1 John 2:28–3:10

Original Meaning

The Identity and Purity of God’s Children (3:1–3)

MENTION OF REBIRTH in 2:29 inspires John to reflect in praise on the splendor of God’s love for us. The NIV fails to translate the first exclamation: “Behold! How great is the love the Father has lavished on us!” John expresses his wonder at this, using an unusual word to express the utterly foreign nature of this love. The Greek term potapen means “of what country” and thus implies that God’s love is so unusual, so unearthly, so unique to our experience, that we barely expect its result: “We are called children [Gk. tekna] of God” (cf. Matt. 5:9). This transaction is not imaginary, and John buttresses it with a final phrase to cement it firmly (“And that is what we are!”). Marshall points out that this is an act of “legitimation,” in which a father names his child and thereby makes a permanent claim to identity and ownership.8 Hence it is not in the child’s hands! Rather, this identity is entirely in the Father’s hands, so that the child’s security is assured.

Further confidence in our place with God is found in our relation with the world (3:1b). The intimate knowledge shared between the believer and the Father is now contrasted with the absence of such knowledge found in the world. The NIV makes a free translation of 3:1b, changing its meaning slightly. The verse begins with the Greek dia touto (“on account of this”), which the NIV has referring forward: “The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” This means that the world’s ignorance of us is theological: It has never known God and thus cannot recognize his children.

On the other hand, some say that the phrase should refer back to what was in the previous sentence in 3:1a.9 A literal translation might read: “Therefore, we are called children of God—and so we are! For this reason the world does not know us.”10 We might paraphrase 3:1 thus: “God has given incredible love to us! He has even made us to be his children! And this is the reason the world does not know us, for the world has not known the Father either.” This second reading is striking because it suggests that the children of God, because of their relation with the Father, have become an enigma to the world. Of course, it is true that the world has not known the Father as well, and this contributes to its ignorance of and hostility toward God’s people.

Again and again John repeats that now we are God’s children. It is an established fact that God’s love controls. In 3:2 John reflects on how this fact will have consequences in the future. If now we have a glimpse of what it means to have the presence of the Father within us, when Christ comes there will be yet more overwhelming experiences for us. He will appear, we will appear just like him, and then we will see him exactly as he is.11 In that day there will be an immediate and unmistakable unity between us and the Father. This is reminiscent of Paul’s thought in 1 Corinthians 2:9: “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him.” Inherent in this idea is Paul’s notion that we will share in the glory of Christ (Rom. 8:17–19; Phil. 3:21; Col. 3:4).

Verse 3 contains the apostle’s summary of his reasons for confidence in the Christian life. Fully knowing the Father’s love, witnessing God’s righteousness at work in us, experiencing the alienation of the world, and sharing a fresh confidence and joy at the prospect of Jesus’ return—these things build renewed joy and assurance among Christians who may be struggling. This was certainly the setting for John’s church with the schism that challenged his leadership and was poised to rend the church in two.

However, John’s pastoral purpose here is not simply to reassure his readers’ wavering faith. Ultimately his purpose is ethical. If we set our minds on the confident basis of God’s promise, we will feel differently, and this will renew the character of our living. “Everyone who has this hope in him [Christ] purifies himself, just as he is pure” (v. 3). “Purity” (hagnos) occurs only here and refers to the absence of any stain. But John does not have ceremonial or ritual purity in mind. A mind singularly focused on meeting Jesus will discover a renewed power to pursue righteousness so that “when he appears,” our righteousness will resonate with him. This recalls the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

Bridging Contexts

WHILE MANY OF the sections we have studied in 1 John are shaped entirely by the apostle’s conflict with the secessionists, the present section has a remarkable universal applicability. This is not to deny that the Johannine doctrinal struggle still influenced the passage. First John 3:7 provides an explicit warning against the author’s opponents. Nevertheless, the congregational division, the crisis of leadership, and the corruption of orthodox Christology are not limited to John’s first-century context. Therefore, as I read the passage and distill its meaning for today, my task seems to be easier. John is giving an exhortation that evokes themes that can be sounded in any age and context.

When John describes the essential meaning of living like God’s children, two emphases are placed in the forefront: assurance and righteousness. Perhaps these two can even be subsumed under a wider category: transformation. In the midst of the conflicts in his church, John desires that his followers exhibit a thorough-going change in how they view themselves and their relationship with God. His people need a renewed vision for who they are and what God desires them to become. It is through the renewal of that vision that a transformation will occur—and that transformation will bear measurable fruit: They will discover greater assurance in their identity as God’s children and will begin to exhibit the righteous character of Jesus Christ.

