Hope Purifies Us
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Text: 1 John 3:1-10
Theme: Hope Purifies Us
Verses 1-3
For believers, the return of Christ is our blessed hope. So it says in Titus 2:13 “our blessed hope (is) the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.” This is our blessed hope whether we choose to recognize it in that way or not.
In my youth, I remember being frightened at the thought of the return of Christ. This was before I had really come to know Jesus. I knew I wasn’t in a right relationship with Him, so when I thought about the return of Jesus Christ it caused me to worry.
For a time after becoming a Christian, I still was not terribly excited about the return of Jesus. I wasn’t afraid of it, but there were still a lot of things I wanted to do! There were some video games coming out that I wanted to play, movies I wanted to see, and of course, most importantly, I wanted to get married. “At least let me get married before coming back, Jesus!”
Now, I can say with confidence that the blessed hope of believers is definitely the return of Jesus. I’ve played my video games, read my books, watched my movies, seen the Great Wall of China, the Rocky Mountains, and truth be told – I’ve learned that there’s really no reason to not prefer the return of Jesus. Had Jesus come back before I got to see the Great Wall, it would have been A-OK.
Sure, I enjoy life. I’m glad for all the gifts and experiences I’ve had. But Jesus is better. I absolutely believe that. And all the truest joys and best feelings and experiences will carry on throughout eternity with Jesus. It is the bad stuff, the dross that we will say goodbye to at Jesus’ appearing.
There are many reasons that the return of Jesus is our blessed hope. His return will begin His government over the earth – so we’ll have perfect government at last. His return means our eternal life. His return means the end of sin, and our reward.
John mentions two aspects in particular that give us hope for Jesus’ return. One is that we shall be changed to be like him. What does that mean? Well, funny you should ask, we actually don’t really know precisely. John says “what we will be has not yet appeared.” We know some details. We know that our body will be resurrected and transformed into an indestructible, incorruptible, eternal body. Having never experienced that, we don’t know precisely what that will be like. But having experienced the opposite – a destructible, corruptible, mortal body – I think we all have a good enough idea about what it’ll be like to get excited about it and have great hope for it! No more disease! No more death!
We also know that we will be sinless. Our sin nature will be gone. That side of you that pushes you toward making sinful decisions will be completely dead. The side of you that enjoys certain sins will be completely dead. You will no longer need to hear the exhortation again “do not love the world” because it won’t be a temptation at all. My role as preacher will become obsolete, and I’ll be OK with that!
Instead, the new nature you received through faith in Christ will completely dominate. Your delight in and capacity to experience the good things of God will be supercharged. You will love like you didn’t know that it was possible to love and realize better than you ever could in our imperfect bodies the extent to which God loves you. Laughter and joy will be richer. Guilt and impurity will be gone. It’ll be great.
The other aspect of Jesus’ return that John points out as our hope is that we shall see him as he is. You will know Jesus accurately and like never before. For one, very few of the people who actually saw Jesus in the flesh really saw him as he is. Being in human form, His eternal godhead and glory were veiled.
On Christmas day, people saw the second person of the Trinity through whom the universe was made – but they saw Him as a baby. That’s quite a bit less than the full extent of His glory. And as Jesus walked through the streets of Jerusalem, He didn’t radiate in white. The bottom of his robe probably had dust and dirt and there was dirt in His toe nails. And for us, well I know Him, I trust in Him, I’ve read a book about Him a lot, I pray to Him. But I don’t actually even know what He looks like in human form, much less in all His glory.
The artwork that is out there today about Him is usually totally off. Most of it He looks like a white man with long hair and blue eyes. Sometimes He looks like a black man. In China, a lot of the time, He is represented as an Asian man. Actually the oldest paintings and carvings that have been uncovered He actually looked like a Jewish man with short hair. Go figure! That’s probably much closer to the truth.
But I have even less idea about what He is like in all of His glory. I can try to imagine it, but I’m sure it’s not even close. But when Jesus returns – we will see him as he is.
And this goes beyond just appearance: we will understand in truer sense what His character is and His righteousness and purity. Inevitably, as imperfect humans, our conception of Jesus ends up skewed in some way. You can read about the disciples making tons of mistakes in their understanding of Jesus. It would be the height of pride to assume that you and I know Him perfectly. But when He appears, we shall see Him as He is. In this we hope.
Link: And this hope has great practical value by the way. What does hoping in the return of Jesus do? How does it change us? Why think about it? Shouldn’t we be focused on the here and now?
It has practical value because hoping in the return of Jesus purifies us even as Jesus is pure. Our desires, thoughts, motives, values, and character start to align themselves with the purity of Jesus as we think about His return to make everything pure.
Start trying to think of Jesus’ return with hopeful thoughts on a day to day basis. I promise you, it will change you for the better. Really it follows the treasure principle: where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Hope for Jesus’ return, and it purifies your heart.
Verses 4-10
At first these verses appear to be unconnected with verses 1-3. The connection comes as we start to understand more about the people who were causing problems for these Christians.
If you’ll remember from last week, there were people who had left the congregation and were now denying that Jesus was the Christ and were trying to lead the Christians astray. John was writing to assure these believers that they had eternal life and that the deniers of Jesus as the Christ did not. I applied it today to a problem we face with professing Christians leaving for atheism. But what the believers of this time were facing was a group that later came to be known as Gnostics.
