1st John 3.1-7
“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” Today’s reading from 1st John invites us to look directly into the wonder of God’s love, see the radiance of our life and identity in God. “See what love the Father has given us.”
John’s invitation to look into heavenly love stands in contrast to Monday’s eclipse and all the cautions against looking directly that cosmic event. “The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament shows forth his handiwork,” says Psalm 19, a perfect caption for wonder of the eclipse. Just make sure to avert your eyes; it’s risky to see too much of it. Even as far away as we were from the path of totality, hardware stores were selling those glasses fitted with special lenses so that if we wanted to look at the eclipse, we would be protected. Not that it mattered. On a cloudy Monday afternoon, the sky didn’t get any darker than it does during a summer thundershower; there wasn’t much to see. How different for the letter of 1st John. In today’s second reading, there’s lots to see. John wants to see more clearly and look directly at the wonder and radiance of our life and identity in God. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us”—lavished, says one translation—“that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
Everything John writes in his letter expresses that love, is illuminated by that love. When John writes about the truth and meaning of Jesus Christ, it’s about that great love. When he writes about how Christians relate to one another, it’s about love lavished on all people. Even when John writes about sin, his sight is set on the God who first loved us. I’m curious to know, though, what you thought when you heard today’s second reading say, “No one who abides in Jesus sins”? Can that really be true, that no one in Jesus sins? Is that true for your life? I have a hunch that in the silence between the invitation to confess your sins week-to-week in worship and the actual confessing of them, you bring things with you that really do need absolution and forgiveness. What could John mean by saying “no one who abides in Jesus sins?”
Various biblical scholars have tried to think their way through that question; various proposals have been offered. Some suggest that it’s not actually a sin if it’s done by a believer. Now that would certainly be convenient from the sinner’s side, the ultimate excuse for bad behavior. But if you’ve ever been hurt by someone because of their anger, gossip, greed, or more the idea that it wasn’t actually sin because the person who hurt you was a person of faith is no comfort at all, an odd double-standard that hardly seems fair or right. Others have wondered if John overstates his case to catch our attention the way Jesus exaggerates when he says if your eye causes you to sin pluck it out or if your hand causes you to sin cut it off. In other words, John’s words aren’t meant to be taken literally as if our sin is stronger than the assurance we have as children of God. But John does want us to take sin seriously. Henry Alford, a 19th century Anglican, says, “The plain words of the apostle must be held fast and must not be tamed down to suit our conscience.” This is a warning not to get comfortable with our faults in thought, word, and deed.
Because John does know that Christians—people born of God, children of God who have had God’s love lavished on them—do sin and do need the restoration and fresh start that comes with forgiveness. In fact, the greater problem for John isn’t that we sin, the problem is when we think that we don’t. Early in his letter, John says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” Yet even as he directs our attention to the reality of sin in our lives, he focuses beyond that to the loving and forgiving purpose of God in Jesus Christ. “If we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
John lays out a modest, humble approach. He knows that Christians sin, that we need restoration. Awareness of that need leads to contrition, repentance, and amendment of life. But most important, all of it is held within the forgiving love of God in Jesus Christ. Jesus is our advocate, John says, the atoning sacrifice for our sins and for the sins of the whole world. So when John says today that people who abide in Jesus do not sin, he is warning about making sin the normal pattern of life, a settled habit—not just missing the mark or falling short of God’s desires as we all do—but, to use the word that John uses today, ‘lawlessness,’ a disruption of God’s order and desires; of too easily dismissing our faults and failings by saying, ‘I’m only human,’ as a way to settle in to them despite knowing God’s desire for us is something different. John Baycroft in The Anglican Way says, “When you become aware that God has made you for love and loves you personally, you will feel uncomfortable about sin…If you see yourself as you really are and as God sees you, you will know that you have great potential for love and goodness.
“See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.” Today, we are invited to look directly into the wonder of our lives as children of God. And, at the same time, the letter of 1st John wants us to see that same wonder in the people around us because they are also children of God. Now the world doesn’t always recognize believers as children of God, John says today. And there are times when believers fail to live out our identity and don’t exactly help that cause. Yet don’t we also, at times, fail to see the people around us as children of God? Later in his letter John says, “Since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another,” that is, to see the radiance of God’s love shining on others—the person next to us, the neighbor across the street, the stranger making a home among us.
A prayer included this week in the prayer list in the bulletin asks God to help us do just that. It’s a ‘Prayer for Cities’ from the Book of Common Prayer. The prayer begins by giving thanks that God, in the Word, has given us a heavenly vision for the whole world. The prayer then prays that we be given the power and courage to reveal God’s glory in the world and work to eliminate poverty, prejudice, and oppression; prays for peace to prevail with righteousness and justice with order; finally, prays for the day when all people will find the fulfillment of their humanity in Jesus Christ. Take that prayer home, take it to heart, pray it daily, and pray it with courage. The energy and sense of purpose in that prayer come from the vision that 1st John shares with us today. Throughout that letter, John clearly sees the problems in the world around him, knows how poverty and prejudice eclipse God’s goodness and human dignity, how hatred leads down paths of darkness into despair, knows the power of sin. And so John invites us to look directly at the glory of God’s love in the face of Jesus Christ for us and for the whole world. “See what great love the Father has lavished on us.”
In his little commentary on the Letters of John, NT Wright says, “People who spend a lot of time looking at one another sometimes come to resemble each other. Perhaps this is because they are instinctively copying one another’s facial expressions [until their own are reshaped].” That’s a perfect description of what 1st John wants for us and for our lives. Today he invites us to look directly into the wonder of God’s love for us (no special glasses required) and to see our life and identity in God—to be reshaped by the love of God in the face of Jesus Christ, to resemble Jesus in his love and grace, and to live in courage and hope until the day Jesus Christ is fully revealed, when we see him as he is and will be like him. In response to God’s love lavished on us, we purify ourselves as he is pure, reshaped in the very depths of our life. “See what love the Father has given us—and the person next to us, and our neighbor, and the stranger—that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.”
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