However, these exhortations are not aimed at simply making the Christians in John’s church feel better. His intentions are not purely therapeutic. That is, his goal is not simply to help them have a victorious Christian life. We must always keep in mind that the Johannine context here is adversarial and that John’s aim is therefore to strengthen his followers and protect them and so to make them less susceptible to the challenges and corruptions of his detractors. Consequently, when John speaks about perfection among Christians, he may well have in mind the secessionists, who seemed to deny ethics. But he no doubt has others in mind as well—his own followers, whose righteousness in comparison with their opponents should be stellar.

At the same time, there is much in this passage that offers sound pastoral therapy for Christians who, while not experiencing the threats of any opponents, still feel the same insecurities that one under threat may feel. In other words, even though the Johannine adversaries may be absent in a modern context, the symptoms that are native to such conflict (insecurity, vulnerability, etc.) are still with us today. And John’s words about assurance and righteousness can thus play an essential role.

Therefore, it seems that my interpretative task, which calls for me to bridge these themes to my own day, is fully possible. Believers are looking for reassurance about their place before God and for some way to understand God’s unyielding call for righteousness that does not create legalism. Unfortunately, my experience suggests that while we must balance these issues, we have not done well. Men and women of faith hear the call to holiness but cannot comprehend the nature of their security before the Lord. John’s themes can be immediately bridged, but we need new, creative ways to express these truths today that powerfully reach our own people.

Contemporary Significance

EVERY PASTOR AND Christian leader wants to strengthen the spiritual stamina of his or her flock. This is particularly the case when, as in John’s church, opponents are at the door or in the pews. The natural question is, What strategy works best to reinforce Christian discipleship?

This passage opens up as many questions as it resolves. Yet it leads us into areas of reflection that are extremely pertinent even if we do not have all of the answers. John is a pastor with a pastor’s heart. Therefore he knows, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, what issues need to be addressed.

(1) Assurance and rebirth. Throughout this passage (and much of the letter) John repeats again and again that divine rebirth is a necessary feature of Christian discipleship (see 2:29; 5:1–2). This is the source of our power to live a life not plagued by sin. It also gives us confidence that our identity is completely found in Christ and that even when he comes again, we will be filled with self-assurance.

When I was growing up as a child in a Lutheran church, such thoughts about divine birth were truly perplexing. We were baptized, we were confirmed, and we were regularly taught that discipleship included such practical matters as Bible reading, prayer, the Lord’s Supper, and personal piety and obedience. For good measure Luther’s Shorter Catechism was even given a place in our personal devotional lives! John’s remarks about rebirth, however, implied to me that there was an experiential dimension to Christianity that I was missing. When John writes to tell his followers that it is their rebirth that gives them assurance, what happens when they cannot anchor their spirituality in some powerful ecstatic experience that validates the presence of God in their lives?

In order to answer this question, we must first look at what happens when a pastoral theology makes experience the centerpiece of Christian discipleship. Students at my college, for example, often ask one another to tell their “conversion story.” This seems to reinforce the notion that a valid Christian life must have a dramatic beginning or at least a dramatic component. In evangelical/fundamentalist circles this may be a profound conversion experience. Among charismatics, it may be an ecstatic experience such as speaking in tongues or a healing.

Of course I am not denying that Christians must be born again—John 3 makes that perfectly clear!—nor am I saying that a powerful, transforming experience with the Holy Spirit should not be an important part of the Christian faith. I simply wonder if experiential theologies, that is, preaching that reinforces the centrality of experience, make faith tenuous. If what I feel in my Christian walk is where my assurance is anchored, then my confidence is frail indeed, for I cannot continue to manufacture those experiences nor can I reinvent them. And as time passes on and the earlier experiences become more and more dim, I find that they have less and less power to reassure me.

I am instructed by John’s teaching that feeling the power of rebirth is not the foremost measure of being reborn. For John it lies elsewhere. My moral impulse to do right, to obey God’s Word, to live an ethical life, is the first by-product of divine rebirth (2:29; 3:9). Admittedly, such ethical maturity lives in conjunction with a thoroughly informed orthodoxy (John would have it no other way). But it is Christian behavior, behavior that the world does not recognize and that the world finds incomprehensible, that shows us that something divine has happened within us, that we have been reborn.

