If
you really need good news, read Revelation 21-22. Throughout the New Testament, the permanent
joining in love of God and God’s people is described using marriage as a
metaphor, and the bride is mentioned in Revelation 21. After the final confrontation between God and
Satan is concluded resoundingly in God’s favor, and Satan is gone, the bride
and groom are joined. All who follow Jesus are invited into perfect fellowship
with God.
He wipes away every tear. Death is no more. Mourning and crying and pain – each are gone
(21:4). The home of God is with human
beings (21:3b). At the end of Revelation
21 we see in the Heavenly city, there is no temple; God is the temple. There is no sun. God is the light (21:22-23). All whose names are written in the Lamb’s
book of life see the face of God (22:4).
That is coming. Anyone need hopeful words today? We’re 1st John 3, but if you need
to, linger at the end of Revelation. John of Patmos received that vision. We read his accounting of it and we imagine …
What about today? We have a lot to deal with now before that
future vision comes to fruition. How
does it help to know that we will one day be in God’s physical presence in
unbroken fellowship and in pure joy?
It’s something to look forward to.
But what about right now?
First John 3:2. “Beloved, we are God’s children now.” Though we cannot see God with our eyes, our
relationship with God is made possible by His Holy Spirit. In God’s view, His love and the death and
resurrection of Jesus are what is needed to make us sons and daughters of
God. That’s how God see all people who receive
Jesus. Right now, not sometime later, we
are children of God.
This week I was working on this
message just before the voting on Tuesday and then right after it. Outside the site where I vote, I saw some
friends who were demonstrating with a placard.
They were peaceful and did not do anything unacceptable or unkind. They definitively declared their position
with the message on their board. As we
talked some who voted opposite them were visibly upset as they walked by and
they voiced their displeasure.
The tension made me uncomfortable,
but my conversation with my friends turned my mind to other thoughts. The two women are committed Christ followers,
and soon, one of them is going to live in an extremely repressive country where
one can be imprisoned or killed for criticizing the government. She’s going there as a visiting
professor. Secretly, she will meet with
Christians and try to establish a small group or even, God-willing, an
underground church.
Overt Christianity in this totalitarian state
leads to imprisonment. If one of the
citizens tries to escape the country, the government will kill his wife, his
kids, and his parents. Here we were in
America openly expressing our views with our in conversation and with our votes. And this woman I met will soon be voluntarily
headed to one of the most repressive places on earth.
How can she willingly do that, and
do it with a joyful smile? She is
beloved. She knows that she is a child
of God. It’s not sometime later. It’s right now.
Our nation’s political dialogue is
locked in catch phrases. People called
my house repeatedly with recorded messages.
Their entire platform was “Get Obama out of Washington.” None of the would-be congressmen offered a
plan for affordable healthcare or job creation or any other pressing
issue. It was just a series of different
voices repeating the same, tired, attack-dog lines with no positive alternative
to offer. I received the exact same
calls in 2004: “Anybody but Bush.” Really?
That’s the platform. I am not saying
this as a pro-Obama or pro-Bush stance.
The whole system is sick, and we voters act like lemmings, mindlessly
following politicians completely void of conviction or honesty off an
ideological cliff.
I was down about all of it. Then I received some criticism on things I
had written and said. I became defensive
and wrote words as mean-spirited and meaningless as those I hear from
politicians. I became what I hate.
I had to remember the woman headed off to
risk her life for the opportunity to share the Gospel. I had to remember the spirit of volunteers
from our church who go to Habitat for Humanity projects and similar works like
A Brush with Kindness. Why do these
folks spend Saturdays helping people they don’t even know? They do it because they are beloved children
of God. I had to remember just two weeks
ago, I was with 15 amazing people in Ethiopia and we spent time with 160
incredible children sharing the love of Jesus.
Being a child of God means something. It give definition to our lives. We live a certain way and our values are
different than the world’s values. Life
is an incredible adventure when we live into our inheritance.
Verse 1 – “See what love the Father has given
us that we should be called children of God.”
The Gospel of John, chapter 1 – “To all who received his name, who
believed in his name, he gave the power to become children of God who were born
not of blood or of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God” (v.12-13).
Malaise settled on my spirit as I
depressingly mulled over the political state of things. My melancholy spilled over and I fell into
ridiculous arguments online. Then the
sense of purpose of being God’s child snapped me out of it – both the fact that
I am God’s child and that I witnessed that sense of call and joy and meaning in
others. First John 3:2 establishes a
certainty we can stand on and live from – we are children of God.
Then we read, “What we will be has not yet
been revealed.” First John three moves
from “We are children of God” to sin, mentioned 10 times in verses 4-10. First John is among the most positive,
hopeful writings in scripture, but in the midst of all this good news, sin is
present. In our lives – the lives of
people who have put their trust in Jesus – sin lurks.