Here, in a nutshell, is what the Gnostics believed: they believed that Jesus was not really the Son of God. They believed that He was the Son of God in a kind of mystical consciousness/knowledge/awareness sense. Jesus achieved a kind of state of perfect knowledge about God and in doing so became a son. You also can become a son of God through developing that concept of mystical awareness, so the gnostics taught.
Gnostics did not believe that Jesus was really crucified, buried, and rose again three days later. In these ways, they denied that Jesus was the Son of God and they denied that He was the Messiah. That’s what John was talking about in the earlier verses. These people who claimed to be Christians but were denying that Jesus was the Son and denying that He was the Messiah were not really Christians. They said they gained special access to the father through their knowledge, but no one who denies the Son has the Father.
And there was still more problems with the gnostics. The gnostics didn’t believe that Jesus was going to return to the earth. They didn’t believe in the second coming of Christ. Therefore, they placed no hope in that coming event.
Furthermore, the gnostics believed that the physical realm is irredeemably evil, that all of physical matter was created by an evil god, and that the spiritual realm is absolutely pure.
The result of this mix of beliefs was that they had no problem with sinning. They practiced sinning regularly. No sins were off limits and it didn’t really matter because in their view salvation came through esoteric knowledge. And all their sins were done in their body, which was going to be done away with anyway. Their spirit was separate, good, and unharmed by their sins. With no true knowledge of Jesus, no hope for His return that purifies, no true experience of God’s salvation from sins – their lives were filled with sin. Salvation didn’t mean freedom from sins for them.
So you have a group of people that don’t believe Jesus is the Messiah, they don’t believe He was the Son of God, they don’t believe Jesus is coming back, and they practice sin regularly. And despite all of these things, they nevertheless claim to be Christians. This sounds very much like the kind of person that John is writing the book to warn these believers against.
But there is still one more big clue that the gnostics were the bad guys in this letter. Gnostic means knowledge. Gnosis is the Greek term for “know.” And gnostic basically means “knower.” The word “know” appears over and over and over and over in 1 John. You don’t need to know Greek to see it. Every time you see the word “know” you are seeing “gnosis.”
Verses 4-10 are a heavy swing from John at the “Knowers.” John tells the believers – do not let the “Knowers” deceive you. Because you know – gnosis – that Jesus came to take away sins. And you know – gnosis – that no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.
These people claim to know the real Jesus. They claim the real Jesus was not the Son of God or the crucified Savior. They claim He is not coming back. They claim you can live in sin and it doesn’t matter because your spirit will be saved through knowledge.
But I, John, who hung out with Jesus personally all the time. I tell you that these people are not Christians. And you also can know that they are not Christians because it is evident who is a child of God and who is not a child of God. It is displayed in whether they look like Him or not. They talk about knowledge a lot, but they do not know Jesus. Because the reason Jesus came was to destroy the works of the devil. He came to take away sins. But these people sin constantly. And their works are the works of the devil. The people trying to deceive you are children of the devil.
It has been awhile since the book the Da Vinci Code came out. I remember when it did that it troubled a lot of Christians. They started to hear, maybe for the first time, that there were these other books written long ago that claimed to be Christian. And there was this group of people long ago known as the gnostics. And so people got real nervous about that book and others like it, because they thought “well what if these other books are true?” There’s a gospel of Thomas out there somewhere? What if it’s true? A gospel of Judas, what if it’s true?
Let me tell you, don’t worry about it. Once again, John, who took care of Jesus’ widowed mother after His death, burial, and resurrection into heaven – so I think He would know Jesus. John already wrote a book debunking the gnostics and it’s called 1st John. You don’t have to wonder if any of those books written by the gnostics know something that you don’t. You already know the truth. And it’s evident that the gnostics didn’t have it because they behaved as children of the devil.
Application: So what do verses 1-3 and verses 4-10 have to do with each other then?
Our hope or lack thereof toward seeing Jesus says a lot about our relationship with Jesus, whether we want to admit it or not. How did King Herod respond to the birth of Jesus? What do you think that says about who King Herod was a child of? How did Mary respond to the birth of Jesus? What do you think that says about her?
How did people like John and Peter and Paul look at the second coming of Jesus? How did the gnostics look at the second coming of Jesus?
Everyone who hopes in Jesus and His return purifies himself as he is pure. The gnostics denied the return of Jesus and had no hope in it. Instead of looking forward to living eternally with a holy God, they loved the world and the things of the world. They gave themselves to sinful things in agape love. The fruit of that was a life of sinning and lawlessness.
For us, our hope in Jesus is something that purifies us. You want to know the real, deep down reason why I used to not look forward to the return of Jesus? It was because I wanted to sin more. I knew that when He came back, the “fun” would be up and I would be punished for the sin I was committing. Now, I hope deeply in the return of Jesus because I have learned that sin isn’t fun at all. I hate it that I still sin. I don’t want any more of that “fun.” It’s empty. I can’t wait to be like Jesus is. And I find that the more I look forward to the return of Jesus and my becoming like Him, the more I am changed to be like Him.
How do you feel about seeing Jesus again someday? Is it your blessed hope? That’s great. Are you a little worried about it but mostly hopeful? That’s pretty common; He is a holy God and we all make mistakes. Do you want it to be as far away as possible so that you can enjoy sin some more? Well, then I have to say I am worried about you. Jesus came to take away sin, not so that you can do more of it. Wanting to enjoy sin as much as possible is a contradiction for one who says they know the God who is entirely without sin! *Read verse 6*
Evaluate where your hope is. It says a lot about your spiritual state. Hope in Jesus this holiday season!