It is interesting to note that throughout the Johannine literature the world not only fails to recognize Jesus but also cannot comprehend the behavior of his followers (John 15:18–27). This is further testimony to the foreignness of the experience of the Spirit. But what are the things the world finds impossible? John gives us little help, but we may speculate that it has something to do with our undivided devotion, loyalty, and obedience to the person of Jesus, even when that devotion denies our self-interest. This is the gist of John’s message. Christian love for God and one’s neighbor is a sacrificing love that is animated by supernatural power; it takes its model from what God has shown us in Jesus Christ—sacrificial love—and then extends that same quality of love within the world (John 16:12–17; 1 John 3:1).

(2) Assurance and adoption. In 3:1–3 John gives a second way we can know about our security with God. John remarks that we are to be known as children of God, and this ascription comes from his love that he initiates in our behalf. This leads John to an exclamation of praise.

A few years ago our family had the privilege of adopting into our home a little four-year-old girl named Grace. I have often reflected on how this experience is so much like our experience with God as he makes us his own. It was not Grace’s merits that made the adoption happen, nor was it someone forcing us to do it. We decided independently that this was something we wanted to do. And one day, on February 20, 1992, all of us went to the Illinois court building in downtown Chicago, where a judge with solemn black-robed dignity and the smack of a gavel forever changed one little girl’s name.

When John thinks about our status as “God’s children,” he has in mind this sort of absolute, unyielding decision initiated by God on our behalf. That is what leads John to exclaim, “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God!” It is an unmerited love, an unmerited adoption, a divine choice whereby we utterly become the Lord’s possession. When this conceptual framework is firmly a part of our consciousness, when we discover that our security with God is out of our hands and firmly in his, assurance comes naturally. Confidence in our Christian identity comes simply through finding that God holds us secure. If we do not feel like a child of God or if others say that we do not exhibit certain criteria confirming our status as God’s children, it makes no difference. A divine gavel has fallen.

I am frankly astonished at the number of times I have explained to classes of Christian college students about the unmerited love God has for us—how we are his children and he will never “unadopt” us—and how in the course of my explanation students from strong evangelical churches literally will cry. Their tears have nothing to do with the character of my presentation; instead, they point to the insecurity they have learned at their home churches. “If I don’t feel like God’s child, maybe I’m not.” “If I can’t always act like God’s child, perhaps I never was.” My office has witnessed such statements from the children of our evangelical households every semester for years.

(3) Assurance and eschatology. John writes in 3:3 that everyone who holds to his or her eschatological hope is purified. That is, if we have an expectation of the imminent return of Jesus and realize that we will be identified with him and unveiled as his children, it will have a galvanizing impact on our lives. Our faith will be strengthened and our resolve to live a godly life will increase.

But I wonder if this is really what happens. Apocalyptic preaching that reinforces the Second Coming and our meeting the Lord Jesus must be handled with extreme care. I believe many average Christians are filled with anxiety and fear at the thought of the Second Coming, and they wonder if for them it will be a day of joy. Using passages such as 1 Corinthians 3:10–15 and Jesus’ parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14–30, many Christians teach that the day of Jesus’ return will be a day of reckoning for everyone. When he comes back, he will want to know what we have been doing with the heritage he left behind.

John’s purposes run along different lines. In 3:2 he says, “Now we are children of God,” and since we bear Christ’s image, when he appears, we will be like him. The return of Jesus will disclose the truth about God’s relationship with us, not evaluate whether that relationship is satisfactory. Peter refers to this event as one of celebration and joy for believers (1 Peter 4:13), and Paul thinks of it as a time of divine reward (2 Tim. 4:8) and genuine encouragement (1 Thess. 4:18).

(4) Righteousness and rebirth. In the commentary section above I made clear John’s intention when he speaks of the sinlessness of believers. Those who are children of God, who bear Christ’s character and are born of him, are not plagued with ongoing habits of sin. One evidence of God’s presence in their lives is their sanctification. Yet while John urges us toward holiness, he is candid that perfection is not completely possible since he honestly says elsewhere that sinfulness is characteristic of every human (1:8; 2:1–2). There is thus a tension here, which is accompanied by a number of profound pastoral problems. On the one hand, we candidly admit to our fallenness and announce God’s generous forgiveness. On the other hand, we exhort one another to pursue holiness, to become Christlike as we grow in Christian maturity.