In chapter 1, those who minimized or denied
sin were called liars. Chapter 2, the
possibility of born-again persons sinning is accepted, and Jesus is named as
the one who advocates for us. He is the
atoning sacrifice for the sins of the whole world (2:2). Now in chapter 3, Jesus was revealed to take
away sins, and in him there is no sin (3:5).
And there rises a problem. We’ve already read that denial of sin is a
lie. We are all sinners. But here we read “everyone who commits sin is
a child of the devil.” If we sin, does
that negate our status as sons and daughters of God? If we
sin … what a thought! Of course we
sin. The sins of our entire political
system dropped me into an existential funk.
The sins of a nation under the heel of a megalomaniac make me fear for
the lives of the people who live there.
All of us suffer pain because of the sins of those around us, many of
whom are Christians. We suffer because
of our own sins.
The literal definition of sin is to miss the
mark. Disobedience is sin. Foul language
and mean-spirited words and deceit are ways we sin. First John 3:8. “Everyone who commits sin is a child of the
devil.” First John 3:10. “The children of God and the children of the
devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from
God, nor are those who do not love their brothers or sisters.” Failure to do right and failure to love lead
us into sin, all of us.
First John doesn’t mince words. Have you heard of the antichrist? First John 2:18 says many antichrists have
come and more are on the way, and First and Second John are the only books of
scripture that even use the Greek word, Antixristos ’antichrist.’ Child of the devil; antichrist;
how do we reconcile such straightforward teaching with equally definitive words
that say we are children of God? Can we
have two Fathers – God and the devil?
First John 3:9 says “Those who have been born
of God do not sin. Because God’s seed
abides in them they cannot sin.” When we
live into the gift we’ve been given, the gift of new life in Christ, we have no
inclination to sin. We are new
creations. But the old self, the one in
constant rebellion, is at war with the spirit of God who resides in us. The old self is egged on by the evil of
Satan. The old self is tempted by demons
and spirits and antichrists all around.
The old self is satisfied by the flesh most clearly seen in greed, lust
for power, and sins of a sexual nature, but also manifest in a 1000 other
ways.
First John 3 implies this tension of sin for
children of God. In Romans 7, it is
stated directly.
I am
made out of flesh,[f] sold into sin’s power. 15 For I
do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do,
but I do what I hate. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I
agree with the law that it is good. 17 So now I am no longer the one
doing it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that nothing
good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is
with me, but there is no ability to do it. 19 For I do not do the
good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do. 20
Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but it
is the sin that lives in me. 21
24
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this
dying body? 25 I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord![k] So then, with my mind I myself am a slave
to the law of God, but with my flesh, to the law of sin.
Where
do we go from here?
A few faithful
Christ-followers are called to put their lives on the line in faraway countries. They go where the Gospel is violently opposed
because they are children of God and He has sent them. But what about us, living for Jesus in Chapel
Hill, going about our everyday lives.
Are we children of God, living with purpose, or slaves to sin and
children of the devil? If we don’t
attend to our relationship with God, the enemy will have great sway in our
lives and we’ll easily fall to his temptations.
What
about the seed of God, planted us, as verse 9 says? I believe that seed is the Holy Spirit and
the Holy Spirit is the difference maker.
We go back to verse 2. Now we are
children of God. What we will be –
people of purpose or slaves of satan – has not been revealed. Next it says, “What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for
we will see Him as He is.”
No,
sin doesn’t win. Satan does not
reign. The antichrist does not come out
on top. Jesus does. We know he will return and be revealed and
that will be the most wonderful day of history.
We can bank on that
Between now and then,
we worship, pray, and stay in the Bible.
In these activities we meet God and stay connected to God’s church. None of these activities save us, but, in
worship, prayer, and Bible reading, we set ourselves so that we are receptive
and ready when God enters and begins transforming us.
With
worship, prayer, and Bible-reading as regular life practices, we serve. Mission trips, work in the church, volunteering
in the community, sharing Jesus with friends and inviting them to church –
these things make up our lives. We heap
love on hurting, discouraged people around us.
We walk through trials with people.
Good works do not save us any more than prayer, worship, and Bible
study. Jesus saves. We work out of response to grace. We love hurting people because that’s where
Jesus is. We’re likely to meet Jesus
when visiting a hospital or a prison to give encouragement. We’re likely to come face-to-face with Jesus
while helping the poor, teaching kids, and doing acts of Christian
service. When we do for the “least of
these” as Jesus say in Matthew, we do for Him.
Being where He is puts us in touch with the Holy Spirit who takes sin from
us.
When He is revealed, He says to us,
“Welcome, good and faithful one, enter into the joy of your master.”
First
John 3:2: “We will see Him as he is.”
Revelation 22:4: we will see his face and his name will be on us. That hope gives us something to look forward
to and something to live into today. As
we close, may each one of us imagine that day … and also imagine this coming
week, how we will live with purpose as children of God.
AMEN
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