Christ, but if you have already trusted in Him, then you can enter into the Father’s love. “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us.” It is the children who are addressed, not sons. It is a rather singular thing that so often in our Authorized Version, in the translation of John’s writings, we have the word sons where it should be children. “That we should be called the children of God.” And because we are the children of God “the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not.”
If you have the Revised Version you will notice that there are three words added which were found in some old manuscripts which were not known when the King James’ Version was translated, “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God, and we are.” It is not that we hope to be, but we are. Are you clear about that? If you are, you will never sing,
“ ‘Tis a point I long to know,
Oft it causes anxious thought,
Do I love my Lord or no?
Am I His, or am I not?”
I would not dishonor my Lord by singing words like that when I read, “Rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.” I do not wonder that those words dropped out of some of the manuscripts, for they must have been too much for some of the folk copying them. Therefore, because we are, because we have been born of God, have been regenerated, the world does not understand; it knows us not because it knew Him not. If it did not know Him, we cannot expect it to recognize us. Because He passed through this scene a stranger and a pilgrim, we too go through it as strangers and pilgrims, refusing to look at things from the world’s standpoint.
“Beloved, now are we the children of God”— not we hope to find that we are such when we get to heaven but— “Now are we the children of God.” But then we find that there is something that we are waiting for. “It doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” This is our great expectation, and soon every believer will be fully conformed to His blessed image. What a wonderful day that will be! But right now God looks at His people as they are going to be when He gets through with them. We look at each other as we are now, and get so discouraged with ourselves and with one another, but God is looking at us as we shall be when we see our blessed Lord and are changed into His glorious image.
A story is told of an artist who had in his mind the conception of a great picture which he was going to paint. He stretched his vast canvas straight across one side of his large studio, put up the scaffolding, brought the large, thick brushes, and prepared the paint. It looked like a job of house painting. He painted with great sweeps of his brush as he put in the background. Day after day he would walk back and forth putting a daub of gray here, a daub of blue there, and some black there, and one day he came down from the scaffolding to look at it. He kept moving back, and back, and back. A visitor had come in unnoticed, and as the artist moved backward he bumped right into him. He turned around and said, “Why, you here? I didn’t know you had come in. What do you think of that picture? That is going to be the masterpiece of my life. Isn’t it magnificent?” The other said, “I don’t see anything there but a lot of great daubs of paint.” “Oh, I forgot,” said the artist; “you can see only what is there, while I can see the picture as it is going to be.” The blessed Lord sees us as we are going to be when we see Him, for then we shall be just like Him. Even now on earth, “We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor. 3:18). And when we see Him as He is, we shall become just like Him.
“And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.” It is literally, “Every man that hath this hope set on Him”— looking on to the coming of the Lord Jesus, the blessed hope of His return. I do not know any incentive to godly living like the hope of the coming again of the Lord Jesus Christ. People must be weaned away from the world by heart-occupation with the coming Saviour. You cannot be taken up with Him, the coming One, and be taken up with the world at the same time, for it is impossible not to be weaned away from the world when your heart is occupied with Him. You do not have to give up the world for Jesus’ sake. The fact of the matter is that:
“The things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.”
When you are looking on to His return, you cannot enjoy the things of the world that crucified Him; and conversely, if you are a Christian and trying to enjoy the world, forgetting that you are called to be separate from the world, you cannot enjoy Christ. You cannot enjoy Christ and the world at the same time. In the fly-leaf of John Bunyan’s Bible he had written,
“This Book will keep you from sin,
Or sin will keep you from this Book.”
And so we may say, occupation with Christ will save you from worldliness, or worldliness will hide the glory of His wonderful face. “Every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.”