Christian traditions differ on how they handle this delicate question. Some traditions, particularly in the Holiness churches, stress the demands of righteousness strenuously. In the Reformed tradition the emphasis on God’s grace and love has made many of us uncomfortable with bold calls to holiness. For those of us in this latter community, the uncompromising words of John must be sounded again. “No one who lives in him keeps on sinning” (3:6). Sadly, there are many in our churches for whom habitual sin is nothing of real consequence. Even among Christian leadership, not everyone is comfortable speaking forthrightly about purity and righteous living.

(5) Righteousness and assurance. The difficult theological problem that attends to the subject of perfection is whether or not someone who continually sins, who consciously breaks God’s law, puts himself or herself in spiritual jeopardy. That is, can habitual sin so violate our status as children of God that we lose any privileges that come through such a relationship? Another way to frame this question is to ask whether continuous sin reflects that we have already violated our status as God’s children, or perhaps never known it in the first place.

This brings us full circle as we return to the subject of assurance. John’s intention is to exhort his followers to superior Christian discipleship in a way that will strengthen their faith. Therefore, his appeals to holiness emphasize not the impossibility of sin but the connection to Christ. “No one who is born of God will continue to sin” (3:9). The assumption throughout is that John’s audience is born of God, that they enjoy a redeemed place with the Father. In light of that privilege, sin should have no place. Holiness becomes an imperative fueled not by fear of jeopardy but by a heartfelt response to the security that God’s love gives us. Cosmetic changes appear in our lives in response to threat. Permanent change comes to us when we are safe and assured in God’s love; this safety must be anchored in the objective work of Christ on the cross.

However, at the risk of taking away the assurance that I have so carefully protected in the preceding paragraph, I cannot help but feel troubled by verses such as 3:6, 8, and 10. John seems to sound a warning here, a final and terrible warning, that lives characterized by sin, lives willfully disobedient and unrighteous, cannot be lives that are born of God (3:9), that know him and abide in him (3:6). Such persons possess the dreaded prospect of eternity without God. They are “the children of the devil” (3:10). Setting our pastoral concerns about assurance aside, does this warning have a valid place in the teaching and preaching of the church? It is like those passages in Hebrews that every Calvinist prefers to avoid, particularly Hebrews 6:1–8 (also chaps. 3 and 4), where the writer warns Christians not to fall into disbelief as did the Israelites who fell in the desert and failed to enter the Promised Land.

However I communicate this, I must weigh carefully the measure of exhortation and the measure of grace I serve up. I must be honest about both. But in the end, my aim is to strengthen, not to tear down; to fortify belief and resolve, not to weaken them through severe exhortation.

Original Meaning

God’s Children and the Children of the Devil (3:4–10)

THE PREVIOUS DISCUSSION about righteousness and purity leads John to reflect on the tension between sin and perfection in the Christian life. As Stott illustrates, themes repeat themselves systematically:12

	1 John 3:4–7	1 John 3:8–10
Introduction	whoever does sin	whoever does sin
Theme	sin and lawlessness	sin and the devil
The purpose of Christ’s appearing	Christ appeared to take away sin	God’s Son appeared to destroy the devil’s work
Logical conclusion	no one who remains in him keeps on sinning	no one born of God keeps on sinning

The New Testament contains a number of general descriptions of sin, its character, and its compulsions (Rom. 1:18–3:20; James 4:17; 1 John 5:17; etc.). But few passages are as clear as 1 John 3:4–10. John’s firm condemnation of sin suggests that he has in mind the secessionists, who have made some claim about sinlessness (see on 1:8–10). Paul confronted the same problem in Romans 6, where some believers had apparently viewed sinfulness as an opportunity to exercise the grace of God more fully. John is not only affirming the universality of sin once more, but is describing its inner character. Sinners break the law.

John’s use in verse 4 of the term lawlessness (Gk. anomia, from nomos, “law”) can be viewed in two ways. He may possibly be referring to the moral quality of sin as a breach of some divine command. Indeed, this is true. To commit sin is to offend a rule or word given by God. Many read the verse in this light and believe that John is describing the essence of sin. John’s heretics were viewing immorality with indifference, and he writes to confront them.13 In this sense lawlessness and sinfulness are virtually synonymous and interchangeable (and thus appear that way in the LXX).

But other interpreters have gone a different direction.14 It seems unusual for John to interject a legal image here, since no hint of such a framework has yet appeared. Moreover, this is John’s only use of anomia, so we cannot compare his use of the word elsewhere. Perhaps, therefore, it carries another meaning. In 2 Thessalonians 2:3, 7, the word describes “one who is lawless,” one who stands in direct opposition to Christ at his second coming (hence the “man of lawlessness” in some translations). Therefore, John may mean that those who sin participate in a lawlessness, otherwise known as a rebellion, that is characteristic of the devil. This interpretation is helpful because in his previous section (see 2:18) John has described the antichrist and unveils the outbreak of evil that will accompany the end of the world.

This interpretation finds added support if we follow the symmetry of the passage and look at 3:8. Here John makes the alignment crystal clear: Those who sin participate in the devil’s work because they share the inherent character of the devil (v. 8a). Therefore, the decision to sin or not to sin is really a decision to reflect the character of Christ or Satan. John is describing what it means to be a true child of God—or of the devil (v. 10).

But, John adds, Jesus came to destroy all sin (3:5b, 8b). This means initially that his substitutionary sacrifice “carried away” our sins (cf. John 1:29) and the punishment that accompanies them. But John has more in mind. Jesus himself is pure—there is no sin in him—and if that is the case, his work also includes opposition to any sinfulness. In other words, Jesus’ works include both removing the guilt of sin and defeating its presence altogether. Jesus is concerned with both justification and sanctification.

In order to make the point unmistakable, John goes on to say that no one who is truly in an intimate relation with Christ “keeps on sinning” (3:6). The same thought is repeated in 3:9 and 10 with different nuances (see also 5:18). Those who are born of God—those who have received the “seed” of God15 and who are children of God—keep themselves free from sin. In fact, 3:9 makes the statement boldly: Such people “cannot go on sinning” because they have “been born of God.”

John’s characteristically bold statements in these verses have led to numerous struggles for the average Christian. Does this mean that perfect holiness is God’s expectation for me? Initially, we can dismiss the notion that John believes Christians can be sinless. In 1:8–2:1 (cf. 5:16–17) he has said just the opposite, and we must allow that he is not contradicting himself one chapter later. Some have suggested that John is addressing different issues in 2:1 and 3:9. In the earlier section he is confronting proto-Gnostics, who have denied ethics in their embrace of a higher spirituality. The apostle rejects this. But in the present verses John presents an ideal, a vision of Christian character that is godly and above reproach. He would hardly say, “Be as much like Christ as you can.” Rather, he would urge us to take on Christ’s perfect character (even though it is an ideal beyond our reach).

A helpful solution is used by the NIV, concentrating on the tenses of the verbs. In Greek a present tense (in certain forms) indicates continuous, repeated activity.16 Four key occurrences demand attention. (1) In 3:6a and 5:18 John says (lit.) that Christians “do not sin.” The Greek verb “to sin” appears in the present indicative, and the sense is that we should not have the ongoing, self-endorsing habit of sin. (2) In 3:6b the construction uses a present participle (lit., “the one who sins,” or better, “the one who continues to sin”) to express the same notion. Once again, a participle with a present tense implies ongoing activity. (3) In 3:9a, a different verb is used (“to do sin”), and sin appears as a noun. Again, it appears as a present tense. (4) Finally, in 3:9b John describes Christians as “not able to sin.” Both the verb (“to be able”) and its infinitive (“to sin”) appear in the present tense. It is useful to outline these verses carefully since they can be difficult in most English translations. Using this interpretation, John may well be emphasizing that ongoing, habitual sin should find no place in the believer’s life.

But a number of interpreters have outlined problems with this view.17 Chiefly, it seems that John may not be diligently following the grammatical function of present and aorist tenses this carefully. Among these scholars most see these texts controlled by the theological situation of the Johannine crisis. John is confronting people who seem to say that Christians are free to sin (since ethics is irrelevant anyway by their accounting). In 3:7 their influence is mentioned and a warning is sounded. Therefore the real subject is the permissibility of sin18 or a sort of perfectionism that has no regard for morality.

Even if John does affirm that Christians will indeed sin, still, he is making a strong case for the holiness of the believer. In fact, those commentators in the Wesleyan or Holiness tradition (e.g., Marshall) point out that even within Judaism there was the expectation that in the era of the Messiah, surprising holiness would be commonplace (Ezek. 36:27).19 Thus the New Testament writers (who viewed themselves living in that era) fully expect near sinlessness to accompany the Christian life.

This is a subject that will take some discernment in our application below. Its pastoral implications are immense, and we will have to ask how closely this teaching squares with the practical experience of the Christian life.